Tonight was no different than another night for the young kitty.  Another day had been spent working herself to exhaustion for another master that was more interested in keeping up appearances and getting results than anything else. She padded down the hallway in the servant’s quarters to her room that she shared with two other girls on the house’s staff. Chir always hurried to get there before the others so she could change clothes and shower in privacy, terrified that her difference from other girls would be noticed and force her back on the street. After listening at the door for a moment to see if her roommates were present she slipped in and hurried into the bath.

	Chir’s thoughts wandered in the shower. She ran through her nightly accounting of her life, a process that was inevitably depressing and pushed her ever closer to terminal hopelessness. She felt, however, that to forget where she had been and where she wanted to go would make it too easy to fall off the track she was trying to desperately to maintain.

“If I could just make it a little further”, she reminded herself, “I’m free.”

	So lost in that ritual of misery was Chir that she failed to notice the door to her dorm open and close while she was in the bath. Drying herself with the one communal towel the master allowed per room she wrapped it around herself and stepped back into the room. Catching sight of one of her roomies undressing by her locker she froze in place. She had forgotten to bring a change of clothes into the bathroom for her and now had to get dressed out in the open!

	Sandra, the other maidservant that Chir shared quarters with, looked up as she stripped out of her clothes tossing them on her bed.

“Finally!”, she said, “I thought you were never going to get out of there before my date! Gimme the towel, I gotta wash before I’m any later.”

	The vixen started to grab the towel wrapped around Chir’s body. Chir stepped back and stammered, “J-Just a minute! I just forgot something in the bathroom”, she turned away and started to retreat into the relative security of the WC until the vixen snatched the towel away.

“Why are you always being so bashful? Just because you don’t have any tits-“, her jibe trailed off and her eyes went wide as her eyes tracked down towards the cat’s crotch. The vixen’s face screwed up into horrified disgust as she looked back at Chir’s face.

“You motherfucking PERVERT”, she screamed at Chir. Sandra attempted to cover herself up and ran from the room hollering all the way down the hall leaving Chir behind in miserable terror.

	The kitty blinked back the tears, slowly becoming unfrozen from the initial panic and surprise at the sudden turn of events then because to mindlessly move. She threw on the same dirty clothes she wore yesterday and started to throw everything she owned into the sack she had come to this place with. Imagining the master’s security staff coming through the door to, at worst, haul her off to the authorities. More likely they would just throw her out past the main gate to the mansion. Either way, she wasn’t waiting to find out. She stuffed everything she had, which wasn’t much, into the threadbare 
sack and ran out of the dorm and into the night.

	Chir awoke as the morning light began streaming into her eyes through the leaves in the bush she had taken refuge in for the night. Sleeping in the city park wasn’t the wisest of moves but the shock, despair, and panic from last night had left her so drained that she merely had crawled under the nearest bush and fallen fast asleep. Now, waking up covered in dirt and smelling like wino piss, she fell even further into despair. For the first time since her roommate’s discovery last night she finally broke down, curled up, and sobbed into her knees.

	The cat was so lost in miser that she didn’t hear the approaching footsteps until they were just outside the shrub that had been hiding her. She stifled herself and looked around hurriedly for an escape route, but the bush was up against a building and she had no way out except for the way that someone was approaching from. Holding her bag in front of her and making her voice as deep and threatening as she could she shouted, “Go away!”

	The footsteps stopped. Silence rang as the boots she could see under the branches stayed where they were, neither advancing nor retreating. Chir held her breath waiting for something to happen while the seconds ticked by. Eventually she heard whoever was standing outside shuffling and the boots turned into knees, and the knees turned into fox’s face peering in at her.

	“Hey.”, he said simply and gazed at the dirty and frightened kitty cat in the bush.

	“What do you want? I’m armed, leave me alone”, she yelled. The fox didn’t respond but rather laid himself down on the ground outside of Chir’s leafy refuge. He rested his chin his hands and smiled meekly.

	“Are you okay?” He spoke as if Chir hadn’t just threatened him. The fox just maintained a bland expression on his face and waited patiently for a response. The cat fidgeted and nervously pulled her belongings nearer.

	“I’m fine. Now go away, I mean it”, the kitty snarled. The fox looked a little more intently at the girl then nodded.

	“Okay. Sorry to bother you.” He got up, dusted himself off and walked away, leaving the young cat alone.
	
	After a few minutes to make sure he was gone Chir crawled out from under the bush and pulled the sticks and leaves from her hair and clothes. She urgently needed to pee and glanced around looking for somewhere to go. The park itself had already proven to be too busy, but she spied a narrow alleyway between buildings nearby and headed towards that. Walking down the narrow space she found a dumpster near the end that would provide some brief cover. She was in such desperate need to relieve herself that she had already started pulling down her pants to go when she discovered she wasn’t alone in the alley after all.

	“Well hello, girlie”, a gravelly voice said from a doorway behind her, “I guess Santa thought I was a good boy after all.” The chuckle that emanated from whoever was behind her sent icy needles through her spine. She pulled he pants back up quickly and turned around to see a lumpy mess of a man come shambling out of the doorway. He leered as he approached, reeking of filth and booze.

	“What a pretty present to have come wander into m’ alley! Well, girlie, let me make you feel at home.” He lunged at Chir with rough hands and foul breath and she squeaked in surprise and horror. 

“Hey”, a shout echoed down the alley. Chir’s eyes remained locked on her assailant but the dirty man looked over with a sneer.

“This is nunya business, mate. Go ‘ead and move along.” He reached out to grasp Chir, wrapping iron fingers around her arm when the voice down the alley spoke again.

“You should probably not do that, buddy”, the calm voice said. The other man dropped the girl’s arm and turned to the owner of the voice.

“Look, you. I toldya to mind-“, his voice trailed off as the man at the mouth of the alley displayed something under his coat briefly. The ugly man grunted, glanced at Chir, then stumbled out of the alley, grumbling. There at the opening stood the same fox that had found her under the bush earlier.

“So… I know we’ve been through this once already but… are you okay?”

	Chir regarded the fox warily. Again, he didn’t seem particularly concerned, or anxious, or… anything really. He just stood there with the same friendly calm he had displayed earlier.  Retrieving her bag, Chir started to walk past the man when he reached out to bar her path. She tensed up and looked up at the man defiantly.

“Look… thank you for helping me, but I don’t owe you anything. Can I go?”

	The fox just looked down at her and shook his head, “No.  No, I’d like you to talk to me for just one moment. Then you can go.” He lowered his arm and waited.

Chir clenched her teeth and hissed, “Okay. Then what do you want?”

“I want to know if you’re okay. That’s all.”

The girl stared at the man, trying to read his intent. Having not come up with anything overtly dangerous she relaxed a little and sighed.

“Yes. I’m fine. Thank you very much for your help back there.”

He looked her over, at her simple clothes, her soft hands, her clean arms and neck, and her only-recently mussed hair.  

“You don’t really seem like you should be sleeping under a bush. As if anyone should…”, he trailed off, paused for a moment, then continued, “But you seem to be especially new to it. Did you run away?”

The hackles stood up on the back of Chir’s neck, “Excuse me? I’m a little too old be running away from home, don’t you think? How old do you think I am?”

Holding his hands up in surrender he grinned uncertainly, giving her a sheepish look back. “Okay, okay. That’s not what I meant. I meant you look like you must have left in a hurry last night. People usually do that for a reason. I don’t need to know what happened, I’m just seeing if you need any help. You seemed in pretty rough shape back there”, he jerked his thumb towards the park where she had sought refuge through the night.

Still peeved she looked away, embarrassed to be so obviously out of her element. She briefly considered her options, something she should have probably done the previous night before running out the door, and came up with a depressingly  short list. Hugging the sack to her chest she looked towards the fox and again tried to determine his motives. Finally she sighed and spoke.

“Yes. I had to get out of a… situation last night and now I’m sort of…”, her mouth twitched slightly before she continued, “homeless. Do you think you can get me into one of the city shelters?”

The city had a few shelters that were run by the local governments. There were “private” shelters, but those were places where one had a tendency to come out rather worse than when you went in. The city’s shelters, however, were neat and clean and kept orderly and safe by the local police. The problem was that these shelters required a sponsor to vouch for you. Seeing as she had no one in this town to vet her, at least no one who would, she had a miserably small chance of making it into one.

“Oh. Err…”, the fox began, “I’m not from around here. I was more passing through.” He looked thoughtful for a moment then reached for his wallet saying, “I could give you enough money to rent a room for a few nights, or to get out of town.” He stopped as he saw the look of disgust on her face.

“No, I don’t need a charity”, she snarled. “If you can’t help, then you can’t, but I’m not looking for handouts.”

She pushed passed him and walked out of the alley, not bothering to look back and see if he was following. After turning the corner she ducked into a doorway and watched the alley’s entrance to see where he would go. After only a brief moment her “hero” from the alley stepped out, scanned the streets quickly, then turned away from her and walked away towards the city center. 

Breathing a sigh of relief and forcing calm into her mind she started thinking about what to do next. She cursed herself for being so stubborn with the guy who tried to help her, but it was done now. Chir shook her head and moved back out onto the sidewalk and walked the other way, not really caring where she was going at the moment.

Watching her feet take her forward she wracked her mind about how she was going to get back onto her track again. She went on for a block before she sensed that someone was walking close to her. Just as she started to look over her shoulder to see who it was she was roughly yanked into another alley.

“Oh ho! Sorry for the in’truption back there, dearie. We ne’er gotta chance t’ finish our date!”
The stinking man from the other alley had apparently stalked her after the fox had left her alone.  Chir let out a scream that was almost immediately silenced by a filthy hand being pressed against her mouth.

“Donchya make a sound now, love.” He produced a broken rusty blade from his belt and pressed it against her throat, “Or it’ll be the last one to come out of your pretty little mouth.”

Despite the sharp instrument at her neck she panicked at being restrained and bit down on the hand gagging her. The man cursed and jerked his hand back. The cat tried to use that opportunity to flee out the alley and only made it a step before she felt herself being jerked back by her hair. She fell backwards, her head slamming into the concrete.

Her world spun and stars burst in front of her eyes as she commanded her body to get up, to run, to get away from the danger. As she fought the heaviness creeping over her, watching the double image of her assailant move closer she heard a sharp bang come from somewhere out of sight. Her attacker stopped advancing and twisted to one side before tipping over to the concrete with a thwack. As her eyes grew more and more unfocused she could dimly make out someone approaching her and kneeling down. Chir vaguely felt herself being lifted and carried somewhere before she blacked out entirely.