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Description
What You See Is Not Always What You Get

I am at home, or outside my home, in the garden. I love sitting in the garden. In the summer I always sit there after work. I take with me some food and a book and just relax. The sun is shining and warming my back. My little garden is like a paradise on earth. It is covered with flowers which are clinging to the walls of my little white house and to the low fences which part my little paradise from the narrow street outside. I am reading my favorite book; The Blade Itself. I'm really into fantasy. I'm also a writer, I write fantasy books for teenagers. I've never been good at writing books for children but I have a plan on writing one of those too. I even think I have an idea. But right now, there is another story that has to be told.

I put down the book I'm reading and go inside to fetch my computer. I have to get this down on paper before I go crazy. I'm a little special when it comes to writing: If I have something to write, I'll go crazy if I don't write it down at once. The little story you are about to hear is hundred percent true. It happened to me only a couple of days ago, in this particular garden, my little paradise.

It was a hot summer day, much like today. I was sitting and reading the exact same book as I was before I began to write this: The Blade Itself. My cat sat in the corner of the garden in the shadow of the low fences and looked at me. I knew that look. It meant "I want you to come over here and give me some food, right now." I followed my cat's silent order and went inside to get some food. I gave my cat the food and looked at him in silence. 'Eating cats are fascinating to look at,' I thought. I find myself thinking back to the day I found that cat. I remember I was walking down one of the narrow streets in my neighborhood, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, he came jumping. He jumped out form the bush and landed on my chest and I nearly fell over. He was quite heavy at least for his size. I remembered taking him to my house and that he liked it so good here that he just stayed. I called him Mike, after my favorite musician and artist, Mike Shinoda. Now he has lived with me for little over two months and has become a good friend to me.

I went back to my outdoor chair to continue reading my book. I didn't get to read for more than five minutes before I heard a voice behind me. I thought it might be my boyfriend or one of my friends. So I turned around and looked towards the street. No one there, except for Mike, of course, who sat on top of the fens looking over the street, his back ageist me. 'Strange,' I thought, but didn't care to give the voice more than a second of my time. I was at a particular amazing page in my book and had to know what happed. I don't know for how long I sat in that same chair, reading that same book, but I'm sure it was a while. It was getting dark. Mike was still sitting in the same position on the fence. I put down my book again and went over to him. When I got closer, I could clearly hear someone sing. The closer I got to the cat on the fence, the louder sounded the song. Suddenly, Mike turned his head and looked at me. "Hi," he said in an extremely humanlike voice. I stumbled backwards and tripped over the cat's food bowl and landed on my back on the grass. "Are you ok? I didn't mean to scare you or anything. I just felt like telling you this now. I'm not a normal cat, you see…" Mike trailed off when he saw that I didn't move or reacted at all. I was so scared and so shocked that I simply couldn't. Mike jumped down from the low fence and jogged over to me. "Do you want me to call a doctor or anything?" said Mike, in a scared tone. "Y-you're t-talking?" I stuttered. "Yea, I know, I should have told you before…" Mike said, he sounded sorry. I couldn't say anything, it was a shock for me, and that I have a talking cat is quite hard to adjust to, even now. Mike continued to talk to me, trying to get me to say something. After what he tells me, was an eternity and what I remember as seconds, we began to talk. We talked about the day we met, and he told me that he ran away from some evil people who had tried to get money for his talent, by letting others hear him talk. He had refused to talk while unknown people listened and nobody believed the owners. They had begun to punish him for it and then he just ran away. He also told me the reason why he is talking. "No one ever taught me to speak; I just listened to you humans and tried to make the same sounds. When I got the sounds right, I tried to figure out what the sounds meant. I managed that too and now I'm a talking cat, that's all," he said it in a way that made it sound so simple. But I guessed it wasn't. I was right. He had begun the talking thing as a kitten. Now he was about ten years and said he was still learning, even though he sounded like a normal human to me.

We sat in the garden for many hours. It was completely dark, but it did not bother me at all and it bothered Mike even less, because he is a cat and can see in the dark anyway. The summer night was hot and I fell asleep on the grass next to my half way new friend Mike. I wake up early the next morning, thinking that I had a crazy dream, or hit my head or something. Why was I sleeping outside? Then I saw Mike and remembered everything from last night. "Mike, wake up," I said, poking Mike's back with one finger. "I'm awake," he yawned turning over on the other side, facing me.
I stayed home from work that day; I called my job and said I was sick. I could not possibly go to work on a day like this.

Now a couple of days later, me and Mike have become best friends. My boyfriend was a little jealous in the beginning, but he understood that Mike was a normal cat in every way except for the talking part. We spend a lot of time together and I'm really happy he told me his big secret.
After my meeting with Mike, I've learned a lot, especially about cats in general, but also that sometimes real life is like stories, what you see is not always what you get. Remember that.