Fhilcar Faunillani 
The cat’s eyes tremble. She drags her broken front legs across the cold pavement. Her body is small, fragile, like a leaf caught in a storm. She doesn’t cry out. She never does. The street is quiet, save for the distant hum of cars. She inches toward a scrap of food, her breath shallow. Pain …
The kitten crouched under the bus stop, shivering. Its eyes, crusted shut, wept yellow tears. Rain threatened, heavy and cold. The woman knelt, her coat brushing wet pavement. She saw the kitten’s trembling paws, its thin body curling tighter against the wind. Her heart caught—something small, something lost, something needing her. She scooped it close, …
The kitten lay under the house, small and strange, his body puffed like a forgotten balloon. His eyes, wide and cloudy, held a question no one could answer. He wasn’t right. Not muscular, as they first thought, but swollen, air trapped beneath his skin. A young couple found him, their hands gentle, their voices low. …
The rain was coming. A faint mew trembled under the house, weak and hungry. It had been two days. The kitten was alone in the garden, shivering, too small to walk. Its mother was gone, siblings nowhere near. The sky darkened, heavy with clouds. We couldn’t leave it there. We carried it inside, a tiny …
The tent was cold at 4 a.m. A soft, insistent meow broke the silence. I unzipped the flap, my breath catching in the chill. A tiny kitten sat there, fearless, eyes wide. He looked at me like he’d been waiting. His fur was matted, a faint smudge of dirt on his nose. I didn’t know …
The cat staggered across the street, thin as a whisper. His bones pushed against his dull fur. I stopped my car. His eyes, cloudy and tired, met mine through the dusk. I couldn’t drive on. A can of cat food sat in my glovebox, bought for a neighbor’s pet. I opened it. The scent drifted. …
The rain fell soft on the pavement, soaking my shoes. A tiny kitten, shivering and small, mewed from a corner. It was just a shadow at first, tucked against a wall. Its fur clung to its body, wet and thin. I knelt, calling softly, and it ran to me, stumbling, crying out. Those eyes, wide …
The kitten clung to the wall, its tiny claws scraping against the brick. Its cries pierced the evening, sharp and desperate, pulling me to a stop on my walk home from work. I stood there, watching. The kitten’s wails grew louder, echoing off the empty street. Its small body trembled, eyes wide, searching for something …
The river glinted under the afternoon sun. I held my fiancé’s hand, lost in the woods, when a ripple caught my eye—a small, sodden shape bobbing in the water. It was a cat. His fur clung to his frame, gray and matted, his eyes half-closed against the current. I knelt by the bank, reaching out, …
Her eyes, soft and dark, held a story no one had bothered to read. She lay under the sun, waiting. The dirt was warm beneath her, baked by a summer that didn’t care. A woman, gray hair tied back, knelt beside her. She’d seen the dog left there, abandoned, three days ago. The woman’s hands …
Her eyes were dull, like forgotten coins in the dust. She lay there, trembling, on Easter Sunday. The street hummed with footsteps. Families in bright dresses, children clutching baskets, passed by. Nobody stopped. Aurora was a shadow, a scrap of life curled against a crumbling wall. Her tiny body, barely a skeleton, was patched with …
The puppy lay in the dirt, ribs sharp against his skin. His eyes held a quiet, trembling hope. Last night, I scrolled past a post on my phone. Another stray, forgotten in the endless feed. The subtitles were short, almost whispers: “Just skin and bones, abandoned.” Nobody seemed to care. Pain had become ordinary, just …
The sack moved in the dirt, trembling under a gray sky. A man’s hands paused, hesitant, before pulling it open. A dog crawled out, eyes wide with fear. His name would be Max, though no one knew it then. His body shook, not from cold, but from pain that clung to him like damp earth. …
Her belly sagged low, heavy with life, as she stepped from the shadows. I stopped, my dog’s leash loose in my hand, and watched her pause, eyes wide, trusting. The evening was cool, the kind that settles over a small town when the sun dips below the trees. My dog, Rusty, sniffed the air, curious …
The rain fell soft on the pavement, and her eyes caught mine through the glass. A stray cat, small and soaked, huddled by my shop’s door. She didn’t move. She just sat there, her fur matted, her gaze steady but wary. I pushed the door open and set a bowl of scraps near her. She …