HUMANS

There was once a crying cat.
She lived in a cage, around eighteen by eighteen by eighteen, with rusty bars and a rickety little door.
There was once a crying dog. His cage was bigger, and I'm bad with measurements.
You could poke him with a stick if you wanted to, or pull his ears from outside. Never have I seen him hold his head high, for his cage, just cramming in his form somehow, had no room for that kind of pride.
There was once a budgerigar and a lovebird and a cockatiel. Birds, in case you were wondering.
And they had no idea what was happening to them.
Sometimes they would feel dizzy. Sometimes they would vomit out the little pellets they swallowed. Most of the time, they would make babies. As much as they loved their babies, they were used to seeing them die just as much. High powered medicine made them crave more food and produce more offspring. Mostly dying, or already dead offspring.
It didn't really matter anymore.
The cat and the dog cried themselves to sleep every night. It was etched on their faces, it really was. From the half-closed, bloodshot eyes came out dark, noticeable streaks of an endless stream. The actual tears, the salt-water, was never to be seen. Tear trails have never looked darker.
You could however, seldom count their ribs. My story is devoid of that kind of cliché, don't you worry. The cat and the dog were given very high energy hocus pocus to eat. It never filled their tummies, no. It was there to ensure that they were extra fluffy. Faking extra fluffy was supposed to be the trend in high society homes.
The common birds, cats, dogs - all of them remained together. Their cages were stacked on top of each other - first dog, then birds and cat a little farther. Germs floated everywhere. Dog germs, cat germs and parakeet germs. The sickly dog would breathe in heavily, and diphtheria from cats would seep right in.
The rare birds however, were never to be seen where our said animals were kept.
The Hill Mynah and the Indian Ringneck Parrot lived in a damp little warehouse. They wondered why nothing was ever green, and why when they wanted to spread out their wings, something metallic would hit them every time. Some of them, the more experienced ones knew a little human-tongue. They uttered the little gibberish they knew in low whispers, constantly missing the people that they love.
Sometimes, these animals got lucky. People would buy them from their prison, nurse them to health and really bond with them over time. Luck didn't favour all of them though, for there would always be the crazy kind. The kind that fed mashed potato to birds or the kind that expected newborn kittens to eat fish right away. Worse still, was the kind that let out their frustration, their twisted little sickness on their dogs. Belts, whips and chains fell mercilessly as dogs, still wondering what went wrong, yelped and howled in pain. When they got bored, they threw out their cats. Sometimes this throwing out involved a gunny bag closed tight with the cat still alive inside. Most of the time, the cat neither got out of the bag nor lived to tell the tale.
I wonder why nobody asked about rabbits.
The rabbits didn't move much. They sat, about fifteen or sixteen in the same small cage, huddled together - each as motionless as the other. They didn't require hocus-pocus food to make babies; all they needed was a little rabbit hole instead. However, the cages were made out of metal, not soil. No burrowing or playing or nursing their babies. Too many deaths happened in the rabbit cage every day.
What was the point really, in my telling you all this?
I am just a confused little girl, sometimes way too much of a lucid dreamer. I actually believed that typing a few words would help change things.
Maybe, just maybe, the mighty Alsatian would be let out of its cage to play and frolic in a beautiful lawn.
Or maybe the kittens in the cage, all twenty of them would be loved by some crazy cat lady resting cozily in an armchair - ten kittens dangling from her dress and the other ten playing with her hair.
Maybe the beautiful birds would be loved for who they are instead of their ability to produce babies. Some idiot would not simply set them free, for they are dependent on humans and are unable to survive in the wild.
Maybe those who still can survive in the wild will be transported back to Chittagong Hill Tracts, back home, deep in the forests there.  
And the rabbits will be given a proper home, with plenty of soil to burrow in. The little Alice of the household would dream of falling into one of those rabbit holes, and write all sorts of magical stories about it.
And I thought I could do all that with a few written words.
What was I even thinking?

Qazi Mustabeen Noor is a CSE student at Military Institute of Science and Technology.