[ WP ] Most outdoor cats bring their owners mice or birds as presents . Yours just dropped a pixie at your feet .

`` Where'd you get this?'' I ask looking at the unidentifiable mass of mud-covered animal that was writing at my feet. 
 
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 Snuffles stares back up at me innocently. 
 
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 I sigh. 
 
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 Snuffles was a jet black cat that was a rescue from a shelter after her mother and the rest of the litter died in a house fire. I visit shelters from time to time, but never to actually get one, or so I thought. I loved animals but I could n't keep one, because I lived alone in a tiny apartment and was gone most of the day. There was nobody to look after them if I brought one home. 
 
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 When I chanced upon Snuffles, she was barely the size of my palm. 
 
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 `` Sister, take her.'' The owner had tried to thrust the cat into my arms. `` Her family, dead. Big fire. No open windows. She dug out.'' 
 
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 It was hard to believe this sleepy little kitten who barely had claws managed to dig out of a burning house. It's not like she was a mole who had buried her way through the ground. 
 
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 `` I really can't..'' 
 
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 `` She's house cat. No survive here. If I leave her in street, she'll die.'' 
 
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 *Stop trying to guilt trip me. It's not my responsibility*, I wanted to say through clenched teeth, but he had a point. I could n't exactly leave the cat, and oh look, it was sniffling against my hand. 
 
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 I'd got her home, and taken the first few days off work, to adjust her to her new home. After that, I actually got paid help to look after her while I was at work. I guess there is always a solution, for the right finances. 
 
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 Surprisingly, Snuffles was a very lively cat who loved playing, darting around rooms at top speed, and disappearing for hours every few mornings. But every so often when I picked her up, she'd sniffle at my hand. 
 
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 That's how I came around to calling her Snuffles. My boyfriend laughed when I told him that, and said mean things along the lines of how cliched that name is, and I should know better than find meanings just to give it the name. 
 
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 Snuffles had the habit of occasionally getting me birds and dead rats as presents, dropping it in front of my front door. Most of them were half-alive and I had to nurse them back to health, while Snuffles watched curiously as to why I was n't playing with the toy she'd got me. No matter how much I rebuked her, this habit never stopped. 
 
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 Through the years, I'd learnt to live with it. Snuffles was perfectly angelic in every other way, and I could n't ask for a more perfect cat. 
 
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 About a week ago, we'd moved to our new house, a proper house, not longer an apartment. It was almost at the edge of town, just a few houses separating us from the woods around it, and my backyard opened into a large hollow meadow behind, where surprisingly, there was a lack of trees. 
 
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 Soon after we moved here, Snuffles took to digging random spots in our garden, and running around after invisible objects. She was so persistent in this new game, I had to convince my boyfriend to get her back every night because I did n't want her to be snatched or attacked by some wild animal that came strolling through. 
 
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 And now she'd brought me this. She looked so accomplished, like she'd finally figured out and caught what was in the garden. 
 
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 I started softly dusting the mud out of the object when it flew up. 
 I took a step back, half afraid it was either a bird or a large insect, but I could n't believe my eyes when it was actually, what appeared to be ( from my limited knowledge of fairytales and folklore, ) a pixie. 
 
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 `` Wha-'' 
 
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 The pixie dusted itself off, flew down, appeared to be scolding my cat who seemed unaffected, and then flew right back out through the open door. 
 
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 I ran after it outside after gathering my composure believing this was really happening, and in the rays of the early morning light, I saw the shimmering trail it left, and the light yellow glow it had about it, and it followed a path into the ground that lit up. And as I stood watching, stretched into a maze of curved and jagged paths behind my house, stretching across the whole meadow. 
 
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 My house was built on the soil that has intricate tunnels beneath its hidden layers, and hidden to dull human eyes, is home to thousands of pixies, and my cat has merely brought me one of the few hundreds of thousands. 
 
 
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