A Letter to Mom...

Dear Mom,
I know it’s been awhile since I left home and I haven’t written you in way too long. I’m sorry. I hope this will make up for my negligence just a little.
I’ve had a few adventures which were kinda fun since leaving. Fun that is until I was caught and put in some sort of cage like place where I am writing from now. Leastways I ain’t found a way out yet and none of my companions have either. Ah, yes---my companions. There are four of them. They are all a few years older than I and have been here longer but seem quite content with life for the time being. Maybe I’ll get used to this place too after awhile… …but I do enjoy having the freedom to roam.
Part of the reason I am writing to you is because of an extraordinarily strange thing that happened to us all a few days ago. You never told me and the others of us siblings anything about this happening to you or dad when we all were growing up so I thought I’d ask you about it.
This place where we are held we get some variety of things to eat but the frequency is somewhat unpredictable. What usually happens is the roof opens and food is thrown down to us. Mostly it comes in random sized chunks which brings quite a scramble and the inevitable grousing and complaining about who got an unfair share. Sometimes we get a live critter thrown to us that we have to dispatch before eating. Some days ago a really strange thing happened. The roof opened and a live critter was thrown down to us. As we leaped to our feet, suddenly there appeared standing before us a man with a very stern countenance who firmly commanded us not to touch the critter nor harm it in any way and then he was gone. Of course being the sort of creatures my friends and I are we all proceeded to ignore this instruction and tried to grab the live critter for dispatch. None of us could do it! Not one of us could even open our mouths! I’m seriously glad I didn’t have a stuffy nose! Have you ever tried to breathe through tightly clenched teeth? Yeah, it was that bad. I thought maybe we all had suddenly got ourselves a serious case of lockjaw and lock limb or some other awful disease I never heard tell of. To make matters worse this live critter seemed very calm in our presence and even walked right over to us. It looked me in the face from quite close and reaching out with a paw even scratched my ears and patted me on the head. I must say if it wasn’t so terribly embarrassing and frustrating I might actually have enjoyed it---but just a little mind you! My fellow inmates were a-snorting with humor at my predicament through their clenched teeth until the same thing happened to them. One of them even got his long whiskers pulled. I guess the hardest thing came when the critter went and lay down at my side and put his head down on my tummy and went off to sleep. All any of us could do was roll our eyes! The whole experience was enough to make a fellow doubt his sanity! At least the critter didn’t snore much. Not any where near as much as my noble companions! The next morning after a whole night of this sort of thing, very early it was, the roof opened up yet again and a loud voice hollered down at us.
The critter leaped to its feet and yelled back, “Oh King live forever, My God sent His Angel and shut the Lions mouths. They have not harmed me.”
Then the critter was dragged back up outa our place on a viney looking thing.
Mom, might you know just who this critter is? Why couldn’t any of us touch him?

Lots of purring and nuzzlings to you.
Your prodigal son, Leo.

PS I did a lot of yawning and stretching of my limbs for an hour or so after all this and I’m hungrier than usual but I seem to be just fine so don’t you be worrying about me.