They moved like small kittens. By daylight they took sniper fire, at night they were mortared, but it was not battle, it was just the endless march, box to box, without purpose, nothing won or lost. They marched for the sake of the march.

Out of all of us, Ritchie was a hardened cat. He saw too much. He felt too much. Behind those black eyes were a sadness that was held back from all the years of killing. Those black eyes conveyed a coldness that sent a shiver down my spine. While we all enjoyed catnip, he looked at us, not giving a slight of feeling to us. We left Ritchie alone.

I approached him one night at our cardboard outpost. I offered him some catnip, but as usually he declined my offer. In one hand, he held a picture of small hamsters, running on a training wheel. "Say Ritchie, why do you hold onto that picture?". He looked at me, those cold hardened black eyes staring right into me. He glanced away, with some pain on his face. "It's to remind me that I used to have some humanity".

We marched on the next day to the next litterbox outpost. As we marched, we were ambushed on all sides by hamsters. We managed to kill some of them off, with some casualties. When we were done, I saw Ritchie standing over a body of a dead Hamster, tears rolling down his cheeks. Before I could put my paw on his shoulder, he muttered quietly..

"I killed them".

• karma to anyone who figures out what book my first paragraph references :)