I've heard people say that they're different than those that came before them. I've heard it enough to believe that it's false.

Sure, each individual has slightly different characteristics than the last, but they always follow the same cycle.

I would know, considering I've been the family cat for centuries.

Most recently, I was passed to the eldest daughter, named Alyssa, a woman with three children, two girls and one little boy. They always have three. They always have two daughters and one son. And I always end up with the eldest daughter.

Alyssa mentions to her husband, James, "Don't worry about the cat. I'm sure he'll kick the bucket soon enough, anyway."

James responds, "Yeah? What if your mother wasn't lying? What if that cat's going to outlive us both?"

"That's a family myth. I'm almost positive that she's been replacing him every 10 years, and that soon enough she'll knock at my door and tell me that I've got to keep it up."

"What are you going to tell her?"

"No!"

Another pattern repeats itself. They always deny that I really will live forever, and they're always disappointed that I end up staying alive, year after year. It's not like I'm a bad cat, it's that somehow, all the eldest daughters are not cat people.

They're tried poisoning me, to no avail. They've tried putting me in shelters, but I always wake up the next morning in their house. The younger siblings have even tried taking me, but until the eldest daughter takes me back, I butcher their luck.

Once they realize I'm immortal, and I will continue to plague their household until they die, they give up, and the next thirty or fourty years are relatively uneventful. No one in the family has ever truly amounted to much, with most of the family becoming accountants, office workers, librarians--things that won't put your name anywhere important--and the eldest daughter always being a stay-at-home mother with her high-school-English-teacher husband. Or, whatever form of teaching existed before the introduction of high school. I've been the cat of a couple tutors, all the way back in Victorian times.

However, before they realize I'm immortal, they really enjoy praying for my death.

Alyssa's children crowd around me, taking multiple grabs at my tail, and the eldest daughter manages to pick me up, holding me right under my arms, and swinging me around like a tornado. James tells her to put me down, and fortunately for me, she obliges. Alyssa grumbles, "You should've let her keep going, maybe she'd finally kill that cat."

James says, "Maybe we'll grow to love the cat! You don't know that you'll hate having him around."

"Believe me, I will."

If she's anything like her previous generations, I'm afraid she's right.