The Barn Cats

A packed barn

Marmite rolled over. He got up sleepily.
"Ugh... I'm so tired." He mumbled as he began to stretch. He was a handsome ginger tomcat with big, shiny blue eyes. His brother Peppermint grumbled as Marmite rose to his paws, and after glancing at the green-eyed grey tomcat, he lay back down.
"Sorry, there's not enough room to sleep further away from you." Whispered Marmite.
"Tell me about it!" Muttered Peppermint. "Jesse is always lying on my tail."
Jesse -a speckled tomcat that you saw on the front cover- raised his chin huffily and wrinkled his nose. "It's not my fault your tail is ridiciously long." He meowed defensively.
"Will you all shut it? Some of us are trying to sleep!" Paulina, the she-cat that slept on his other side, was hushing them so her sister Alyssa wouldn't wake up.
Marmite mumbled an apology before resting his head on the ground. Big mistake. Veronica's biggest kitten, Fluffy, ran over with his eyes wide and he was squealing in delight. He soon trampled all over Marmite's head.
"Fluffy!" Veronica hissed. "You'll wake your father Harvey, and poor Marmite doesn't need you on his head! Get off him now!"
"But mommy, I saw a rat behind Marmite and I wanted it for supper tonight." Whined Fluffy, tail trailing as he padded back to his mother.
"Nonsense. If you caught a rat, you'd have it for your breakfast!" Veronica reminded Fluffy.
Marmite couldn't find the energy to be angry at Fluffy, especially since he knew there was a tasty rat to catch later. He heard a squeak and glanced at Patch, a sensitive black and white moggy tomcat.
"You trod on my tail, Fluffy, and it hurt!" Patch whimpered pathetically. He was a full grown tomcat and Fluffy was a big kitten who'd lightly trod on Patch's tail on accident, not as hard as on Marmite's head at all.
"I'm very sorry, Patch." Fluffy mewed.
"You ought to be-" Patch began, but was interrupted by a she-cat.
"Shut it, won't you, Patch?" Huffed the beautiful ginger she-cat with sparkly amber eyes. Her name was Amber. Just like her eye colour. She wasn't being mean, she was sleepy and cranky. So Patch shut it. Marmite could feel Cherri's -a reddish she-cat- tail on his head, and sighed. He would sleep feeling bothered today. He rested his tail on Jassmine's head, because she lay under him and he wanted to take out his annoyance on someone. Jassmine was a black she-cat with blue eyes. It was very rare, but very pretty, yet Marmite didn't talk to her much. He heard her mumbling: "Shh, Savannah, I was almost asleep until you talked to Chelsea!" Marmite only knew a few cats very well. Patch, because he found comfort in whining to anti-sociable cats and Matmite was to polite to refuse, his brother Peppermint, Savannah as she often hunted the same rat as him so they'd found it fun to joke about it, Chelsea, because she was best friends with Savannah and liked to befriend whoever she had and Harvey, because he always shared his catch with close friends and Marmite shared his no matter what. But he'd be forced to talk to other cats very soon...