Prologue

Another clash of lightning tore across the sky, another boom of thunder rocked the earth to and fro, another lashing of rain beat at the ground in heavy thuds. Grass dissolved into mud and mush, gloomy willow and oak trees illuminated white and black with each flash across the sky, doors and windows slammed shut on the turmoil outside in the world… where one, defenceless and alone, tiny and fragile tan kitten was frantic to get inside.
The kitten was barely two months old, dark tan all over with lighter tan on her miniscule paws and front, with only one variation in colour on the tip of her teeny bottlebrush tail - a tip of purest, bright shock red fur. She mewled again, cowering under a bench at the park, the mud between her toes squelching horribly under her teeny claws and the howling winds fighting to take a chilly bite at her where she hid. She shivered, ducked lower and crouched, mewing and crying, desperately hoping someone would hear. She blinked her large, hazel-green eyes and then held them tight shut again as another roll of thunder drummed above her.
She was just about to give up hope, lay down and wait for death, knowing no one would rescue her from this nightmare, when a miracle happened.
A pair of human feet stumbled past the bench.
A very tall, skinny man with a long, sallow face , a hooked nose with a neat pair of small, square glasses pushed on it and scruffy brushed-back hair struggled past in the heat of the storm, clasping tightly to his umbrella, which was being tugged wildly around in the wind. He turned round and tried to walk backwards with the umbrella to no avail - the wind only pulled him backward. There was a particularly large gust; the umbrella ripped out of his hand and blew away, soaring over the tops of the houses and pulling the man over in the process. He span round twice, tripped over his own, rather long feet, then the wind and the rain caught him once more and he fell face-first into a deep puddle.
The kitten watched the whole process happening before her, even forgetting to cower at the thunder in her surprise of this hapless man. She watched, her little tan ears forward with curiosity as he sat up, still in the puddle, and put his head between his knees in hopeless failure. It was apparent to the kitten that this man was just as alone and scared as she was, stuck in the storm with no one to help him… no one to help her… and then it dawned on her.
The man had given up. It was night time; he was just going to sit there and wait for the storm to subside. There was no point trying to go any further while it was raging like this. Oh, what a day he’d had… he got fired from his job, his only girlfriend broke up with him because of such, his car stopped working just as the storm started and now… now he’d lost his only umbrella, the only thing stopping him getting soaked… and then he heard it. A very small sound was getting ever so slightly louder. A tiny meowing, he thought. A little rough tongue licked his hand; he looked down to find a very tiny kitten staring back at him, an ever so peculiar-looking cat, with all tan markings and very large, hazel eyes… and perhaps the only kitten in the world with a vivid red marking on her tail.
“Hello there, you,” the man said to the kitten, gently picking her up and cradling the tiny life in the cup of his hands. He stood up and went to sit on the bench as the rain began to subdue. The thunder and the lightning had stopped altogether as the two of them sat.
“I’ve got no one,” the man told the kitten, and she mewed her pity for him. “Looks like you don’t either… I’ve lost everything today, little one, and I’m so crazy I’m actually talking to a kitten…” She mewled again and put a gentle paw on his arm, telling him not to worry about it and to carry on. He wasn’t mad… he’d saved her…
“My girlfriend is gone, I’ve lost my job, I can’t find another job because my car’s broken down somewhere, I don’t even know where anymore…” He sighed. “C’mon, you’ve been just as lonely as me, probably your whole life. I’ll… I’ll take you home, get you some food and water. You’ll be okay, little one,” he reassured her. The kitten looked deeply into the man’s kindly brown eyes through his spectacles. “… You’ll be okay now. We’ve got each other.”
Slowly, he trudged back to his home, the little kitten nestled into his jacket where he held her close to his chest. He opened the door with a sigh of relief, gently placing the kitten on a tea towel in the kitchen to dry off. The man was worried the red on the kitten’s tail was blood, but in fact, it definitely was a unique, natural marking. It looked rather lonely on its own, that single red tip to her tiny tail.
The man cleaned the kitten, using an old toothbrush to scrape the mud from her paws and brush her fur back into place. And as he brushed, he looked very closely at the head of the kitten to see just a couple of long, red hairs growing out here and there between her ears.
“My, my, you are a peculiar one, aren’t you?” the man said with a small chuckle, lifting the kitten into his arms, with a small baby bottle of warm, full-cream milk. She was very thin and helpless looking, which he hoped to change.
The kitten was relieved to finally have a friend; a person who would care for her and feed her, and give her another chance in life. She really thought she was doomed to a life on the streets until she met this kindly man. And the man probably thought the same about her - he had no one and nothing until she came along. They’d saved each other…
“You know,” the man said, holding up the kitten and examining her once more, “a unique kitten like you needs a unique name. A name that will stand out from all other cats, a name people will remember…” He looked up at a crystal clock hanging from the wall. It was made from dark onyx. “How does that sound… Onyx?”
The kitten smiled… she loved that name.









Chapter One

Three years had passed since that night. mark had never got a new girlfriend and had no need for a new car, since he now worked from home selling guides for cat care.
The now three year old cat Onyx was sprawled out over a plush cat sofa in front of a huge TV, on which her favourite show was playing once more. Where small strands of long red hair were growing out of the young kitten’s head now sat a full head of hugely red hair, which was the most bizarre thing for a cat to have ever developed. The man, who Onyx now knew as Mark, who’d found her over a year ago was completely shocked by this, but loved her just the same. He had brushed it and styled it into a particular fringe which covered half her face, a style which the cat loved. He didn’t like to answer awkward questions, so when people in the street asked about Onyx’s strange hair, he simply lied it was a wig and left it at that.
Onyx the cat had changed over the last year. She’d gone from bedraggled, skinny kitten to a brushed and cared for, rather fat and well-fed cat, who was addicted to something that Mark thought also made her unique.
Onyx had a love and adoration, even fandom, for the TV show ‘BOLT’. That American White Shepherd was Onyx’s hero! The second week living with Mark, he’d watched an episode of BOLT on TV with Onyx. Onyx had seen that canine on the TV for the first time, looked up to him with admiration and love and since then, she’d grown up with the show. It was her whole kittenhood, her entire life, everything revolved around BOLT for Onyx.
She watched BOLT every single Thursday at 8pm, owned the DVDs of all the previous series with the original Penny (but of course, Mark had to put in the DVDs for her) and even had a plush dog Bolt twice the size of her, which Mark had also bought for her. Mark even went as far as dying a permanent lightning-bolt shape in black onto Onyx’s back left leg. He didn’t really know why, but Onyx just loved it. But, in her mind, she more than just loved it…
“Go Bolt go! Penny’s in trouble!” Onyx yelled at the TV, though all Mark heard was incessant meowing. “Oh Bolt, you’re my hero! I’m your biggest fan! EVER!” Onyx considered herself the number one fan of the show and even more so, the number one fan of Bolt the dog himself. He was her idol! She’d give anything to meet him for real…
Onyx stretched on the cat sofa and shovelled another mouthful of salted popcorn, watching her favourite dog Bolt soar across the screen at top speed, with Penny on her scooter behind him every paw step of the way. She looked down - that was the last of the popcorn. But what a crisis, she thought, because she couldn’t reach the magic button pad to pause the DVD, but she was still hungry and needed more popcorn, but she was also too comfy to move! She was just about to mewl for Mark when there was a knock at the door.
“Oh, Julie, my sweet, come in!” Mark’s cooing voice trailed in from the hall. Cooing? Since when did Mark coo?
With all the effort that fat, lazy Onyx could muster, she heaved herself off the sofa and paused the DVD with that ever magical pause button that could freeze time for Bolt (which also left her wondering, I wonder what it’s like to be frozen in time?) and trudged into the hall to see what all the cooing was about.
There was a woman there.
“Is this Julie, Mark?” Onyx said, apparently to no avail, because all he ever heard of her speech was meowing. “Who’s Julie then, eh?”
“Oh, look at you!” A particularly plump woman with red hair kneeled down in front of Onyx, petting her head lightly. “Look at this hair! Oh that wig looks adorable on you!”
“Wig?” Onyx sneered. She didn’t know about Mark’s cover-up.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Julie carried on. “Mark tells me stories that you just love BOLT!”
“I’m the biggest fan!” Onyx said proudly, then wondered if Julie felt as odd as she did talking to a human.
“Shall we go through then, Julie?” Mark said, taking her hand and directing her into the sitting room. Onyx stared at their entwined hands with incredulously. Is Julie… his girlfriend? But Mark hadn’t had a girlfriend in three years!
She followed them into the sitting room to eavesdrop. What if they got married? And had children? Mark would forget all about Onyx and the baby would pull her hair and her tail and her ears and they’d all coo over the baby and then she’d have no one but Bolt! Well, no one except her Bolt plush… which would be given to the baby! She could NOT let this happen.
With her Bolt toy hugged close to her, she began to listen.
“How have you been?” Mark said, and Onyx watched in horror as he put his slim arm around her.
“Good, yeah, it’s been a bit stressful with all our pets, as you know -“
“Yes, Mittens, Rhino and the rest. How’s Penny?”
Penny? Onyx listened in more.
“She’s been good,” Julie small-talked, “yeah, she’s getting good grades at school…” Julie looked at the TV, to the paused screenshot of BOLT. “Onyx has been watching BOLT again, I see. You two should move in one day, I mean, we are engaged after all, we’ve been planning it for months! And I’m sure Onyx would love to meet and even live with the original Bolt.”
WHAT?? Onyx was practically on tip-toes now, clawing her way up the back of the sofa to hear.
“Oh yeah, I’m sure!” Mark reassured with a short nod. “Course, because your daughter Penny was the Penny on the show, wasn’t she? And Bolt…”
“Bolt was the one from the show, yes. We quit, however, because the business is just so bad! Our agent was nothing but trouble for us! Let’s put a pin in it! He told my Penny… Stuck-up idiot too involved in his job to care.”
“So when should we move in?” Mark saw the upset in Julie’s eyes and changed the subject. “We haven’t got much stuff in this little flat, I mean, it’d take us less than half a day to pack.”
“Oh, tomorrow should be fine,” Julie said, smiling, “and bring Onyx, course! Like I said, I’m sure she’d love to meet the star of the BOLT show! Even live with the star! Well, the star for the first three series at least…
Onyx blinked. She was going to meet Bolt. She was going to LIVE with her hero Bolt. Oh my Dog. No way, this could no be happening! Too fast! Way too fast was this discovered!
Grinning, Onyx dragged her Bolt plush out of the room to go and squeal with delight somewhere where she couldn’t be heard. She was going to meet Bolt! Her idol, her hero! She could tell him that she was his biggest fan! She could live with Bolt, wake up to see him every single day! Oh, who cared if Mark had a baby and forgot all about her… she’d have Bolt! The REAL Bolt! Bolt would stop the baby from bugging her and he could be her friend, hopefully even her best friend! What more could his biggest ever, number one fan ask for…?