Kitty 10

I am participating in NANOWRIMO this year. I will attempt to post my daily ramblings in the hopes that eventually it will become a book which will entertain you as well as myself…

This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.

Kitty Part 10

By Plot Roach

Kitty stopped and looked at the ground, sniffing a few places before she turned back to the cat. “Did they take the bodies of the dead, both human and poisoned animal, away?” She asked.

“Oh my, yes,” the cat said, licking at her paw. “It was a mess. Perhaps the biggest the humans have ever made.” the cat stopped grooming herself and stared off into the distance past Kitty, as cats are wont to do.

“You would think that they wouldn’t mind that animals wanteded to eat on the bodies. I mean, there was more than enough for all of us to share. But maybe there’s a huge den of animals somewhere that the humans like more and they are all hungry.”

“Can humans eat poisoned animals?” Kitty asked.

“Have you smelled some of the things that they eat?” the cat asked, an astonished look on her face. “I’m surprised that they don’t poison themselves with some of that stuff. I saw a man once who stood at the back of this building.” the cat said nodding to the apartment complex. “And he breathed fire. FIRE. Now what kind of animal can sets fire to its lungs and still lives?”

Kitty could say nothing, she had seen the old woman’s son breathe smoke at the same spot, but it never occurred to her that his lungs were on fire. “If humans can do such great and terrible things,” Kitty said. “Like breathing fire and eating poison, then why do they bother hunting us for food?”

“They EAT US?!” the cat asked.

“Well, where do you think the bodies go?” Kitty asked.

“The humans eat things out of cans and boxes that they get someplace called a ‘grocery store’,” the cat said. "I’ve never seen any human drag a cat corpse -or even one of their own kind- back inside their den to eat it.”

“Maybe the bodies are already in the food cans?” Kitty asked.

“But who puts the bodies in the cans?”

Kitty shivered at the idea. “I came from the pound where they kill the animals and someone comes to take the bodies away, you just saw the humans take away both human and animal corpses, and yet you are telling me that there is a place where they are taken to be put into cans so that the humans can get them from a ‘grocery store’ and then eat them?”

The cat stopped grooming and hissed. “Run!” she yowled. The cat's fur fluffed up until the animal appeared to be twice the size Kitty knew her to be before she raced off into the night and up a nearby tree.
Kitty turned in time to see a pack of dogs race toward her.

Should I run? she asked herself. Even though they can easily outrun me, weak as I am from lack of food. Or should I fight?

Kitty stood her ground, hackles raised. A growl caught in her throat as she looked among them for any who would have been in the animal pound with her. Any who might still carry a grudge. Her legs trembled and her ears drooped, a tail curled protectively over her genitals.

Her heart pounded in her chest as she waited for the pack to reach her, knowing that if they chose to attack that she was greatly outnumbered. I can only hope that it will be over soon, she told herself and braced for impact as the first dog came closer.

But the dog did not attack her, nor even pause to size her up. It whizzed past, as did the others in the pack, and continued to run until it reached the tree where the cat was hiding.

The cat looked down upon them in contempt, knowing that they could not follow her up the tree.
"Rotten luck, that," The alpha sighed, his breathing still rapid from the chase. He was a German Shepherd mix, much like kitty. But where her fur was red with an undercoat of tan, this dog seemed the color of a dark cloud. His ears perked forward as he tracked the cat up in the tree.

"Excuse me?" Kitty asked.

"Oh, sorry about that," the dog said, turning to Kitty. "We didn’t mean for you to lose your kill. It's just that we've been searching the city for so long for a bite to eat and couldn't pass up the opportunity when we saw it."

"My kill..?" Kitty asked.

"You won't get me now you mangy mutts!" the cat called out from the tallest tree limb, winking down at Kitty when none of the other hounds were looking.

Oh, so that's what they were after, Kitty thought. "You got off easy today, fur ball!" she called to the cat above them. "But if I catch you tomorrow..." Kitty ended the threat with a growl and a shake of her head, hoping to fool the dogs around her into thinking that she was just as fierce as they were.

The cat settled down to groom herself and the pack master knew to move his dogs on. "Once they hit the trees," he said to Kitty. "They can stay there for days."

"Don't I know it," Kitty agreed, thanking the cat in her mind for her part in Kitty's acceptance by the pack.
"We better move on to find something before the big dogs eat the little ones," The alpha male said.
Kitty almost laughed until she saw the ribs poking out of most of the dogs' sides. The alpha might not be that far off after all, she thought.

"Are you new to this area?" Kitty asked him.

"We've been traveling the last three weeks in search of food," he said. "Most of us were turned out by our owners, though a few lived on the streets before that. And you?" he asked Kitty. "How long have you been on your own?"

"Almost all my life really," she admitted. "I was born in a junkyard, but humans trapped my family and I've been moving around on my own ever since." She neglected to tell him about being trapped and taken to the pound. And the fight with the other dogs who escaped. She wanted him to think that she was capable of handling herself in trouble so that he might add her to his pack.

He eyed her, taking in her physical form and weighing it in his mind. She stood still as he sniffed her as well, trying to weight the pros of someone who was healthy and obviously a good hunter (since her ribs did not show as much as the dogs of his pack did), against the need of another mouth to feed.

"You say you know this area?" he asked.

"I hunted here a little over a week ago and thought that I would come back." she said, hoping that he would not ask why she had left if the area if it was such a good feeding ground.

But he merely cocked his head as he nipped her on the ear. "My name is Max, and if we take you into our pack, you have to understand that I'm the leader and that there are a lot more dogs of higher rank above you. If we find food and make a kill, we will be the ones eating first, not you. If you are going to cause trouble, we'll leave you behind. Got that?" he asked.

"Yes, sir." she answered, not sure now that she wanted their companionship. But one dog in a strange world has a harder time of things than one in a pack, she reminded herself. In this group, though they might be skinny, she stood a better chance of bringing down large game and fending herself off from the dogs of the pound, should they try and attack her again.

Should I tell him after all? she asked herself, but buried the thought like a well chewed bone. Why bring up a problem that she might not face. The one thing the streets had taught her was that she could never expect a life of peacefulness and tedium, for something was always around the corner to snatch safety away, which also might take your life in the process.

"Lead us around your fair city then," the alpha commanded. And before she knew it, she was off on her feet and leading the pack through her usual haunts in search of food.

She began her usual route through the neighborhoods, now dark as the night. "That's odd," she said, walking from the street and onto the sidewalk, and looked up at the street lamp. "That usually comes on when it gets dark."

"Not afraid of the dark, are you missy." sniggered a dog from behind her.

"No, it's just that the humans normally keep it on. They can't see in the dark, you know," she said before heading further down the street. Along the way she noted that the windows in the homes were dark as well. Where are all the humans? she asked herself.

She walked to her usual spots, noting the lack of people -and their garbage cans. What will we eat if they are all gone? she asked herself. And will the pack gets angry with me and turns on me if I cannot feed them?
"This is where I usually find water, but the sprinklers are not on." she said, nosing a dry plastic bulb that rose from the grass. I wonder how long they have been gone? Kitty wondered as the grass felt dry beneath her feet.

"Hey! There's something over here." called one of the pack.

"Be careful or MINE will hear you and attack. He‘s the guard dog here and he‘ll hurt you if given half a chance." she said. She slunk up to where the dog was and looked down at his find.

It was MINE, laying at the end of his chain. He had managed to find water by licking the drips that had fallen from a leaking water hose, but obviously had not had any food in a while. His ribs jutted out farther that the mutts that made up Max's pack. And his breath came in shallow gasps. He was lean before she had been trapped and sent to the pound. What she saw before her was a skeletal ghost of the dog MINE.

"MINE?" she asked, wondering if the dog could even respond to her.

An eyelid cracked open, caked with dried dust. He growled, but did not move. The air wheezed in his throat.

"We have to get him loose." Kitty said. "It's not right to let him die lie this."

"No, dear, it is not." Max said and leaned down to the starving dog. Before Kitty could stop him, he latched his jaws on MINE's neck and twisted hard, breaking the dog's neck instantly.

"By the All Mother!" Kitty yelled. "What did you do?!"

"You were right, He couldn't continue to live like that. It was horrible of the humans to leave him suffering like that. And it would have been worse had we just wandered past and left him to his misery. So I ended his suffering in the most humane way possible."

"But couldn't we have freed him instead?" Kitty asked.

"And what?" Max asked. "Brought him food when my own pack is starving? He was chained to the tree, there's no way a dog -or a pack of dogs, for that matter, could ever chew though a chain. You’d be better off chewing through the tree instead."

Kitty looked at the dead dog. She knew that MINE was a rotten guard dog and prone to malicious behavior. But she had not wanted him to die like this.

Max leaned down and took MINE's hide in his teeth. At first Kitty was certain she was going to pull the dead dog to the side of the yard and bury him, but when she heard the flesh tear instead, her heart fell to her paws.

The alpha tore open MINE's skin to get at his flesh. As she watched in horror, Max took out the shriveled organs and pulled them to the side, bolting them down before another of his pack could challenge him. Other dogs rushed forward, knocking Kitty out of the way. Her stomach lurched. If she had had anything to eat, she would have lost it then and there.

"If you can't stand to watch," Max said over a mouthful of dead guard dog. "Then turn away."

And Kitty did just that, though she could not block out the horrible noises of dogs fighting over wet bits of flesh or the smell of blood and dog crap as MINE's intestines were emptied of their contents by two dogs playing tug of war.

When the feast was over, and there was little left of MINE but a few blood streaked bones, the pack settled down for the night. Kitty licked a few drops of water from the leaking water hose and tried not to step in any of the gore, not wanting to have to lick MINE's blood off of her paws.

One of the smaller dogs wandered over to her, limping as he came.

"Sorry we didn't save any for you, but it's been a while since we fed properly. Thank you for leading us to him," he said and touched noses with her.

"Um... You're welcome?" She said, not feeling so much like a gracious host as an executioner.

The little dog wandered off and her thoughts turned to Grimy, now lost forever to her. Did he make it out of the pound alive? she asked herself. Or has the same thing happened to him? She hated to think of one of the larger dogs turning on him and making a meal out of the rat terrier, but she knew that if these dogs had resorted to cannibalism, it was only a matter of time before the little dog found himself some bigger dog's lunch.

Or the humans, she thought. Don't forget the humans and their insatiable appetite. Though I'm still not sure if the cat was right about them eating their own dead.

The rest of the dogs settled in around her, some congratulating her on finding "the kill", others welcoming her into the pack.

"Pity there wasn't anything left for you." Max said, licking the last of MINE's blood from his muzzle.

"That's okay." she said. "It was my gift for joining the pack. Perhaps if MINE could not go on living, he would have wanted his flesh to go to those who could." She stifled the urge to whine, it would not do well to appear weak in front of a pack of dogs who had just devoured what had once been her enemy.

"That's the pack mentality I was looking for." Max said and settled down next to her. His breathing became slow and even and she knew that he was asleep.

She looked around her and noted that the rest of the pack had fallen asleep as well.

Can I run away while they are sleeping? she asked herself. "What have I done? Just getting mixed up with these cannibal hounds… I'm no better off than I was being attacked by the pound dogs. It's only a matter of time before they start turning on their own -if they haven‘t already. And I'm the lowest member of the group. They'll kill me first for sure.

But as she tried to edge away from Max, he opened an eye. She settled back down and he moved a little closer to her. Though he was not an overly large dog, he still had more muscle than Kitty and she did not doubt for one minute that he could chase her down and snap her neck like he had MINE -or worse, wound her and leave her alive as his pack ate her as she watched.

That night her mind relived the flight from the pound, the death of MINE and added her paranoia about what would become of her and Grimy. It seemed that no matter how hard or fast she ran, trouble ways caught up with her. Her last image was of a small rat terrier being ripped to shreds in Max's jaws a she drowned in a sea of blood.

She snapped awake as Max licked her muzzle. "We have to keep going, keep looking for food," he said. Already his pack was at attention, though some sniffed the bones from last night's feast looking for any leftover scraps that might have been overlooked. It made her empty stomach turn and she was glad, for the second time in her life, that there was nothing in it.

"Sure thing, Max." she got to her feet, trying hard not to look at the scattered and cracked bones of MINE as she headed out of the human's front yard. She stood at the gate, trying to get her bearings as Max walked up to her, stopping when they were shoulder to shoulder. There’s no going back now, she told herself. He could run me down and kill me before I could even run to the end of the block.

"Where to now, dear lady?" Max asked.

Kitty's muzzle twitched and she tried to tell herself that his lick to her muzzle earlier was just him trying to wake her and not done to see what she taste like. "We'll go to one of my old haunts today," she said, trying not to show any fear.

"Lead the way." Max said, watching her with intense eyes.

She lead the pack to the dumpster behind the restaurants where she had often found something for the night, but was surprised when the humans were gone.

One of the windows of the restaurant was boarded up, shards of broken glass littered the pavement and she had to step around it to avoid getting the sharp bits lodged in her paws and to get closer to the door.

"They are all gone." she said, after she had surveyed what she could through the remaining intact window. There was not a whiff of cooking food, human cleaning chemicals or rotting food. What was that the cat had said? The humans had gotten sick, most died and the rest must have moved on.

What am I going to do now? She asked herself as she turned and faced the hungry pack.