Kitty 19

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 19

By Plot Roach

The human, Craig, put down the food and water bowls in the kitchen and Kitty’s mouth watered. Despite what the cats had told her earlier, she was afraid that the food would run out before she could get a chance to fill her belly. She fought between the urge to run into the kitchen to eat and to stay safely hidden beneath the table. The shuffle f footsteps alerted her to Craig’s presence. He stooped and set down a food and a water bowl just outside the safe zone of the table where kitty was hiding.

“Here you go, princess.” Craig said. “I hope one day you can take your food in the kitchen with the others. They’re not all bad, you know.” His burden deposited on the ground in front of her. The human pulled himself back up and walked to the couch, finding his way by touch.

Here he is trying to persuade me to think that the others are safe when the others say that same about him, she thought. What odd creatures these humans are. They kill perfectly healthy dogs, for who knows what reason. And yet they let a physically weak specimen like Craig live when any other pack of creatures would have abandoned him to a slow death if out in the wild.

Kitty waited until he had settled down on the couch and heard him talking once again to Shakes, before eating her meal from the bowl that Craig had set down for her. This time, the service dog did not visit her in her secluded spot, but occasionally looked her way before turning his eyes elsewhere, should she think that he was threatening her.

The human coughed, and a rattle could be heard across the apartment. It’s the same noise that the old woman made in the apartments where I made my home, Kitty thought. Is he sick too? Shakespeare spent the rest of the day beside his master, fetching items for Craig when he did not have the breath or the energy to get them himself. Kitty sat in the shadows and tried not to think of what would happen if Craig succumbed to his illness.

The days continued in what seemed an odd comfort to Kitty, with Craig setting out food and water for the animals three times daily before settling back down to the couch and eating his own meal, sometimes slipping Shakes or the cats a bite or two of the leftovers. Though Kitty’s nose perked up at the tidbits that Craig offered, she could never fully trust him enough to take the food from his hand. Instead she waited until he lefts the dishes on the floor or waited silently while he tossed chunks under the table where she hid. In the evenings he sat and listened to his television while his beloved service dog sat beside him. The cats took up their respective posts, sometimes on the overstuffed chairs that sat next to the couch and other times on top of the table where kitty hid.

Though Blue and Prue visited briefly with her after meals, Lucy kept much to herself and it seemed that Shakespeare now avoided her completely. Though there were times that Kitty found him staring at her when she wasn’t looking. If Craig noticed the change in his dog’s behavior he didn’t let on. But he did put Kitty’s food and water bowl farther and farther away in an attempt, Kitty thought, to get her to come out and socialize with the other animals if not with himself.

Maria came by occasionally to check on the disabled man and Kitty, bringing groceries when she visited. She tried to check on Kitty’s paws, but the dog would let her get no nearer than before.

“She’s not limping,” Maria said, watching kitty disappear under a nearby table. “But she won’t let me get close enough to touch her leg, so I don’t know for sure if she’s healed.” Much to Kitty’s horror, Maria tried to chase her out from under the table and into the open. This resulted in a dog and human games of “catch me if you can” involving the one large living room table and the two smaller end tables. Had Kitty not been so frightened of the woman, she might have enjoyed the exercise. But Maria gave up the chase after ten minutes of lunging after the dog. “I guess she’d have to be okay to run away like that.” she consoled herself. Craig and Shakes, however, were too busy laughing at the antics to be of much help.

Craig’s laughter went from heavy guffaws into rattled coughing and Maria turned her attention from the wayward dog to her human companion. “How long have you been sick?’ she asked him.

“Just a few days, I think,” he said, another coughing fit taking his breath from him.

“I think we should take you to the doctor.”

“I’ve already called, but they are booked full until next week. They told me to go to the hospital if it gets too bad.”

“A lot of good that will do you,” Maria said. “I’ve seen stories on the news where they have been turning people away because there’s so many people out there with this. And they quarantined Almaville last week when there were so many dead that there wasn’t room for them. They had to leave the bodies out on the streets.”

“The bodies aren’t still out on the streets, are they?” Craig asked.

“What does it matter?” Maria asked. “It wasn’t like there was anyone left to care. But, no, they picked them up when they caught some animals eating on the corpses. They stored them in some of the closed down buildings like the school’s gymnasium and the animal pound.”

“What will happen now?” Craig asked, scratching Shakes behind the ears.

“The CDC is telling folks to stay in their homes, not go out for unnecessary trips and to keep the infected quarantined behind closed doors. They keep telling people to stockpile things like water and food -you know, the usual. And in the meantime no one can come up with an answer as to where this thing came from or how to beat it. ”

“That’s nice… calling them ‘the infected’ rather than ‘the ill‘, makes them sound like zombies in a horror film. Maybe the CDC should tell us to light out torches and get the chainsaws ready. It‘s the end of the world, folks. Time to grab your boom stick!”

“Things are getting almost that bad,” she said. “Sometimes I think it’s blessing that you can’t see the pictures on the news. They’re getting quite graphic.”

“I think that I could deal with dead bodies as long as I had my vision back,” he said.

“Well, yes.” Maria said, backtracking. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know,” said Craig. “But I have to tease you sometimes.”

It was Maria’s turn to laugh. “You’re a mean old man,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. I set the fruit in a bowl on the table, like usual. There was a sale on wheat bread, so I brought you two loaves this week since I noticed that you were getting a bit low. They were out of the margarine you liked, so I had to buy the generic. Everything else I got on the list you sent with me. Anything else I can bring you -you just let me know, okay?”

“Sue thing, Maria.”

Kitty watched the woman leave and noticed that she coughed a few times and smelled a little different from when she first met the woman. Maybe she’s sick too, kitty thought. The knowledge of tat possibility lay in her stomach like a stagnant water. If I don’t find a way out of here soon, she told herself, I might be stuck in a room full of corpses.