Kitty 20

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 20

By Plot Roach

The following morning Craig was much worse. His breath rasped and he was barely able to stand. Shakes took the phone to him, but it was of no use. The power had gone off in the night and the phone had no dial tone.

“How will we reach Maria?” Shakes barked. “Someone has to came and take care of him.” The cats had no idea how to reach her. Kitty was sitting beneath the table, thinking of her surroundings and how to help both the service dog and herself in the process.

“Settle down, Shakes,” Craig said to the service dog who now dashed around the room. “We’ll be okay.” By the time Craig sat back down on the couch he was nearly out of breath as he called out to his service dog: “Hey, Shakes. I’m sure Maria will come by later today, buddy. It will be okay. Just get me a soda from the fridge, would you Shakes?” When the service dog returned with the soda, his master scratched him behind the ears. “I’m sure the power will come back on in no time. We’ll just wait to call until in the morning.”

Craig drank the soda and took some of the medications that Maria had gotten for him the day before. Shakes whined and repeatedly checked the door and the phone, though no one was there.

“Where’s Maria? Whenever there’s been a problem before, she always checked in with us,” he said in a frenzied growl.

Kitty came out from under the table during Shakes’ rant. “Do you know where she lives?” she asked. She looked at the ground and held her position next to the table, not wanting to spook Shakes if he still had hard feelings about the bite on the muzzle she had inflicted a few days earlier.

“Yes… maybe…” he said.

“Yes or no?” Kitty growled. She stopped herself from barking at the dog and took a deep breath. I lose it on him right now, he’ll never trust me again and then all the planning in the world will not get me out of this place, she told herself. “Can you find her house from here?” She asked in a quieter tone, trying to exude calmness from every doggy pore in her body.

“No,” Shakes said, ears drooping and head down. “I’ll fail him. I just know it.”

“No you won’t,” Kitty said. “You just have to do what I tell you, okay?”

“Why should I trust you -you bit me, after all.”

She winced at his accusation. I knew that bite would comeback to haunt me, she thought. Now I’ll just have to try and make up for it in whatever way I can. “Okay,” Kitty said. “I deserve that. But if you want to help your human, then you have to listen to me. Okay?”

“Okay,” The golden retriever said reluctantly.

“First, we need to leave the apartment,” Kitty said.

“But we can’t do that without a human.”

“You can’t or you won’t?” Kitty asked. “There is a difference you know. And that difference can get your master killed while we wait for help that may never come.”

“Okay, what do you want me to do?” Shakes asked.

Kitty took another deep breath to prepare herself for the argument that was to follow. “Open the door,” she said.

“No.”

“Listen to me, Shakes-”

“No,” the golden retriever argued. “It’s wrong to go out without Craig. It goes against all my training and I won‘t do it.”

“Listen to me, Shakes, or your human will die,” Kitty snarled. She winced, hoping that the human had not heard her and would be alerted to their altercation, lest he put her back into the animal carrier and her plan be rendered moot before she had a chance to begin it.

But the human was snoring in his usual place on the couch.

“What I want you to do is open the door,” She said as patiently and quietly as possible. “We will go up and down the hall and try scratching at each door. There has got to be a human somewhere in here that can get him into a car and get him to that place that Maria was talking about… where the doctors can heal him.”

“The hospital?” Shakes asked.

“Yeah.”

“But it’s wrong to go out without him,” Shakes argued with her. “Shouldn’t I wake him and try and take him with us?”

“You saw what he was like just now,” Kitty said. “He can barely get up off of the couch by himself. What are we supposed to do, drag him up and down the hallway until we find someone to take him? No, it would be better to go out on our own and find someone and then bring them here, that way we don’t waste energy and he won’t get sicker by being dragged out in the cold.” Please let him use logic instead of his training, Kitty thought. All the training in the world won’t help us if Craig dies and he refuses to open the door to let us out.

The golden retrieved thought about her proposal for a moment or two. “Why are you trying to help us?” He asked. “Is this just so you can run off when the door is open?”

I had to ask for him to use logic… she said to herself. Let’s hope that he can use a little more. Kitty had thought about the possibility of leaving the human and his so called pack, but felt rather guilt ridden when Shakes mentioned his suspicions to her. “You love your master and he has been kind to me. If I can help you both, I will.” she said tightlipped, hoping that the service dog would believe her intentions to be honorable.
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Kitty stood back while she watched the service animal at work. He stood on his hind legs and pawed at a lever that kept the door locked to those who would enter the apartment illegally. That having been disengaged, he pawed at the door handle, also a lever which twisted to open and whose end had a plastic grip attachment added to it so that the dog could open it without trouble. The door opened and Shakes nosed it wider for them to pass. Kitty had to restrain herself from bolting past the shaggy golden creature and out into the hall. What if there are more doors and I need him to open them? She asked herself. Wouldn’t it be better to lure him completely outside and then make a break for it?

“Shakes?” Craig asked. The noise of the door had startled him awake from his sleep. “Is that you, boy?” his voice was faint, and his breathing labored. There isn’t much time left for him, Kitty thought. It’s now or never.

“I told you that this was wrong!” Shakes said, turning upon Kitty. She thought that the golden retriever would lunge at her, teeth bared and out for blood. But the service dog kept his attacks upon her verbal instead of physical. A fact that she was grateful for.

“If he stops us from going outside, we’ll lose our only chance at helping him and you know it,” she reasoned with him.

“What do you want me to do about it?” Shakes asked.

“Go placate him,” she said. “Let him pet you and fall back to sleep. Then we will go back outside.”

“And I suppose you’ll just wait next to the door like a good pet for me to return?” he asked.

The accusation hurt and Kitty let it show on her face. “After what you just said, I should, you know. Just because I came from the wild doesn’t mean that I can’t be civilized. And just because you’ve been raised in captivity, it doesn’t make you a gentleman.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that I’m so worried about him. All these years I’ve always been afraid of what would happen to him if I were gone. I never thought it could happen the other way around.”

“Forget about it,” Kitty said. “Just go help your master get back to sleep and then we can get on with our plan.”

It took Shakes another twenty minutes for Craig to fall back into a deep sleep. By the time he had returned to the door he did not know whether or not to expect Kitty still waiting for him there. But she was, and he wagged his tail with delight.

“Enough already.” she said, reading his surprise in his body language. “As soon as I take care of you and your human, I’m off on my own.”

Shakes stopped dead in his tracks. “But I thought…”

“Thought what?” she asked. “That I would stay here forever and be a happy little ‘pet’ for your blind master? Or maybe that Maria would take me back to her home and teach me how to be a service dog so that I, too, could be saddled with a damaged human to call master for the end of my days?”

“But I thought that you were happy with us,” the golden retriever said, a deep sadness coming over his eyes.

“Because I didn’t snarl and whine all the time?” Kitty asked. “I was biding my time until I could get out on my own. If not with you, then when Maria came to claim me.”

“You certainly acted like you were coming around, eating the food and whatnot.” the dog said, a certain amount of smugness reaching into his voice. Good, Kitty thought. Let him get mad at me, it will make it easier when I have to go on without him.

“I’ve learned in my limited interaction with humans that as long as I don’t snarl, bite or howl that they tend to like me better, and liking me better means leaving me alone,” she spat at him. “Now are we going to get this over and done with or not?”

The service dog had nothing he could say to that. He simply looked back and forth between Kitty and his sick master as if weighting his options.

“We should get going.” Kitty said. “The sooner I get this done, the sooner I’m out of here.”

“And you think I’ll just let you go?” Shakes asked, a slight growl in his voice.

“I don’t really see how you have a choice.” Kitty said. “I can leave now, if I want to. I’m just waiting around long enough to make sure that you and the cats will be okay.”

“And Craig?” Shakes asked. “Do you feel nothing for him?”

“Maybe if I had been raised with humans and loved by them, I might have,” she said. “But I’ve been on the streets too long, and my heart is as cold as the stones that I sleep on.”

“Let’s go then” he said, walking through the open doorway without looking back to see if she followed. His head was held high as he walked past her, but the rest of his body betrayed his thoughts. He was scared at the possible death of his master and the betrayal of what he though was a good friend. It’s not like we could have been part of the same pack, she told herself. He was a civilized service dog and she was a wild mutt. Such friendships were rarely encouraged by the humans that ran this world, and would often get both parties in trouble if not in the pound.

Kitty sighed an followed him, a lump in her throat. She wanted out of this dreadful apartment more than anything else, but she had not wanted to hurt the service animal to get there. She had lied to him when she said that she did not care for the human. For while she feared him, she had learned to tolerate his presence. And that had eventually turned into a grudging sort of love, if only because she had seen the love that he shared with Shakes and his cats. If not all humans were raging monsters bent on destroying all life that they could get their hands on, then Craig was deemed a shining example of human love and compassion. Compassion that belongs to Shakes and the cats, Kitty thought. But not me. Never me.

If I could be a part of that I would stay, she told herself. But any time that I find myself belonging to any specific place or pack, it falls through in the end. No, she told herself, better to have a heart of solid stone than to have it fall into pieces when those I love turned upon me or die when I am unable to prevent it. The loss of her pups still gnawed at her heart. Even if I could not save them, kitty thought, maybe I can Save Shakes’ family.

The two dogs wandered up and down the hall, stopping to scratch at a door if they heard movement inside. Kitty sniffed the base of each of the rooms, scenting the inhabitants, or lack thereof, from under the crack of the door. Some had been abandoned for quite some time, the stale smell of food a ghost of its former inhabitants.

In more than one she smelled the stench of death and a corpse rotting away. “I think this illness the humans have is spreading worse than they know.” Kitty told Shakes. “Didn’t the human “Maria” mention something about there being too many corpses to move?”

“Then we better get help for Craig as fast as we can.” he said.

They heard noises form only a handful of the apartments, yet when they scratched and barked outside those doors, no one answered. At one apartment an old woman answered only to swat at them with a broom until the were forced to flee further down the hall.

“Why won’t they help us?” Shakes asked, pawing at one of the doors as if he could dig his way through to help.

“Maybe they can’t get to the door because they are sick like Craig,” she said. “Or maybe they are afraid that we are wild dogs come to eat the bodies.”

“Wild dogs eating the bodies?” Shakes asked.

“Yes,” Kitty said. “It happened in the area I was living in just after the escape from the dog pound and before I joined up with Max’s pack.”

“But you didn’t eat any of the bodies, did you?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “They were gone before I got there.”

“Does that mean that you would have if they had still been there?”

“NO!” she insisted. “What’s the point of eating a diseased animal -it might make you sick.”

“Is that all?” he asked.

“What do you mean ’is that all?’” kitty asked. “It’s good enough for me.”

“But humans are smart, like cats and dogs,” Shakes said. “You wouldn’t eat cats or dogs would you?”

“Right now isn’t the time of this conversation.” Kitty argued.

“No, I want to know.”

“Fine.” Kitty said. “You think cats, dogs and humans are the only smart animals out there? Think again. Just because you have a collar and a master, it doesn’t make you any better than the raccoons that scavenge through your garbage or the owls that live in the trees. Some animals speak and I can’t understand them as plain as how we’re talking right now, but they display more intelligence than some hounds and -dare I say it? -most humans out there. The problem is that your food comes from a can or a bag and you can’t have a conversation with it before you eat it. Maybe if you hunted your own prey, instead of letting the humans do it for you, you might get an idea of what the world is really like, and how fragile your link to ‘civilization’ really is.”

“If Craig dies I don’t know what I’ll do, Kitty.” the golden retriever said.

“Then let’s get moving and see what we can do about it, shall we?”

“But what do we do from here? Where can we go?” he asked. ”None of these people will help.”

“Then we have to find someone who will,” she said. “You’ve been outside with Craig on walks, right?”

“Yes, why?” he asked.

“I’m thinking of retracing the steps of those walks to see if we can find any humans that he would have spoken with on a daily basis.” Kitty swallowed hard, preparing for the next battle of the wills. “I need you to get us outside.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I won’t do it. I won’t leave the building without Craig.” the service dog said. “What happens if he needs help? Do you think that the cats will do it? They’re not big enough to open the refrigerator door, much less grip a can to take to Craig.”

“And if you do not do this,” Kitty said. “If you do not get us out of this building to where there are human who can help us -help Craig- then you will kill him as surely as if you put your teeth on his throat.”

“That’s not fair.” the service dog said.

“I don’t have to be, I’m a wild dog, remember?”

“We’ll have to go down the stairs,” Shakes said. “Since the power is out, the elevator won’t work.”

“What’s an elevator?” kitty asked.

“It’s kind of like a small room that moves without you having to walk.” Shakes explained.

“I’ve been in a car with you and your humans, and I was in a van once when they took me to the dog pound.”

“I don’t think that you would like it very much,” ha said. “It’s small, enclosed and there is no way to escape if you get trapped in one.”

“Have you ever been trapped in an elevator?” Kitty asked.

“Only once when I was walking with Craig to the supermarket.” Shakes grinned. “We were in between the floors of the apartment complex when a thunderstorm caused the power to go out. We were stuck in there for hours until the lights came back on and we could go to our floor. And by that time we had eaten most of the groceries.”

“Weren’t you scared?” Kitty asked, imagining what it would be like to be confined in such a small space with a human as company.

“No, not really.” Shakes said. “Craig is a good human and he kept petting me and telling me that it would be okay. So I trusted him -it’s not like he’s given me any reason not to.”

“So what are stairs?” Kitty asked.

“Think of them as really large bumps on a hill.”

Shakes lead Kitty down the long hallway of the apartment complex to a large metal door. Once again he stood up on his back legs and used his forepaws to push the lever that was the door handle. Once the door was open, he nose what looked like a little leg at the base of it.

“What is that?“ Kitty asked.

“It’s to keep the door from closing behind us and locking us out.”

The area of the stairwell was lit only by the light that filtered through the windows on each landing. “It will be tricky going down, but not impossible,” Shakes said. “All it takes is a little practice.”

The service dog went down a few of the steps first so that Kitty could see how it was done. She took a few tentative steps as Shakes barked encouragement at her. After a few minutes, her body found its own rhythm and she got the hang of it. At the first landing, they took a break so that Kitty could rest, since it was taxing on the muscles of the wild dog who had never before undergone such a workout. Kitty realized, with much disgust that Shakes had not been lying when he said that they would get plenty of practice as they traveled down the next three flights of stairs.

“How do you do this?” Kitty asked, a little winded.

“I don’t do it everyday.” Shakes admitted. “I was trained on how to by Maria, if Craig needed to take this route. But usually we just take the elevator.”

“I’m beginning to have second thoughts on trying that elevator now.” Kitty said.

“Oh, come on,” Shakes teased. “I thought dogs like you ran down wild game and lived off of your muscles and you wits.”

“I can run down small creatures when I need to,” Kitty said. “But they rarely take four flights of stairs.”

Once they were at the base of the building, shakes pushed on the lever to the emergency exit and the two dogs spilled out into the night. Once again, Shakes pushed at the little leg on the door to keep in place.

“Where do we go now?” Kitty asked when shakes turned to face her. Her nerves were still a jitter from the odd passage down the building , her muscles burned from the workout that she had received. The smell of the city, the wind ruffling her fur and the grit of the pavement beneath her paws sang of freedom in her veins. Yet as she battled the will to run and be free, she saw the look of concern flow across the face of the golden retriever and knew that she could not leave him in the trouble that he now faced. For the service dog without his human companion was as trapped in his mind as kitty was physically in the cage she had been in the dog pound.

I have to help him, she told herself. I have to help him keep his pack together.

“We go from here to the light on the corner there, but…”

“But what?” Kitty asked.

“Well, Craig always hit’s the street button that lets us cross in traffic so that the cars stop for us.”

“Let’s worry about it when we get there.”

So the dogs traveled on until they hit the street corner. “Someone has to push the button for us to cross,” Shakes said.

“Why?” Kitty asked.

“So that the cars don’t hit us.”

Kitty looked up and down the city street in all directions. If there was a car anywhere nearby, Kitty’s ears and eyes could not detect it. She stepped off of the curb and onto the street.

“No!” shakes barked. “You’ll be killed.”

Kitty once again took a look around her and grinned at the golden retriever. “I don’t see any cars, do you?”

“No, but…”

“Trust me,” Kitty said. “I used to walk streets like these in the night when I went wandering for food. I think I know how to avoid getting us hurt.”

“But..” Shakes said. And Kitty could see the dog argue with himself over what he should do. So Kitty decided to solve the problem for him.

“Where is the button that your master pushes for you to safely cross the street?” she asked. Shakes immediately went up to the button in the nearest concrete pole and nosed it.

“Fine,” Kitty said. She got up on her hind legs as she had seen Shakes do both in the apartment and in their journey since their departure, and pushed the button with her nose. Both dogs then settled down into a sitting position until the light changed colors and the chirruping of the signal told them that it was safe to go -even though there were no cars in either direction.

“At least the electricity is working in this part of the city.” Shakes said. We’ll get to the supermarket and find someone to help, I just know we will.”

Kitty held her tongue, not wanting to get the service dog’s hopes up, but not wanting to dash them either. She had been in plenty of places that the humans had abandoned, but still had power. But she decided not to tell him about it.

Let him have hope, she thought. Even if I do not.