Kitty 3

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… By the way, we are not allowed to edit the work in progress before December, so please excuse the mistakes…

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

Kitty Part 3

By Plot Roach

The old woman paused in her task only when a spasm of coughing took her breath from her. It was a rasping sound punctuated by a wet rattle deep in her lungs. She put out a hand to steady herself on the brick wall of the alley behind her, the animals busily feeding around her feet. Only the dog stopped to look up at the old woman, though it was not in concern for the old woman’s health so much as to wait for any further treats that the woman might give. Kitty knew that if she waited long enough her patience might be rewarded with an extra bit of something that the cats never tasted. It was as if the woman had kept a special place for Kitty in her heart. And it was someplace that a cat could never touch.

But the human did not seem herself this day, as she mumbled to herself as she put her hand against her chest. “Silly old fool.” she said. “Going out to feed the strays when you feel this bad off. It would serve you right to fall down here and be eaten by them.” She shook her head and dumped the rest of the dried kibble into a pile by her feet, neither the dog nor the cats rushed any closer to her to gorge on what she had gifted them, but waited for her to leave before they would dare venture nearer.

She wove through the thick tangle of weeds which snagged at the hem of her floral print cotton dress and opened the back gate to the apartment complex. It wheezed closed behind her, locking into place with a final metallic click.

Kitty whined and the old woman stopped and looked at her through the mesh. “I’m sorry, dog. I don’t have anymore to give to you today.” she said and disappeared into the building. The sound of her coughing continued.

While Kitty had been watching the old woman the cats had finished off the dry kibble so not even a single pellet remained tucked away in the cracks of the pavement or hidden by a tuft of crabgrass. She licked her lips, remembering the taste of the kibble, even when none was to be found.

The dog snorted as she watched the last of the cats disappear into the shadows like water evaporating on hot cement. She walked deeper into the alley where water pooled along the edge of one wall. She lapped at the wetness where it had collected into a dip in the pavement, the chemical taste of motor oil and antifreeze sticking to her tongue. She drank until the pangs of hunger were assuaged and returned to her home beneath the apartment complex, the coughs of the old woman filtering through her kitchen window and out into the heat of the day.

That night Kitty hunted in earnest to fill her greedy belly. When the restaurant dumpster provided only a meager ration she resorted to stealing from the locals. She padded silently into the yards of other dogs and ate openly from their food bowls, gobbling what she could and bolting away into the dark when any sound alerted her to the presence of others. She raided a few trash cans along the way, spreading the refuse into the streets where she was joined by raccoons and opossums in her gastronomic gluttony. When a human, enraged by their thievery, yelled at them from a porch step, Kitty once again fled to the shadows.

The raccoons snickered at her from the tops of trees, chattering away into the night. She longed to be able to climb into the trees after them, to hunt them down one by one and throttle them into silence.

She meandered on, seeking water from the sprinklers in front of MINE’s house. He was still awake, gnawing on a bone while watching the street. He did not bark at Kitty as he often had whenever she should pass in this direction on her night’s foraging. She paused, licked the water from the air as it sprayed across the lawn and watched the big dog from the corner of her eye.

When he stopped gnawing the bone and approached her, she pulled away fast, nearly a block away from his home before she stopped.

“Hungry?” he whispered, the sound carried on the night air like a tattered moth, coming to rest in her troubled mind. She had to strain her ears to hear it, and did not believe her mind when she did.

He dropped the bone and backed away, finally turning his back on her as he walked back to the tree to which he was chained. He yawned and made a show of curling up in a hollow made by the roots of the tree.
Could it be? She asked herself. Could he really be sharing with her or was it a trap? She paced forward, stopping at the yard’s entrance. Should she go past the gate into his territory? Should she trust a TAME dog?

When he made no move to come closer, she crept past the gate and into the yard, mere inches away from the bone. She saw it glinting in the moonlight, taunting her with scraps of flesh and delightful smell, Her mouth watered as she wondered at the taste of it. Was it beef? Maybe pork? Or could it be some exotic animal that she had never tasted before, something reserved solely for humans and their domesticated beasts?

She dashed forward, snatching the bone and taking her eyes off of MINE in the process. It had been a mistake. Just as she had lunged for the bone, so had MINE jumped forward to hunt her. His teeth came down on the back of her neck and she twisted, rolling onto her back to kick out with her back paws. She had used similar tricks with other mongrel dogs when fighting over a scrap of food.

Being a house dog, and with little in the way of fighting skills, she had caught him off guard and thrown him off easily enough. She turned and fled out the gate, the precious bone still clutched in her teeth. Had she not worried about losing it, she could have used her teeth to deliver a horrible wound to the domesticated dog’s throat. But as she stood at the edge of his property, prize in her teeth, she was thankful of this small win. She saw the dog’s eyes glitter with rage at the loss of his bone and the failed attack which had gone so badly for him. In his teeth were tufts of her reddish tan fur, small strands of silver catching the moonlight threaded between his fangs.

“If I can catch you I will kill you.” He said.

She had expected him to bark and betray her presence to his human masters. But perhaps he does not want to let them know of his failure in protecting his own bone, she told herself as she turned away and trotted home with her prize. Her endorphins still up from he fight, she shied away at every shadow she passed, imagining that MINE had somehow slipped off of his chain and now followed her with a murderous vengeance.

Once home, she gnawed the bone with a new ferocity, scavenging whatever flesh had clung to the bone. She found it to be beef after all, and though disappointed in the lack of exotic origin, found herself pleasantly surprised that a honey barbeque sauce still clung to the bone like a coating of shellac. Once she had gnawed every bit of flavor from the outer surface, she cracked the bone open with powerful back teeth to get at the marrow, licking the delicate material away from the splintered remains.

She was still working on the bone and its contents when the sun rose in the sky and the stray cats took up their posts to wait for the old woman.

Kitty set the splintered remnants of her meal aside and journeyed out into the daylight, blinking against the sun to look for the old woman.

The cats meowed their displeasure at the woman’s tardiness, and eventually moved on to other tasks when she failed to show at all. Cats had no patience when it came to scavenging, thought Kitty. It was all spent on the stalking of prey, then more used to toy with the corpse. It seemed to Kitty that all cats could do was fight amongst themselves while they waited for the old woman to return. Unlike a pack where members knew their pecking order, cats had a fluid hierarchy that changed like a breeze on the wind. It seemed wasteful and indulgent to Kitty who remained ever thankful that she was a dog.

Kitty sniffed the ground, hoping for an abandoned scrap of food or clump of kibble, but found nothing with which to fill her belly. She heard the voice of the woman talking to another human, and pricked her ears in order to triangulate her location.

“I know, I know.” the old woman said. Her voice filtered through the window of where she lived at the back of the apartment complex. “I will try and take better care of myself, but I’ve got to take care of my ‘kids’ too.”

“Stop feeding the strays, Nana.” spoke another voice, a male. His footsteps scraped against the linoleum floor of the kitchen and Kitty heard the groan of a wooden chair take his weight as he sat.

Kitty slunk a bit away. While she had never had a problem with the old woman aside from occasionally being petted, she didn’t trust the male. In her experience, men kicked at her if she approached them. Or worse, took her family away.

“But they need me.”

“You need to feed yourself, not them.” he said. “I love you, grandma. But I buy food for you, not them. And I don’t want you using your medicine money on cat food for the strays.”

“But Paul…”

“No, Nana. You’re sick and you need to take care of yourself. You probably got this way because you stopped taking your medication and eating healthy.”

“Paul-”

“No, Nana. I’ll help you out this time. But I’m going to call animal control and get these strays off the street. You shouldn’t have to feed them. They should be in their own homes, not out on the street.”

A short while later a man came out from the back of the building as Kitty cowered behind a patch of weeds. He threw a bowlful of dried kibble onto the ground and added a couple of cans of tuna on top of it.

Kitty held her ground until the man left the alley and stood inside the back door. When she could stand it no longer she dashed for the pile of food, taking great gulps to eat what she could before the cats found out about the bounty or in case the man chose to run her off -or worse, attempt to hurt her.

He simply stood in the doorway, clicking his tongue and watching her eat. When she was done she returned to the patch of grass where she had been hiding, its long unkempt leaves shielding her from his view.

Once she was sure that he was gone, she returned to her underground lair where she curled up to sleep through the heat of the day, kicking aside the empty shards of beef bone as she circled the dirt floor three times before curling up into a ball and sleeping.

The following night, her quest for food continued, she fared a bit better than the night before at the restaurant’s garbage bin. She ate the raw skin and fat that had been trimmed off of chicken breasts, burned meatballs and a section of meatloaf that was just about to turn bad.

She rarely suffered food poisoning, as her stomach contained more acid in it that the average human’s. It not only broke down stubborn proteins, but often killed bacteria before they could make her ill.

She was licking the leaves of a discarded salad for the ranch dressing that still clung to the wilted lettuce when the raccoon approached her.

“Comeon.” it said, bristling to look bigger in an attempt to scare her off. She bared her teeth, sending the creature running for a nearby tree while she paused long enough to lick the salad dressing from her jaws. It would not do well to have the raccoons thinking that they could scare her off of her meal, even if she was done. For there might come a time when the bold little bandits might band together to try and keep her from feeding when she was desperate for food.

She waited until the beady eyes in the trees stopped trying to stare her down before taking to her feet and making the rounds back home. She wandered through a new neighborhood, marking the places in her mind that had guard dogs, which set out bowls of food for their animals and which had trash cans within easy reach before heading off to her usual haunts.

She drank water from MINE’s sprinkler’s, making herself appear unconcerned about his attack the night before.

He approached her as far as his chain would allow, his breath warm and fetid on the wind. “You look funny with a chunk of fur taken out of your hide.” he laughed.

“You look even funnier chained to a tree.” she retorted.

“I’LL KILL YOU!” he barked, throwing himself at her, though his chin brought him to a stop just short of her.

“Bring it on, flea bag.” she said, squatting to mark the edge of his gate with urine as if it were her own territory.

“MONGREL.” he snarled.

“HUMAN TOOL.” she teased.

“SCAVENGER.” he said.

“PET.” she spat.

That last epithet sent him over the edge, he barked at the tops of his canine lungs. “MINE MIEN MINE!” he yelled, reverting to his usual bark.

Kitty ran, not from MINE and his nonsense, but from the humans who now turned on the lights in their home, opening the door and yelling at MINE to cease his barking.

Kitty fled the scene, a smile on her muzzle as her baiting had accomplished what she had set out to do. By making him bark in the dead of night, he had earned the wrath of his human owners who were now, even as she ran away, punishing him for his disobedience. She had managed to hurt him without even touching him.
The next morning, while still snuggled away in her hidey hole, she heard them come.

Men in vans came to set up traps. She watched them from the shadows as hey went to work setting up the same mesh and metal cages that she had come to know so well. They baited the inside with wet cat food and set them a little apart from one another so that there would be room for their prey to walk between them.
As morning approached, then men retreated in their white vans and the cats leaked into the alley as if from the shadows themselves.

Kitty sat and shuddered, unable to move and unable to warn them. The memory of her family taken from her played throughout the day as she heard one cage after another snap closed, the cats hissing and mewling incessantly as they discovered that there was no escape.

And though her belly growled at the mess of the food to be had, she kept herself still as a stature. At dusk the men returned and took the trapped cats with them. They reset the traps and went away with their squalling burden, leaving Kitty to the darkness and her fear.

Though she was sure that the men were gone, Kitty refused to leave her burrow for fear that some unseen trap might catch her. She curled into a ball and slept, the best to avoid her growling belly and full bladder. The next morning found only a few animals in cages. This time only one cat and half a dozen raccoons.
The men took them away as well as the cages. Once they had left, Kitty dashed outside to relieve herself and to search for food at another location, no longer trusting the food to be had in the alley.

In the morning she slunk back to her hole under the apartment complex, seeing too late the man who watched from the kitchen that overlooked the alleyway.

Kitty heard the wet coughing of the old woman who no longer came to drop food off, but was kept a prisoner by her grandson.

Kitty did not fear him, since he had not been one of the men to trap the cats. Instead she merely curled up into her hole, hoping that the sleep would comfort her instead of reminding her of her loss.

When night settled onto the land it brought with it a small chill of the upcoming winter. Kitty left the confines of her hideaway and walked out into the night.

She stopped when she bumped against a wall of thin wires and back away with a start. Too late she discovered that a cage had been placed just outside her den. The door had come down, locking in to place, and there was nothing that she could do about it.

She chewed at the bars until she bruised her gums and shattered a tooth. She paced the cage, poking her nose into every crack in the hope of finding some hole, however small, that she might be able to squeeze through. She pawed at the gate that had swung down behind her, hoping to make it swing up and away, to set her free.

In the end, she simply sat in the cage, passive as stone as she waited for the men in the white van to come and collect her.