Kitty 7

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 7

By Plot Roach

The humans rushed through the rest of the day’s chores while the animals whined in frustration at not being able to see the new tenants of the pound. Night came too swiftly for the dogs that thrust their noses in between the wire mesh of their doors in vain to catch whatever wisps of scent that the slight breeze could carry.

The lights were shut off at the end of the night, all cages checked to ensure that the animals had adequate water and that their cell doors were locked. Mitch bid them farewell for the night, and Kitty paced the floor of her cage three times before settling into her usual stance of tight ball of fur with her nose tucked snugly under one paw.
Even though the room was dark, it did not mean that the inhabitants were asleep, nor would they be with such excitement. Some raced up and down the lengths of their cells while others howled at the sliver of the moon which could be spotted through the dingy windows of the pound.

“Kitty. Psst! Kitty!” Grimy whispered.

“What is it Grimy?” Kitty asked, raising herself up from the floor to face the little dog in the near darkness of the room.

“Did the All Mother or the Dark One tell you anything about me by chance?’ he asked.

“No.” Kitty said. “Should they have?”

"It's just that..." Grimy said. "If the two gods spoke of US out on a journey..."

Then he would be spared from death in this place as well, Kitty thought. It had never before occurred to her that he counted himself as her companion in her "quest" set upon her by the Dark One, or that it was anything more than a fanciful dream until the old hound had confirmed that she had, indeed spoken with the gods.

So if I have been gifted with such a task it meant that I will not die until it could be fulfilled, doesn't it? she asked herself. But did the gods take human action into mind when planning fate? For humans ran the world were the dogs roamed. And they did not seem to be a species that could be counted upon for intelligent planning.

"If I speak with the gods again, I shall ask them about you, Grimy." Kitty sighed.

"All this talk of gods..." The Dalmatian mumbled, chewing at a flea on his back leg. "It doesn't get us out of here now does it?"

"Snappish young brute." The old hound said, pulling himself up off of the floor. "It is thoughts like those that invite the trickster gods to make trouble in your life."

"They're just a myth, old one." a Husky said in the cage next to him.

"A myth, you say?" the old hound laughed with a wheeze. "Well, did you ever do something foolish, something you knew was wrong, yet you could not help yourself?"

"Like what?"

"Chewing on your master's shoes, chasing after something when you knew you could not catch it -or that it should not be caught."

"Oh, shoes are my favorite..." The Chihuahua whispered before curling up into a ball.

"What kind of things should not be caught?" asked the Husky.

"Skunks for starters." said an Akita a couple of cages down from Kitty.

"And don't forget porcupines." added a German Shepherd.

"As I was saying." interrupted the old hound. "When you feel the overwhelming urge to do something that you know that you should not, it is because of the trickster gods Chase and Chew."

"Never heard of them." Grimy said.

"But doubtless you have felt their power." the old hound said. "For they are here in this world as a punishment, and here they will stay until they have learned their lesson and are forgiven."

"What did they do that was so bad?" Grimy asked, yawning and settling down for the night.

Kitty had already curled back into a ball and was drifting off to sleep as the old hound began his tale.

"They tricked their brother into a trap, and when he died, the hounds of the Celestial Packs sent them to our world to be rid of their trickery."

"Once when the world was new, all of the animal kingdoms were equal, even humans..."

Kitty felt herself drift into a deep sleep, pulled into the world of the old hounds words.

She saw a beautiful place, much like the forest of the Afterworld and the beach where the All Mother dwelled. The hills were covered in great green foliage, the water of rivers ran clear and deep. The flowers were bright, their heady scent filling the air with an irresistible perfume. Animals bustled about in the undergrowth and prey lived beside hunter with no fear, for all of them consumed plants.

The sun was golden and showered the packs of dogs with warmth and love as they dozed upon a hill. Two dogs, barely out of their puppy hood at the time, tugged at the ears and the tail of the third until he woke and raced with them. They were brothers and were inseparable.

The oldest was Chase, as he loved to run as swift as the wind. He had a thick pelt of long fur and a tail hat streamed like a banner behind him as he ran. He was the color of a dark cloud bringing rain and thunder. And his temper was as cruel and quick to anger as a raging volcano.
The next brother was named Chew, for it was said that his teeth were as sharp as daggers and as strong as the mountains themselves. There was not a thing that he could not chew to pieces, if he put his mind -and his teeth- to it. He was the color of hay bleached by the summer sun. His temper was skittish and fearful, always sure that others were somehow plotting against him.
The last brother was named Hunt, for he could track any animal by land, water or air. When his brothers hid from him, he could find the every time. He was the color of brightly polished gold. And of the three brothers he was brave and bold. He knew no fear, and that was his folly.
On this day the three brothers took to the woods as the Celestial Packs slept peacefully upon the hill. And just as all the animals had their place in this world, so did the species that was called man.

The brothers slipped from their golden realm into the world of the humans, their minds set to make mischief. 　
　

Kitty 6

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 6

By Plot Roach

She was running, the soft sand warm beneath her feet. The golden sun hung like a kite stuck in a tree, unmoving and bright as a child's toy. The warmth that played over her skin was delicious and she felt like she could run like this forever.

She was aware of water beside her, waves crashing down upon her feet. When she stopped to look, the sheer size of it overwhelmed her. Bright blue water ate hungrily the horizon and made her dizzy with its dance.

She sat, unsure that she could keep herself from falling in. What IS this? she asked herself.
"It is called the ocean" said a voice from behind her.

Kitty turned and faced the biggest dog she had ever seen. At least she thought that it was a dog, for it was much bigger than she ever imagined that a dog could ever be and much shaggier, as if made from hair alone. She feared what the animal could do to her if it chose to attack and hoped that it had already fed before meeting her.

"What are you?"

"I am the All Mother, the first dire wolf from which all dogs are descended from."

"Does it hurt?" Kitty asked.

"Does what hurt?" the All Mother asked.

"To be that big." Kitty said. "My bones hurt when the weather changes, and I figure that is because I'm the size I am. I mean, you never hear of the smaller dogs kept in human women’s purses complain of pain. But someone like you must hurt unbearably so."

"It's not from your size, dear daughter. But from the wounds you have received from the world in which you walk." The All Mother said, touching noses with her. Kitty fought with herself to keep from backing away, should she somehow offend the wolf and be torn to pieces. A shiver passed through her like lightning and the big wolf backed away.

"What happened?" Kitty asked, for she was sure that the touch had somehow changed her.

"I have blessed you with a gift." the All Mother said. "It will guide you in dark times when you cannot even trust the truth from your nose."

"What does it do?" Kitty asked. "This gift which you have given to me."

"You will know when you need it the most."

And as she watched the All Mother breasts began to leak milk. What fell into the ocean turned into brightly colored fish that swam away into the water's depths. What leaked onto land became plants which grew into thick clumps and from them darted small animals and insects.
Kitty opened her muzzle, about to ask why she was being honored with such gifts that the All Mother and the Dark One had given to her, but her vision was disturbed by gust of wind blown sand. When Kitty opened her eyes, the All Mother had faded into a lump of sand and land debris which, even as she watched, was claimed by the rolling waves of the ocean.

Kitty woke with a start in her cell, the metal clink of the food bowl slammed against the hard cement floor, spilling out a good bit of it into her water bowl. The human moved on to the cell next to hers, depositing food bowls in each on. He neither spoke with the inhabitants nor kept the dogs from fighting amongst themselves over their dry kibble ration

Kitty lurched to her feet, a bit more steady than the first time, yet still not up to her everyday standards.

"Save me some! Save me some!" Grimy yapped from his cage. The other dogs which shared his cell had pushed him out of the way to gorge on the kibble themselves, the little dog being left out of the feeding until the others had had their fill. When it was over, there was not a single bit of dry kibble to be had for the rat terrier who was forced to fill his belly with the cold metallic water from the water bowl since there was nothing else to fill it. He flopped on his side at the front of the cage, his sigh a testament to his place in life.

And he was once the alpha of his own pack, Kitty reminded herself. It must have been filled with very small dogs indeed, if he managed to push his way to the top rank.

"I would give you some of mine, if I could." Kitty said. "But the hallway between our cages is too far for your mouth to reach.

"Thanks, Kitty. But I'm not hungry anyway." Grimy sniffed, trying to look as though it was his idea not to eat instead of being forced away from the food bowl.

"If only they had put you in my cell with me." Kitty said.

"No one will be going in your cage." Mitch said, sauntering past.

"And why is that?" Kitty asked.

"It is because the people who run this place have deemed you a 'feral'. You have wild animal blood in you."

"How is that?" Kitty asked. "How could they know such a thing when I don't even know about it myself?"

"By your blood, and by the way you look." Mitch said. Kitty once again licked the shaved patch of skin on her leg, remembering the tubes that the human woman had put into her. As she groomed, Mitch stopped, eyes locked on hers. A bit of his ruff raised and a soft whine was caught in his throat.

"Mitch, are you okay?" Kitty asked, pulling herself up from the cement floor of her cage.

Mitch backed away, the growl now louder. And his eyes were now locked on her own.

"Mitch, what has gotten into you?" Kitty asked.

When he backed up to the front gate of the cage behind him, Grimy jumped to his feet and bit the collie on the haunch to break him out of his trance.

Mitch snapped out of it, panting hard and trying not to meet Kitty's eyes as he spoke.

"I'm sorry, girl. I don't know what came over me. It's just those eyes of yours. And it seems like you've somehow... changed... overnight."

"Changed how?" Kitty asked, looking from the border collie to Grimy.

"He's right, Kitty." Grimy said, tongue lolling to the side of his mouth in laughter. "You're a bit bigger than you were yesterday. A bit fiercer looking too."

"My eyes?" Kitty asked. "I'm the one with odd eyes when yours are two different colors, Mitch?"

"What was that you just said?" Mitch asked. "The thing about ‘colors‘?"

"Your eyes." Kitty said. "They are two different colors, the right one is brown and the left one is blue."

"And how do you know of ‘blue’ and ‘brown’ when the rest of us do not know those colors?"

"It was the colors that I saw in the dream that I just had. The beach sand was brown and the water was a deep blue."

"Kitty, have you even seen a beach in your life?" Mitch asked.

"No, I've always lived in or near the city."

"So how do you even know what one is?" Mitch asked.

"It was from my dream..."

"What was the dream about?" Grimy asked.

"I was running along the beach and I stopped to look at the water. That's when I met the All Mother." Kitty said. She was suddenly aware that the cell block where she ad Grimy were being held had gone deathly quiet. She looked up and saw that all eyes were now trained on her and ears were perked in her direction.

"You dreamt of the All Mother?" Asked a Rottweiler in the cage beside Grimy. "What did she look like?"

"How do we know that it wasn't just some dream?" asked a Dalmatian. "Who knows what the All Mother looks like?"

"I hear that she appears as the same species as the dog she appears to when she grants him a vision." said a Chihuahua in Grimy's cage. He had been left out of the feast of kibble as had Grimy. He shot evil looks to the others dogs that had deprived them of their meal, biting them on the legs and dashing away before he could be caught.

"I have seen her." said an old dog. "When I was a young fool and chased a child's rubber ball into a street. A car hit me as I was fetching it and I was in the world between the living and the dead." The old hound said, his eye searching the room behind thick white cataracts. I met the All Mother who told me that I sill had something important left to do in this world before I could live there amongst the Celestial Packs. The Dark One himself escorted me back. Tell me child, what did she look like and I will know whether or not you tell the truth."

Kitty sat on her haunches, took a deep breath and tried to steady her mind. "When I saw the All Mother she looked like a big, shaggy dog. Much bigger than I have ever seen any dog before in my life. When I saw the Dark One, he shifted constantly from one form of dog to another, but he was always black."

"So you saw both of them then, did you?" the old hound asked.

"Not at the same time." Kitty admitted. "I saw the Dark One first, when I was first trapped in the metal cage that the humans had set outside my den. Then I saw the All Mother just now in a dream."

The old hound smiled and nodded. “She has seen them alright.” He laid down at the edge of the cage door, his breath labored as he spoke. “They do not come to just any dog.” he said. “But to those who have a great fate in store for them. You are on a mighty path, my dear. Walk it with determination, for the gods themselves are with you.”

“That is what the dark One told me.” kitty said, thinking back to when she met him in the forest.
“What else did they tell you?” asked the Dalmatian.

“Did they tell you how to get out of these cages?” the Chihuahua asked.

“I already know how to get out of these cages.” Kitty said. And as it surprised her as much as the others, she knew how to work the lock on the door just as the humans did.

“Then get us out!” barked the Rottweiler.

“I cannot.” Kitty admitted. “The locking mechanism is too high up and my paws aren’t the right… way to open the cages.”

“What other ‘way’ could your paws be?” Mitch asked.

“Well, it’s not like I have a human’s paws. Then I could manipulate anything that they could.” Kitty said.

“You could open all the cages…” Mitch said in awe.

“And open up cans of food.” said the Chihuahua.

“And warm it up!” said Grimy, licking the saliva from his jaws.

“But all of this does us no good, ladies and gentlemen, if her paws cannot do what a human’s can.” Mitch said, sighing. “If only…”

“’If only’ what?” asked Kitty.

“If only we had the help of someone who could.”

“And who would help us?” Grimy asked.

“The raccoon!” Kitty barked. “I told him how to get out, and he did it.”

“Yeah, and he left us for the humans, remember?” Grimy said, tongue lolling as he laughed.

“Maybe another one could help us, or some other animal with dexterous paws.” Kitty suggested.

“We’ll have to get some help soon, if we don’t want to end up there…” she said, looking down the long hallway to the door at the end.

“But how would we find such a creature?” Grimy asked, licking the side of his front right paw, and using it to groom his face.

“The humans occasionally bring such creatures in when they catch them.” Mitch said. “though those that have not been re-released are often sick and have to be destroyed.”

“Is is the foaming madness?” Grimy asked.

“What’s that?” Kitty asked.

“Rabies is what the humans call it. It is when an animal becomes sick with an illness so evil it cooks the brain of the creature infected with it, so much so that it confuses them into attack those around him, even pack members -even humans with guns.”

More than one dog shrunk to the back of the cage at the mention of that illness. And Kitty shook her head with the knowledge that there was such a thing.” The worst thing that I have ever suffered as an illness was aching bones in winter and perhaps a few cases of stomach problems when humans mixed poison and other things into the food that they didn’t want me to eat.”

“Then count yourself lucky, dear girl.” Mitch said. “As many have been brought here in the first stages of the madness only to have to be put down by the humans when their blood tested positive for it.”

“How will you know then when you see one of these creatures that the humans have caged, if it has the disease or not?” Kitty asked.

“I will just have to take my chances.” Mitch said. “If it means getting you all out alive.”

“Won’t you get into trouble?” Grimy asked. “I’d hate to have you get cooped up inside a cage like us on account of trying to help us out.”

“What? How could the humans believe that I, a mere dog, could ever open the cage doors and release you?” Mitch laughed. “Humans may be smart enough to set up cages and drive cars, but I doubt that they could conceive of something like that!”

“Just be extra careful.” Kitty said “I would hate for you to get bit and end up with the foaming sickness.”

“As would I.” Mitch said. ”As would I”

Their conversation was interrupted by a commotion at the other end of the cellblock. A great tirade of barks and human yelling was peppered by the screeching of animals unknown.

“What in the world could that be?” Mitch asked, racing in the direction of the hullabaloo.
The noises continued while the dogs on their block barked along with the cacophony. Kitty, with an inner stillness that was unlike her, sat on the floor of her cage, ears pointed at the point of origin.

Even Grimy had broken down and begun barking with all his breath. But Kitty sat and concentrated on the ruckus, as if she could make out what was happening by her sense of sound alone. Normally she would have been in the farthest corner of her cell, curled into a ball with her tail tucked tightly against her genitals and her eyes closed to the trouble until it could pass her by.

“It’s a mess!” Mitch said, as he tore around the corner, barking as loud as the other occupants of the pound. “The humans have really bit off more than the can chew this time!”

“What is it?!” Grimy asked, his coming in short gasps from winding himself with all the barking.

“There was a circus in town.” Mitch panted. “They came into some trouble and all of their animals were confiscated. There’s things in the holding yard I’ve never seen before. And believe me, I’ve worked with the humans here for most of my adult life, twenty seasons at least.”

“Like what?” asked the Dalmatian.

“There’s a horse out there, but it has stripes!” Mitch panted. “It looks it got caught in the shadows behind a fence when the sun was up and got sunburned between the slats! The humans must be up to something -I mean, how can an animal actually be born looking like that?”

The dogs in the cages lunged forward and sniffed at the fur of the border collie. “What’s that?” the Chihuahua asked, sniffing Mitch’s paw.

“It was left behind by something they called an ’elephant’. It was HUGE. At least the size of three horses put together.

Kitty had no idea what Mitch was talking about, having never seen a horse before. “Is a horse like a deer?” she asked.

“I thought that you lived in the city?” Mitch asked. “How do you know what a deer is?”

“I saw it in the other world, when I was with the Dark One.”

Mitch shook with a shiver at the name of Death. “A horse it a bit bigger, with thicker legs. Most have been tamed by humans who ride them when they choose not to ride around in their cars.”
“If they’re so big, why don’t they throw off the human on their backs and run of for the wilds?” asked the Chihuahua.

“Maybe they’re just too stupid to know how.” said the Rottweiler.

“Or maybe they just forgot how.” said the Dalmatian.

“It is because there are very few “wild” places left.’ said the old hound dog. “And when the land forgets what it was, so do the animals connected to it, no matter where they have gone.”

“Bigger than a deer.” Kitty mumbled to herself. And found herself wondering if this ‘elephant’ that Mitch spoke of was bigger than the All Mother. But it seemed impossible. Nothing could be as large as that. The All Mother was even bigger than the deer she had seen in the world beyond when she was visited by the Dark one.

“Bigger than a car.” Mitch added. “Bigger than the wall of this cell.” he said, pawing the chain link gate to her cage.

“Nothing is as big as THAT.” she said.

“You will believe me when you see it for yourself.” Mitch said.

“And just how will THAT happen?” she asked, sighing and settling down on the cold hard floor of her cage.

“One of those animals just HAS to be what we are looking for. One with dexterous hands to let you all out of your cages.” Mitch panted. “We just have to find out which one it is.”

　
　
　
　
　
　　

Kitty 5

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 5

By Plot Roach
　
　
Kitty snarled and yipped, pulling with all of her might. She had never before worn a collar or been on a leash. The noose of the pole dug into her neck, choking off her air supply. But instead of dropping in place so that the rope would loosen, she fought harder.

A man pulled a rifle from inside the white van, aimed and fired. Kitty fought until the darkness overtook her. Her last thoughts before unconsciousness were of the bright sun above her and of the shadows that felt so cold.

A brief flicker of consciousness found her on a cold meat table, a tube down her throat and a sluggishness in her body which she could not shake.

“Hey there, Sleeping Beauty.” a woman said, ruffling her fur. Kitty tried to growl at her, but nothing much more than a sigh escaped her canine lips. She tried to pull herself up onto unsteady legs and fell back down onto the polished surface of the table. Cold, she thought. And it smells weird. She saw another tube attached to her leg and tried to bite at it.

“Oh no, sweetheart.” the woman said, pushing the plunger down on a syringe that fed into the tube. Once again Kitty was plunged into darkness.

The sounds of barking, whines and metal banging upon metal woke her up. Bright florescent lights hummed overhead, making her head hurt even worse.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Oh, you’re up!” Grimy said from across the room. “I was worried about you, especially when they shot you.”

“What was that for?” she asked.

“They probably thought that you were one of those dangerous feral types. So they made you sleep for a while as they checked you out to make sure that you were okay.”

“Of course I’m okay.” Kitty said. “I have been all my life.”

“No, I mean… To make sure you’re not sick or have bones broken.”

Kitty sniffed at the shaved area of her leg where the tube had been inserted, and licked at it to confirm that the wound had been closed. She settled down onto the hard concrete floor, still unsure on her feet. She was filled with a heavy sensation in her body, as if she had just stepped out of a deep pool of water, her fur weighted down by weight of unshed liquid.

Another dog padded up to her cage. He paused long enough to sniff at her through the chain link before addressing her. “You had worms and were dehydrated.” the border collie told her. “The humans gave you medicine and a bag of fluids to remedy the problem.”

“Thank you ….”

“The humans named me Mitch.”

“Thanks Mitch.”

“Anything else that I should know?”

“They don’t know if you are a street feral or just and abused and abandoned dog, like the others that reside here.”

“What’s the difference?”

“If you are not friendly, you cannot be adopted. And if you stay here for longer than two weeks you will be euthanized.”

“Which means?” Kitty asked.

“They put you and a bunch of other dogs in a small room at the end of the hallway.

“ Mitch said. “I don’t know exactly what happens, but when the dogs come out they are dead -and they smell funny.”

“And how do you know all of this?”

“I’ve been here a while.”

“But you haven’t been killed by the humans.”

“I am a pet of one of them, ‘called a service dog’.” Mitch said. “He takes me to places where there are old humans and young ones. He talks about the importance of having your animals “fixed” so that there are no more strays on the street.”

“Fixed?” Grimy asked.

“Balls removed.”

“Like what the cats were talking about.” Kitty said.

“I thought it was just a cat thing.” Grimy said. “I want to keep my balls.”

“That’s not an option here.” Mitch said. “If a family comes to take you to their home, you stay here long enough for the humans to cut them off. And if you’re not lucky enough to find someone to take you home…”

“So let me get this straight: I either lose my balls or my life?” Grimy asked.

Mitch nodded, chewing at a spot on his leg as to avoid eye contact on the rather delicate subject.

“What kind of a sick choice is that?!” Grimy yapped. “I choose neither. Just let me back out and I’ll fend for myself, thank you.”

“Like I said, little guy. You have no other choice.”

“Who are you calling ‘small guy’? I’ll take you right now in a fight, see if I can’t!” Grimy snapped, throwing himself at the wall of his cage.

Mitch raised an eyebrow, wisely saying nothing to the small dog. Instead he turned to Kitty. “I hope that you can pretend to be civil, at least around the humans. It will lead to a bigger cage, time outside with an opportunity to run in the grass and perhaps a chance at a real family.” he said, walking down the row of cages. “I’d hate to see an intelligent being like yourself hauled away to the room at the end of the all.”
Kitty hung her head, letting his words sink in. The thought of another family intrigued her, but it could never replace the one she lost.

She paced the cage three times before curling up into a ball in the farthest corner from the door. The floor was cold and hard, smelling of other dogs long since dead. Their messages of fear and sadness etched into the cell with scents no amount of human chemicals could mask.

Kitty missed her old home beneath the apartment complex and found her mind wandering her old haunts in spirit, even if her body could not follow. She thought about the garbage boys and their overflowing dumpsters, MINE and his chained prison and even the old woman who had dared to reach out and pet her on occasion.

All these thoughts swirled in her mind as she heard the whimpered lamenting of the other inhabitants caged in their communal hell.

Kitty 4

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 4

By Plot Roach

"Aaaaaaaoooooooo."

Kitty lifted her head at the sound. It was far away, yet felt as though it had come from no more than a few feet away from her. A deep chill swept through her and all was silent except the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears. Not even the trees that lined the edges of her cage made a sound as the wind caressed their leaves. She lifted her nose to the wind and was stunned when she could not smell the comforting aromas that decorated her alley home. Had the trap she had fallen into taken her sense of smell from her as well as her freedom?

"Aaaaaaooooo." It was closer this time, she could feel it and remained thankful that the cold metal bars that imprisoned her had not taken her sense of hearing, though her vision was diminished due to the metal plates that were held together with springs and wire.

"Are you afraid?" asked a voice, low and strong.

"Who would not be, trapped in a man’s cage?" she asked.

"But are YOU afraid?" asked the voice.

She sniffed at the edges of the cage, trying to scent her companion. But she could detect nothing more than the metallic stench of her prison. When she settled herself, she found that her blood no longer pounded like a drum in her ears. All was silent. And a calm stillness has infused her. "No" she said with honesty. "I am no longer afraid."

"That is good, my daughter. For you must be brave for the time to come." he said, his voice so close Kitty could swear that it had come from within the cage with her.

"Are you ready?" he asked. And before she could reply, the walls of the cage crashed down around her, the reverberations of the metal traveling through her paw pads and up into her bones. She jumped in fright from it and dashed out and away. A dark figure raced beside her in the night and she soon realized that they were no longer in the alleyway, nor in the human city at all. There were trees everywhere, thick with heavy boughs of scented leaves. The earth beneath her feet was spongy from generations of leaves that had fallen which felt cool against her paw pads. She ran, her heart carrying her deep into this new place, where she felt that she could run forever without getting winded. The night around her was full of life and everything seemed connected together in a way that the human world, with its hard paved roads and chemical smells, could never be. She stopped to wonder at these new smells and sights, watching squirrels leap from the ground up into the tree limbs and disappear from sight, though she could still hear them as they ran about in the hollows of their homes. Birds nested in the trees and a rabbit dashed from a nearby bush and headed off into the night. As she watched it go, she spotted an animal she had never seen before. It was huge, at least four times her size, and carried upon its head what looked to be bare tree limbs. It startled at her approach and ran with a swiftness Kitty envied. Her instincts told her to run after it, though she did not know what she would do with it if she managed to catch it.

"It is called a deer." said the stranger beside her. "Your ancestors hunted them and many more creatures before the world...changed."

"What do they taste like?" she asked, the saliva hanging in strings from her mouth at the thought of such a meal.

"You will find out, in time." he said and walked past her, leading her to a clearing in the forest. The full moon light painted the ground silver, though her companion remained as black as the night.

"This isn't real, is it?" she asked.

"It is just as real as the place where your body now rests, just in a different way." he said.

She watched as, in the moonlight that filtered through the trees and into the clearing, he shifted with every breath he took. He still remained as dark as the night itself, but the creature he became changed from dog to dog. Sometimes he was a large shaggy thing, something she had never seen before, other times he became a tiny creature like the yappy dogs that human women often carried in their purses.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Some call me the Dark One or the Black Dog, for to call me by my true name of Death is to invite me among your pack where I might not leave without a soul to keep me company on the long journey Home." he said, casually chewing the skin between two toes of his front paw, as a mongrel might groom itself when caught in a mischievous deed.

"Am I dead?" she asked.

"Not if you don't want to be." he said, looking into her eyes. His gaze was unwavering, his eyes golden. And though she should have felt fear, she did not. She looked around her, at this place, and suddenly knew why she felt at peace. "This is where we go to after..."

"After you die, yes." he finished. "And you can stay here if you like, but I am hoping that you will take the offer that I am about to give to you."

Another chill raced down her spine. What could she, a mere mongrel, have to off to Death himself?

As if in reading her thoughts, he smiled. It was just the briefest of flickers across his black muzzle before he became serious once again. "You, my daughter, are in the perfect position to help those that need it the most. For you see, the world is coming into very hard days. A time, I fear, that will test the strongest of man and animal. There are those who need to survive if this world is to be saved. Those who remain must learn to work together if we are to keep the void from consuming us all."

Kitty's mind was awash with images, pictures of people, animals and places. There was a man in a wheelchair with a golden retriever next to him, a pack of dogs that ran from a white building, a white buck which loped away through a forest and a dog -not unlike herself- that grinned at her and stared with two different colored eyes.

"This journey is not without its risks." The Dark One said. "And you will lose more than what you think you can bear. But in the end you will find what you have been seeking..."

"My family?" Kitty asked.

"Both the ones you have lost and the family that you have yet to make." He said. "And I will give the gift of seeing the world as none of our kind has before."

"Aaaaaoooo." The call of a dog echoed through the trees.

"You must decide now."

"Yes." she said. "I will do what I must."

"I do not envy the troubles you must solve and the hardships you will face. But know this: I will always be with you, my daughter, closer than your own shadow."

The howl grew louder until it seemed likely to tear Kitty's skull apart with its noise. It was then that she discovered that she was the one howling, and in doing so had woken herself from her dream.

But was it a dream or a vision? she asked herself. What was the difference between the two? Had she really run in the forest of the afterlife and met Death himself? Or had her mind played a trick on her in seeking an escape from the prison she now found herself in? She paced the confines of the cage, the cold metal bars smooth and hard against the worn pads of her paws. Oh how she longed for the soft forest floor against her feet, to run free in the heat of the hunt, her heartbeat a drum within her veins.

The scrabble of paws against metal alerted her to fellow captives. There were four others: a raccoon, two cats and a small dog. The cats had curled up and were sleeping. The dog sat, still as a statue, a whimper escaped his muzzle now and again. The raccoon pawed at the latch of the cage in an attempt to free himself. And as she watched him a strange thought raced through her mind. It was as if a mist had been lifted from her brain and suddenly she understood the connections between things that she had never even been aware of before.

"Reach higher." she told the raccoon. "If you can pull the latch down and slide it to the right, the door will open and you will be free." she told him.

"Whatofittoyou?" asked the raccoon.

"Just try it, what do you have to lose?" she asked.

The raccoon sneered at her between the bars of his cage, but reached further up than before. At last, when he found the lever that Kitty spoke of, he pulled it down and slid it to the right. Sure enough, the spring of the cage released the locking mechanism and the door swung open, crashing to the ground with a dull thud against the weed and garbage strewn floor of the alley.
The raccoon streaked out of the cage in a flurry of dark fur and rodent like swearing, making for a nearby tree. Once up in the tallest of the limbs he continued to shake and began to groom himself in an attempt to calm his nerves.

"Hey!" barked the little dog in a cage next to Kitty. "How about letting us go while you're at it?"
But the raccoon acted as if he could not hear them, and to Kitty it seemed that he might not. His eyes were staring off into the distance and he continued to shake from fear. Raccoons are like that, Kitty thought. All fight and fury when they're sure that they can win. But when faced with a foe that was impossible to defeat, they ran away and turned in on themselves until some passing fancy took their mind off of their loss.

"We won't get any help out of him, I'm afraid." Kitty said to her companion in the cage beside her.

"So why did you help him get out if he wasn't going to help us?" the little dog asked.

"I don't know... It just seemed right somehow."

"Well that's a lot of good it did for us."

"We'll be okay." Kitty said. She did not know why she said it, but once it had left her mouth, she knew that the words were true. We'll be okay, she told herself again. And she believed those words from the bottoms of her paw pads to the tips of her ears.

"Have you been through this kind of thing before?" The little dog asked.

"No." Kitty admitted. "Have you?"

"A few times." he said. "My names is Grimy, by the way."

"I'm Kitty."

"What kind of person names their dog 'Kitty'?" he asked.

"I wasn't really anyone's dog. It was the first human word I recognized. So I came when it was being called and it just somehow stuck." she said.

"So someone was feeding their cat and you showed up for dinner instead?" Grimy asked.

"Something like that." Kitty said. She did not want to admit that the old woman still fed her, as if it would make her look soft and foolish.

"Are you a tame dog, or from the wild like me?" he asked, busily licking the pad of one foot in an attempt to offset his nervousness.

"I was never anyone's pet." she said. "But I live off of human refuse where I can find it." Still she did not admit to eating the handouts from the old woman. "And what kind of name is 'Grimy'?"

"It's better than 'Dirty'." he sighed, ignoring her look. "I was the leader of my own pack, once." said the little dog. And Kitty passed an eye over his tiny form and found it unlikely. Yet she kept her mouth shut and let the little one have his stories if they were so dear to him. At least he has something to entertain himself with, she thought. "But my band go broken up by traps like these." he sniffed at the metal of the cage. "Our numbers dwindled with each place we got caught at, until there was only me."

"And you didn't attempt to help any of them?" she asked. Incredulous! to have a pack and to leave them trapped only to save your own sorry pelt. She remembered back to the day in which she lost her siblings, knowing that if she had been the size she was now and knowing what she had learned over the years, she could have saved them from the humans and taken them where they could not have been troubled again.

But now look at me, she thought. With size and knowledge and yet still I cannot free myself...

"I didn't know how to open the cages." Grimy said. "And there was no sense in sticking around and getting caught when I couldn't help them." He whined. "And just HOW did YOU know how to open the cage, anyway?"

"I don't know." she admitted. "It just came to me."

"Can you get us out now?" Grimy asked.

With a great amount of twisting and pushing, Kitty managed to get her front paw near the latch she had helped the raccoon with. Yet try as she might, she could not get a grip on the same lever. "It's no use." she said. “My paw can't reach it from inside the cage, and even if I could I can't get a grip on it. The raccoon's paws are more adept as grasping things than mine are."

"A fat lot of good it does us then, knowing how the cages work but unable to use it to our advantage." Grimy snarled.

"Hey, look now. If I could have gotten us free I would have." She said.

"I know...." he whined. "I didn't mean to snap at you, it’s just that I don't want to go back."

"So you've been where the humans take their prey?"

"'Prey?'" he laughed. "We're not their prey. All they do is take us to a building where other humans poke us with metal bits and then it's off to a room with other dogs to sit, be fed and wait for other humans to take us to their homes."

"‘Metal bits?’” she asked. “I don't like the sound of that."

"It's not so bad, actually." Grimy said. "It hurts less than when you get a piece of glass stuck in your paw. And you forget about it almost as soon as they set down the first food bowl."

"What do they feed you?" Kitty asked, her mouth watering. The humans who had set up her trap had neglected to put any bait inside of it, so she was still hungry from the day before, a fact that her stomach lamented with a growl of its own.

"Mostly dry pellet stuff-"

"Kibble" she said.

"Yeah, but sometimes they give you the caned stuff. Thick meat bits with gravy." he said, his eyes slitting with the memory of such a gastronomical delight. He swallowed several times to clear the saliva in his mouth, as did she. "The canned stuff is the best. Though it's better when it's warmed up."

"You've had it warm?" she asked.

"Yeah." he said sheepishly. "Back when I was a pup, this old woman had me and she used to warm up my food on days when it was cold outside." he grinned, remembering his days of pampering. "We would come in from a long walk and she would set down a bowl of warm food, and sometimes warm milk instead of just cold water. That was the best."

"That was before you were a wild dog?" Kitty asked.

"Yep. I was with her for a while before she got sick. Then I went to live with a family -with kids." he said, shuddering. "They made me sleep outside and only gave me the dry stuff -kibble- after that. The kids were mean, and the other humans mostly ignored me. So ran away to start my own pack. To live wild and free."

They drifted into a silence after that, the cats now slowly waking and licking the dew off that had accumulated in their fur. They spoke little except to hiss at the dogs to keep their distance, as if the dogs could leave their cages to torment them.

"It will be alright." she reminded herself as a white van pulled into the alley.

It came to a halt only a few feet away from the empty cage that had once held the bandit raccoon. One of the men loaded it into the empty space of the van first, noting that the bait had been eaten and that the latch had been tripped.

"Looks like the ‘coons are getting smarter." he said, showing the other man the tripped latch.

"Let's hope not." the other man complained. "We'll have to use the lethal traps if it comes to that and I hate to see them die if we can just dump them off alive at the edge of the woods."

"I know what you mean." the first man said, pushing the trap to the back of the van before he grabbed one with a cat in it. "At least those guys have a future. These ones I'm not so sure about."

The two men loaded the rest in silence, taking care not to get their hands too near the edges of the cage when Grimy decided to nip at whatever appendage came close enough to worry with his rat terrier teeth.

"Feisty one."

"Won't do him any good in getting adopted."

Once loaded into the van, the doors swung shut and the animals were left in relative darkness and the floor began to move beneath them.

Despite her resolve, Kitty peed on the floor of her cage and braced herself against the back corner.

"What's wrong with you, girl?" asked one of the cats. "Never been in a car before?"

"No." she snapped. "I’ve never been a pet." She wondered vaguely if she was as sorry looking as she felt, covered in her own urine with a tail curled between her legs and ears drooping.

"I've been in a car once." said the other cat. "But it was to be taken to a man called the vet who cut me and took my balls."

"Get me out of here!" the rat terrier screamed. "I'm so small there's not that much of me left to lose!"

The van ride became the longest moment of terror that Kitty had yet endured, with the exception of the loss of her family. And to make matters worse, one of the cats vomited up his breakfast.
Please let it be over soon, Kitty prayed. Though who she prayed to even she did not know.

After a while, the van ceased it rocking and the men opened the back doors. They loaded their cargo of frightened animals into the back of the building where more workers waited for to process them. A long pole with rope was slid in between the bars of Kitty’s cage, the loop closing about her neck as the workers pulled her out.

Though they had meant to be gentle with her, Kitty gave them no choice but to fight her. As soon as the cage wall came down and she could see open sky she make a mad dash for the street, dragging a small woman in a lab coat behind her.

“Somebody get the tranquilizers! NOW!” she yelled, holding Kitty back with the long pole and praying that the animal did not turn upon her.

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.

　

Kitty 2

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 2

By Plot Roach

The sun high overhead, the shadows pooled beneath their empty bellies. They searched for scraps in the abandoned junkyard. A leaf fluttered by on the wind and the pups gave chase. Even though it was not food, it provided a moment of entertainment where the dogs forgot their hunger and gave into their instinct of the hunt. A brief game of grab the leaf ensued, the dominate male of the group in possession of the cast off leaf as the others chased him. A shadow fell upon them and the alpha soon dropped his prize in order to run for shelter, as did his sisters and brothers.

“There’s six of them back here.” A man said over his walkie talkie. “What should we do about them?”

“Bring in the traps.” A voiced squawked in answer.

The shadow left, but the puppies did not resume their game, having learned from their mother that humans were not to be trusted. They could wait for hours in their hiding space beneath an old bare hulk of a car where they had first gained their eyesight and later, their legs.

The man who had approached them stood nearby, taking out a bit of food from a pocket in his overalls and tempting the puppies with tidbits and kissing noises. But these were no tame pups, and they held their ground.

By early dusk, the men came into the yard with metal mesh boxes and set them near the car. Then, with a sound of a can opening, the most delicious smell wafted through the junkyard and set the puppies to begging.
Smells the likes they had never before encountered melted the resolve of the little creatures. One by one they entered the wire boxes to gorge on the feast laid out before them. And one by one the doors snapped shut, trapping them inside.

Piteous yaps and snarls issued from the wire traps as the puppies found themselves unable to flee when the men returned in the morning to claim their prize. Five traps took away her brothers and sisters. Five traps took away all she had left of her family.

“Think these are the pups from the bitch we trapped two days ago?” One of the men asked, loading up a cage with the Alpha pup, who snarled and bit at the wire.

“I hope so.” The other man said, wiping sweat from his brow with a worn red bandana. “I’d hate to think that there’s more than one out here dropping off litters she isn’t able to feed.”

“Wasn’t there one more pup?”

“I think so.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’ll empty this lot back at the shelter and then reset the trap tonight.”

The men drove away, vowing to come back before the day could turn into dusk once again. They would set another trap, and catch another abandoned and wild dog, but they never caught the last pup, for she moved on to another, safer place, having lost the only thing that had tied her to this place.

The dog who thought of herself as “Kitty” kicked in her sleep, the hard packed earth beneath her catching the claws of her feet as she ran in her sleep. She remembered the first run, her journey from First Home. She had many homes since that old junkyard, but none had felt as safe and as comforting as when she had been in that place, surrounded by kin.

She whimpered and woke herself from her nightmare. She bared her teeth at the men who took away her family in wire cages, though she could not have known now (or even then) that they had done it to keep the pups from starving to death. The moon was high overhead and illuminated the street just outside the door of her home. She continued to growl, though thoughts of the men dissipated from her mind like dew drops from the grass on a summer morning. Though it was night, the heat of the day had been stored up in the bricks of the building and in the black pavement of the street. The unbearable heat brought her back to her present reality, her growling stomach setting her to her task. She yawned and strode out into the night, the moonlight highlighting her fur in a false silver that made her look more fox than dog.

She loped at a steady pace through the streets, pausing in front of a house to drink water from the sprinklers that came on every night at this time to water the front lawn. She sniffed the wind and headed westward toward the smell of Chinese food and Barbeque. Another growl escaped her, but this one issued from her belly. She was a shadow against the stillness of the night, only her paw pads betrayed her movement.

“MINE MINE MINE!” barked a dog from a neighboring yard. He had seen her approach and alerted his people, as was the code among dogs.

Protect your pack.

Protect you home.

Chase the invader away.

Kitty had no such loyalties that bound her and paused at the gate to study this loyal, yet annoying, creature.
“MINE MINE MINE!” He continued to bark, building up a lather along his jaws and pulling against the chain which tied him to a tree. “YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE!”

“Of course I do not belong here.” she said. “I am wandering past, as I do every night at this time. I never cross onto your land or take from you and your pack, why must you always yell at me so?” she asked.

“MINE MINE MINE!” was all he would say. Followed by “GO GO GO.” as she wandered off in search f the smells which tempted her.

A few blocks away she waited in the shadows and watched as the kitchen staff from the nearby restaurants unloaded heavy vats of garbage into dumpsters. They were young men, and as such often did their job hurriedly and without grace. She watched as food splashed onto the flagstones and waited until the boys returned to their buildings before venturing near to eat her dinner.

“Whaststhat?” said a voice in the darkness, sneezing as it paused along the edge of the streetlight to wash his whiskered face.

Kitty growled softly. “This is my food, my right to eat first.”

The whisker washer looked away as if uninterested in Kitty’s meal. “Whatever…”

Kitty ate until she was stuffed, laying down near the pile of refuse to keep the raccoon at bay.

“Comeon comeon.” he whispered as it groomed itself. Impatient, he made a dash at the food on the ground before Kitty jumped to her feet and snarled, sending him back into the shadows.

Her game startled the occupants of the building, who came out to look at the commotion. The boy who had come out recently to throw away food recognized her at once and tossed a few more bits of meat at her.
She was now hiding in the shadows. The raccoon had moved on to another dumpster in search of food, so Kitty took up his spot in the nearby shrubbery that framed the dumpster and hid it from the view of human patrons.

“What was that?” asked one of them men who had been washing dishes in the kitchen asked.

“Just a dog.” the trash boy answered, tossing the last of the food into the bottom of the bushes where the dog could reach it without leaving the safety of the darkness.

“We are going to have to call animal control soon.” the dishwasher added before returning to the building. “All we need is one customer bit by a stray with rabies and we’ll be out of a job.”

The trash boy nodded, but hoped that the dog moved on to another place in the city before it could come to that. He hated to see any animal suffer on the streets, but it was a better option than ending up in a cage for two weeks before being gassed to death.

Kitty stayed in the bushes until she was certain that the humans were gone. She sniffed at the food that the trash boy had tossed to her and ate a small chunk, testing it for chemicals before eating a few more bites. She had been made sick before by humans setting out food laced with powdered kitchen cleaner and rat poison. And though she had never had a problem while feeding at this location before, she was always careful.

She ate a few more bites, though her belly was already full. Food, while not hard to find at this stage of her life, was always her daily goal. While the dog back at the house she passed had a strict code of protecting his property, she had her own:

FIND FOOD.

FIND SHELTER.

TRUST NO ONE.

Her belly full for the moment, she wandered the city, following her nose and her instincts. She found three more sites to feed from, though she would have competition from the raccoon and other denizens, no doubt. And added to her mental list of hiding places an abandoned car in front of a derelict home, a screen pried off the bottom of an industrial building and a plastic child’s playhouse that might offer some refuge for the night, should her home at the apartment complex become too dangerous to stay in.

She looked up to the moon in the sky, framed by stars and looking for all the world like a saucer of milk that the old woman often left out for the cats on some evenings. She licked her lips at the thought and moved on.
Claws licked against the hard pavement as she meandered home. The guard dog who had so rudely accosted her at the beginning of the evening now lay silent and sleeping beneath the tree to which he was chained. She paused at his gate, tempted to wake him and send him into another barking fit for which she knew that he would be punished. It never ceased to amaze her that humans had set him to guard their home and yet punished him for barking to alert them of intruders in the dead of night.

She sighed and headed past the sleeping dog, her belly full of food and her mind dancing with information she had learned this night. In her heart was the pull of the open road. If she had been human, she might have been a gypsy. Instead she was just following her canine instinct to move on before she over hunted an area, to move along and conquer new lands and perhaps to find a pack of her own. While she had spent the last three years moving alone from place to place, she had a sudden yearning for her own kind.

Not someone like the MINE MINE MINE! the guard dog, she thought to herself. But someone like me. Someone to share her burrow with when the winter nights got cold. Someone to help chase raccoons off with. Someone to pace by her side as she wandered the world.

Back at the apartment complex, she sniffed the entrance to her burrow beneath the building for intruders. It paid to be careful, even in areas she felt safe. It had saved her more times than she could remember. Once from a rabid opossum who had taken over one of her hiding spots as she had gone off for the night on her mission for food. And at least a few times from humane traps that humans had set out to catch her kind.

Smelling only her own musk, she entered the building and paced the dirt three times before settling in to sleep. The earth beneath her was packed hard as stone from the years of use. She had taken the den from a cat three months earlier who in turn had taken it from a skunk. The floor was littered in places with the bones of birds, mice and various bits scavenged from human refuse.

The dog’s leg kicked out at one of these well gnawed bones, a section of pork rib long since chewed clean of flesh and marrow, as she slipped into dream. Once again she was playing with her siblings in the open sunlight until the shadow passed over them, changing her world forever.

The next morning was heralded by the familiar scrape of rubber soled shoes on the black pavement of the back alley. The dog raised her head and yawned, bolting from her hole in the building to chase the dried food pellets that the old woman threw to the ground around her like chickenfeed.

Kitty 1

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 1

By Plot Roach

The scrabble of footsteps on blacktop brought her to alertness. Rubber soled shoes scraped against broken glass and kicked aside other urban debris as the human made her way to the dumpster in the alley. The heat had already risen to unbearable levels this morning and the dog was loathe to leave her haven, even for the food she knew that she would find. A low growl in her stomach reminded her that food was a necessity and that the coolness of her retreat could be regained after she stuffed her belly. She slowly found her feet, stretching like a cat in the small confines of her hideaway. She shuffled through the maze of support beams and exited through the hole that had been broken in the stucco façade.

“Here kitty, kitty.” the human called, tossing out handfuls of dried kibble onto the weed infused ground. Cats by the dozens appeared like phantoms through the cracks in the wall and the thick tangles of greenery. The dog rushed in among them and sucked up bits of dried food whenever she could find them. The cats gave her a with berth, but sneered and snarled at her if she got too close to their chosen spots. The dog hung back, the pang of her hunger satiated as the cats gorged upon the food pellets, for she knew what was to come next.

A few minutes later, the sound of a can being opened caught her ears and her mouth watered with the thought of the food that would now be spilled onto the pavement. “Come kitty, kitties. Good kitties.” the human said, smacking a spoon against the metal side of an emptied tin to get the attention of the animals. Unable to hold herself back any longer, the dog rushed forward and nearly knocked the human over in her quest for food.

 FOOD. She thought. Bolting down the wet globs of meat even as her mouth flooded with saliva. FOOD FOOD FOOD!

 “Well so much for a ‘thank you‘!” the old woman said as she bent down to pat the dog on her back. The dog stifled a snarl, but just barely. She found the old woman tolerable if she brought food and moved slowly. Still, the old woman’s touch was not without its comfort.

But the dog pulled away from the woman when she devoured the last bits of food and licked away whatever gravy could be reclaimed from the hard packed earth beneath her paws. She left the old woman talking to the cats and returned to her dark haven.

In the past she found that humans had been more trouble than their worth. In the silence of her home beneath the apartment complex, her mind wandered back to various points in her life. The warmth and smell of her siblings and milk, the day that their mother left them and the humans who had come to claim them.

It seemed so long ago that she was a young pup, playfully tumbling with her brothers and sisters on an open lot not unlike the alley where the old woman fed her. The dog slipped into a light sleep and traveled back to that place, that time when she lost those dearest to her.

The sun was bright overhead and she remembered being thirsty and hungry, always hungry.