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 14
By Plot Roach
A shadow passed over them, and the dog moved away from Kitty’s cage.
“Well hello,” the human said, leaning over and peering into the pet carrier. “I’m glad to see that you are up and about.”
“Did our little patient wake up?” asked another voice.
The human female unlocked the cage and stood back. “It’s okay, dear,” the human said. “You are among friends.”
Kitty sat silently in the back of her cage, watching the woman until she disappeared from view.
“It’s okay,” said the dog, once again beside Kitty’s pet carrier. “They’re just humans. They’re not going to bite.”
The human female set down bowls of food and water well within reach of the opened pet carrier. Kitty’s greedy eyes took them in, and her stomach threatened to leap from her mouth in order to consume the food. But she remembered the scene in the parking lot where those who had been unable to void their stomachs of poisoned food in time were now cold as the paved road which they had traveled.
Kitty nosed the door open, taking in the room and those who were in it. The two humans were a few feet away, while the cat known as Lucy watched from her perch on a nearby table. Two more cats had taken up residence on an overstuffed chair. The cats seemed aloof, the dog next to her calm and the humans anxious. Kitty made a dash for the dark corner of a table and hoped that from there she would not only be protected from the humans, but from the strangely calm dog as well. Kitty was pretty sure that she could take the cats if it came down to a fight, but was praying that like the feral felines she had met on the street that they had better things to do than harass her.
“What’s wrong?” asked the dog once Kitty had taken up position under the table.
“What do you mean ‘what’s wrong?’” Kitty asked. “I’m in your territory, and a strange dog at that. And the humans just put out food and water. Do you think that you will fool me into thinking that we are friends?” Kitty asked. “I know that just as soon as my attention is focused on the food, you’ll turn on me and try and kill me. The humans probably do this with other dogs as well.”
“Um, did I somehow offend you?” the dog asked. “This isn’t a trick. The humans hit you with their car by mistake. They fixed you up and brought you here until they can find your family. We’re not here to hurt you, we’re here to help.”
“Why?” Kitty asked.
“That’s what you’re supposed to do if someone is hurt and needs help. You drop everything and fix their problems, you give them a safe place to stay and you feed them.”
“My old pack would turn on you if they heard you talk like that. The weak were attacked and killed.” Kitty could not bring herself to say ‘eaten’. “If you had said that around Max, you would have been driven out of the pack -or worse.”
“I don’t think that I would like this ‘Max’ dog that you’re talking about. But I doubt that you will have to worry about meeting up with him here.”
“I hope you’re right,” Kitty said, edging toward the food and water bowls. Is this dog for real? She asked herself. I’m about to eat his food and drink his water and he’s okay with it? She leaned forward and cautiously sniffed the food.
“What’s wrong?” the dog asked. “Did you want something different? I know that kibble isn’t much, but I’m sure the humans could open a can of wet food for you if it comes down to it.”
Kitty shuddered, hoping that the wild cat that she had met by the apartment complex was wrong about killed dogs and cats ending up in cans for human consumption. I abstained from eating fallen pack members all this time, she thought. I would hate to start eating my own kind now.
She took a piece of kibble and rolled it around in her mouth, testing for chemicals, poisonous or otherwise. When she could taste nothing but the tang of the kibble and felt no ill effects, she downed the bowl of dry food as fast as she could, following it up with a healthy drink of water. Once done, she resumed her place under the table. In all the time that she had been out of the cage, the humans had not moved from their spot, but had watched her constantly.
“See,” the dog said. “I told you that they only wanted to help you.”
“I see that now,” Kitty said. “But why?”
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Kitty 13
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 13
By Plot Roach
She tried all of her usual tactics to find food, even though they had moved on to places she did not recognize. How far have we traveled? She asked herself. I don’t recognize any of the usual spots where our kind would normally gather. And I definitely don’t recognize the smell of the animals here.
When her nose brought her to a stop in front of an abandoned human building. “I definitely smell something here,” she told Max. “It’s familiar, but I don’t know why.”
“Is it food?” He asked, salivating as he waited for her answer.
“It smells of humans…and something else,” She said, trying to find the memory that eluded her like a flea in thick fur.
She followed the smells to the back of the building where garbage was strewn about the pavement. There were no garbage can around, no shredded plastic bags either. This isn’t like what the humans did in the other places we visited, she told herself. Something is wrong here.
“Food!” One of the dogs cried out, running for the heaps of trash.
“Wait!” Kitty called out. “There’s something wrong,” she said. I just don’t know what it is, she thought. And though her belly argued with her mind, she knew to trust her own instincts. They have, after all kept me alive so far, she thought.
Max also joined into the fray, pushing aside the smaller dogs to get at the food. The smell of the cast off garbage was too much for them, though she had hoped that some of the dogs would listen to her warning.
“You are missing out on the good stuff,” said Moon. “It will all be gone and you’ll be left with an empty belly yet again. Well, empty except for pups,” she sniggered, plunging her muzzle back into the pile of stale human food
Kitty sat to the side, even as the pack devoured the last of it. The human scent on the food was stale, as was the natural smell of the food itself. There was another smell, stronger than the other two, which hung over the stuff in a pungent cloud. Chemicals, Kitty told herself. It was like the cleanser that the humans used in the restaurant that sometimes clung to their clothes. She had been sick from it a few times when humans intentionally treated the food at the dumpster with it in order to discourage her from scavenging for scraps there.
What was it that the cat had told her about the humans and the dead bodies that had been feasted upon by stray animals? And then it hit her in a flash.
“Stop eating!” she barked. “The humans have poisoned it!”
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Max said, still chewing on a piece of dried hamburger patty.
“Then why have no other animals come and eaten it?” Kitty asked. “Raccoons, cats ad opossums all have had access to this place, and yet the food was left for us to find it. And why do you think that they left it alone?”
That was when one of the smaller dogs began to whine with pain. He staggered and fell, frothing at the mouth.
"The foaming disease!” One of the other dogs called out.
“No,” Kitty said. “It’s poison.” And soon the other dogs began to feel the effects of the chemicals that the humans had put on the food. Many curled up on the spot while others raced to check on their fallen comrades.
“You did this on purpose,” Max said. “You lead us here to kill us. You’re in league with the humans somehow.”
And for the second time in her life, Kitty was accused of betraying her pack to the tyranny of the humans.
“No,” she said. “I would never do that.”
But Max advanced upon her, though she could see that he was suffering from the first effects of the poisoned meat. “Attack her!” he called to his pack. But most of them were busy either in their death throes or trying to vomit up what they could in order to survive. “I’ll kill you myself,” He said. She turned and ran.
Even poisoned he still was fast. He chased her around the building and out into the street.
Kitty, with her attention focused on the murderous alpha behind her did not see the car thundering toward her until it was too late.
She was struck by the metal beast, pain lancing up one leg. Even then she tried to run from Max, though her leg would no longer support her.
A human female burst out from the car, and looked down at Kitty.
“It’s a dog, Craig.” she told the other human in the car.
“Is it dead?” he asked.
“No, but I don’t know how hurt it is.”
Kitty, overwhelmed with pain and fear felt consciousness slip from her. But not before Max growled a warning from a nearby bush. “If I ever find you again on the streets I will kill you.”
Kitty felt herself lifted from the street and onto something that felt soft and cushioned her like great piles of bagged garbage. There was the smell of another animal, a dog. He whined when he sniffed her and her heart raced. Had the pack followed her? Were they going to finish her off? But this dog smelled different from the gamey scent of the pack. He smelled of humans, soap and good health. When he sniffed at her muzzle she could smell the kibble on his breath.
Pet, she thought, he’s nothing but a pet. Then the darkness fell upon her like a thick wool blanket.
When she woke she found herself held in another cage. Not again she thought as she nosed the wire mesh of the door, the side walls, top and floor were of a hard stuff that was like stone, but moved if she pushed against them hard enough. She tried pawing at a corner to dig her way out when the stranger approached her.
“Oh, you’re awake,” he barked. “She’s awake! She’s awake!” he bellowed.
“Stop, or you’ll bring the humans here,” Kitty said.
“That was kind of the point,” he said. “How else are they going to let you out and give you food?”
“Let me out?” she asked. “You mean on purpose?”
“Sure, did you think that you were going to stay in there forever?”
“Until they decided to kill me, yes.”
“You’re a silly dog. Why would the humans want to kill you?”
“Look, pet, I hate to tell you the bad news, but they eat us,” Kitty whispered through the bars of the pet carrier. “They catch us in the wild with cages, kind of like this,” she said nosing the wire mesh of the door. “Then they send us to a place where lots of animals are kept, they throw us in a chamber where the Dark One comes out of a pipe and steal our souls. Then the humans send us to a place where our bodies are put into cans so that the humans can eat us at their leisure.”
“And you learned this how?” the dog asked.
“I was in the place where they kill the dogs, and a cat told me the rest.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” Kitty said.
“Did it ever occur to you that the cat lied?” the dog asked.
“What would be the point of her lying to me?”
“Well, maybe she was misguided then,” the dog suggested. “Has anyone else said this to you?”
“No, but…”
“Here now, let’s put this argument to rest and ask an expert.” The dog turned to a cat and asked: “Hey Lucy, did you know that humans eat cats and dogs?”
“They most certainly do not!” the calico said. “What’s this talk of pet eating? Other than ‘hot dogs’ and ‘cat-chup’, which are not made from what you think that they are, the humans usually eat other, lower, animals. Creatures considered “pets” are not usually on that list.”
“What other creatures are there out there?” kitty asked.
“Well, there’s pigs -that’s where ‘pork’ comes from- goats, cow -that’s called beef- chicken, tuna -my
personal favorite- and then…”
The cat continued her ramblings of the different foods that the humans had provided to her over her lifetime. And quite a few more that she heard about from other cats and was eager to try. Kitty could not believe that there were so many animals that walked the same city as herself, much less ones that she had never seen.
“She can go on like this forever.” the dog told Kitty.
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
Kitty Part 13
By Plot Roach
She tried all of her usual tactics to find food, even though they had moved on to places she did not recognize. How far have we traveled? She asked herself. I don’t recognize any of the usual spots where our kind would normally gather. And I definitely don’t recognize the smell of the animals here.
When her nose brought her to a stop in front of an abandoned human building. “I definitely smell something here,” she told Max. “It’s familiar, but I don’t know why.”
“Is it food?” He asked, salivating as he waited for her answer.
“It smells of humans…and something else,” She said, trying to find the memory that eluded her like a flea in thick fur.
She followed the smells to the back of the building where garbage was strewn about the pavement. There were no garbage can around, no shredded plastic bags either. This isn’t like what the humans did in the other places we visited, she told herself. Something is wrong here.
“Food!” One of the dogs cried out, running for the heaps of trash.
“Wait!” Kitty called out. “There’s something wrong,” she said. I just don’t know what it is, she thought. And though her belly argued with her mind, she knew to trust her own instincts. They have, after all kept me alive so far, she thought.
Max also joined into the fray, pushing aside the smaller dogs to get at the food. The smell of the cast off garbage was too much for them, though she had hoped that some of the dogs would listen to her warning.
“You are missing out on the good stuff,” said Moon. “It will all be gone and you’ll be left with an empty belly yet again. Well, empty except for pups,” she sniggered, plunging her muzzle back into the pile of stale human food
Kitty sat to the side, even as the pack devoured the last of it. The human scent on the food was stale, as was the natural smell of the food itself. There was another smell, stronger than the other two, which hung over the stuff in a pungent cloud. Chemicals, Kitty told herself. It was like the cleanser that the humans used in the restaurant that sometimes clung to their clothes. She had been sick from it a few times when humans intentionally treated the food at the dumpster with it in order to discourage her from scavenging for scraps there.
What was it that the cat had told her about the humans and the dead bodies that had been feasted upon by stray animals? And then it hit her in a flash.
“Stop eating!” she barked. “The humans have poisoned it!”
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Max said, still chewing on a piece of dried hamburger patty.
“Then why have no other animals come and eaten it?” Kitty asked. “Raccoons, cats ad opossums all have had access to this place, and yet the food was left for us to find it. And why do you think that they left it alone?”
That was when one of the smaller dogs began to whine with pain. He staggered and fell, frothing at the mouth.
"The foaming disease!” One of the other dogs called out.
“No,” Kitty said. “It’s poison.” And soon the other dogs began to feel the effects of the chemicals that the humans had put on the food. Many curled up on the spot while others raced to check on their fallen comrades.
“You did this on purpose,” Max said. “You lead us here to kill us. You’re in league with the humans somehow.”
And for the second time in her life, Kitty was accused of betraying her pack to the tyranny of the humans.
“No,” she said. “I would never do that.”
But Max advanced upon her, though she could see that he was suffering from the first effects of the poisoned meat. “Attack her!” he called to his pack. But most of them were busy either in their death throes or trying to vomit up what they could in order to survive. “I’ll kill you myself,” He said. She turned and ran.
Even poisoned he still was fast. He chased her around the building and out into the street.
Kitty, with her attention focused on the murderous alpha behind her did not see the car thundering toward her until it was too late.
She was struck by the metal beast, pain lancing up one leg. Even then she tried to run from Max, though her leg would no longer support her.
A human female burst out from the car, and looked down at Kitty.
“It’s a dog, Craig.” she told the other human in the car.
“Is it dead?” he asked.
“No, but I don’t know how hurt it is.”
Kitty, overwhelmed with pain and fear felt consciousness slip from her. But not before Max growled a warning from a nearby bush. “If I ever find you again on the streets I will kill you.”
Kitty felt herself lifted from the street and onto something that felt soft and cushioned her like great piles of bagged garbage. There was the smell of another animal, a dog. He whined when he sniffed her and her heart raced. Had the pack followed her? Were they going to finish her off? But this dog smelled different from the gamey scent of the pack. He smelled of humans, soap and good health. When he sniffed at her muzzle she could smell the kibble on his breath.
Pet, she thought, he’s nothing but a pet. Then the darkness fell upon her like a thick wool blanket.
When she woke she found herself held in another cage. Not again she thought as she nosed the wire mesh of the door, the side walls, top and floor were of a hard stuff that was like stone, but moved if she pushed against them hard enough. She tried pawing at a corner to dig her way out when the stranger approached her.
“Oh, you’re awake,” he barked. “She’s awake! She’s awake!” he bellowed.
“Stop, or you’ll bring the humans here,” Kitty said.
“That was kind of the point,” he said. “How else are they going to let you out and give you food?”
“Let me out?” she asked. “You mean on purpose?”
“Sure, did you think that you were going to stay in there forever?”
“Until they decided to kill me, yes.”
“You’re a silly dog. Why would the humans want to kill you?”
“Look, pet, I hate to tell you the bad news, but they eat us,” Kitty whispered through the bars of the pet carrier. “They catch us in the wild with cages, kind of like this,” she said nosing the wire mesh of the door. “Then they send us to a place where lots of animals are kept, they throw us in a chamber where the Dark One comes out of a pipe and steal our souls. Then the humans send us to a place where our bodies are put into cans so that the humans can eat us at their leisure.”
“And you learned this how?” the dog asked.
“I was in the place where they kill the dogs, and a cat told me the rest.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” Kitty said.
“Did it ever occur to you that the cat lied?” the dog asked.
“What would be the point of her lying to me?”
“Well, maybe she was misguided then,” the dog suggested. “Has anyone else said this to you?”
“No, but…”
“Here now, let’s put this argument to rest and ask an expert.” The dog turned to a cat and asked: “Hey Lucy, did you know that humans eat cats and dogs?”
“They most certainly do not!” the calico said. “What’s this talk of pet eating? Other than ‘hot dogs’ and ‘cat-chup’, which are not made from what you think that they are, the humans usually eat other, lower, animals. Creatures considered “pets” are not usually on that list.”
“What other creatures are there out there?” kitty asked.
“Well, there’s pigs -that’s where ‘pork’ comes from- goats, cow -that’s called beef- chicken, tuna -my
personal favorite- and then…”
The cat continued her ramblings of the different foods that the humans had provided to her over her lifetime. And quite a few more that she heard about from other cats and was eager to try. Kitty could not believe that there were so many animals that walked the same city as herself, much less ones that she had never seen.
“She can go on like this forever.” the dog told Kitty.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Kitty 12
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 12
By Plot Roach
Kitty lifted her head to the setting sun, her heart heavy with worry. What can I do, All Mother? Where can I go that Max and his minions cannot reach me?
Even as she asked the question, Max walked up and stood beside her. His form as imposing as his mood. “What are your plans for tomorrow?” he asked. He leaned close to her, brushing against her side. And though she was certain that her carried no disease, it sent her skin crawling nonetheless.
“Tomorrow?” she asked, trying to keep the whimper from her voice.
“We should move out tomorrow, find new territory and more food,” he said, scanning the horizon. Whether he was looking for prey or for foe, only he knew for certain.
You mean I’ll be looking for food and you’ll be looking to benefit from it, she thought, though she dared not utter such a phrase. She looked to the wet ground and knew by the feeling in her bones that more cold weather would be soon upon them.
“We have to get someplace that we can shelter in,” she said. “If only for a week or two. Bad weather is coming and some of your pack might not make it through this if we keep going at the pace we’ve been going for the last week.”
Max cocked his head, his eyes still staring off into the sunset. “You leave the planning to me. Your job is to make sure that the pack is fed.” He stalked off to the center of the pack, curling up next to Moon who gave a smirk at Kitty as he lay down next to her.
He likes me better than you, that smirk said to Kitty. She made her bed at the edge of the pack. That night her dreams were of strange dogs who walked a wilderness that she had heard about while in the dog pound, yet had never experienced herself. It was like the forest of the Afterlife, but not as comforting and full of game. She saw herself roam with these dogs, not as the lower cast animal, but second only to the alpha. He was a dog much like herself, though his hair was a bit darker and he was a bit larger in body. His eyes were two different colors, like Mitch, the service dog that she had met in the pound.
And when his eyes met hers, they were filled with kindness and understanding. She woke in the night when a faint howl broke the silence of the empty city.
None of the other dogs heard it, or else ignored the call. None moved in the still night except herself and some rodents that scurried about in the night. Max shifted in his sleep, and Kitty knew that she could not leave even if she wanted to. The pack would not let her.
And where would I go? She asked herself. There were no other packs, only stray dogs which had either run away or were torn to shreds.
Yet even as she drifted back to sleep, the warmth and the safety of the pack in her dreams gave her comfort. Somehow she knew that she would find them.
Dawn came all too soon for Kitty who would have preferred the land of her dreams to the nightmare of her reality. The dogs massed for another day of foraging, with Kitty leading the way. Max kept her hungry to keep her weak and under his control. Whenever she could find food on the side, she gobbled it down before the pack could take it from her, though Max would punish her terribly for it, pulling out chunks of her fur or biting her ears and muzzle.
Even when he had shown her affection during the mating season, he growled as he groomed her, whispering threats of what he would do if she tried to leave his pack.
Then came a series of day when no food could be found. All of Kitty’s tricks had failed her. And she learned that with no humans, there was no human trash to feed off of.
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
Kitty Part 12
By Plot Roach
Kitty lifted her head to the setting sun, her heart heavy with worry. What can I do, All Mother? Where can I go that Max and his minions cannot reach me?
Even as she asked the question, Max walked up and stood beside her. His form as imposing as his mood. “What are your plans for tomorrow?” he asked. He leaned close to her, brushing against her side. And though she was certain that her carried no disease, it sent her skin crawling nonetheless.
“Tomorrow?” she asked, trying to keep the whimper from her voice.
“We should move out tomorrow, find new territory and more food,” he said, scanning the horizon. Whether he was looking for prey or for foe, only he knew for certain.
You mean I’ll be looking for food and you’ll be looking to benefit from it, she thought, though she dared not utter such a phrase. She looked to the wet ground and knew by the feeling in her bones that more cold weather would be soon upon them.
“We have to get someplace that we can shelter in,” she said. “If only for a week or two. Bad weather is coming and some of your pack might not make it through this if we keep going at the pace we’ve been going for the last week.”
Max cocked his head, his eyes still staring off into the sunset. “You leave the planning to me. Your job is to make sure that the pack is fed.” He stalked off to the center of the pack, curling up next to Moon who gave a smirk at Kitty as he lay down next to her.
He likes me better than you, that smirk said to Kitty. She made her bed at the edge of the pack. That night her dreams were of strange dogs who walked a wilderness that she had heard about while in the dog pound, yet had never experienced herself. It was like the forest of the Afterlife, but not as comforting and full of game. She saw herself roam with these dogs, not as the lower cast animal, but second only to the alpha. He was a dog much like herself, though his hair was a bit darker and he was a bit larger in body. His eyes were two different colors, like Mitch, the service dog that she had met in the pound.
And when his eyes met hers, they were filled with kindness and understanding. She woke in the night when a faint howl broke the silence of the empty city.
None of the other dogs heard it, or else ignored the call. None moved in the still night except herself and some rodents that scurried about in the night. Max shifted in his sleep, and Kitty knew that she could not leave even if she wanted to. The pack would not let her.
And where would I go? She asked herself. There were no other packs, only stray dogs which had either run away or were torn to shreds.
Yet even as she drifted back to sleep, the warmth and the safety of the pack in her dreams gave her comfort. Somehow she knew that she would find them.
Dawn came all too soon for Kitty who would have preferred the land of her dreams to the nightmare of her reality. The dogs massed for another day of foraging, with Kitty leading the way. Max kept her hungry to keep her weak and under his control. Whenever she could find food on the side, she gobbled it down before the pack could take it from her, though Max would punish her terribly for it, pulling out chunks of her fur or biting her ears and muzzle.
Even when he had shown her affection during the mating season, he growled as he groomed her, whispering threats of what he would do if she tried to leave his pack.
Then came a series of day when no food could be found. All of Kitty’s tricks had failed her. And she learned that with no humans, there was no human trash to feed off of.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Kitty 11
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 11
By Plot Roach
"You did say that you could find us food here, did you not?" asked one of the dogs behind her. Several others behind him muttered their doubts about Kitty and her heart dropped to her paws. She had to prove to them, and possibly to herself, that she was capable of providing for the pack.
"Yes," she said. "But the last time I was here, there were humans working in the building, serving food to other humans and tossing out what was left over into the big bin over there in the square of bushes." He nose twitched, trying to seek a smell, no matter how faint, that would tell her if the humans had left any food behind.
"But if the humans were eating it,, how did you get any?" Asked the dog who had questioned her earlier.
"The men throwing away the extra food were sloppy and often tossed some of the food over the bins," Kitty said. She did not tell them that the one who threw out the restaurant's garbage would often toss a few bites to her as she hid in the bushes, lest they think her a soft dog and turn their endless and cannibalistic hunger upon her.
"I imagine that there might still be some food left in the garbage bin if the big truck has not come by to feed," she said, walking to the side of the garbage dumpster.
"That big thing that runs with the human cars and belches black smoke?" Max asked. "I've seen it feed before, stopping at every house.” he turned to the other dogs as he recounted this strange beast to them. “It seemed to have a huge belly and almost never stopped eating. It's maw is huge with two big tusks to lift its prey to its mouth. But I still don't know why it runs backwards."
"Maybe to see if it forgot anything left to eat?" Kitty asked. She was only half listening to the alpha dog, trying to figure a way into the dumpster was proving more difficult by the minute and the sides did not appear to have anything for her claws to find purchase upon to pull herself into the large metal bin.
She circled the big trash dumpster, looking for a way in. "Well?" asked Max. "Is there food or not?"
"Yes," Kitty said, sniffing a crack in the side of the large, greasy metal box. "But it will take some effort to get into it."
“So what are you waiting for?” Max challenged.
Kitty snorted at the comment, but kept her thoughts to herself. A real Alpha would not stand back and let a lesser dog provide for his pack, she told herself, but would find a way of doing these things for himself so that he could continue to put the needs of the pack before his own. There is a great deal wrong with these dogs, their leader included.
The dogs of the pack were not great at formulating ideas, but Kitty's wild side of the family was known for their problem solving skills. Her father had been a coyote living on the edge of the human city when her German Shepherd mix of a mother had come into heat. He left for his home in the wild soon after she gave birth, but not before showing her a couple of tricks to survive and provide for his pups.
Kitty remembered back to when she was a pup, when she waited for her mother to come home to the junkyard. Of sitting patiently while the other pups played in the junkyard, just so that she could get a glimpse of her mother returning with their food.
Her mother could jump over the fence by climbing the limbs of a nearby tree. It was not the usual tall tree that cats could scale when they ran from a dog or were stalking feathered prey, but a squat bush with thick almost ladder like limbs. She watched her mother climb the rungs nature had provided until she neared the top of the chain link fence. Then her mother would launch herself over the edge and land on all fours, sometimes with a skid if the weather was bad and the ground was not dry. On the other side of the junkyard was a stack of wooden pallets that made a staircase that she used to leave the fenced in area. And from this Kitty had learned how to get into and out of areas most stray dogs were locked out of. It had helped when she raided a backyard containing chickens a few months back. Though she almost had not made it out of the yard alive when the humans who tended that flock of fowl took offense to her pilfering.
She looked to the edges of the dumpster, planning her attack. If she used the bushes nearest the dumpster, she could work her way to the cinderblock wall that encased the trash bin. From there she could drop down with relative ease into the bin. She did not have a plan for escape, should anything go wrong. But the humans seemed to have disappeared from the planet, so she decided that she would worry about getting out of the bin only once she got into it.
"Stand back," she said, getting a running jump before flinging herself into the limbs of the bushes. It took a moment or two before she could right herself and decide which limbs would bear her weight and which would send her plummeting once again to the ground.
"What is she DOING?" one of the dogs asked Max.
"Give her a chance," the alpha dog said. "She hasn't disappointed us yet." Once Kitty was in the bushes she heard some of the snickering of the others dogs laughing at her. Some made mewing sounds of cats and others wondered aloud about her heritage and if it included feline interbreeding. She ignored them, pulling herself up through the bushes until she could balance against the cinderblock wall long enough to pull herself up and over it.
Once on the wall, she discovered that the bin had been left closed. She jumped over onto the top and found that it was split down the middle. She pawed at the lid and found that if she could get a corner of one of the lids in her mouth, she could pull it back to open it.
This she did with some difficulty as the dogs on the ground could no longer see her and asked constantly what she was doing.
"Are you getting any closer to the food?" Max asked, a low growl in his throat. He was losing his patience and was likely to take it out on her if she failed.
"I would be there now if I didn't have to stop and keep answering questions." she growled through clenched teeth.
"Watch your tone now, girl!" The alpha dog snapped. "I am your master."
My master? Kitty thought, nearly dropping the lid in her shock. I have never had a master, human or otherwise, so why would I start now?
Still, the smell from the dumpster was overwhelming and she was as impatient to fill her belly as the pack was theirs.
Once she pulled the lid back, it fell against the side of the dumpster and she had an open entry point. She jumped in, finding her landing cushioned by old cardboard boxes and plastic bags. These chew chewed open with her teeth as she followed her nose to the most promising smells.
The dogs outside had gone silent when they heard the dumpster lid slam open against the side of the bin, but now they began wailing as the smell wafted to them on the wind. Kitty laughed at their pitiful calls, as their stomachs yearned for what now surrounded Kitty.
"Don't forget that we eat first!" yelled Max, a growl no longer contained by his overstrained patience.
Yeah, me. Kitty thought. She bolted down a stale bagel and a part of a burger within seconds. Once she took the edge off of her hunger she began to fetch pieces of food for the other dogs, tossing them over the edge of the dumpster and onto the ground where they could reach them.
As she worked to feed the pack, her heart sank at the amount of food which she had found. If she had only kept to herself, she could have lived off of this bounty for weeks. But now she had to share, and it would be picked clean before she knew it. She was tempted to share only half of the trash bin's contents with them and come back by herself in the night to fill her belly. But just my luck, she thought to herself. Max would wake up and find me here and probably crawl in after me and finish me off on the spot.
Come to think of it, why aren't the others in here with me? she asked herself. If I can climb the bushes and get in, why am I the only one who has it so far? Maybe the rest were scared. Or did not have the dexterity she had developed with her life on the streets.
What she had not realized was that domesticated dogs had looked to mankind so long for orders on how to behave and to hunt, that they were now almost lost without their human masters.
Still, instinct would return to them as their bellies grew thin. The smartest of the animals fending for himself and his family where the dumbest ones would eventually leave his genetics in the dust with his starved corpse.
With every bite she sent over the edge of the dumpster and into the jaws of a waiting dog, Kitty ate one herself. Why hadn't I done this when the humans filled it regularly? she thought. I was a fool to fight MINE over a skimpy bone when I could have had a feast to myself for free.
When the dumpster was stripped of every last morsel, Kitty climbed a heap of boxes and launched herself onto the closed half of the dumpster lid and onto the ground among the dogs of the pack who were drowsing in the sun with full bellies.
"Good job," Max said, licking her once again on the muzzle. "I hope for your sake that you can keep it up."
Kitty felt fear turn the contents of her stomach over and she had to clench her teeth together to keep from vomiting it all up. That night they slept beside the dumpster, drinking water from shallow pools when a light rain misted upon them in their sleep.
The weeks that followed were more of the same. Kitty would lead them to a food source where the pack would gorge until they could hold no more and Kitty herself was lucky to get a few bites before it was gone. Max always stayed close to her, as if he knew that she was plotting to run away whenever she had the opportunity.
Sometimes a trash bin gave them a bounty of food that would last for days, other times they were lucky to chance upon some small animal that could be trapped and ripped apart to feed the pack. More often than not, Kitty went hungry.
The days grew darker and colder, the pack sleeping huddled together for warmth. Kitty had no chance of escape then, and surrendered herself to living with the pack until a better alternative could be found.
One day a odd sensation came over her, as it did half of the pack. Some of the females had come into heat. And this business of finding food was put on hold until other needs were satiated.
Kitty had felt these sensations before, often calling to her instincts to find another of her kind to mate with and raise her pups. But she remembered her mother's problem of raising a litter of pups while trying to find enough food to feed them all. Even when Kitty had been on her own, she never received enough food to feel that she could be full, let alone raise a family upon.
So she often ignored these urges, stayed away from the others dogs and thanked whatever dog gods that listened whenever the feeling passed.
But now there was no way to ignore the feeling, especially when half the pack was experiencing heat with her and the other half was trying to mount her.
Max never strayed from her side for the first day, constantly testing her with his nose and tongue for the right time to make his move. And, as she knew that it would be, there was no romance leading up to his conquest of her body. He simply grabbed her with his jaws and held her still while he jockeyed himself into position, holding her with forepaws while he thrust himself within her.
All too soon the pleasant feeling of coupling was washed away in the fear that flooded her. What am I doing? she thought. How can I raise pups in a pack like this?
But as she tried to pull away, Max growled and twisted the fur on the back of her neck savagely to keep her in place.
As soon as he had spent himself within her and she felt his grip loosen she tried to run away, only to realize that he was firmly lodged within her. He dropped down to all fours, slipping one leg (with some difficulty) over her back so that they now stood rump to rump. He was still knotted deeply within her, his swelling organ nature's way of ensuring that his seed had an adequate amount of time to fertilize her.
Once he withdrew, she shuddered -not with pleasure, but with revulsion, at having been physically used in such a way.
After they had separated, he turned his attention to another bitch in his pack. And although other dogs expressed an interest in Kitty, Max's growl and greedy eyes kept them at bay.
Kitty found herself the lowest member of the pack, yet in the alpha's interests. It was both a curse and a blessing, as she did not get to eat first yet was not harried by the dominant dogs of the pack as some of the smaller dogs were.
If only I could get away, she thought. She lay to the side of the pack, at the outer edge, yet close enough that Max could keep and eye on her. Another pack member crept up to her, but Max did not chase the dog away. It was only the bitch that he had mated with after her. He was now resting, being groomed by the last dog he had mated with. And though his attention lay elsewhere, Kitty did not fool herself into thinking he would not miss her if she tried to slip away.
"Hey there," the bitch next to Kitty said before settling down next to her.
"Hello," Kitty said in response.
"It's not so bad, you know," she said to Kitty. "He'll treat us decent for a little while at least."
"Because he wants to keep mating with us?" Kitty asked.
"You've got it, sister," The dog sighed. "I'm Moon, by the way."
"I'm Kitty."
"No wonder you can climb trees, with a name like that," Moon said.
"I learned it from my mom," Kitty said.
"I hope she wasn't a calico," Moon joked. Kitty only rolled her eyes in an answer.
Kitty tried to fall asleep, to conserve her energy should Max turn his attentions back upon her when he was done with his latest consort, but fear welled up in her heart.
"What’s wrong?" the dog beside her asked.
"I'm afraid, Moon," she whispered. "How will I raise my pups when we can barely feed ourselves? We keep moving. Where could I make a den if we are always on the move?"
"Oh, that's not a problem at all," Moon told her, snorting at Kitty's dilemma.
"Why is that, Moon?" Kitty asked.
The other dog turned to her and yawned as she spoke, as if bored with the conversation. "That's because we eat them."
"You what?!" Kitty asked, not believing her ears.
"We eat the pups after they are born," Moon said, licking one paw and stopping to chew the webbing between her toes as if trying to pull out a burr or small stone. "Immediately, in fact. So that we cannot form a bond with them and have second thoughts. It would be a disaster if we tried keeping them."
"What? Why?" Kitty asked, still disbelieving the words coming out of the dog's mouth.
"Think about it," Moon said. "We have to keep moving just to find enough food for ourselves. If we stopped to make a den, we would be stuck in one place for at least two moons to wait for the pups' eyes to open. And then we would have to travel slow until their legs grew enough to keep up with the adults. That’s IF we could even find enough food to feed all of us. I don't know where you come from, but if a mother doesn't eat enough, she can't produce milk for her pups. They slowly starve to death. And in the meantime another pack could come upon us and attack, killing the pups anyway."
"But why eat them?" Kitty asked, horrified.
"Well they would be eating off of me as they grow, right?" Moon asked. "If I eat them I'm just gaining back the food I lost in making them. What am I supposed to do, leave them for the raccoons?"
Kitty turned away, unable to listen to another word. She pulled herself up off of the cold ground and tried to ignore the lurching in her belly. How can these dogs live like this? she asked herself.
"You wait," Moon said as Kitty drifted away. "You'll have to make that choice when it happens, just like the rest of us. Maybe you won't be so high and mighty when you are forced to eat your own pups for survival."
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
Kitty Part 11
By Plot Roach
"You did say that you could find us food here, did you not?" asked one of the dogs behind her. Several others behind him muttered their doubts about Kitty and her heart dropped to her paws. She had to prove to them, and possibly to herself, that she was capable of providing for the pack.
"Yes," she said. "But the last time I was here, there were humans working in the building, serving food to other humans and tossing out what was left over into the big bin over there in the square of bushes." He nose twitched, trying to seek a smell, no matter how faint, that would tell her if the humans had left any food behind.
"But if the humans were eating it,, how did you get any?" Asked the dog who had questioned her earlier.
"The men throwing away the extra food were sloppy and often tossed some of the food over the bins," Kitty said. She did not tell them that the one who threw out the restaurant's garbage would often toss a few bites to her as she hid in the bushes, lest they think her a soft dog and turn their endless and cannibalistic hunger upon her.
"I imagine that there might still be some food left in the garbage bin if the big truck has not come by to feed," she said, walking to the side of the garbage dumpster.
"That big thing that runs with the human cars and belches black smoke?" Max asked. "I've seen it feed before, stopping at every house.” he turned to the other dogs as he recounted this strange beast to them. “It seemed to have a huge belly and almost never stopped eating. It's maw is huge with two big tusks to lift its prey to its mouth. But I still don't know why it runs backwards."
"Maybe to see if it forgot anything left to eat?" Kitty asked. She was only half listening to the alpha dog, trying to figure a way into the dumpster was proving more difficult by the minute and the sides did not appear to have anything for her claws to find purchase upon to pull herself into the large metal bin.
She circled the big trash dumpster, looking for a way in. "Well?" asked Max. "Is there food or not?"
"Yes," Kitty said, sniffing a crack in the side of the large, greasy metal box. "But it will take some effort to get into it."
“So what are you waiting for?” Max challenged.
Kitty snorted at the comment, but kept her thoughts to herself. A real Alpha would not stand back and let a lesser dog provide for his pack, she told herself, but would find a way of doing these things for himself so that he could continue to put the needs of the pack before his own. There is a great deal wrong with these dogs, their leader included.
The dogs of the pack were not great at formulating ideas, but Kitty's wild side of the family was known for their problem solving skills. Her father had been a coyote living on the edge of the human city when her German Shepherd mix of a mother had come into heat. He left for his home in the wild soon after she gave birth, but not before showing her a couple of tricks to survive and provide for his pups.
Kitty remembered back to when she was a pup, when she waited for her mother to come home to the junkyard. Of sitting patiently while the other pups played in the junkyard, just so that she could get a glimpse of her mother returning with their food.
Her mother could jump over the fence by climbing the limbs of a nearby tree. It was not the usual tall tree that cats could scale when they ran from a dog or were stalking feathered prey, but a squat bush with thick almost ladder like limbs. She watched her mother climb the rungs nature had provided until she neared the top of the chain link fence. Then her mother would launch herself over the edge and land on all fours, sometimes with a skid if the weather was bad and the ground was not dry. On the other side of the junkyard was a stack of wooden pallets that made a staircase that she used to leave the fenced in area. And from this Kitty had learned how to get into and out of areas most stray dogs were locked out of. It had helped when she raided a backyard containing chickens a few months back. Though she almost had not made it out of the yard alive when the humans who tended that flock of fowl took offense to her pilfering.
She looked to the edges of the dumpster, planning her attack. If she used the bushes nearest the dumpster, she could work her way to the cinderblock wall that encased the trash bin. From there she could drop down with relative ease into the bin. She did not have a plan for escape, should anything go wrong. But the humans seemed to have disappeared from the planet, so she decided that she would worry about getting out of the bin only once she got into it.
"Stand back," she said, getting a running jump before flinging herself into the limbs of the bushes. It took a moment or two before she could right herself and decide which limbs would bear her weight and which would send her plummeting once again to the ground.
"What is she DOING?" one of the dogs asked Max.
"Give her a chance," the alpha dog said. "She hasn't disappointed us yet." Once Kitty was in the bushes she heard some of the snickering of the others dogs laughing at her. Some made mewing sounds of cats and others wondered aloud about her heritage and if it included feline interbreeding. She ignored them, pulling herself up through the bushes until she could balance against the cinderblock wall long enough to pull herself up and over it.
Once on the wall, she discovered that the bin had been left closed. She jumped over onto the top and found that it was split down the middle. She pawed at the lid and found that if she could get a corner of one of the lids in her mouth, she could pull it back to open it.
This she did with some difficulty as the dogs on the ground could no longer see her and asked constantly what she was doing.
"Are you getting any closer to the food?" Max asked, a low growl in his throat. He was losing his patience and was likely to take it out on her if she failed.
"I would be there now if I didn't have to stop and keep answering questions." she growled through clenched teeth.
"Watch your tone now, girl!" The alpha dog snapped. "I am your master."
My master? Kitty thought, nearly dropping the lid in her shock. I have never had a master, human or otherwise, so why would I start now?
Still, the smell from the dumpster was overwhelming and she was as impatient to fill her belly as the pack was theirs.
Once she pulled the lid back, it fell against the side of the dumpster and she had an open entry point. She jumped in, finding her landing cushioned by old cardboard boxes and plastic bags. These chew chewed open with her teeth as she followed her nose to the most promising smells.
The dogs outside had gone silent when they heard the dumpster lid slam open against the side of the bin, but now they began wailing as the smell wafted to them on the wind. Kitty laughed at their pitiful calls, as their stomachs yearned for what now surrounded Kitty.
"Don't forget that we eat first!" yelled Max, a growl no longer contained by his overstrained patience.
Yeah, me. Kitty thought. She bolted down a stale bagel and a part of a burger within seconds. Once she took the edge off of her hunger she began to fetch pieces of food for the other dogs, tossing them over the edge of the dumpster and onto the ground where they could reach them.
As she worked to feed the pack, her heart sank at the amount of food which she had found. If she had only kept to herself, she could have lived off of this bounty for weeks. But now she had to share, and it would be picked clean before she knew it. She was tempted to share only half of the trash bin's contents with them and come back by herself in the night to fill her belly. But just my luck, she thought to herself. Max would wake up and find me here and probably crawl in after me and finish me off on the spot.
Come to think of it, why aren't the others in here with me? she asked herself. If I can climb the bushes and get in, why am I the only one who has it so far? Maybe the rest were scared. Or did not have the dexterity she had developed with her life on the streets.
What she had not realized was that domesticated dogs had looked to mankind so long for orders on how to behave and to hunt, that they were now almost lost without their human masters.
Still, instinct would return to them as their bellies grew thin. The smartest of the animals fending for himself and his family where the dumbest ones would eventually leave his genetics in the dust with his starved corpse.
With every bite she sent over the edge of the dumpster and into the jaws of a waiting dog, Kitty ate one herself. Why hadn't I done this when the humans filled it regularly? she thought. I was a fool to fight MINE over a skimpy bone when I could have had a feast to myself for free.
When the dumpster was stripped of every last morsel, Kitty climbed a heap of boxes and launched herself onto the closed half of the dumpster lid and onto the ground among the dogs of the pack who were drowsing in the sun with full bellies.
"Good job," Max said, licking her once again on the muzzle. "I hope for your sake that you can keep it up."
Kitty felt fear turn the contents of her stomach over and she had to clench her teeth together to keep from vomiting it all up. That night they slept beside the dumpster, drinking water from shallow pools when a light rain misted upon them in their sleep.
The weeks that followed were more of the same. Kitty would lead them to a food source where the pack would gorge until they could hold no more and Kitty herself was lucky to get a few bites before it was gone. Max always stayed close to her, as if he knew that she was plotting to run away whenever she had the opportunity.
Sometimes a trash bin gave them a bounty of food that would last for days, other times they were lucky to chance upon some small animal that could be trapped and ripped apart to feed the pack. More often than not, Kitty went hungry.
The days grew darker and colder, the pack sleeping huddled together for warmth. Kitty had no chance of escape then, and surrendered herself to living with the pack until a better alternative could be found.
One day a odd sensation came over her, as it did half of the pack. Some of the females had come into heat. And this business of finding food was put on hold until other needs were satiated.
Kitty had felt these sensations before, often calling to her instincts to find another of her kind to mate with and raise her pups. But she remembered her mother's problem of raising a litter of pups while trying to find enough food to feed them all. Even when Kitty had been on her own, she never received enough food to feel that she could be full, let alone raise a family upon.
So she often ignored these urges, stayed away from the others dogs and thanked whatever dog gods that listened whenever the feeling passed.
But now there was no way to ignore the feeling, especially when half the pack was experiencing heat with her and the other half was trying to mount her.
Max never strayed from her side for the first day, constantly testing her with his nose and tongue for the right time to make his move. And, as she knew that it would be, there was no romance leading up to his conquest of her body. He simply grabbed her with his jaws and held her still while he jockeyed himself into position, holding her with forepaws while he thrust himself within her.
All too soon the pleasant feeling of coupling was washed away in the fear that flooded her. What am I doing? she thought. How can I raise pups in a pack like this?
But as she tried to pull away, Max growled and twisted the fur on the back of her neck savagely to keep her in place.
As soon as he had spent himself within her and she felt his grip loosen she tried to run away, only to realize that he was firmly lodged within her. He dropped down to all fours, slipping one leg (with some difficulty) over her back so that they now stood rump to rump. He was still knotted deeply within her, his swelling organ nature's way of ensuring that his seed had an adequate amount of time to fertilize her.
Once he withdrew, she shuddered -not with pleasure, but with revulsion, at having been physically used in such a way.
After they had separated, he turned his attention to another bitch in his pack. And although other dogs expressed an interest in Kitty, Max's growl and greedy eyes kept them at bay.
Kitty found herself the lowest member of the pack, yet in the alpha's interests. It was both a curse and a blessing, as she did not get to eat first yet was not harried by the dominant dogs of the pack as some of the smaller dogs were.
If only I could get away, she thought. She lay to the side of the pack, at the outer edge, yet close enough that Max could keep and eye on her. Another pack member crept up to her, but Max did not chase the dog away. It was only the bitch that he had mated with after her. He was now resting, being groomed by the last dog he had mated with. And though his attention lay elsewhere, Kitty did not fool herself into thinking he would not miss her if she tried to slip away.
"Hey there," the bitch next to Kitty said before settling down next to her.
"Hello," Kitty said in response.
"It's not so bad, you know," she said to Kitty. "He'll treat us decent for a little while at least."
"Because he wants to keep mating with us?" Kitty asked.
"You've got it, sister," The dog sighed. "I'm Moon, by the way."
"I'm Kitty."
"No wonder you can climb trees, with a name like that," Moon said.
"I learned it from my mom," Kitty said.
"I hope she wasn't a calico," Moon joked. Kitty only rolled her eyes in an answer.
Kitty tried to fall asleep, to conserve her energy should Max turn his attentions back upon her when he was done with his latest consort, but fear welled up in her heart.
"What’s wrong?" the dog beside her asked.
"I'm afraid, Moon," she whispered. "How will I raise my pups when we can barely feed ourselves? We keep moving. Where could I make a den if we are always on the move?"
"Oh, that's not a problem at all," Moon told her, snorting at Kitty's dilemma.
"Why is that, Moon?" Kitty asked.
The other dog turned to her and yawned as she spoke, as if bored with the conversation. "That's because we eat them."
"You what?!" Kitty asked, not believing her ears.
"We eat the pups after they are born," Moon said, licking one paw and stopping to chew the webbing between her toes as if trying to pull out a burr or small stone. "Immediately, in fact. So that we cannot form a bond with them and have second thoughts. It would be a disaster if we tried keeping them."
"What? Why?" Kitty asked, still disbelieving the words coming out of the dog's mouth.
"Think about it," Moon said. "We have to keep moving just to find enough food for ourselves. If we stopped to make a den, we would be stuck in one place for at least two moons to wait for the pups' eyes to open. And then we would have to travel slow until their legs grew enough to keep up with the adults. That’s IF we could even find enough food to feed all of us. I don't know where you come from, but if a mother doesn't eat enough, she can't produce milk for her pups. They slowly starve to death. And in the meantime another pack could come upon us and attack, killing the pups anyway."
"But why eat them?" Kitty asked, horrified.
"Well they would be eating off of me as they grow, right?" Moon asked. "If I eat them I'm just gaining back the food I lost in making them. What am I supposed to do, leave them for the raccoons?"
Kitty turned away, unable to listen to another word. She pulled herself up off of the cold ground and tried to ignore the lurching in her belly. How can these dogs live like this? she asked herself.
"You wait," Moon said as Kitty drifted away. "You'll have to make that choice when it happens, just like the rest of us. Maybe you won't be so high and mighty when you are forced to eat your own pups for survival."
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Kitty 10
I am participating in NANOWRIMO this year. I will attempt to post my daily ramblings in the hopes that eventually it will become a book which will entertain you as well as myself…
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
Kitty Part 10
By Plot Roach
Kitty stopped and looked at the ground, sniffing a few places before she turned back to the cat. “Did they take the bodies of the dead, both human and poisoned animal, away?” She asked.
“Oh my, yes,” the cat said, licking at her paw. “It was a mess. Perhaps the biggest the humans have ever made.” the cat stopped grooming herself and stared off into the distance past Kitty, as cats are wont to do.
“You would think that they wouldn’t mind that animals wanteded to eat on the bodies. I mean, there was more than enough for all of us to share. But maybe there’s a huge den of animals somewhere that the humans like more and they are all hungry.”
“Can humans eat poisoned animals?” Kitty asked.
“Have you smelled some of the things that they eat?” the cat asked, an astonished look on her face. “I’m surprised that they don’t poison themselves with some of that stuff. I saw a man once who stood at the back of this building.” the cat said nodding to the apartment complex. “And he breathed fire. FIRE. Now what kind of animal can sets fire to its lungs and still lives?”
Kitty could say nothing, she had seen the old woman’s son breathe smoke at the same spot, but it never occurred to her that his lungs were on fire. “If humans can do such great and terrible things,” Kitty said. “Like breathing fire and eating poison, then why do they bother hunting us for food?”
“They EAT US?!” the cat asked.
“Well, where do you think the bodies go?” Kitty asked.
“The humans eat things out of cans and boxes that they get someplace called a ‘grocery store’,” the cat said. "I’ve never seen any human drag a cat corpse -or even one of their own kind- back inside their den to eat it.”
“Maybe the bodies are already in the food cans?” Kitty asked.
“But who puts the bodies in the cans?”
Kitty shivered at the idea. “I came from the pound where they kill the animals and someone comes to take the bodies away, you just saw the humans take away both human and animal corpses, and yet you are telling me that there is a place where they are taken to be put into cans so that the humans can get them from a ‘grocery store’ and then eat them?”
The cat stopped grooming and hissed. “Run!” she yowled. The cat's fur fluffed up until the animal appeared to be twice the size Kitty knew her to be before she raced off into the night and up a nearby tree.
Kitty turned in time to see a pack of dogs race toward her.
Should I run? she asked herself. Even though they can easily outrun me, weak as I am from lack of food. Or should I fight?
Kitty stood her ground, hackles raised. A growl caught in her throat as she looked among them for any who would have been in the animal pound with her. Any who might still carry a grudge. Her legs trembled and her ears drooped, a tail curled protectively over her genitals.
Her heart pounded in her chest as she waited for the pack to reach her, knowing that if they chose to attack that she was greatly outnumbered. I can only hope that it will be over soon, she told herself and braced for impact as the first dog came closer.
But the dog did not attack her, nor even pause to size her up. It whizzed past, as did the others in the pack, and continued to run until it reached the tree where the cat was hiding.
The cat looked down upon them in contempt, knowing that they could not follow her up the tree.
"Rotten luck, that," The alpha sighed, his breathing still rapid from the chase. He was a German Shepherd mix, much like kitty. But where her fur was red with an undercoat of tan, this dog seemed the color of a dark cloud. His ears perked forward as he tracked the cat up in the tree.
"Excuse me?" Kitty asked.
"Oh, sorry about that," the dog said, turning to Kitty. "We didn’t mean for you to lose your kill. It's just that we've been searching the city for so long for a bite to eat and couldn't pass up the opportunity when we saw it."
"My kill..?" Kitty asked.
"You won't get me now you mangy mutts!" the cat called out from the tallest tree limb, winking down at Kitty when none of the other hounds were looking.
Oh, so that's what they were after, Kitty thought. "You got off easy today, fur ball!" she called to the cat above them. "But if I catch you tomorrow..." Kitty ended the threat with a growl and a shake of her head, hoping to fool the dogs around her into thinking that she was just as fierce as they were.
The cat settled down to groom herself and the pack master knew to move his dogs on. "Once they hit the trees," he said to Kitty. "They can stay there for days."
"Don't I know it," Kitty agreed, thanking the cat in her mind for her part in Kitty's acceptance by the pack.
"We better move on to find something before the big dogs eat the little ones," The alpha male said.
Kitty almost laughed until she saw the ribs poking out of most of the dogs' sides. The alpha might not be that far off after all, she thought.
"Are you new to this area?" Kitty asked him.
"We've been traveling the last three weeks in search of food," he said. "Most of us were turned out by our owners, though a few lived on the streets before that. And you?" he asked Kitty. "How long have you been on your own?"
"Almost all my life really," she admitted. "I was born in a junkyard, but humans trapped my family and I've been moving around on my own ever since." She neglected to tell him about being trapped and taken to the pound. And the fight with the other dogs who escaped. She wanted him to think that she was capable of handling herself in trouble so that he might add her to his pack.
He eyed her, taking in her physical form and weighing it in his mind. She stood still as he sniffed her as well, trying to weight the pros of someone who was healthy and obviously a good hunter (since her ribs did not show as much as the dogs of his pack did), against the need of another mouth to feed.
"You say you know this area?" he asked.
"I hunted here a little over a week ago and thought that I would come back." she said, hoping that he would not ask why she had left if the area if it was such a good feeding ground.
But he merely cocked his head as he nipped her on the ear. "My name is Max, and if we take you into our pack, you have to understand that I'm the leader and that there are a lot more dogs of higher rank above you. If we find food and make a kill, we will be the ones eating first, not you. If you are going to cause trouble, we'll leave you behind. Got that?" he asked.
"Yes, sir." she answered, not sure now that she wanted their companionship. But one dog in a strange world has a harder time of things than one in a pack, she reminded herself. In this group, though they might be skinny, she stood a better chance of bringing down large game and fending herself off from the dogs of the pound, should they try and attack her again.
Should I tell him after all? she asked herself, but buried the thought like a well chewed bone. Why bring up a problem that she might not face. The one thing the streets had taught her was that she could never expect a life of peacefulness and tedium, for something was always around the corner to snatch safety away, which also might take your life in the process.
"Lead us around your fair city then," the alpha commanded. And before she knew it, she was off on her feet and leading the pack through her usual haunts in search of food.
She began her usual route through the neighborhoods, now dark as the night. "That's odd," she said, walking from the street and onto the sidewalk, and looked up at the street lamp. "That usually comes on when it gets dark."
"Not afraid of the dark, are you missy." sniggered a dog from behind her.
"No, it's just that the humans normally keep it on. They can't see in the dark, you know," she said before heading further down the street. Along the way she noted that the windows in the homes were dark as well. Where are all the humans? she asked herself.
She walked to her usual spots, noting the lack of people -and their garbage cans. What will we eat if they are all gone? she asked herself. And will the pack gets angry with me and turns on me if I cannot feed them?
"This is where I usually find water, but the sprinklers are not on." she said, nosing a dry plastic bulb that rose from the grass. I wonder how long they have been gone? Kitty wondered as the grass felt dry beneath her feet.
"Hey! There's something over here." called one of the pack.
"Be careful or MINE will hear you and attack. He‘s the guard dog here and he‘ll hurt you if given half a chance." she said. She slunk up to where the dog was and looked down at his find.
It was MINE, laying at the end of his chain. He had managed to find water by licking the drips that had fallen from a leaking water hose, but obviously had not had any food in a while. His ribs jutted out farther that the mutts that made up Max's pack. And his breath came in shallow gasps. He was lean before she had been trapped and sent to the pound. What she saw before her was a skeletal ghost of the dog MINE.
"MINE?" she asked, wondering if the dog could even respond to her.
An eyelid cracked open, caked with dried dust. He growled, but did not move. The air wheezed in his throat.
"We have to get him loose." Kitty said. "It's not right to let him die lie this."
"No, dear, it is not." Max said and leaned down to the starving dog. Before Kitty could stop him, he latched his jaws on MINE's neck and twisted hard, breaking the dog's neck instantly.
"By the All Mother!" Kitty yelled. "What did you do?!"
"You were right, He couldn't continue to live like that. It was horrible of the humans to leave him suffering like that. And it would have been worse had we just wandered past and left him to his misery. So I ended his suffering in the most humane way possible."
"But couldn't we have freed him instead?" Kitty asked.
"And what?" Max asked. "Brought him food when my own pack is starving? He was chained to the tree, there's no way a dog -or a pack of dogs, for that matter, could ever chew though a chain. You’d be better off chewing through the tree instead."
Kitty looked at the dead dog. She knew that MINE was a rotten guard dog and prone to malicious behavior. But she had not wanted him to die like this.
Max leaned down and took MINE's hide in his teeth. At first Kitty was certain she was going to pull the dead dog to the side of the yard and bury him, but when she heard the flesh tear instead, her heart fell to her paws.
The alpha tore open MINE's skin to get at his flesh. As she watched in horror, Max took out the shriveled organs and pulled them to the side, bolting them down before another of his pack could challenge him. Other dogs rushed forward, knocking Kitty out of the way. Her stomach lurched. If she had had anything to eat, she would have lost it then and there.
"If you can't stand to watch," Max said over a mouthful of dead guard dog. "Then turn away."
And Kitty did just that, though she could not block out the horrible noises of dogs fighting over wet bits of flesh or the smell of blood and dog crap as MINE's intestines were emptied of their contents by two dogs playing tug of war.
When the feast was over, and there was little left of MINE but a few blood streaked bones, the pack settled down for the night. Kitty licked a few drops of water from the leaking water hose and tried not to step in any of the gore, not wanting to have to lick MINE's blood off of her paws.
One of the smaller dogs wandered over to her, limping as he came.
"Sorry we didn't save any for you, but it's been a while since we fed properly. Thank you for leading us to him," he said and touched noses with her.
"Um... You're welcome?" She said, not feeling so much like a gracious host as an executioner.
The little dog wandered off and her thoughts turned to Grimy, now lost forever to her. Did he make it out of the pound alive? she asked herself. Or has the same thing happened to him? She hated to think of one of the larger dogs turning on him and making a meal out of the rat terrier, but she knew that if these dogs had resorted to cannibalism, it was only a matter of time before the little dog found himself some bigger dog's lunch.
Or the humans, she thought. Don't forget the humans and their insatiable appetite. Though I'm still not sure if the cat was right about them eating their own dead.
The rest of the dogs settled in around her, some congratulating her on finding "the kill", others welcoming her into the pack.
"Pity there wasn't anything left for you." Max said, licking the last of MINE's blood from his muzzle.
"That's okay." she said. "It was my gift for joining the pack. Perhaps if MINE could not go on living, he would have wanted his flesh to go to those who could." She stifled the urge to whine, it would not do well to appear weak in front of a pack of dogs who had just devoured what had once been her enemy.
"That's the pack mentality I was looking for." Max said and settled down next to her. His breathing became slow and even and she knew that he was asleep.
She looked around her and noted that the rest of the pack had fallen asleep as well.
Can I run away while they are sleeping? she asked herself. "What have I done? Just getting mixed up with these cannibal hounds… I'm no better off than I was being attacked by the pound dogs. It's only a matter of time before they start turning on their own -if they haven‘t already. And I'm the lowest member of the group. They'll kill me first for sure.
But as she tried to edge away from Max, he opened an eye. She settled back down and he moved a little closer to her. Though he was not an overly large dog, he still had more muscle than Kitty and she did not doubt for one minute that he could chase her down and snap her neck like he had MINE -or worse, wound her and leave her alive as his pack ate her as she watched.
That night her mind relived the flight from the pound, the death of MINE and added her paranoia about what would become of her and Grimy. It seemed that no matter how hard or fast she ran, trouble ways caught up with her. Her last image was of a small rat terrier being ripped to shreds in Max's jaws a she drowned in a sea of blood.
She snapped awake as Max licked her muzzle. "We have to keep going, keep looking for food," he said. Already his pack was at attention, though some sniffed the bones from last night's feast looking for any leftover scraps that might have been overlooked. It made her empty stomach turn and she was glad, for the second time in her life, that there was nothing in it.
"Sure thing, Max." she got to her feet, trying hard not to look at the scattered and cracked bones of MINE as she headed out of the human's front yard. She stood at the gate, trying to get her bearings as Max walked up to her, stopping when they were shoulder to shoulder. There’s no going back now, she told herself. He could run me down and kill me before I could even run to the end of the block.
"Where to now, dear lady?" Max asked.
Kitty's muzzle twitched and she tried to tell herself that his lick to her muzzle earlier was just him trying to wake her and not done to see what she taste like. "We'll go to one of my old haunts today," she said, trying not to show any fear.
"Lead the way." Max said, watching her with intense eyes.
She lead the pack to the dumpster behind the restaurants where she had often found something for the night, but was surprised when the humans were gone.
One of the windows of the restaurant was boarded up, shards of broken glass littered the pavement and she had to step around it to avoid getting the sharp bits lodged in her paws and to get closer to the door.
"They are all gone." she said, after she had surveyed what she could through the remaining intact window. There was not a whiff of cooking food, human cleaning chemicals or rotting food. What was that the cat had said? The humans had gotten sick, most died and the rest must have moved on.
What am I going to do now? She asked herself as she turned and faced the hungry pack.
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
Kitty Part 10
By Plot Roach
Kitty stopped and looked at the ground, sniffing a few places before she turned back to the cat. “Did they take the bodies of the dead, both human and poisoned animal, away?” She asked.
“Oh my, yes,” the cat said, licking at her paw. “It was a mess. Perhaps the biggest the humans have ever made.” the cat stopped grooming herself and stared off into the distance past Kitty, as cats are wont to do.
“You would think that they wouldn’t mind that animals wanteded to eat on the bodies. I mean, there was more than enough for all of us to share. But maybe there’s a huge den of animals somewhere that the humans like more and they are all hungry.”
“Can humans eat poisoned animals?” Kitty asked.
“Have you smelled some of the things that they eat?” the cat asked, an astonished look on her face. “I’m surprised that they don’t poison themselves with some of that stuff. I saw a man once who stood at the back of this building.” the cat said nodding to the apartment complex. “And he breathed fire. FIRE. Now what kind of animal can sets fire to its lungs and still lives?”
Kitty could say nothing, she had seen the old woman’s son breathe smoke at the same spot, but it never occurred to her that his lungs were on fire. “If humans can do such great and terrible things,” Kitty said. “Like breathing fire and eating poison, then why do they bother hunting us for food?”
“They EAT US?!” the cat asked.
“Well, where do you think the bodies go?” Kitty asked.
“The humans eat things out of cans and boxes that they get someplace called a ‘grocery store’,” the cat said. "I’ve never seen any human drag a cat corpse -or even one of their own kind- back inside their den to eat it.”
“Maybe the bodies are already in the food cans?” Kitty asked.
“But who puts the bodies in the cans?”
Kitty shivered at the idea. “I came from the pound where they kill the animals and someone comes to take the bodies away, you just saw the humans take away both human and animal corpses, and yet you are telling me that there is a place where they are taken to be put into cans so that the humans can get them from a ‘grocery store’ and then eat them?”
The cat stopped grooming and hissed. “Run!” she yowled. The cat's fur fluffed up until the animal appeared to be twice the size Kitty knew her to be before she raced off into the night and up a nearby tree.
Kitty turned in time to see a pack of dogs race toward her.
Should I run? she asked herself. Even though they can easily outrun me, weak as I am from lack of food. Or should I fight?
Kitty stood her ground, hackles raised. A growl caught in her throat as she looked among them for any who would have been in the animal pound with her. Any who might still carry a grudge. Her legs trembled and her ears drooped, a tail curled protectively over her genitals.
Her heart pounded in her chest as she waited for the pack to reach her, knowing that if they chose to attack that she was greatly outnumbered. I can only hope that it will be over soon, she told herself and braced for impact as the first dog came closer.
But the dog did not attack her, nor even pause to size her up. It whizzed past, as did the others in the pack, and continued to run until it reached the tree where the cat was hiding.
The cat looked down upon them in contempt, knowing that they could not follow her up the tree.
"Rotten luck, that," The alpha sighed, his breathing still rapid from the chase. He was a German Shepherd mix, much like kitty. But where her fur was red with an undercoat of tan, this dog seemed the color of a dark cloud. His ears perked forward as he tracked the cat up in the tree.
"Excuse me?" Kitty asked.
"Oh, sorry about that," the dog said, turning to Kitty. "We didn’t mean for you to lose your kill. It's just that we've been searching the city for so long for a bite to eat and couldn't pass up the opportunity when we saw it."
"My kill..?" Kitty asked.
"You won't get me now you mangy mutts!" the cat called out from the tallest tree limb, winking down at Kitty when none of the other hounds were looking.
Oh, so that's what they were after, Kitty thought. "You got off easy today, fur ball!" she called to the cat above them. "But if I catch you tomorrow..." Kitty ended the threat with a growl and a shake of her head, hoping to fool the dogs around her into thinking that she was just as fierce as they were.
The cat settled down to groom herself and the pack master knew to move his dogs on. "Once they hit the trees," he said to Kitty. "They can stay there for days."
"Don't I know it," Kitty agreed, thanking the cat in her mind for her part in Kitty's acceptance by the pack.
"We better move on to find something before the big dogs eat the little ones," The alpha male said.
Kitty almost laughed until she saw the ribs poking out of most of the dogs' sides. The alpha might not be that far off after all, she thought.
"Are you new to this area?" Kitty asked him.
"We've been traveling the last three weeks in search of food," he said. "Most of us were turned out by our owners, though a few lived on the streets before that. And you?" he asked Kitty. "How long have you been on your own?"
"Almost all my life really," she admitted. "I was born in a junkyard, but humans trapped my family and I've been moving around on my own ever since." She neglected to tell him about being trapped and taken to the pound. And the fight with the other dogs who escaped. She wanted him to think that she was capable of handling herself in trouble so that he might add her to his pack.
He eyed her, taking in her physical form and weighing it in his mind. She stood still as he sniffed her as well, trying to weight the pros of someone who was healthy and obviously a good hunter (since her ribs did not show as much as the dogs of his pack did), against the need of another mouth to feed.
"You say you know this area?" he asked.
"I hunted here a little over a week ago and thought that I would come back." she said, hoping that he would not ask why she had left if the area if it was such a good feeding ground.
But he merely cocked his head as he nipped her on the ear. "My name is Max, and if we take you into our pack, you have to understand that I'm the leader and that there are a lot more dogs of higher rank above you. If we find food and make a kill, we will be the ones eating first, not you. If you are going to cause trouble, we'll leave you behind. Got that?" he asked.
"Yes, sir." she answered, not sure now that she wanted their companionship. But one dog in a strange world has a harder time of things than one in a pack, she reminded herself. In this group, though they might be skinny, she stood a better chance of bringing down large game and fending herself off from the dogs of the pound, should they try and attack her again.
Should I tell him after all? she asked herself, but buried the thought like a well chewed bone. Why bring up a problem that she might not face. The one thing the streets had taught her was that she could never expect a life of peacefulness and tedium, for something was always around the corner to snatch safety away, which also might take your life in the process.
"Lead us around your fair city then," the alpha commanded. And before she knew it, she was off on her feet and leading the pack through her usual haunts in search of food.
She began her usual route through the neighborhoods, now dark as the night. "That's odd," she said, walking from the street and onto the sidewalk, and looked up at the street lamp. "That usually comes on when it gets dark."
"Not afraid of the dark, are you missy." sniggered a dog from behind her.
"No, it's just that the humans normally keep it on. They can't see in the dark, you know," she said before heading further down the street. Along the way she noted that the windows in the homes were dark as well. Where are all the humans? she asked herself.
She walked to her usual spots, noting the lack of people -and their garbage cans. What will we eat if they are all gone? she asked herself. And will the pack gets angry with me and turns on me if I cannot feed them?
"This is where I usually find water, but the sprinklers are not on." she said, nosing a dry plastic bulb that rose from the grass. I wonder how long they have been gone? Kitty wondered as the grass felt dry beneath her feet.
"Hey! There's something over here." called one of the pack.
"Be careful or MINE will hear you and attack. He‘s the guard dog here and he‘ll hurt you if given half a chance." she said. She slunk up to where the dog was and looked down at his find.
It was MINE, laying at the end of his chain. He had managed to find water by licking the drips that had fallen from a leaking water hose, but obviously had not had any food in a while. His ribs jutted out farther that the mutts that made up Max's pack. And his breath came in shallow gasps. He was lean before she had been trapped and sent to the pound. What she saw before her was a skeletal ghost of the dog MINE.
"MINE?" she asked, wondering if the dog could even respond to her.
An eyelid cracked open, caked with dried dust. He growled, but did not move. The air wheezed in his throat.
"We have to get him loose." Kitty said. "It's not right to let him die lie this."
"No, dear, it is not." Max said and leaned down to the starving dog. Before Kitty could stop him, he latched his jaws on MINE's neck and twisted hard, breaking the dog's neck instantly.
"By the All Mother!" Kitty yelled. "What did you do?!"
"You were right, He couldn't continue to live like that. It was horrible of the humans to leave him suffering like that. And it would have been worse had we just wandered past and left him to his misery. So I ended his suffering in the most humane way possible."
"But couldn't we have freed him instead?" Kitty asked.
"And what?" Max asked. "Brought him food when my own pack is starving? He was chained to the tree, there's no way a dog -or a pack of dogs, for that matter, could ever chew though a chain. You’d be better off chewing through the tree instead."
Kitty looked at the dead dog. She knew that MINE was a rotten guard dog and prone to malicious behavior. But she had not wanted him to die like this.
Max leaned down and took MINE's hide in his teeth. At first Kitty was certain she was going to pull the dead dog to the side of the yard and bury him, but when she heard the flesh tear instead, her heart fell to her paws.
The alpha tore open MINE's skin to get at his flesh. As she watched in horror, Max took out the shriveled organs and pulled them to the side, bolting them down before another of his pack could challenge him. Other dogs rushed forward, knocking Kitty out of the way. Her stomach lurched. If she had had anything to eat, she would have lost it then and there.
"If you can't stand to watch," Max said over a mouthful of dead guard dog. "Then turn away."
And Kitty did just that, though she could not block out the horrible noises of dogs fighting over wet bits of flesh or the smell of blood and dog crap as MINE's intestines were emptied of their contents by two dogs playing tug of war.
When the feast was over, and there was little left of MINE but a few blood streaked bones, the pack settled down for the night. Kitty licked a few drops of water from the leaking water hose and tried not to step in any of the gore, not wanting to have to lick MINE's blood off of her paws.
One of the smaller dogs wandered over to her, limping as he came.
"Sorry we didn't save any for you, but it's been a while since we fed properly. Thank you for leading us to him," he said and touched noses with her.
"Um... You're welcome?" She said, not feeling so much like a gracious host as an executioner.
The little dog wandered off and her thoughts turned to Grimy, now lost forever to her. Did he make it out of the pound alive? she asked herself. Or has the same thing happened to him? She hated to think of one of the larger dogs turning on him and making a meal out of the rat terrier, but she knew that if these dogs had resorted to cannibalism, it was only a matter of time before the little dog found himself some bigger dog's lunch.
Or the humans, she thought. Don't forget the humans and their insatiable appetite. Though I'm still not sure if the cat was right about them eating their own dead.
The rest of the dogs settled in around her, some congratulating her on finding "the kill", others welcoming her into the pack.
"Pity there wasn't anything left for you." Max said, licking the last of MINE's blood from his muzzle.
"That's okay." she said. "It was my gift for joining the pack. Perhaps if MINE could not go on living, he would have wanted his flesh to go to those who could." She stifled the urge to whine, it would not do well to appear weak in front of a pack of dogs who had just devoured what had once been her enemy.
"That's the pack mentality I was looking for." Max said and settled down next to her. His breathing became slow and even and she knew that he was asleep.
She looked around her and noted that the rest of the pack had fallen asleep as well.
Can I run away while they are sleeping? she asked herself. "What have I done? Just getting mixed up with these cannibal hounds… I'm no better off than I was being attacked by the pound dogs. It's only a matter of time before they start turning on their own -if they haven‘t already. And I'm the lowest member of the group. They'll kill me first for sure.
But as she tried to edge away from Max, he opened an eye. She settled back down and he moved a little closer to her. Though he was not an overly large dog, he still had more muscle than Kitty and she did not doubt for one minute that he could chase her down and snap her neck like he had MINE -or worse, wound her and leave her alive as his pack ate her as she watched.
That night her mind relived the flight from the pound, the death of MINE and added her paranoia about what would become of her and Grimy. It seemed that no matter how hard or fast she ran, trouble ways caught up with her. Her last image was of a small rat terrier being ripped to shreds in Max's jaws a she drowned in a sea of blood.
She snapped awake as Max licked her muzzle. "We have to keep going, keep looking for food," he said. Already his pack was at attention, though some sniffed the bones from last night's feast looking for any leftover scraps that might have been overlooked. It made her empty stomach turn and she was glad, for the second time in her life, that there was nothing in it.
"Sure thing, Max." she got to her feet, trying hard not to look at the scattered and cracked bones of MINE as she headed out of the human's front yard. She stood at the gate, trying to get her bearings as Max walked up to her, stopping when they were shoulder to shoulder. There’s no going back now, she told herself. He could run me down and kill me before I could even run to the end of the block.
"Where to now, dear lady?" Max asked.
Kitty's muzzle twitched and she tried to tell herself that his lick to her muzzle earlier was just him trying to wake her and not done to see what she taste like. "We'll go to one of my old haunts today," she said, trying not to show any fear.
"Lead the way." Max said, watching her with intense eyes.
She lead the pack to the dumpster behind the restaurants where she had often found something for the night, but was surprised when the humans were gone.
One of the windows of the restaurant was boarded up, shards of broken glass littered the pavement and she had to step around it to avoid getting the sharp bits lodged in her paws and to get closer to the door.
"They are all gone." she said, after she had surveyed what she could through the remaining intact window. There was not a whiff of cooking food, human cleaning chemicals or rotting food. What was that the cat had said? The humans had gotten sick, most died and the rest must have moved on.
What am I going to do now? She asked herself as she turned and faced the hungry pack.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Kitty 9
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 9
By Plot Roach
"But Mitch, I thought you said that they only come to collect the bodies once a week?" asked Grimy.
"They do -until now," Mitch said. "I overheard my master talking to the others who work here. And something bad is going on with the humans."
"Something bad is always going on with the humans," the Husky complained. "I've been in and out of human homes all my life and all I can make out of human existence is that they like to fight and makes the lives of those they touch miserable. And if they bother to touch you to pet you, inevitably it will end with punch to the muzzle."
"My first master wasn't so bad," Grimy whined. "She was old, but nice."
"And what happened when she died?" the Husky asked. "They either threw you out or kept you locked up in a yard, didn't they?"
Grimy looked to the floor, ashamed of his past. As if the old woman's death had somehow been his fault. And as if he deserved the treatment the humans had given him thereafter.
"The only reason that the old lady didn't hit you herself was because she was too old to," the Husky said.
"That's enough of that!" Mitch barked. "Not every human in the world beats dogs. My master-"
"'Your master,'" the Husky mocked. "Your master will betray you, mark my words. There isn't a human alive that would put his needs and his life behind those of his dog. A loyal, loving human? I've searched for it all my life, and never found it." The Husky snapped. "No matter how much they act like they love you, you'll end up starving to death in the wild. Or worse, you’ll end up in the chamber," he said, his tirade ending in a whine.
"I'm sorry for your past," Mitch said. "I wish that there had been more love in your life."
"Why?" the Husky asked. "Would it make the final sleep I'll find in the chamber any easier to bear?"
Mitch looked away, unable to answer the dog's question.
"Yeah, you just go on feeling sorry for me," The Husky said. "Because by this time tomorrow you'll be curled up next to the feet of your master while Death comes for my soul."
The rest of the dogs in the cell next to his whined, for the Husky had spoken the Dark One's name aloud, and everyone knew that it summoned him to the pound and that he would not leave without a companion. They looked to one another and wondered which of them would leave and which would stay.
The air grew thick with tension as the dogs grew silent.
"What of an animal to help us open the cages?" Kitty asked Mitch, breaking both the silence and the dismal mood which had come over them. "Have you found any animal with paws dexterous enough to open the locks?"
"I'm afraid not," Mitch said. "I looked in the wild animal compound and it is empty save for a rabid skunk that needs to be put down."
Kitty whined, it had been her last hope to get them all out alive.
"I know, girl. I'm sorry," Mitch said.
"What about the circus animals?" she asked.
"Not an animal here that is able to do what you would ask of it." Mitch said. "The human only brought the animals here that needed medical attention. The healthy ones were taken to the local zoo."
"What's a zoo?" Grimy asked.
"It is where the humans go to look at wild animals," Mitch explained.
"Can't they go out into the wild to do that?" Grimy asked.
"They humans don't feel safe in the wild, that's why they keep the animals in cages a safe distance away so that the animals can't fight back," Mitch explained.
"It doesn't seem fair," Grim said. "They go to all the trouble of trapping all these animals and no one eats them."
"Who says?" asked the Husky. "Does anyone know what happens to the bodies of the dead dogs that they take away from here?"
All the dogs were silent, contemplating his question. Would the humans really keep them trapped up in cages and kill us off, just to eat us? Kitty asked herself. It makes sense, in a way. They could keep the meat fresher for a longer period of time, unlike the food that I find at the dumpster. Maybe they just kill us off as they get hungry. It made her shiver at the thought. What about MINE? she asked herself, thinking of the guard dog that she loved to torment. Are his people just keeping him around until they get hungry enough to send him here and have him killed?
"What will they do with the sick animals from the circus?" Kitty asked.
"Fix the ones that they can, kill the ones they can't," he said, licking a paw.
"Must be a lot of meat on that elephant thing you said that they have out there," Grimy said, licking his chops.
"They have decided to move it to the zoo," Mitch said. "But the zebra is still out there."
"And that was what again?" Asked the Husky.
"That thing that looked like a sunburned horse," the Dalmatian said.
"So there is no other animal that we can turn to for help?" Kitty asked.
"I'm afraid not," Mitch said, looking at his feet because he could not meet her eyes. "I'm sorry," he said softly and then walked away.
Then the man walked from cage to cage, depositing a half ration of dried kibble in each cell. The bigger dogs pushed the smaller ones to the side again and devoured all that was to be had. Kitty bolted down her food, though she felt bad that she could not share any with Grimy in the cage across from hers. But it does no good not to eat it, she thought.
Then the man left the room, shutting off the light and locking up the door as he did every night.
"But it's midday," Grimy said, as if reading her thoughts.
The dogs were left in the half darkness of the pound, their only means of light coming from the small windows placed at the top of tall cinderblock walls.
Kitty's belly felt filled with rocks, not kibble as she thought of what was to await them in the morning.
But I told him it was going to be alright, Kitty thought to herself, remembering the conversation between herself and Grimy when they had first been caught in the cages. Somehow it HAS to be alright. Somehow I'll find a way out of this for all of us. Why did the gods come to me and give me gifts if it was all in vain? she asked herself. Unless it was just the dreams of a desperate dog.
She relieved herself in a corner of the cage, noting that the man had not even stopped to clean up after the dogs before he left.
Kitty slept uneasily, as had the other dogs. It was one thing to sleep when you knew that you were imprisoned and that one day would be much like the one that preceded it. But the dogs knew that their hours were numbered and none of them could settle down for the night, knowing that each hour that passed was one less to live.
But the following morning brought light, but no humans. By midday the dogs realized that something had gone wrong. "What did Mitch say was wrong with the humans?" Grimy asked.
"He didn't," Kitty said.
The dogs murmured amongst themselves of what could have been happening in the human world, for them to be left, literally, in the dark.
"Even if the humans couldn't come, Mitch would -wouldn't he?" asked the Chihuahua.
"You fool," said the Dalmatian. "He's with his human, that who he goes home with at the end of the night. it's not like he lives here with us. If something went wrong with the humans that run this place, then he's in the thick of it with them. All we can do is wait and see."
But the solitary hours stretched into another evening and another dawn found them, starved and scared. the bigger dogs started snapping at the smaller ones in their cages and soon fights broke out among them.
"Stop it!" the old hound called out. "It is no use fighting amongst ourselves. It is the trap of the trickster dogs! If you give into temptation you are lost!"
The dogs settled down for a while, some pacing their cages to alleviate their anxiety while other groomed themselves constantly, like cats.
By the fourth day most of the dogs lay listlessly on the hard concrete floors of their cages. No one spoke, for by that time everything that needed to be said had been yipped, snarled or whimpered. They reminisced about the good and bad times in their lives. Exchanged hopes and dreams about what the forest of the Afterlife would hold for them and wondered if the Dark One would come to claim them all at once, or one at a time.
A noise broke the stillness in the air as the light hummed into live overhead. Then, despite all odds, the humans walked in.
"Let's just get this done and get out of here." One mal said to the other. He was a tall, thin man with thinning hair. He walked with a purpose, as if he had someplace that he needed to be other than here, among the dogs of the pound. "It's not like they're paying us overtime to do this, you know."
"Then why are we doing it at all?" the smaller man said. He was a head shorted than his companion and had more meat to him. He looked to Kitty as though he had never skipped a meal in his life. And she wondered absently how many dogs he had eaten to get so fat.
"We can't leave them to die in the cages, that's why." the other said. "They'll be using the building as a shelter for the sick and I doubt that they'll want dead dogs in it."
"Where's Mitch?" Grimy asked.
"Shush," Kitty said. "I'm trying to hear what they are saying."
"Like a dog can understand what a human is saying," said the Dalmatian.
"Mitch could," Grimy argued.
"Shut up and let me hear what is going on!" Kitty snapped. The dogs fell silent and the two men looked at her through the chin link of her cell door.
"That one's not a dog," the fat one said. "I bet if we set it free it could go live in the wild."
"Why?" the thin on asked. "Why should we set it free? So that it could eat the dead bodies set out on the streets? So that it can spread the disease?" There was a sound to the thin man's voice. A sound that a small dog makes just before it picks a fight with a larger one. The thin man was being pushed too far, but by whom Kitty did not know.
"It's just that... I'd hate to see them die, is all. Not when they can go live in the wild or something," the fat man said.
Yes, Kitty thought. Free us, let us take our chances elsewhere.
"They'll die out in the cold, you know that. How many dead strays have we had to pick up in an alleyway or in the park?" The thin man asked.
"I know," said the fat man. "I just thought..."
"No," said the thin man. "You weren't thinking. Now leave it to me how to handle this, alright?"
The fat man nodded and looked around him at the dogs. They had all gotten to their feet and looked up at him, whining and tails wagging in anticipation of food and water.
"Can we feed them first?" the fat man asked. "They look awful hungry."
"They should he hungry," the thin man said. "They've been here most of a week without food. But we can't feed them now, they'll just be sick when they're in the chamber."
"Are we really going to kill them?" the fat man asked, sounding like a small child.
"What did you think we were doing here?" the thin man asked. "Now stay here, I have an idea of how to get them all into the chamber at once."
"But can the chamber hold them all?"
"Oh, they'll fit in there, especially if it's the only way to get food. I'll go get what's left of the kibble and load it into the wheelbarrow. We'll dump it at the far end of the chamber, release the dogs and then close the door behind them and turn on the gas. They'll be dead in no time and all we'll have to do it unload the corpses in the driveway and hose out the chamber. We'll be out of here by lunchtime," The man said, walking away.
The fat man chewed a knuckle, weighing what his companion had told him against the faces of the dogs which looked up to him in anticipation of mercy.
"When they open the doors, don't go after the food," Kitty said. "It's a trap."
"A trap?" the Rottweiler said. "If it's food, I'm going after it. Why should we listen to you? All you did was raise our hopes with false promises of being able to free us. I say we trust the humans, they've come back, after all. Maybe they'll treat us nice and give us food."
"And maybe rabbits will spring from my farts," said the old hound, laying at the edge of his cage. Kitty was surprised he was alive at all, since she had not seen him move for the last day and a half.
"I say do what the coydog says, she knows what the humans are saying better than anyone of us does."
The fat man took a ring of keys off of the wall next to the door and unlocked the back door. He then walked up the line of cages and unlatched each door, shooing the dogs out with quick hand movements and kissing noises, as one would a puppy.
"Where's the food?" One of the dogs asked. "I'm not moving without food."
"Get out now!" Kitty barked. But the noise was too loud and brought the thin man back to their cellblock.
"What the hell are you doing?" he shouted at the fat man. "We're supposed to gas them!"
"Can't we set some free?" he asked. “Not all of them are old and sick, some might make it out on their own."
"What is wrong with you? We have a job to do and I'm not going to lose it because you feel kind hearted all of a sudden," The thin man yelled as he snatched at the dogs running past him out into the open. He missed several times and grabbed the gun from the wall next to him, he pulled the trigger, aiming at the mutts who had run past him and into the side parking lot. But this time it was not tranquilizer darts, as had been used on Kitty when she tried to run from her cage, but bullets.
"RUN! THEY"RE TRYING TO KILL US!" Kitty barked. A few of the dogs froze in place and were mown down within seconds, when the man stopped to reload the gun, Kitty tried to run past him. But the thin man saw her coming and brought the rifle down like a club.
Kitty shied away at the swing, expecting the blow that would end her life, but it never came. Instead the old hound had shoved her out of the way, receiving the fatal blow himself.
"Run, child," he said with the last of his breath. "I was left here for a purpose, now I know what it was." His eyes closed and his body lay limp against the thin man's feet, trapping him in place as the fat man tried to wrestle the rife out of his grip.
Dogs streamed out of the building and into the side parking lot where some could jump the fence and others were small enough to climb under it.
She looked for Grimy in the fray and bumped into the Rottweiler.
"You," he said. "Somehow this is all because of you." he lunge at her, missing as she jumped away.
"It's all her fault," the Dalmatian snarled, the blood of the wounded and dying staining his feet.
Before she knew it, a group of dogs surrounded her, each calling for her blood. And as she managed to sidestep one assault, another dog would lunge in and snap at her, often coming away with a tuft of fur -or worse- her flesh.
The men were yelling at one another, still struggling over the rifle when it went off and the Rotweiler in front of her went down hard. Kitty took the opportunity to jump over the wounded dog while the others looked at his body in shock. And then the unthinkable happened, some of the dogs had stopped to began eating the corpses of the fallen.
There was no time to stop to look for Grimy as another shot rang out.
All of the dogs scattered once they left the gate. The humans would spend many days looking for them all, though Kitty doubted that they would try very hard. She made a mental note to remind herself that any food she sought from now on might be bait for a trap to get her back. And her heart dropped even as her feet flew across the black pavement. Where would she go now that she was free?
She walked for hours, stopping only when water from a street gutter was too much for her to ignore with her thirst. Occasionally she saw another one of the dogs, but they ignored one another in order to get as far from the pound as possible. The memory of the dogs turning their hunger upon the dead was too much for her. It was like the story of the trickster gods, and it sent a shiver down Kitty's spine. Before she knew it, she found herself at her old home, the alley of the apartment complex. She walked past a cage holding the bloated corpse of a raccoon and hoped that it had not been the one she had helped to free before her imprisonment. The bait had long since been eaten, for what little good it had done for the dead raccoon. So Kitty scanned the ground where the old woman normally left her offerings of Kibble and canned meat.
But there was nothing, not even a whiff of food to be gleaned from the weed infested lot. She heard a mew from the end of the apartment complex.
My old home, she thought and headed for her burrow. What she found in the doorway to her home did not surprise her. It seemed that the humans continued to set a trap here, even after they had caught her.
Only now it was a cat trapped in her place.
"How long have you been here" Kitty asked the bundle of fur in the cage.
"A day and a half, I think." said the cat, her orange fur spiked all over her body making her look like an angry sun. "Are you here to eat me?" she asked.
"No," Kitty sighed. "I think that there has been enough killing in my life today." She stood up on her back feet in order to get a better look at the latch on the cage. And using her muzzle was able to trip the spring and let the cage door fall into the dirt. The cat zipped out, quick as lightning, and climbed a nearby tree.
"Well so much for a ‘thank you.’" Kitty mumbled and dropped back down to all four paws once again.
"Sorry," the cat said. "I wasn't sure that you weren't going to eat me." She climbed down from the tree and landed next to Kitty, close enough to talk, yet far enough away that the dog could not easily attack her. "The dogs have been eating anyone not fast enough to get away."
"Where are the dogs now?" Kitty asked. "In fact, where is everyone?"
"Most of the dogs were either trapped and taken away or moved off when there wasn't anymore food, like the dead bodies" the cat explained.
"What dead bodies?"
"Where have you been to miss the dead bodies?" the cat asked.
"I was in the pound for the last week or so," Kitty said.
"Oh," the cat said. "How did you get out?"
"One of the humans let us out while the other one tried to kills us. Now what happened here?"
"The humans got sick and died pretty fast," the cat said, licking a paw to wash her ear. "When there wasn't enough cars to take the bodies away, the humans started stacking them in the streets. Then the dogs and other animals started eating on them and the humans began trapping them or poisoning them.
"Poisoning them how?"
"By treating the meat and leaving it on the ground next to the bodies."
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
Kitty Part 9
By Plot Roach
"But Mitch, I thought you said that they only come to collect the bodies once a week?" asked Grimy.
"They do -until now," Mitch said. "I overheard my master talking to the others who work here. And something bad is going on with the humans."
"Something bad is always going on with the humans," the Husky complained. "I've been in and out of human homes all my life and all I can make out of human existence is that they like to fight and makes the lives of those they touch miserable. And if they bother to touch you to pet you, inevitably it will end with punch to the muzzle."
"My first master wasn't so bad," Grimy whined. "She was old, but nice."
"And what happened when she died?" the Husky asked. "They either threw you out or kept you locked up in a yard, didn't they?"
Grimy looked to the floor, ashamed of his past. As if the old woman's death had somehow been his fault. And as if he deserved the treatment the humans had given him thereafter.
"The only reason that the old lady didn't hit you herself was because she was too old to," the Husky said.
"That's enough of that!" Mitch barked. "Not every human in the world beats dogs. My master-"
"'Your master,'" the Husky mocked. "Your master will betray you, mark my words. There isn't a human alive that would put his needs and his life behind those of his dog. A loyal, loving human? I've searched for it all my life, and never found it." The Husky snapped. "No matter how much they act like they love you, you'll end up starving to death in the wild. Or worse, you’ll end up in the chamber," he said, his tirade ending in a whine.
"I'm sorry for your past," Mitch said. "I wish that there had been more love in your life."
"Why?" the Husky asked. "Would it make the final sleep I'll find in the chamber any easier to bear?"
Mitch looked away, unable to answer the dog's question.
"Yeah, you just go on feeling sorry for me," The Husky said. "Because by this time tomorrow you'll be curled up next to the feet of your master while Death comes for my soul."
The rest of the dogs in the cell next to his whined, for the Husky had spoken the Dark One's name aloud, and everyone knew that it summoned him to the pound and that he would not leave without a companion. They looked to one another and wondered which of them would leave and which would stay.
The air grew thick with tension as the dogs grew silent.
"What of an animal to help us open the cages?" Kitty asked Mitch, breaking both the silence and the dismal mood which had come over them. "Have you found any animal with paws dexterous enough to open the locks?"
"I'm afraid not," Mitch said. "I looked in the wild animal compound and it is empty save for a rabid skunk that needs to be put down."
Kitty whined, it had been her last hope to get them all out alive.
"I know, girl. I'm sorry," Mitch said.
"What about the circus animals?" she asked.
"Not an animal here that is able to do what you would ask of it." Mitch said. "The human only brought the animals here that needed medical attention. The healthy ones were taken to the local zoo."
"What's a zoo?" Grimy asked.
"It is where the humans go to look at wild animals," Mitch explained.
"Can't they go out into the wild to do that?" Grimy asked.
"They humans don't feel safe in the wild, that's why they keep the animals in cages a safe distance away so that the animals can't fight back," Mitch explained.
"It doesn't seem fair," Grim said. "They go to all the trouble of trapping all these animals and no one eats them."
"Who says?" asked the Husky. "Does anyone know what happens to the bodies of the dead dogs that they take away from here?"
All the dogs were silent, contemplating his question. Would the humans really keep them trapped up in cages and kill us off, just to eat us? Kitty asked herself. It makes sense, in a way. They could keep the meat fresher for a longer period of time, unlike the food that I find at the dumpster. Maybe they just kill us off as they get hungry. It made her shiver at the thought. What about MINE? she asked herself, thinking of the guard dog that she loved to torment. Are his people just keeping him around until they get hungry enough to send him here and have him killed?
"What will they do with the sick animals from the circus?" Kitty asked.
"Fix the ones that they can, kill the ones they can't," he said, licking a paw.
"Must be a lot of meat on that elephant thing you said that they have out there," Grimy said, licking his chops.
"They have decided to move it to the zoo," Mitch said. "But the zebra is still out there."
"And that was what again?" Asked the Husky.
"That thing that looked like a sunburned horse," the Dalmatian said.
"So there is no other animal that we can turn to for help?" Kitty asked.
"I'm afraid not," Mitch said, looking at his feet because he could not meet her eyes. "I'm sorry," he said softly and then walked away.
Then the man walked from cage to cage, depositing a half ration of dried kibble in each cell. The bigger dogs pushed the smaller ones to the side again and devoured all that was to be had. Kitty bolted down her food, though she felt bad that she could not share any with Grimy in the cage across from hers. But it does no good not to eat it, she thought.
Then the man left the room, shutting off the light and locking up the door as he did every night.
"But it's midday," Grimy said, as if reading her thoughts.
The dogs were left in the half darkness of the pound, their only means of light coming from the small windows placed at the top of tall cinderblock walls.
Kitty's belly felt filled with rocks, not kibble as she thought of what was to await them in the morning.
But I told him it was going to be alright, Kitty thought to herself, remembering the conversation between herself and Grimy when they had first been caught in the cages. Somehow it HAS to be alright. Somehow I'll find a way out of this for all of us. Why did the gods come to me and give me gifts if it was all in vain? she asked herself. Unless it was just the dreams of a desperate dog.
She relieved herself in a corner of the cage, noting that the man had not even stopped to clean up after the dogs before he left.
Kitty slept uneasily, as had the other dogs. It was one thing to sleep when you knew that you were imprisoned and that one day would be much like the one that preceded it. But the dogs knew that their hours were numbered and none of them could settle down for the night, knowing that each hour that passed was one less to live.
But the following morning brought light, but no humans. By midday the dogs realized that something had gone wrong. "What did Mitch say was wrong with the humans?" Grimy asked.
"He didn't," Kitty said.
The dogs murmured amongst themselves of what could have been happening in the human world, for them to be left, literally, in the dark.
"Even if the humans couldn't come, Mitch would -wouldn't he?" asked the Chihuahua.
"You fool," said the Dalmatian. "He's with his human, that who he goes home with at the end of the night. it's not like he lives here with us. If something went wrong with the humans that run this place, then he's in the thick of it with them. All we can do is wait and see."
But the solitary hours stretched into another evening and another dawn found them, starved and scared. the bigger dogs started snapping at the smaller ones in their cages and soon fights broke out among them.
"Stop it!" the old hound called out. "It is no use fighting amongst ourselves. It is the trap of the trickster dogs! If you give into temptation you are lost!"
The dogs settled down for a while, some pacing their cages to alleviate their anxiety while other groomed themselves constantly, like cats.
By the fourth day most of the dogs lay listlessly on the hard concrete floors of their cages. No one spoke, for by that time everything that needed to be said had been yipped, snarled or whimpered. They reminisced about the good and bad times in their lives. Exchanged hopes and dreams about what the forest of the Afterlife would hold for them and wondered if the Dark One would come to claim them all at once, or one at a time.
A noise broke the stillness in the air as the light hummed into live overhead. Then, despite all odds, the humans walked in.
"Let's just get this done and get out of here." One mal said to the other. He was a tall, thin man with thinning hair. He walked with a purpose, as if he had someplace that he needed to be other than here, among the dogs of the pound. "It's not like they're paying us overtime to do this, you know."
"Then why are we doing it at all?" the smaller man said. He was a head shorted than his companion and had more meat to him. He looked to Kitty as though he had never skipped a meal in his life. And she wondered absently how many dogs he had eaten to get so fat.
"We can't leave them to die in the cages, that's why." the other said. "They'll be using the building as a shelter for the sick and I doubt that they'll want dead dogs in it."
"Where's Mitch?" Grimy asked.
"Shush," Kitty said. "I'm trying to hear what they are saying."
"Like a dog can understand what a human is saying," said the Dalmatian.
"Mitch could," Grimy argued.
"Shut up and let me hear what is going on!" Kitty snapped. The dogs fell silent and the two men looked at her through the chin link of her cell door.
"That one's not a dog," the fat one said. "I bet if we set it free it could go live in the wild."
"Why?" the thin on asked. "Why should we set it free? So that it could eat the dead bodies set out on the streets? So that it can spread the disease?" There was a sound to the thin man's voice. A sound that a small dog makes just before it picks a fight with a larger one. The thin man was being pushed too far, but by whom Kitty did not know.
"It's just that... I'd hate to see them die, is all. Not when they can go live in the wild or something," the fat man said.
Yes, Kitty thought. Free us, let us take our chances elsewhere.
"They'll die out in the cold, you know that. How many dead strays have we had to pick up in an alleyway or in the park?" The thin man asked.
"I know," said the fat man. "I just thought..."
"No," said the thin man. "You weren't thinking. Now leave it to me how to handle this, alright?"
The fat man nodded and looked around him at the dogs. They had all gotten to their feet and looked up at him, whining and tails wagging in anticipation of food and water.
"Can we feed them first?" the fat man asked. "They look awful hungry."
"They should he hungry," the thin man said. "They've been here most of a week without food. But we can't feed them now, they'll just be sick when they're in the chamber."
"Are we really going to kill them?" the fat man asked, sounding like a small child.
"What did you think we were doing here?" the thin man asked. "Now stay here, I have an idea of how to get them all into the chamber at once."
"But can the chamber hold them all?"
"Oh, they'll fit in there, especially if it's the only way to get food. I'll go get what's left of the kibble and load it into the wheelbarrow. We'll dump it at the far end of the chamber, release the dogs and then close the door behind them and turn on the gas. They'll be dead in no time and all we'll have to do it unload the corpses in the driveway and hose out the chamber. We'll be out of here by lunchtime," The man said, walking away.
The fat man chewed a knuckle, weighing what his companion had told him against the faces of the dogs which looked up to him in anticipation of mercy.
"When they open the doors, don't go after the food," Kitty said. "It's a trap."
"A trap?" the Rottweiler said. "If it's food, I'm going after it. Why should we listen to you? All you did was raise our hopes with false promises of being able to free us. I say we trust the humans, they've come back, after all. Maybe they'll treat us nice and give us food."
"And maybe rabbits will spring from my farts," said the old hound, laying at the edge of his cage. Kitty was surprised he was alive at all, since she had not seen him move for the last day and a half.
"I say do what the coydog says, she knows what the humans are saying better than anyone of us does."
The fat man took a ring of keys off of the wall next to the door and unlocked the back door. He then walked up the line of cages and unlatched each door, shooing the dogs out with quick hand movements and kissing noises, as one would a puppy.
"Where's the food?" One of the dogs asked. "I'm not moving without food."
"Get out now!" Kitty barked. But the noise was too loud and brought the thin man back to their cellblock.
"What the hell are you doing?" he shouted at the fat man. "We're supposed to gas them!"
"Can't we set some free?" he asked. “Not all of them are old and sick, some might make it out on their own."
"What is wrong with you? We have a job to do and I'm not going to lose it because you feel kind hearted all of a sudden," The thin man yelled as he snatched at the dogs running past him out into the open. He missed several times and grabbed the gun from the wall next to him, he pulled the trigger, aiming at the mutts who had run past him and into the side parking lot. But this time it was not tranquilizer darts, as had been used on Kitty when she tried to run from her cage, but bullets.
"RUN! THEY"RE TRYING TO KILL US!" Kitty barked. A few of the dogs froze in place and were mown down within seconds, when the man stopped to reload the gun, Kitty tried to run past him. But the thin man saw her coming and brought the rifle down like a club.
Kitty shied away at the swing, expecting the blow that would end her life, but it never came. Instead the old hound had shoved her out of the way, receiving the fatal blow himself.
"Run, child," he said with the last of his breath. "I was left here for a purpose, now I know what it was." His eyes closed and his body lay limp against the thin man's feet, trapping him in place as the fat man tried to wrestle the rife out of his grip.
Dogs streamed out of the building and into the side parking lot where some could jump the fence and others were small enough to climb under it.
She looked for Grimy in the fray and bumped into the Rottweiler.
"You," he said. "Somehow this is all because of you." he lunge at her, missing as she jumped away.
"It's all her fault," the Dalmatian snarled, the blood of the wounded and dying staining his feet.
Before she knew it, a group of dogs surrounded her, each calling for her blood. And as she managed to sidestep one assault, another dog would lunge in and snap at her, often coming away with a tuft of fur -or worse- her flesh.
The men were yelling at one another, still struggling over the rifle when it went off and the Rotweiler in front of her went down hard. Kitty took the opportunity to jump over the wounded dog while the others looked at his body in shock. And then the unthinkable happened, some of the dogs had stopped to began eating the corpses of the fallen.
There was no time to stop to look for Grimy as another shot rang out.
All of the dogs scattered once they left the gate. The humans would spend many days looking for them all, though Kitty doubted that they would try very hard. She made a mental note to remind herself that any food she sought from now on might be bait for a trap to get her back. And her heart dropped even as her feet flew across the black pavement. Where would she go now that she was free?
She walked for hours, stopping only when water from a street gutter was too much for her to ignore with her thirst. Occasionally she saw another one of the dogs, but they ignored one another in order to get as far from the pound as possible. The memory of the dogs turning their hunger upon the dead was too much for her. It was like the story of the trickster gods, and it sent a shiver down Kitty's spine. Before she knew it, she found herself at her old home, the alley of the apartment complex. She walked past a cage holding the bloated corpse of a raccoon and hoped that it had not been the one she had helped to free before her imprisonment. The bait had long since been eaten, for what little good it had done for the dead raccoon. So Kitty scanned the ground where the old woman normally left her offerings of Kibble and canned meat.
But there was nothing, not even a whiff of food to be gleaned from the weed infested lot. She heard a mew from the end of the apartment complex.
My old home, she thought and headed for her burrow. What she found in the doorway to her home did not surprise her. It seemed that the humans continued to set a trap here, even after they had caught her.
Only now it was a cat trapped in her place.
"How long have you been here" Kitty asked the bundle of fur in the cage.
"A day and a half, I think." said the cat, her orange fur spiked all over her body making her look like an angry sun. "Are you here to eat me?" she asked.
"No," Kitty sighed. "I think that there has been enough killing in my life today." She stood up on her back feet in order to get a better look at the latch on the cage. And using her muzzle was able to trip the spring and let the cage door fall into the dirt. The cat zipped out, quick as lightning, and climbed a nearby tree.
"Well so much for a ‘thank you.’" Kitty mumbled and dropped back down to all four paws once again.
"Sorry," the cat said. "I wasn't sure that you weren't going to eat me." She climbed down from the tree and landed next to Kitty, close enough to talk, yet far enough away that the dog could not easily attack her. "The dogs have been eating anyone not fast enough to get away."
"Where are the dogs now?" Kitty asked. "In fact, where is everyone?"
"Most of the dogs were either trapped and taken away or moved off when there wasn't anymore food, like the dead bodies" the cat explained.
"What dead bodies?"
"Where have you been to miss the dead bodies?" the cat asked.
"I was in the pound for the last week or so," Kitty said.
"Oh," the cat said. "How did you get out?"
"One of the humans let us out while the other one tried to kills us. Now what happened here?"
"The humans got sick and died pretty fast," the cat said, licking a paw to wash her ear. "When there wasn't enough cars to take the bodies away, the humans started stacking them in the streets. Then the dogs and other animals started eating on them and the humans began trapping them or poisoning them.
"Poisoning them how?"
"By treating the meat and leaving it on the ground next to the bodies."
Monday, November 7, 2011
Kitty 8
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 8
By Plot Roach
It was Hunt who found the path that lead from the Celestial Pack's home to the dwelling place of the humans. Chase lead the way with his brothers following close behind him. By dusk they had found themselves a little village, the human workers were returning to their homes from the fields, leaving their tools next to the doors of their homes as they entered. They watched as men, women and children feasted upon the wheat from the field, found comfort in one another’s arms and settled down to sleep for the night. Chase and Chew had jealousy in their heart for the humans, while Hunt’s heart held only wonder.
The dogs waited until the light extinguished from each hut before going to work. Chase ran through the fields, the mighty wind kicked up from his fast feet destroyed the crops that the humans had worked so hard to harvest the day before. Chew was busy destroying the scythes, hoes and other tools that the humans used to plant, tend and gather their crops. Hunt stood to the side, watching the huts for any signs of movement. But as he watched the huts, he had forgotten to keep an eye elsewhere in the human‘s land. A rabbit, sensing the movement above his hole in the ground, raised himself to the world above and found the brothers in their mischief.
Quickly he sounded an alarm, using his back foot to thump the ground. The humans woke and dashed out into the light of early dawn, and saw what the dogs had done. Chase ran from the scene, being the fastest among them he knew he could not be caught by the humans. Chew, thinking that it had been a plot all along by his brothers to get him into trouble, launched himself at the rabbit and caught it about the neck. He was certain that his brothers had somehow put the rabbit up to warning the humans, so he loosed his anger upon it, tearing it to pieces.
The humans, upon seeing the death of the rabbit who had given his life to warn them of the dogs' trickery, chased the dogs to the edge of their village. One of the humans, having taken up a broken blade of one of the scattered tools and hurled through the air at the two remaining dog brothers. Chew cowered, unable to move. Hunt tracked the blade's flight and called a warning to his brother, Chew. Upon finding that his brother would not move, Hunt threw himself in front of Chew as the blade plunged into his heart, killing him instantly.
Chew ran off after Chase, leaving his brother's body to grow cold in the dirt.
Once the humans found Hunt's body, they tore it to pieces as Chew had done with the rabbit. They returned to their village and collected the remains of the rabbit. One of the men, upon accidentally licking the blood from his fingers found that the rabbit tasted quite good. He shared it with the others and they took turns fashioning spears from the broken tools and began to hunt the smaller animals. These became the first weapons that humans learned to use on the animals in their world, and eventually, upon one another.
Once Chew had found his brother, Chase, the two of them huddled by the sleeping forms of the rest of the Celestial Pack, pretending to be asleep.
When the pack woke, they asked the two brothers where Hunt had gone. But Chase and Chew pretended to be ignorant about it. The alpha of the group, a large black wolf, came forward and smelled the blood upon Chew's hide, both the blood of the rabbit and the blood of his brother, Hunt.
"You have tasted blood and must now be cast out of our world." The black wolf said. "You have taken a life, though you did not need to for survival." And the wolf was right, for they ate the same grass as the rabbit and did not need flesh for sustenance.
"It is not blood but berry juice!" Chase cried, lightly licking at a spot of the dried blood to convince the alpha male.
The others of the pack tasted the blood on Chew's coat and found it appealing, licking Chew's hide until it gleamed. The black wolf, barked a command for them to stop, but they no longer listened to him as they were now too obsessed by the taste of blood to listen to reason.
"Enough!" he yelled at the pack. "Since you have all tasted blood, you will now all live and die by your urge for it. I cast you all out of this world, where your lives have been easy and peaceful. You will now be forced to hunt and kill for your food. You will now know hunger, pain and sorrow. You will fight amongst yourselves, for you now have no leader. And know this." The black wolf said, growing is size and ferocity. "I will not be one of you, but will hunt you all to the end of your days. When a sickly pup is born, I will take his last breath. When a great hunter falls to the tines of a deer, I will take his last drop of blood and when you feel the endless sleep of cold beckoning you, I will take your final heartbeat. I will be closer to you than your own skin, and I will never leave until I have taken what I want from you, for I am Death."
That day, which had begun in golden prosperity, saw the banishment of every dog, wolf, coyote, fox and canine creature that would come to roam the human world.
That cloudless day that had shined upon their pelts found them saddled with their first reminder of Death, for they now all had shadows which could not be cast off until they had shed their very skin.
The dogs who had been tricked into tasting the blood by the brothers Chew and Chase then chased them from the pack. Just as all packs of dogs, tame or wild, now turn upon the cowardly and the weak of their own kind.
The dogs were forced to flee to the human world where the humans caught them, eating some, casting out the wildest and saving the rest to use to hunt the smaller animals. Thus the partnership between the humans the dogs was formed.
Death walked the land and when he took the soul of any of the Celestial Pack, he also took its form. Thus he shifts constantly with the memories of his victims.
And of Hunt? When Death came upon the pieces of his body, he breathed life back into the golden haired dog.
"You did nothing." he said to the youngest brother.
"I only watched." Hunt said.
"But," Death said. "You stood by when your brothers destroyed the human's food, when the rabbit was killed and when yours brothers ran. You sacrificed yourself for one who ran away like a coward."
"He is my brother." Hunt said. “I would do it again if I had to."
"And you claim him still?" Death asked.
"One cannot change the litter he was born to" Hunt said. "As he cannot chose the world he is born to."
"How true" Death said and cocked his head to the side to study the young dog. "And reborn you shall be." he said, touching noses wit the golden haired dog. "Time and again you shall be born in the human world when all the other hounds have log since come to me. Your brothers will be trapped in their own skins and unable to die until they have found you and asked for your forgiveness."
"Then I give it freely, to let them pass from the human world and back into our own for I hold no grudge against them."
"Ah" said Death. "But with each new life, you will not remember them, nor what you have been through. Each body will be a clean slate. So first they must find you, then they must convince you of your past, and then finally they must ask your forgiveness."
"But-"
Death interrupted Hunt's argument by severing his soul from his body and casting it into the body of a pup just being born into the world of humans and dogs.
Then he began to hunt the Celestial Pack and their descendants.
There were times when Chase and Chew searched for their brother in earnest, trying to convince him of their past and to ask for his forgiveness. But he either never believed them or was killed before he could give it.
More often than not Chase and Chew vented their frustration on those who were unlucky enough to cross their path. Of those they feasted upon, Chase and Chew were able to steal their form, much like Death was able to take the form of his victims. Mother dogs use their story to scare their pups into minding them by saying that the two trickster brothers will come for them to eat them in the night, appearing as friends or loved ones to lure them away from the safety of their pack.
The two brothers traveled the world of the humans, always searching for the path that lead home. Sometimes the two brothers traveled together, but mostly they kept to themselves. They had made a pact that if they should find Hunt again, they would use him to find the path to their former home and bypass this nonsense of forgiveness. But Chase's temper always gets the best of him and he murders Hunt before the way can be shown. And as for Chew, his paranoia keeps him from trusting his reborn brother and he always takes the wrong path, leading to nowhere.
And as for Hunt, he is born countless times into the world of humans and dogs. Sometimes he is a wild thing, living by his instincts in the forest. Sometimes he is the loyal hound of a human. But always he is born with bold heart and a clever mind, walking the world of the wild and the tame, yet belonging to neither.
Kitty felt that she could see him clearly, a golden furred figure at the top of a hill. Sunlight streaming upon him, making him glow with an unmistakable magic as he surveyed the world around him. She felt like a small brown mouse compared to his sleek facade.
But then he turned to her and, looking into her eyes, she felt transformed into a creature of legend. She felt taller, more muscular and as if she was one of the Celestial Pack itself and not some mutt of the streets half starved and meek.
It was the howling that woke her up. She shot to her feet as she heard the mournful wails encircle her. It was followed by the yipping of the smaller dogs and the threatening barks of the larger ones.
"What's happening?" she asked the dog in the cell next to her own.
"Some dogs are headed for the end of the hall." he said between barks of obscenities aimed at the humans.
Then she saw them, being dragged on leashes by the humans workers. Twenty in all, with two dogs per worker.
"I've never seen so many go into the room at once." said the Dalmatian.
"I wonder what happens." Said the Chihuahua.
"They go into the room and the Dark One comes from a pipe in the floor to collect them." said Mitch.
"They keep the Dark One a prisoner here as well?" asked the Chihuahua.
"I don't see how that can be, since dogs still die out in the wild." said the German Shepherd.
"So they must have some way of summoning him." Grimy said with a shiver. "Imagine being that powerful to summon the Dark One to come get some poor dog's soul and then send him away again."
"Who says he leaves?" asked the Chihuahua.
"Well he has to." said Grimy. "I mean, who takes the souls of other dogs if he stays here all the time?"
"Maybe there's more than on Dark One." the Chihuahua said.
"Bite your tongue." said the Dalmatian.
But their chatting ceased as the doomed dogs were loaded into the chamber at the end of the hall. Kitty leaned forward in her cage and could see that the inside of the room was painted an industrial green color, there was nothing in it except a pipe that lead up from the center of the floor. There were no windows and only one door. How could the Dark One fit through such a small pipe? she asked herself.
Once the dogs were locked in, most of the humans left. One stayed behind and pushed a series of buttons by the door. It seemed to Kitty that time moved slowly, like frozen water thawing from a drainage pipe during winter.
Before their breakfast was served, two men came back to the chamber, one was rolling a wheelbarrow. The other man pressed another series of buttons, the door swung open and the dogs inside were on the floor. They looked peaceful, as if in a deep sleep. It would look comforting, Kitty thought. If you didn't know any better. The men began tossing the dead dogs into a pile in the wheelbarrow. Once it was full, one of the men wheeled it out of the room and through the door of the pound.
"What are they doing with the bodies?" Kitty asked.
"A truck comes to collect the dead, like it does this time every week." Mitch said.
"How many bodies go out?" Grimy asked.
"Ten, sometimes fifteen." Mitch said, scratching behind one ear with a back leg. "But never this many at once. Never, before today."
The last of the bodies were hauled off in the wheelbarrow and another human hosed out the inside of the chamber as some of the dogs' bowels had emptied after their death.
"I didn't see the Dark One, did you?" asked the Akita.
"They say that you don't actually see him until you die." The Husky said. "Or if you have a vision." he added, looking at Kitty.
As soon as the men were done unloading the bodies of the dead and cleaning out the chamber at the end of the hall, one came by their cages, switching the tags from the white neatly printed slips, which listed their dog type, possible age and sex, to blazing orange colored ones, which listed only a date. They swung on each cage door, tied by the thinnest of wires.
"What to the orange tags mean, Mitch?" Kitty asked, a low whine in her voice.
"It means that you are next in line for the chamber." He said, dropping his eyes to the ground as the world spread from one cage to the next. Tomorrow the Dark One would come for them.
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
Kitty Part 8
By Plot Roach
It was Hunt who found the path that lead from the Celestial Pack's home to the dwelling place of the humans. Chase lead the way with his brothers following close behind him. By dusk they had found themselves a little village, the human workers were returning to their homes from the fields, leaving their tools next to the doors of their homes as they entered. They watched as men, women and children feasted upon the wheat from the field, found comfort in one another’s arms and settled down to sleep for the night. Chase and Chew had jealousy in their heart for the humans, while Hunt’s heart held only wonder.
The dogs waited until the light extinguished from each hut before going to work. Chase ran through the fields, the mighty wind kicked up from his fast feet destroyed the crops that the humans had worked so hard to harvest the day before. Chew was busy destroying the scythes, hoes and other tools that the humans used to plant, tend and gather their crops. Hunt stood to the side, watching the huts for any signs of movement. But as he watched the huts, he had forgotten to keep an eye elsewhere in the human‘s land. A rabbit, sensing the movement above his hole in the ground, raised himself to the world above and found the brothers in their mischief.
Quickly he sounded an alarm, using his back foot to thump the ground. The humans woke and dashed out into the light of early dawn, and saw what the dogs had done. Chase ran from the scene, being the fastest among them he knew he could not be caught by the humans. Chew, thinking that it had been a plot all along by his brothers to get him into trouble, launched himself at the rabbit and caught it about the neck. He was certain that his brothers had somehow put the rabbit up to warning the humans, so he loosed his anger upon it, tearing it to pieces.
The humans, upon seeing the death of the rabbit who had given his life to warn them of the dogs' trickery, chased the dogs to the edge of their village. One of the humans, having taken up a broken blade of one of the scattered tools and hurled through the air at the two remaining dog brothers. Chew cowered, unable to move. Hunt tracked the blade's flight and called a warning to his brother, Chew. Upon finding that his brother would not move, Hunt threw himself in front of Chew as the blade plunged into his heart, killing him instantly.
Chew ran off after Chase, leaving his brother's body to grow cold in the dirt.
Once the humans found Hunt's body, they tore it to pieces as Chew had done with the rabbit. They returned to their village and collected the remains of the rabbit. One of the men, upon accidentally licking the blood from his fingers found that the rabbit tasted quite good. He shared it with the others and they took turns fashioning spears from the broken tools and began to hunt the smaller animals. These became the first weapons that humans learned to use on the animals in their world, and eventually, upon one another.
Once Chew had found his brother, Chase, the two of them huddled by the sleeping forms of the rest of the Celestial Pack, pretending to be asleep.
When the pack woke, they asked the two brothers where Hunt had gone. But Chase and Chew pretended to be ignorant about it. The alpha of the group, a large black wolf, came forward and smelled the blood upon Chew's hide, both the blood of the rabbit and the blood of his brother, Hunt.
"You have tasted blood and must now be cast out of our world." The black wolf said. "You have taken a life, though you did not need to for survival." And the wolf was right, for they ate the same grass as the rabbit and did not need flesh for sustenance.
"It is not blood but berry juice!" Chase cried, lightly licking at a spot of the dried blood to convince the alpha male.
The others of the pack tasted the blood on Chew's coat and found it appealing, licking Chew's hide until it gleamed. The black wolf, barked a command for them to stop, but they no longer listened to him as they were now too obsessed by the taste of blood to listen to reason.
"Enough!" he yelled at the pack. "Since you have all tasted blood, you will now all live and die by your urge for it. I cast you all out of this world, where your lives have been easy and peaceful. You will now be forced to hunt and kill for your food. You will now know hunger, pain and sorrow. You will fight amongst yourselves, for you now have no leader. And know this." The black wolf said, growing is size and ferocity. "I will not be one of you, but will hunt you all to the end of your days. When a sickly pup is born, I will take his last breath. When a great hunter falls to the tines of a deer, I will take his last drop of blood and when you feel the endless sleep of cold beckoning you, I will take your final heartbeat. I will be closer to you than your own skin, and I will never leave until I have taken what I want from you, for I am Death."
That day, which had begun in golden prosperity, saw the banishment of every dog, wolf, coyote, fox and canine creature that would come to roam the human world.
That cloudless day that had shined upon their pelts found them saddled with their first reminder of Death, for they now all had shadows which could not be cast off until they had shed their very skin.
The dogs who had been tricked into tasting the blood by the brothers Chew and Chase then chased them from the pack. Just as all packs of dogs, tame or wild, now turn upon the cowardly and the weak of their own kind.
The dogs were forced to flee to the human world where the humans caught them, eating some, casting out the wildest and saving the rest to use to hunt the smaller animals. Thus the partnership between the humans the dogs was formed.
Death walked the land and when he took the soul of any of the Celestial Pack, he also took its form. Thus he shifts constantly with the memories of his victims.
And of Hunt? When Death came upon the pieces of his body, he breathed life back into the golden haired dog.
"You did nothing." he said to the youngest brother.
"I only watched." Hunt said.
"But," Death said. "You stood by when your brothers destroyed the human's food, when the rabbit was killed and when yours brothers ran. You sacrificed yourself for one who ran away like a coward."
"He is my brother." Hunt said. “I would do it again if I had to."
"And you claim him still?" Death asked.
"One cannot change the litter he was born to" Hunt said. "As he cannot chose the world he is born to."
"How true" Death said and cocked his head to the side to study the young dog. "And reborn you shall be." he said, touching noses wit the golden haired dog. "Time and again you shall be born in the human world when all the other hounds have log since come to me. Your brothers will be trapped in their own skins and unable to die until they have found you and asked for your forgiveness."
"Then I give it freely, to let them pass from the human world and back into our own for I hold no grudge against them."
"Ah" said Death. "But with each new life, you will not remember them, nor what you have been through. Each body will be a clean slate. So first they must find you, then they must convince you of your past, and then finally they must ask your forgiveness."
"But-"
Death interrupted Hunt's argument by severing his soul from his body and casting it into the body of a pup just being born into the world of humans and dogs.
Then he began to hunt the Celestial Pack and their descendants.
There were times when Chase and Chew searched for their brother in earnest, trying to convince him of their past and to ask for his forgiveness. But he either never believed them or was killed before he could give it.
More often than not Chase and Chew vented their frustration on those who were unlucky enough to cross their path. Of those they feasted upon, Chase and Chew were able to steal their form, much like Death was able to take the form of his victims. Mother dogs use their story to scare their pups into minding them by saying that the two trickster brothers will come for them to eat them in the night, appearing as friends or loved ones to lure them away from the safety of their pack.
The two brothers traveled the world of the humans, always searching for the path that lead home. Sometimes the two brothers traveled together, but mostly they kept to themselves. They had made a pact that if they should find Hunt again, they would use him to find the path to their former home and bypass this nonsense of forgiveness. But Chase's temper always gets the best of him and he murders Hunt before the way can be shown. And as for Chew, his paranoia keeps him from trusting his reborn brother and he always takes the wrong path, leading to nowhere.
And as for Hunt, he is born countless times into the world of humans and dogs. Sometimes he is a wild thing, living by his instincts in the forest. Sometimes he is the loyal hound of a human. But always he is born with bold heart and a clever mind, walking the world of the wild and the tame, yet belonging to neither.
Kitty felt that she could see him clearly, a golden furred figure at the top of a hill. Sunlight streaming upon him, making him glow with an unmistakable magic as he surveyed the world around him. She felt like a small brown mouse compared to his sleek facade.
But then he turned to her and, looking into her eyes, she felt transformed into a creature of legend. She felt taller, more muscular and as if she was one of the Celestial Pack itself and not some mutt of the streets half starved and meek.
It was the howling that woke her up. She shot to her feet as she heard the mournful wails encircle her. It was followed by the yipping of the smaller dogs and the threatening barks of the larger ones.
"What's happening?" she asked the dog in the cell next to her own.
"Some dogs are headed for the end of the hall." he said between barks of obscenities aimed at the humans.
Then she saw them, being dragged on leashes by the humans workers. Twenty in all, with two dogs per worker.
"I've never seen so many go into the room at once." said the Dalmatian.
"I wonder what happens." Said the Chihuahua.
"They go into the room and the Dark One comes from a pipe in the floor to collect them." said Mitch.
"They keep the Dark One a prisoner here as well?" asked the Chihuahua.
"I don't see how that can be, since dogs still die out in the wild." said the German Shepherd.
"So they must have some way of summoning him." Grimy said with a shiver. "Imagine being that powerful to summon the Dark One to come get some poor dog's soul and then send him away again."
"Who says he leaves?" asked the Chihuahua.
"Well he has to." said Grimy. "I mean, who takes the souls of other dogs if he stays here all the time?"
"Maybe there's more than on Dark One." the Chihuahua said.
"Bite your tongue." said the Dalmatian.
But their chatting ceased as the doomed dogs were loaded into the chamber at the end of the hall. Kitty leaned forward in her cage and could see that the inside of the room was painted an industrial green color, there was nothing in it except a pipe that lead up from the center of the floor. There were no windows and only one door. How could the Dark One fit through such a small pipe? she asked herself.
Once the dogs were locked in, most of the humans left. One stayed behind and pushed a series of buttons by the door. It seemed to Kitty that time moved slowly, like frozen water thawing from a drainage pipe during winter.
Before their breakfast was served, two men came back to the chamber, one was rolling a wheelbarrow. The other man pressed another series of buttons, the door swung open and the dogs inside were on the floor. They looked peaceful, as if in a deep sleep. It would look comforting, Kitty thought. If you didn't know any better. The men began tossing the dead dogs into a pile in the wheelbarrow. Once it was full, one of the men wheeled it out of the room and through the door of the pound.
"What are they doing with the bodies?" Kitty asked.
"A truck comes to collect the dead, like it does this time every week." Mitch said.
"How many bodies go out?" Grimy asked.
"Ten, sometimes fifteen." Mitch said, scratching behind one ear with a back leg. "But never this many at once. Never, before today."
The last of the bodies were hauled off in the wheelbarrow and another human hosed out the inside of the chamber as some of the dogs' bowels had emptied after their death.
"I didn't see the Dark One, did you?" asked the Akita.
"They say that you don't actually see him until you die." The Husky said. "Or if you have a vision." he added, looking at Kitty.
As soon as the men were done unloading the bodies of the dead and cleaning out the chamber at the end of the hall, one came by their cages, switching the tags from the white neatly printed slips, which listed their dog type, possible age and sex, to blazing orange colored ones, which listed only a date. They swung on each cage door, tied by the thinnest of wires.
"What to the orange tags mean, Mitch?" Kitty asked, a low whine in her voice.
"It means that you are next in line for the chamber." He said, dropping his eyes to the ground as the world spread from one cage to the next. Tomorrow the Dark One would come for them.
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