Beautiful Day for a Walk

The air is filled with the scent of breezy laundry, freshly slaughtered grass, and propane-licked steak. My stomach rumbles, and I hear the happy shrieks of kids and the low roll of suburban traffic. I’d love to eat but I’m on a mission. I take another sniff – and there it is. The sweaty over-ripe fragrance of needless aggression.

The breeze keeps snatching at the faint scent, but it’s enough for me to follow. I run past the Mitchells, head out the cul-de-sac, and down Triton Avenue. I lose the trail where Triton hits Berry Road, thanks to cars with their pungent smokes and acrid oils – but there! Across the road, the flick of a mangy grey tail! For a second I lock eyes with that miserable stray, Missy, and then she darts into Ouroboros Place.

I surge after her. Cars honk, tires squeal, and plastic crumples against metal, but I don’t have time for any of that. When I hit Ouroboros I just see Missy disappear into the overgrown lawn of the old Rainer place, a crumbling house that’s stood abandoned for the better part of a year.

I flatten my ears and rocket after her. The paint-chipped door is open a crack and it nearly flies off its hinges when I torpedo it with my nose. And inside–

Ah crap. It’s a trap.

I skid to a halt on the scuffed linoleum and seven cats jump out of the shadows and surround me. Missy, Filthy, Scabs, One Eye, Loudmouth, Hey You, and Cougher; all the neighbourhood wretches gathered in one place. And there, lounging on the fireplace mantel, is Imperator himself.

“Well, well,” he says, his eyes half-lidded. His fluffy white tail flicks playfully, and he stinks to high hell of sour self-satisfaction. “What do we have here?”

“It’s a dog,” says Scabs.

Imperator scowls at him. “Yes, thank you. I can see that.”

“A dumb dog,” says Missy. “Name of Pugsly, right? Fell right for your plan.” She extends her claws and scritches the linoleum, and I feel a shiver run down my spine.

“As I knew he would,” Imperator says. The smugness is suffocating, a miasma of ego cascading down to us from the mantel. “Now, before we put an end to you, satisfy my curiosity. Why have you been stalking me?”

Wait, there’s something else beneath the pompous perfume. I sniff. A hint of fear? No, that can’t be right. It’s not me, but why would Imperator be afraid? I sniff again. Yes, definitely a tiny spike of panic and… bird!

I see now Imperator has a fledgling engulfed in his paw, casually petting it with the other.

“Unhand that bird!” I shout.

Imperator guffaws. “Never!”

“You’re a menace!”

“I am,” Imperator says, petting the trembling little bird so hard he nearly crushes it. “And it’s high time the world knew it. Is that why you’re here, Pugsly? To whine at me, about your petty moral dogma?”

“You can’t just run rampant, slaughtering all the little creatures in the neighbourhood! You’re a house cat, Imp!”

“Imperator, thank you, and yes, I can. I am a house cat no longer. I am now a world cat!” The other cats meow their approval. “I tire of your whining. Any last words, Pugs?”

The other cats all turn their vicious gazes on me, and I hear the blood curdling shwing of their claws extending.

Then there’s something else – a muffled slam? Boots? I can’t quite place the noises, and suddenly Imperator’s street crew all hiss and scatter.

“What the devil?” says Imperator. “Hey, come back here at once!”

Suddenly the door flies open again, and a man barrels through. He’s wearing mint-green coveralls with a logo of a bright, smiling sun, which says, ‘Happy Farm Animal Control.’ He’s got a net for some reason that makes me vaguely queasy, and he smells of existential disappointment with his life, and like he’s been sitting in the sun too long.

Suddenly he grabs me, and next thing I know I’m in the net!

I yelp, and Imperator unhelpfully roars with laughter.

“Serves you right!” he says. Small mercy, the bird took its opportunity to slip away.

But then a woman bursts out of a side door and scoops Imperator into another net. I might have found his indignation amusing on any other day, but I have no idea what’s going on and I’m terrified. In a flurry of motion, the humans whisk us out of the abandoned house and into the back of a van with the same sunny logo. They hang our nets from hooks, slam the doors, and start driving.

“Pugs!” Imperator whimpers. “What’s happening?”

It’s dark in the back and we don’t have any windows. “I don’t know,” I say. I try to writhe out of the net but my feet are all tangled. At least I can still wag my tail, though I don’t particularly feel like it.

I sniff out a couple other animals with us. A kind of earthy/fishy thing… a snake? Then a kind of warm, doughy aroma, with a piny edge. An armadillo, I think. And sort of a lily-scented hotdog, which must be a porcupine, and then the fragrance of spoiled fruit, motor oil, fresh plastic, and joy – that’s got to be a raccoon. In fact, “Spoons? Is that you?”

“Ey!” comes Spoons the raccoon’s voice from the darkness. “Is that you, Pugsly? They got you too?”

“I guess so,” I say.

“Who is that?” Imperator says. “Who are you talking to? What’s happening?” He meows piteously, and I hear him thrashing about in his net.

“We’re in a van!” says Spoons.

“Yes, I know that,” says Imperator. “But where are we going?”

“I dunno. Some kind of farm, I think.”

“I’ve always wanted to live on a farm,” says a tiny voice I trace to the porcupine.

“Well I don’t!” says Imperator. “I’m a house cat! Not some barn mouser.”

Are we really going to a farm? The idea of open fields sounds nice, but… I don’t want to leave my home behind. I don’t want to leave my humans behind. They’ll be lost without me!

“Fools,” says a low voice, slithering with venom. It can only be the snake. “There is no farm. This is just a ruse.”

“A ruse?” I say. “What do you mean?”

“Human treachery – what else. They call themselves Happy Farm, but it’s just a trick to fool stupid beasts into complacency.”

“Well then, what are they going to do?”

“What else, dog? They plan to eat us.”

The porcupine squeals, Imperator argues, Spoons chitters nervously, and the armadillo snores. And I’m not ashamed to say, I let out a high pitched whine.

“That’s preposterous!” Imperator says. “How do you know that? Humans don’t eat cats!”

The snake chuckles cruelly. “I know, because I’ve been caught before. And humans eat anything they can fit in their mouths. You say you’re a house cat. Surely you must have taken note of the canned meat they have.”

“That’s tuna!”

The snake doesn’t respond right away, instead drawing the silence out. “Is it? Have you ever seen a tuna?”

“Oh dear!” Imperator gasps, and then everyone gets going again.

Then one of the humans bangs on the metal wall separating us from the cab, and we hear a muffled shout. And the rest of our dreadful ride is in silence. I don’t know how long it lasts but I do know I whimper most of the way through, and the air fills with the bitter odor of fear.

Eventually the van comes to a stop. I hear the crunch of boots outside and the back door is opened. The sudden sunlight is blinding and someone pulls me out by the net. As my eyes adjust to the brightness, I see a long, squat building bearing that same Happy Farm logo, nestled on a weed-choked gravel parking lot. The building is run down, with a rusty drainage pipe and peeling paint, and whatever else it might be, it’s clear this is no farm.

And then a most delightful aroma reaches my nose. Sizzling grease, sumptuous beef patties, breaded chicken nuggets, and even wretched potatoes made palatable by deep frying, and I can’t stop the saliva from dripping. Then I see a pair of yellow arches on an adjoining building. The universal human symbol for food.

Oh no – the snake was right!

I gasp, Imperator shrieks, and all of us make noise. All except the sleeping armadillo.

The humans jostle our nets and take us into the gloom of the squat building, and as we enter, I smell the air is rank with fear and dread. So this is it then. This is the place where they turn good animals into burgers and cans of tuna.

They place the armadillo – still sleeping – on a scale, and a human in a white coat examines it and jots something down on a clipboard. No doubt calculating how much meat they’ll get from us. Oh, this is terrible!

“Psst!” says the snake. “Dog. I demand your attention.” In the dull light of this sad building, I can see the snake is actually much bigger than I expected. It’s coiled in on itself numerous times, and its tongue flicks in my direction. And I think, if I saw this thing back home, well, I’d probably cross the street in a hurry.

“I need you to cause a diversion,” it says.

“A diversion? What? Why?”

“Because I am getting out of here, and you will assist me.”

“But I don’t know how.” Or if I should, to be honest.

“It’s simple, dog. Make those annoying howling noises your kind are so fond of and thrash about. Bite. If you are able, foam at the mouth.”

“Foam at the mouth?”

“Yes. Do it. Now.”

“I don’t–”

“–Now! Obey!” It flicks its tongue mesmerizingly.

I bark. I howl. I start thrashing about. The human holding my net struggles and grunts, and the others look our way. When another human steps up, making calming coos and holding its hand out soothingly, I snap at the fingers. I’m tangled in the net, but I manage to kick my hind leg and I connect with something soft that makes the human holding me yelp, and then I’m on the ground.

The other humans scramble, one of them trying to tackle me and getting just as tangled in the net as I am. I can’t quite get away, but I notice they set the other animals down too, and the snake has already slithered out of its net. But then I lose sight of the snake as someone grabs me by the scruff of my collar, and now I see the man in white approaching with a – gulp – needle.

I whine and try to look for any way out, but someone’s holding my head firm. I can only move my eyes around and I see that Imperator’s managed to get out of his net too.

“Help me, Imp!” I just manage to grunt.

“Imperator!” he huffs. “And no.” He sticks his tongue out and then releases a stench of self-satisfaction.

“Please! They’re going to eat me!”

Imperator turns to go, looks at me again, and then vanishes from my sight. I whine again. Well, I suppose that’s what I get for pinning my hopes on a cat.

My claws clatter against the floor as I shiver uncontrollably. Three humans are now holding me, and the one in white crouches. He starts pawing at me with one latex hand, smoothing the fur away from my shoulder, while the other hand brings that needle ever closer. He coos and mumbles in the jolly-if-infantile language of humans, but his eyes are dead like a – well, like a cat’s.

He brings the needle closer. I feel the deathly cold of the metal touch my skin. This is it then; my destiny, a can of dog burger. I let out one final whimper.

But then I hear something. A metal crash, a bunch of barks and howls, the shrieking of birds. The humans hear it too. The man in white pulls the needle away and all of them look to an adjoining door – which suddenly bursts open as a mountain lion tears through it.

It’s quickly followed by no fewer than six stray dogs, a parrot, and – I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it myself – a chimp. The humans scramble to their feet, letting go of me. The man in white starts shouting things to the others and they begin chasing the loose animals, but they just keep coming. Cats pour out of the door, alongside rats, and even some bats. A human cowers when a wolf slinks by, and is then bowled over by a doe eager to stretch her legs.

Nobody even considers standing in the wolverine’s way.

And more and more beasts just keep coming. When a gator crawls out and snaps its maw, the humans flee. Thankfully, like all the others, it seems happy just to get out of this place and leaves me be.

I try to get out of my net but I’m tangled pretty badly. Then a cloud of misplaced self-superiority descends on me and I almost gag. I look up and see Imperator standing before me.

“There,” he says. With a flick of his wrist he switchblades my net. “Don’t say I never did anything for you.”

“You came back for me?”

Imperator rolls his eyes. “Don’t read too much into it, Pugs. I just figured it might get boring back home without you.”

We walk to the door of the Happy Farm building and look out over the unfamiliar gravel parking lot.

“Besides,” he says, “I don’t really know how to get home. Do you?”

I sniff at the air. Firs, a fishy creek, nearby fields with wildflowers – memories of country walks – “Yeah, I think I know where we are.”

“Good,” he says. He leaps onto my back. “In that case, yah dog! Home we go.”

“What are you doing? Get off.”

“I don’t want to get my feet dirty.”

“I thought you said you were a world cat now?”

“I meant worldly. That means I like rugs, which you remind me of.”

“Ouch. Fine, we’re even now.”

“Ha! Hardly.”

We’ve a long road ahead of us, but it’s a beautiful day for a walk.