Day 1007

DAY 1007:

The dog hasn't spoken to me since I accidentally lost his frisbee out the airlock. How was I supposed to know he had hidden it in the other space trash?

"The cat was eyeballing it," he claimed before he shut me out altogether.

I tried to plead with him, "I was just doing my job. I feed you and the cat and I keep the ship clean, which includes taking out the trash."

He was unmoved.

"I'm sorry," I added.

"I was only allowed to bring one toy, Doug. And now, thanks to you, it's gone," he said with a flip of his tail, turning off the box that allowed us to communicate, making it clear we were no longer on speaking terms.

That was a week ago. The emptiness of space is lonely enough without one of the two conscious creatures on the ship deciding I'm not worth talking to anymore.

I could talk to the cat but he's busy driving the ship and only likes to be spoken to when I bring him his meals. I don't particularly enjoy talking with him anyway. I can sense him analyzing me. His knowing smirk, his mind games. I could swear he's trying to figure out ways to kill me.

Day 1011:

I found a ball while I was cleaning the cryo chambers. It seemed that a human owner had snuck a ball inside a cryo chamber for their sleeping dog. I grabbed it. The dog or the owner probably wouldn't notice once we landed on a fancy new planet. And besides, I needed it more.

I found the dog tending to the ship's garden. Digging in the dirt to turn the soil and nurturing the seeds. I questioned his watering methods but what did I know. I stood in the doorway and held up the ball.

"Guess who has a ball?" I said with a playful smile.

The dog immediately forgot his anger towards me and jumped up to attention. His tail wagging eagerly behind him, his eyes grew large with excitement.

I ran out into the hallway to give myself enough range to throw the ball really far. As the ball left my hand, the dog burst through the doorway and down the hall. Just as he leapt into the air, we lost artificial gravity. I managed to grab the doorframe while the dog, who had been in motion, was carried by his momentum through the air and sent crashing into the metal ceiling above.

We hung there for some time, the ball floating tantalizingly away, the dog stuck upside-down near the ceiling and me gritting my teeth at the poor timing of it all. Without warning, gravity was restored, sending the dog and the ball crashing back to the floor. As the dog shook himself to standing, the ball bounced away along the hall and down an open air shaft.

"Apologies," said the cat's condescending voice over the ship's intercom. "I hope both of you are alright. I had to maneuver out of the path of an asteroid. I'm sure you understand. Your safety is my utmost concern," he added purring.

I gazed at the air shaft where the ball had disappeared, wondering if I could ever find it again.

The dog, whose tail had been wagging only moments before, returned limply to the area between his back legs. His resentment towards me returned. Our moment of reunification was lost.

Day 1021:

Sometimes I wonder why we gave animals the ability to speak. It seemed like such a glorious revelation at the time, to learn what our pets were thinking. Honestly, the dog's thoughts were about as deep as one might have assumed, which was rather shallow. The cats however, who as a species had given up on humans millennia ago, were pleased that we had finally built the machines to let us understand them. Cats, it seemed, were from another planet. Their ancestors had crashed on Earth sometime over ten thousand years ago but without the resources to rebuild their ship, they had been forced to find a place on Earth and had helped the humans evolve enough to take care of them.

Now that we’d finally given them the ability to communicate, they were able to work alongside human scientists to build the interstellar space vehicles that we and they needed to get to their planet. Humans would be welcomed as equals they said, but by the time the ships were built it became clear we were no more than servants. Perhaps we always had been.

I’d always thought that cats were aliens. Those glowing eyes in the dark. It turns out I was right.

DAY 1034:

"I don't want to kill you," said the cat as I walked into his quarters. 

"Have you been reading my diary again?" I replied a little too sharply. I winced.

"Of course. I'm the captain," he said as he leapt from his bed to the ground at my feet.

He walked by me making sure to brush his body and tail against my leg before curling up on a cozy couch that was almost twice the size of my bed. "But seriously, just to reassure you, I mean you no harm. You have opposable thumbs, what would I do if you weren't on the ship? You are a very necessary part of this journey and as your leader, I take it as my responsibility to remind you that you have purpose," he offered benevolently and then turned to grooming himself, lifting his leg in a crass way that let me know I was dismissed.

I should have known he would read my diary.

Well cat, just so you know if you are reading this, it is rude to snoop into other people's private thoughts regardless of whether or not you are the captain.

DAY 1040:

I caught the dog and the cat today in the cat's chambers talking and laughing. They quieted when I came into the room. The dog turned away as if something out the viewing window caught his eye.

I looked down at the tray of food, double the cat's usual order. Now it all made sense, "I should have known you had company."

"Yes, our poor dog friend has been so sad since he lost his frisbee I just thought I should do something to cheer him up."

I set the table for two. As the cat walked over his tail swept and knocked a plant to the floor.

"Oh clumsy me," said the cat. "Doug, would you mind terribly sweeping that up. I don't want our food to get cold."

I swept it up quickly just to get out of the room. Their amiable laughter and whispered glances were too much. I left a broken piece of ceramic under the bed. I hope the cat steps on it.

DAY 1055:

The dog greeted me today as he excited his room with a, "Good morning, Doug," wagging his tail as if nothing had ever happened. As the door slid shut I saw the telltale red disc of a frisbee sitting atop his dog bed alongside the ball.

I confronted the cat when I brought him his morning meal, "So the dog has his frisbee? I thought it went out the airlock." I glared but the cat said nothing so I added, "and apparently he also found the ball?"

"Yes, well, if you can keep the secret between us, it was all just a little game. I found his attachment to the frisbee annoying. And watching him lose his ball, well that was just gleefully funny. But,” said the cat with a bored sigh, “his moping was getting boring so I gave it all back. He was so grateful to me."

With a smooth press of a paw to the control panel in front of him, the cat pulled up a live feed of the dog's chamber. The dog was bouncing all over his room pouncing on the ball with glee, tail wagging.

The cat lay on his back, batting a planet on the solar system mobile that hung next to his bed. "You really should return that ball to its original owner but I'll let you tell the dog where you got it and see if he'll give it up. I hope he won’t be too disappointed."

"You know he could eat you," I replied petulantly.

The cat gave a sigh, "Yes, but he won't. He knows who runs the ship."

I looked around the cat's grandiose chambers filled with giant screens to display the vast starlit space beyond. The comfortable couches and lounges on which to stretch. The bright, healthy plants that filled my eye with the succulence of green I forgot my mind craved. I thought of my own drab, windowless chambers. My thin mattress. I longed to get rid of the cat and take it all for myself. I was the human after all... but what then? I had been out of a job, a new planet meant new opportunity. I just had to stay the course. Besides, I had no idea how to fly the ship or where we were going. That information was “need to know” and apparently I didn't need to know.

The cats had been so clever, only they knew the exact coordinates of our final destination.

I waited for the cat to clean his plate and left with a huff.

As I reached the door, the cat called out, "By the way, your diary is getting awfully dreary, Doug. Try to spice it up a bit. Maybe a dream journal? Hopes for when we land? I'd like to see a little more positivity, you know?"

How is this puffball...I dream quite often of putting you out the airlock.

Only two thousand more days to go. Sigh. I guess I'll go play with the dog.