(no subject)
I should have known.
I should have known there was NO way it could be easy.
My friends Chris and Petra don’t get away too often, so when they do, I like to help when I can.
See, they have cats.
Now, I love cats. Always have. But these cats are… different. Something always happens. Something often disturbing and dangerous.
These are not normal cats.
After the last time,
I figured maybe things would be different. When my friends mentioned they were going away, I volunteered without fear or hesitation. What could they do next? The Catmageddon, the Downfall of Humanity, had been averted last time with minimal casualties. Surely they had learned their lesson.
I should have known…..
Today was lovely when I left the house. Bright blue sky, clear air. AWESOME. Six previous feeding trips down without a hitch. Just scoot over to the house, serve up some kitty grub, then off to work. I was running a little late, but nothing to worry on. They wouldn’t do anything crazy…..
As I pulled into the driveway, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I had the windows open and something felt…wrong. The air felt greasy and tingling. As I unlocked the door, my unease increased. I could hear a mechanical whirring sound and smell ozone. I heard meowing and felt the pit of my stomach tighten. What was happening?
As I tumbled through the door, I beheld an amazing sight. The cats were sitting in a bizarre machine, made with what looked like brass tubing and a car creeper. A red velvet catbed was sitting on the creeper, which have the tubing circled around it like a cage. A large black tube was in the front with handles and buttons on it, which Gus, the rust colored long-hair, was frantically batting at. Ridiculously, they were both wearing old fashioned aviator goggles, and Norton has on a black leather helmet that matched his black fur perfectly. At the back of the odd contraption was a large bicycle wheel, festooned with LEDs and wire, spinning madly and throwing sparks across the room. The ambient electricity had the television flickering wildly and burn scars spiderwebbed across the painted walls. The ozone smell was overpowering now. The wheel spun faster and faster. I had to rub my eyes, as it appeared that the machine and its feline occupants were growing fuzzy. Well, in the case of the cats, fuzzier. Norton yowled when he saw me and Gus looked up with a hiss before slamming a red handled lever forward. A bolt of eldritch lightning struck the metal door handle to which I still clutched. Startled, I leapt forward and crashed into the bookcases sending comic books and erotic art collections tumbling to the ground. As I tried to steady myself, fate intervened and I tripped on a mislaid toy belonging to my goddaughter Sophia. Off balance, I feel forward, into the whirring, vibrating, cat-piloted machine, my hands scrambling for purchase.
The living room got hazy and went dark. As light again streamed into the windows, Chris, Petra and Sophia came in and walked, rapidly and apparently without seeing me, the insane machine or the wretched furballs who were now yowling and clawing at me in a vain effort to release my deathgrip on the brass railing. My friends shot across the room like rockets. Gus pressed the lever to its extreme position and the night came like the turning out of a lamp, then, in another moment, I realize the sun came up again. The room grew faint and hazy, the fainter and ever fainter. What I realized was a tomorrow night came black, then day again, night again, day again, night again, it was light, it was dark, it was light, it was dark… and then I threw up. Faster and faster still. A screeching, meowing howl filled my eats and a serious sense of WhattheFUCK!! descended on my mind.
I now know that the peculiar sensations I was experiencing were time travel. They were excessively unpleasant, especially with cat claws in my arm. There was a feeling not unlike being drunk, it you could imagine you yourself were the water in the glass. The feelings settled down into a sense of prolonged falling which began to absolutely upset my nerve, particularly since I was outside the machine, clinging by tiring fingers and legs flailing in the vortex. The scenery flew by like a stuttering movie on some unholy fast-forward. Buildings fell rose again. Humans and animals strobed past, all viewed dimly through a swirling blue and white tunnel that spun and writhed about us. I decided that I enough was too much and, with a gust of petulance, I resolved to stop this insanity forthwith. Like an impatient fool, I lugged the red handled lever over and was flung headlong through the air.
There was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears and the taste of fur in my mouth. I may have been stunned for a moment. A pitiless hail of hissing was round me as both of the confounded creatures had fallen forward as well, landing on my face. We were lying on soft turf in front of the overset machine, now randomly sparking and emitting pale smoke.
Norton was the first to right himself, and sprang to the Time Machine, frantically pawing at the controls and meowing most piteously. I gathered Gus, who seemed to have struck his head without benefit of the stylish helmet Norton sported and was thus groggy and misoriented. I finally got a look at the controls and saw that there were several gauges and dials. Norton was pawing at one in particular and I noted that it was in fact a date, rendered on flip dials as one would find in an old clock radio from the 1970s. The date was tomorrow, or rather tomorrow, July 6, but 42,000,069 years in the future. Norton, typically the more vocally reserved of the pair, was warbling and mewing a panalopy of vocalizations, paws flickering over a series of wheels above the date. The Holstein patterned fiend then fanged me quite viciously, and withdrew to regard me with cat-like but easily recognizable disgust.
It slowly dawned that I was the cause of this calamity. In my wild fall, I had somehow reset the target date and had flung us far off the course these devious little balls of hair had plotted. Opposable thumbs do not keep one from being ham-handed I suppose. Norton’s tail swished ominously as we regarded one another.
Gus, by now, was beginning to show signs of life and was consuming grass in prodigious quantities. After gulping down a rather large dandelion, he belched contentedly and flopped onto his back, demanding a belly rub. Idly I complied, but, fool I am, it was instead a trap, a four paws sprang closed, claws unsheated and ready, and he added his own punishment for the ruination of their plans.
With a howl and a jerk of my arm I sent him into a nearby bush with an impressive trajectory arc, then decided a review of our predicament was in order.
Standing, I became aware that we had landed in a flat plane, with tall mountains surrounding us on two sides, which merged together in the distance. With a start, I realized I was looking at the future forms of the Santa Cruz Mountains and the modest Coast Ranges of our own time, now grown to much taller profiles through the actions of time and tectonics. We were still in the same location, however removed in time we were.
In the distance, smoke rose from what looked like small red houses, each looking rectangular with simple peaked roofs. There were forms in motion on several of them, large shapes that were resting on the peaks. It was then I spotted the movement, a mass of…something…coming toward us with great speed. There was dust obscuring my vision, but I noticed a tree nearby and climbed into its branches for a clearer view.
I at first thought they were men, but perhaps that was simply because my mind would not accept the truth. They stood upon two legs and swung what appeared to be great, muscled arms by they were certainly not men. The creatures that were racing, running with great speed, were in fact dogs.
My fear must have tipped off the cats. They ran to my vantage point and reached an even higher point, staring in the same slack-jawed amazement as I. Gus climbed even higher, trying to measure the size of the group come to greet us, but in the unfamiliar terrain or perhaps because of lingering confusion from the head bonk, he misstepped and plummeted to the ground.
He did not, however, fall quietly. With a great yowl, he bounced among the branches and careened into Norton taking them both back to the earth. The dogmen, their ears alert, heard the cry and a howling arose from the pack, a wailing call that settled in the put of my stomach and turned my vitals to ice.
I leapt from the tree and ran to the Time Machine, Gus and Norton at my heels. What the intent of these strange dog-beasts was, I will never know, but the howls and snarls I could hear drifting across the plain did sound give me feelings of welcome. With a heave I righted the tipped rig and began looking it over for any damage. Norton sprang to the wheel and began pulling and pushing at wires, while Gus’ paws caressed the controls and reset levers. Useless at this task, I instead monitored the approach of the pack, which was still some distance off but gaining ground with an alarming pace. Frantic meowing pulled my eyes from the horror that approached, so close I could begin to make out exaggerated canine teeth gnashing in the morning air and fierce clawed fingers which flexed and tensed in anticipation.
The cats were pawing furiously at the control panel and looking my way piteously. I looked into a gap in the panel and saw a pair of loose hanging wires. Try as they might, these maniacal masters of feline skullduggery could not reach these errant powerlines. I, too, was at a loss until I realized I have my keys. Carefully, I fished a key into the gap and hooked them, pulling them carefully forward. Gus gripped my leg with his claws, tension and fear etched on his face, until I yelped with pain as he punctured skin. Norton was hopping, nearly pogoing on the seat, bouncing and murmuring as the hoard of humanoid hounds drew ever closer. I lost one for a moment, but deftly hooked it again and brought them out from the gap. Quickly, I twisted the bare copper end tight and the machine awakened, lights and buzzing and the now familiar greasy, tingly sensation.
Those overwrought piles of fur barely waited for me to grab hold before they leapt to their cat bed and Norton punched down a bright yellow button. The landscape went dark and hazy as the dogs came around a small hill and accelerated. They were like men, but huge, perhaps 7 to 8 feet tall. Their muzzles were filled with pointed, razor like teeth, and their eyes, set forward and unblinking, were yellow-gold and locked on us with laser focus. The machine shuddered and the haze deepened, just as the lead dog sprang from the ground and lunged for us.
Watching him suddenly turned absurd, as he slowed in his flight, then hung for one moment, suspended in mid-jump. Slowly, he reversed, heading ass-lead back to the ground, then the entire snarling pack began running backward with greater speed. The blinking succession of the days and nights was resumed, the sun got golden again, the sky blue. The hands spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw dim shadows of houses, the evidence of humanity. These too changed and passed, and others came. I began to recognize our own familiar architecture and when the ugly rusted moonlight of the County Jail rose into view, I knew we were almost home.
Then, the old walls of the living room came round us. Very gently, now, Gus slowed the mechanism down. As we returned, Chris, Petra and Sophia repeated their transit of the room, only in reverse this time, shooting like rockets back out the door. One more dark to light and then the machine stopped. A glance at my cel phone showed that barely a minute had passed since I had unlocked the door for that mornings seemingly uneventful feeding.
The cats, of course, immediately dismounted and ran to their dishes, Gus in particular raising a ruckus of meowls and purps, no heed for the befuddled human who was now suffering the mother of all jet lags. I stumbled into the kitchen and, without thinking, began portioning out the dry and gooshy food, adding the bonito flakes and whiska lickin’ treats ensuring that the water bowl was filled.
The essentials handled, I slumped into the sofa, which was slightly smoking from the electrical arcs of a few moments before, and tried to comprehend the turn this July morning had taken. My eyes feel onto the control panel and I contemplated the dial set for July 6.
July 6.
One day into the future.
With a roar I realized what had happened. Those impatient, imperious animals! I had been late this morning. 30 minutes, maybe 40 minutes, but late none the less. A night of fireworks and revelry had conspired to lead me to bed late and awaken me late. But these kings of the castle could not be put off. So they had done the unthinkable. In their impatience, they had build a Time Machine, tampering with the fundamental laws of nature, probing into the dark recesses of physics where angels fear to tread and Stephen Hawking sits in a corner and cackles maniacally. They had risked unmaking the very fabric of time and space to travel 23 or so hours into the future.
To get fed.
In a blind fury I chased them from the house and last I saw they were on top of the shed, staring blandly at me as I raged. After all, their eyes seemed to say, it WAS my own fault.
I finally calmed down and realized the truth. They were right. In amends, I went into the house and hacked open another can of gooshey food, leaving it as an appeasement offering for my tardiness.
As I left, however, I realized I could not just leave such an awesome power in their paws. Thankfully, they had spent too much time watching Chris build bicycles and had thoughtfully mounted the crucial wheel on a quick disconnect. With a flick of the lever, I demounted the wheel and carried it away with me, tossing it into the back seat of my car. Door locked, cats fed and the horrible future quickly being forgotten, I drove off the work a little subdued, wondering what horror would await the next time the opportunity would arise for me to volunteer to care for these unpredictable creatures.
I vowed that next time, I would not be caught unaware.
Next time, I would be prepared when I return.
Because now I KNOW.
I should have known there was NO way it could be easy.
My friends Chris and Petra don’t get away too often, so when they do, I like to help when I can.
See, they have cats.
Now, I love cats. Always have. But these cats are… different. Something always happens. Something often disturbing and dangerous.
These are not normal cats.
After the last time,
I figured maybe things would be different. When my friends mentioned they were going away, I volunteered without fear or hesitation. What could they do next? The Catmageddon, the Downfall of Humanity, had been averted last time with minimal casualties. Surely they had learned their lesson.
I should have known…..
Today was lovely when I left the house. Bright blue sky, clear air. AWESOME. Six previous feeding trips down without a hitch. Just scoot over to the house, serve up some kitty grub, then off to work. I was running a little late, but nothing to worry on. They wouldn’t do anything crazy…..
As I pulled into the driveway, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I had the windows open and something felt…wrong. The air felt greasy and tingling. As I unlocked the door, my unease increased. I could hear a mechanical whirring sound and smell ozone. I heard meowing and felt the pit of my stomach tighten. What was happening?
As I tumbled through the door, I beheld an amazing sight. The cats were sitting in a bizarre machine, made with what looked like brass tubing and a car creeper. A red velvet catbed was sitting on the creeper, which have the tubing circled around it like a cage. A large black tube was in the front with handles and buttons on it, which Gus, the rust colored long-hair, was frantically batting at. Ridiculously, they were both wearing old fashioned aviator goggles, and Norton has on a black leather helmet that matched his black fur perfectly. At the back of the odd contraption was a large bicycle wheel, festooned with LEDs and wire, spinning madly and throwing sparks across the room. The ambient electricity had the television flickering wildly and burn scars spiderwebbed across the painted walls. The ozone smell was overpowering now. The wheel spun faster and faster. I had to rub my eyes, as it appeared that the machine and its feline occupants were growing fuzzy. Well, in the case of the cats, fuzzier. Norton yowled when he saw me and Gus looked up with a hiss before slamming a red handled lever forward. A bolt of eldritch lightning struck the metal door handle to which I still clutched. Startled, I leapt forward and crashed into the bookcases sending comic books and erotic art collections tumbling to the ground. As I tried to steady myself, fate intervened and I tripped on a mislaid toy belonging to my goddaughter Sophia. Off balance, I feel forward, into the whirring, vibrating, cat-piloted machine, my hands scrambling for purchase.
The living room got hazy and went dark. As light again streamed into the windows, Chris, Petra and Sophia came in and walked, rapidly and apparently without seeing me, the insane machine or the wretched furballs who were now yowling and clawing at me in a vain effort to release my deathgrip on the brass railing. My friends shot across the room like rockets. Gus pressed the lever to its extreme position and the night came like the turning out of a lamp, then, in another moment, I realize the sun came up again. The room grew faint and hazy, the fainter and ever fainter. What I realized was a tomorrow night came black, then day again, night again, day again, night again, it was light, it was dark, it was light, it was dark… and then I threw up. Faster and faster still. A screeching, meowing howl filled my eats and a serious sense of WhattheFUCK!! descended on my mind.
I now know that the peculiar sensations I was experiencing were time travel. They were excessively unpleasant, especially with cat claws in my arm. There was a feeling not unlike being drunk, it you could imagine you yourself were the water in the glass. The feelings settled down into a sense of prolonged falling which began to absolutely upset my nerve, particularly since I was outside the machine, clinging by tiring fingers and legs flailing in the vortex. The scenery flew by like a stuttering movie on some unholy fast-forward. Buildings fell rose again. Humans and animals strobed past, all viewed dimly through a swirling blue and white tunnel that spun and writhed about us. I decided that I enough was too much and, with a gust of petulance, I resolved to stop this insanity forthwith. Like an impatient fool, I lugged the red handled lever over and was flung headlong through the air.
There was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears and the taste of fur in my mouth. I may have been stunned for a moment. A pitiless hail of hissing was round me as both of the confounded creatures had fallen forward as well, landing on my face. We were lying on soft turf in front of the overset machine, now randomly sparking and emitting pale smoke.
Norton was the first to right himself, and sprang to the Time Machine, frantically pawing at the controls and meowing most piteously. I gathered Gus, who seemed to have struck his head without benefit of the stylish helmet Norton sported and was thus groggy and misoriented. I finally got a look at the controls and saw that there were several gauges and dials. Norton was pawing at one in particular and I noted that it was in fact a date, rendered on flip dials as one would find in an old clock radio from the 1970s. The date was tomorrow, or rather tomorrow, July 6, but 42,000,069 years in the future. Norton, typically the more vocally reserved of the pair, was warbling and mewing a panalopy of vocalizations, paws flickering over a series of wheels above the date. The Holstein patterned fiend then fanged me quite viciously, and withdrew to regard me with cat-like but easily recognizable disgust.
It slowly dawned that I was the cause of this calamity. In my wild fall, I had somehow reset the target date and had flung us far off the course these devious little balls of hair had plotted. Opposable thumbs do not keep one from being ham-handed I suppose. Norton’s tail swished ominously as we regarded one another.
Gus, by now, was beginning to show signs of life and was consuming grass in prodigious quantities. After gulping down a rather large dandelion, he belched contentedly and flopped onto his back, demanding a belly rub. Idly I complied, but, fool I am, it was instead a trap, a four paws sprang closed, claws unsheated and ready, and he added his own punishment for the ruination of their plans.
With a howl and a jerk of my arm I sent him into a nearby bush with an impressive trajectory arc, then decided a review of our predicament was in order.
Standing, I became aware that we had landed in a flat plane, with tall mountains surrounding us on two sides, which merged together in the distance. With a start, I realized I was looking at the future forms of the Santa Cruz Mountains and the modest Coast Ranges of our own time, now grown to much taller profiles through the actions of time and tectonics. We were still in the same location, however removed in time we were.
In the distance, smoke rose from what looked like small red houses, each looking rectangular with simple peaked roofs. There were forms in motion on several of them, large shapes that were resting on the peaks. It was then I spotted the movement, a mass of…something…coming toward us with great speed. There was dust obscuring my vision, but I noticed a tree nearby and climbed into its branches for a clearer view.
I at first thought they were men, but perhaps that was simply because my mind would not accept the truth. They stood upon two legs and swung what appeared to be great, muscled arms by they were certainly not men. The creatures that were racing, running with great speed, were in fact dogs.
My fear must have tipped off the cats. They ran to my vantage point and reached an even higher point, staring in the same slack-jawed amazement as I. Gus climbed even higher, trying to measure the size of the group come to greet us, but in the unfamiliar terrain or perhaps because of lingering confusion from the head bonk, he misstepped and plummeted to the ground.
He did not, however, fall quietly. With a great yowl, he bounced among the branches and careened into Norton taking them both back to the earth. The dogmen, their ears alert, heard the cry and a howling arose from the pack, a wailing call that settled in the put of my stomach and turned my vitals to ice.
I leapt from the tree and ran to the Time Machine, Gus and Norton at my heels. What the intent of these strange dog-beasts was, I will never know, but the howls and snarls I could hear drifting across the plain did sound give me feelings of welcome. With a heave I righted the tipped rig and began looking it over for any damage. Norton sprang to the wheel and began pulling and pushing at wires, while Gus’ paws caressed the controls and reset levers. Useless at this task, I instead monitored the approach of the pack, which was still some distance off but gaining ground with an alarming pace. Frantic meowing pulled my eyes from the horror that approached, so close I could begin to make out exaggerated canine teeth gnashing in the morning air and fierce clawed fingers which flexed and tensed in anticipation.
The cats were pawing furiously at the control panel and looking my way piteously. I looked into a gap in the panel and saw a pair of loose hanging wires. Try as they might, these maniacal masters of feline skullduggery could not reach these errant powerlines. I, too, was at a loss until I realized I have my keys. Carefully, I fished a key into the gap and hooked them, pulling them carefully forward. Gus gripped my leg with his claws, tension and fear etched on his face, until I yelped with pain as he punctured skin. Norton was hopping, nearly pogoing on the seat, bouncing and murmuring as the hoard of humanoid hounds drew ever closer. I lost one for a moment, but deftly hooked it again and brought them out from the gap. Quickly, I twisted the bare copper end tight and the machine awakened, lights and buzzing and the now familiar greasy, tingly sensation.
Those overwrought piles of fur barely waited for me to grab hold before they leapt to their cat bed and Norton punched down a bright yellow button. The landscape went dark and hazy as the dogs came around a small hill and accelerated. They were like men, but huge, perhaps 7 to 8 feet tall. Their muzzles were filled with pointed, razor like teeth, and their eyes, set forward and unblinking, were yellow-gold and locked on us with laser focus. The machine shuddered and the haze deepened, just as the lead dog sprang from the ground and lunged for us.
Watching him suddenly turned absurd, as he slowed in his flight, then hung for one moment, suspended in mid-jump. Slowly, he reversed, heading ass-lead back to the ground, then the entire snarling pack began running backward with greater speed. The blinking succession of the days and nights was resumed, the sun got golden again, the sky blue. The hands spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw dim shadows of houses, the evidence of humanity. These too changed and passed, and others came. I began to recognize our own familiar architecture and when the ugly rusted moonlight of the County Jail rose into view, I knew we were almost home.
Then, the old walls of the living room came round us. Very gently, now, Gus slowed the mechanism down. As we returned, Chris, Petra and Sophia repeated their transit of the room, only in reverse this time, shooting like rockets back out the door. One more dark to light and then the machine stopped. A glance at my cel phone showed that barely a minute had passed since I had unlocked the door for that mornings seemingly uneventful feeding.
The cats, of course, immediately dismounted and ran to their dishes, Gus in particular raising a ruckus of meowls and purps, no heed for the befuddled human who was now suffering the mother of all jet lags. I stumbled into the kitchen and, without thinking, began portioning out the dry and gooshy food, adding the bonito flakes and whiska lickin’ treats ensuring that the water bowl was filled.
The essentials handled, I slumped into the sofa, which was slightly smoking from the electrical arcs of a few moments before, and tried to comprehend the turn this July morning had taken. My eyes feel onto the control panel and I contemplated the dial set for July 6.
July 6.
One day into the future.
With a roar I realized what had happened. Those impatient, imperious animals! I had been late this morning. 30 minutes, maybe 40 minutes, but late none the less. A night of fireworks and revelry had conspired to lead me to bed late and awaken me late. But these kings of the castle could not be put off. So they had done the unthinkable. In their impatience, they had build a Time Machine, tampering with the fundamental laws of nature, probing into the dark recesses of physics where angels fear to tread and Stephen Hawking sits in a corner and cackles maniacally. They had risked unmaking the very fabric of time and space to travel 23 or so hours into the future.
To get fed.
In a blind fury I chased them from the house and last I saw they were on top of the shed, staring blandly at me as I raged. After all, their eyes seemed to say, it WAS my own fault.
I finally calmed down and realized the truth. They were right. In amends, I went into the house and hacked open another can of gooshey food, leaving it as an appeasement offering for my tardiness.
As I left, however, I realized I could not just leave such an awesome power in their paws. Thankfully, they had spent too much time watching Chris build bicycles and had thoughtfully mounted the crucial wheel on a quick disconnect. With a flick of the lever, I demounted the wheel and carried it away with me, tossing it into the back seat of my car. Door locked, cats fed and the horrible future quickly being forgotten, I drove off the work a little subdued, wondering what horror would await the next time the opportunity would arise for me to volunteer to care for these unpredictable creatures.
I vowed that next time, I would not be caught unaware.
Next time, I would be prepared when I return.
Because now I KNOW.