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#1 Americana Nov 2019 & Feb 2021 | Meowza!
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#1 Animal Fiction August 2021
Seven cats live in Feline Society #337, along with Hooman #1 and...
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by Buttercup
Phoebe the One and Only Pain in My Butt is, unfortunately, my copilot in accessing the secret message Greg uploaded to the GalaNet on the other side of the QR code Lahea's pulled up on her laptop.
This is hopefully the last time this year us three lionesses need to work together.
Philosopher Jones would handle important correspondence if Hooman #1 hadn't left with him to the vet right after we scuttled to the computers scattered throughout the living room.
We had to insist to Hooman #1 that Greg and Tom would be okay before she reluctantly lifted Philo into the leopard-spotted carrier and slipped through the door to get his prednisone injection; to re-check his blood.
Now we just need to make sure Tom and Greg are actually fine. No problem.
I wouldn't be squeezed between Phoebe's bony shoulders and Lahea's Lisa-Frankesque sparkle unless I thought I could help Tom. I mean, if I'm being real: I hate Greg. He bullies me. And Phoebe and Lahea are two spoiled, unbearable, pretty-pretty princesses—
Phoebe Buttercup: Hold. Still. You're wiggling everywhere, and it's disrupting our dual-scan of the matrix barcode.
Buttercup You sure it isn't scanning because the image isn't reaching the warmth of your carbonithril neuralace through your fading eyes?
Phoebe Ageism sounds ridiculous coming out of a senior cat.
Buttercup I'm only eight.
Phoebe That's when the vet started my 20% senior discount on thermometer butt-poking.
Lahea Forget discounts; I can't wait to access the Deep GalaNet with matrix codes!
Phoebe ...Well, Butternemesis, at least you aren't her age.
Lahea Hey...
The laptop screen flickers and flexes, then the code's black-and-white bumps evolves into more colors; the chromatic burst works in unstable pixels before settling on a crisp image of a train-car full of lizardmen— or, rather, lizard-children.
Lahea They look like they're struggling against hybrids similar to the ones found in our invasion of their base...
Major Tom's voice speaks to us telepathically, beyond the reaches of Lahea's furry ears.
Tom We seem overrun. Can you beam in support?
Phoebe Yeah. I got the passcodes. You ready?
Buttercup You sure it's a good idea to use our spaceship this early in the game?
Greg For the love of our nine-tailed, nine-lived gods, send the detonations—
Greg is slicing and dicing two lizard-people at a time, bouncing from their chests with saber-sharp paws. He moves in blurs that only occasionally sharpen on the screen, unfocused in the thicket of it.
Buttercup I don't want to watch.
Phoebe Then don't; I just needed you to get into the secured cloud in the GalaNet.
Phoebe curls her lip at me and I scurry into the back room.
The room behind the office is mostly windows and storage bins, dark in the uncertain night.
I crawl into the old, beige-carpeted cat tree that Hooman #1 dragged into the back room last summer, after I told her I liked spending time in there.
While the rest of Cat Society #337 thinks of me as the antisocial sass-cat in the closet, I'm fond of the windows, the privatized tree, and the smells of hoomanity— memories and childhoods— rising from the storage bins.
Unlike the rest of Cat Society #337, I was not assigned to protect Earth. I was a stowaway when the ship left our star system; I tired of my former life as a dumpster cat, so I decided it was time for the universe to feel bigger.
And when the captain didn't check for stowaways in the first month of travel, it made it harder to send me back, so I came out from my hiding place in the engine room and joined the rest of the felines in defending Earth.
Deep down, I've never felt like the other cats have accepted me; most of the time, when they include me, it's only to use me to boost numbers for multi-process tasks like matrix scans, cattack sequencing, and responses to the social media mafia.
I jump into one of the window sills, basking in the starlight. It's okay if I'm the loner. I made it here. I think, in the end, all our souls are celebrating that we made it in sonorous unison, like whale-song carried through the sea, if the ocean were the expanse of suns, nebulas, and the forever-expanding darkness.
