Cats.

Chapter Three

The next morning I was up “bright and early”, to coin a phrase. 

I usually hated waking up before 11am and I disliked going to class even more, which meant Ruby was shocked to find me in the kitchen at 7am, eating peanut butter straight from the jar because we didn’t have any clean plates.

I explained that I was going to uni, and she nearly had a heart attack.

“Don’t worry, not to attend class,” I reassured her.“It’s to solve a time travel mystery.”

“ Oh well, that sounds a lot more like you.”

She then explained that the reason she was also up early due to was Robert and Angela’s continued absence. She was in contact with the authorities in the Blue Mountains, trying to organise a search party. 

“What if they’ve been murdered?” She said, the look on her face clearly saying she was sure this is what had happened.

Even I was starting to get concerned: if they didn’t come back we would have to find two new housemates.

I glanced down at Mr Kittens on the floor.

“Do you think the cat could pay rent?” I asked. Ruby took this as a ‘great joke’ and just shook her head at me. Well, it was not in any way a ‘great joke’, but I didn’t have time to explain my rules of comedy to Ruby yet AGAIN right at that moment. I needed to catch Jake Nitro before he had to give his first morning lecture. 

***

I’d looked up his profile on the University’s webpage. Jake taught in the Physics Building, which was an extremely logical place to put a physics lecturer. 

I had found the building pretty easily. So far so good. After looking at the list of office locations in the entry way, I also cleverly came upon the information that Jake’s office was located on the third floor. 

God, solving time travel mysteries is turning out to be pretty fucking easy, I thought. I ran up to the third floor and located a door which read  “Jake Nitro PhD” on it.

I then steeled myself for the moment which was about to take place – meeting a real life time traveller.

At this stage– I must admit – I expected Dr Jake Nitro to be really old and pretty unattractive. I know, I know – on campus a LOT of girls have a thing for the oldies. They can’t seem to get enough of 50 year old professors with balding heads and heights of no more than 5 foot 5. They all claim that “intelligence is really hot”, but you know what else is really hot? A guy who is actually really hot.

Which was why I was totally surprised to open the door and discover that Dr Jake Nitro was extremely hot. His hair was not balding: rather it was thick, dark and curly. And he must have been at least 6 foot. And he could not have been older than 31.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Well he looked so pretty that I just kind of stumbled over my words and just blurted out the reason that I was there.