New Cats, Survivor's Meetup

In the first dream of the evening, I was heading to the front room when I heard a tiny forlorn little meow. Following the noise led me to the dining room, and there in the far corner of the bottom shelf of the far book case was a fluffy white kitten with bright blue eyes. She saw me, and immediately switched from meow to purr. Teddy head-bumped my leg from behind as if to ask "can we keep her?" I put down a bowl of food for her, and another white cat arrived, this one was older, quite possibly the kitten's mom. She brushed past Teddy and myself as if she'd always been here. Somehow, that made me smile.

The bowl of food was next to the water dish, and Teddy laid between them and the rest of the house, guarding them while I went and got my camera. I was pretty sure from the ratty collar on the older cat that they were abandoned, but figured I'd print out some pictures and walk the neighborhood to see if anyone claimed them. I told Teddy we didn't want to be kit-nappers. He didn't seem to appreciate the pun.

I was thinking they would bring me back up to five cats, and that made me sad, because there were no more sprocket kitties.


Right before the water sprinklers went off out front, I was dreaming of another post-apocalyptic, digging out from the rubble to re-establish some sort of order, scenario. I have no idea what the actual apocalypse was for this one, only that there were very few of us left, and none of us were much younger than forty or so.

Whether the younger folks had all traveled away from the ruins to start new, or were taken in the apocalypse, I can't say. However, it was nearly the full moon, so those of us who'd stayed, or were left, gathered in the ballroom of the only hotel to have one in the area.

We'd thought about meeting at one of the college gymnasiums, but the hotel was more elegant, so it won out in the voting. Personally, I thought it was a little bit on the musty side, even though a few of us had raided the Home Depot to repair the roof and windows, it still seemed to get enough water to encourage mold to grow. I always waited until the last second to make my way through the musty hallways to the ballroom, which, at least, had hard floors and paneled walls, so didn't have as much mildew smell. We managed to get the generators started up and the room's chandeliers glowed unsteadily from the fluctuating power.

There was some trading, and some reporting of events of the past month, some fresh vegetables and fruit, some furs, some clothing and finally, some music and dancing. We welcomed new members to the community, and said goodbye to those who were leaving for what they hoped were greener pastures. For a change there'd been no deaths to report, and the people who were missing were accounted for by their friends or kin.

Folks returned from San Diego brought the news from the survivors there, apparently there was some sort of turf war going on, that made us all shake our heads. There really weren't enough of us left to imagine that there wasn't room enough for everyone who wanted to stay in the area, but the city was apparently being flooded by the high tides and that had forced some of the coastal sorts to abandon the convention center and Harbor Island, the other coastal communities hadn't been willing to absorb them.

There was lots of drinking with the dancing and soon folks were slipping off into the various halls and rooms for some private time. I was too drunk to make my way home in the dark so found a spot on a couch near the front desk, where, when I rolled over later I found N sleeping there next to me. "Don't get any ideas, I was just cold."