An excerpt from In a Dog’s World. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead to the next chapter.
There looked to be eight cats and two dogs hanging about Cheshire Suite when they got there. Dominic was highly amused when he saw Daria climb in through the wide open window. He stepped forward to follow her, and Aaron immediately cried out from his reclined position in the overstuffed armchair, “Halt!”
Dominic blinked at the funny Persian boy in his cape and beret. He was wearing a different tunic and trousers today, but the cape and beret had stayed the same. Aaron rose from his armchair and circled Dominic while swishing his tail. It was an amusing sight. Aaron was noticeably shorter, with ragged, fluffy orange fur. Dominic looked especially sleek and rugged in comparison. A tough guy, being sized up by the resident alpha-geek.
“You are not of these hallowed halls,” Aaron said.
“He’s my brother,” Katasha said.
Aaron sniffed. Clearly, that answer wasn’t good enough. “Can he play chess?” Aaron asked.
“I know the rules,” Dominic said.
Aaron’s eyes lit up, and he held his cape in a welcoming gesture. “Then, by all means, enter our humble domain and have your mind opened.”
Dominic flicked one of his ears questioningly.
Aaron said, “Let us say that the rules are only a starting point. A mere tangent to the expansive universe of options that chess opens for the inquisitive mind.”
For the next hour, Dominic played variants of chess that involved two or sometimes three chessboards with Aaron, Rover, and Blue. They played in teams. Rover and Blue were paired together; Aaron partnered Dominic. They all felt that would be the most fair, as Aaron was the most experienced player and Dominic was the least experienced.
The dogs in the room were Moby, still hunched over his colorful puzzle, and a butterfly-eared Papillon. From listening to their conversation, Katasha gathered that the two were roommates. She was intrigued by the fact that they were choosing to hang out in Cheshire Suite which was obviously slated to be the center of feline interaction in Greene Dorm.
Perhaps, Jimothy wasn’t the only dog with a desire to surround himself with cats for friends. She felt a strange combination of kinship and alienation from these two dogs. In one sense, their choice to be the two dogs among a room full of Cheshire Suite cats was the perfect analog to her being the one cat among all the Intro to Isleywood dogs. On the other paw, however, they were rejecting everything that Katasha wanted. They could easily have been hanging out with other dogs. Instead, they chose Cheshire Suite.
She was only here in Cheshire Suite because her species dictated it. She’d been assigned a cat for a roommate. Her brother was a cat. All these cats recognized species kinship in her. And, thus, she found herself dragged here. The natural currents of her life led her to be among other cats. She had to strike out against those currents if she wanted to find herself in situations where she was interacting with dogs. For instance, wrapped in Howell’s arms at prom or hiking through gorgeous snowy vistas with Jimothy…
The sense of alienation won out, and Katasha chose not to approach Moby and his Papillon roommate. Perhaps she was simply over stimulated from meeting so many new people already this week. Either way, Katasha stood quietly behind Dominic’s shoulder and watched the black and white statuettes advance from one side of the double chess board to the other. Occasionally, pieces were moved to the third chess board on the far side of the room for lightening rounds between two of the players. At one point, a single pawn was replaced with a pair of salt and pepper shakers in neighboring squares. Katasha didn’t entirely follow the reasoning behind that rule.
In fact, she found most of the game somewhere between mystifying and painfully mathematical. The latter generally happened when Blue and Rover stopped to debate the merits of which move to make based on an analysis of the precise probabilities of possible outcomes. The former was more likely to happen when Aaron mewed something like, “Double fault!”, and bizarrely introduced a deck of playing cards into the game, carefully sliding specific cards under various chess pieces.
All the while, Daria hung out with Moby and the Papillon. At first, Katasha was confused by the change in her behavior from the way she’d ignored Claire the other night. Then, Katasha thought that perhaps Daria was only afraid of strange dogs — ones she hadn’t met before. There’d been a whole week for Daria to get to know Moby. Though, the Papillon must be new to her.
Maybe Daria hadn’t been rudely ignoring Claire after all. Perhaps she’d simply been so focused on the excitement of meeting Katasha — they were going to be roommates for the rest of the year — that anything else at that moment was merely noise. In that light, Daria’s intense focus on her was strangely flattering. Katasha wondered if she’d seemed disappointingly disinterested in their first meeting to Daria. Hopefully not.
“Can we go?” Katasha asked Dominic when he and Aaron finally won the game they’d been playing. This one had involved multiplying the power of pawns by stacking them in precarious towers. If the tower fell over, the toppled pawns were given to the other team. Dominic and Aaron won in large part due to Dominic’s steady paws. He was a mechanic after all.
“Sure,” Dominic said, helping set the pieces back up for another game. He stepped back from the board once they were all arranged. “We should get some lunch before I have to go.”
“Sustenance,” Aaron said, hissing each S. “That can be provided here.” He pointed at Rover who grabbed a blue half-sheet of paper that proved to be a take-out menu.
Rover held the take-out menu toward Dominic and said in his droning monotone, “Pick what you want, and I’ll put an order in over the computer. Then we can start the next game.”
Dominic looked like he was about to thank them, then he looked over at Katasha. Her ears were flat; her eyes were glaring. “You know what,” he said, “I think I’d like to have a nice goodbye lunch alone with my sister.”
Katasha rewarded him with a smile.
“It was nice meeting you all though,” Dominic said.
Before they’d finished climbing back out of the window, Daria came pouncing their way. “Oh! You’re leaving!” she mewed.
“Lunch,” Katasha said. She realized how abrupt that must sound and added, “I want to spend some time alone with my brother before he leaves.”
Daria nodded. “Of course,” she said. “I had a terrible time letting my sisters leave last week.”
“You have sisters?” Katasha asked.
“My whole litter is girls!” she mewed. “I’m the only one who’s going to college.” Daria’s gold eyes looked distant and dreamy. “They’re all back in Boston now.”
“That’s a long ways away.” On an impulse, Katasha put her paws around Daria and embraced her. “I miss my sister too,” she said. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Okay,” Daria said. “I’ll probably be here in Cheshire Suite.”
Katasha wasn’t surprised. “I kind of figured,” she said.
Blue stepped forward and said, “We’ll probably all get take-out and eat it here for dinner. Sort of a feast to celebrate the last night before classes. You’d be welcome to join us.”
“Thanks,” Katasha said. “I’ll keep that in mind, but I’m hoping to catch up with my hiking friends. I haven’t seen them since we all got back from the hike.”
“Of course,” Blue said.
Daria said, “I’ll see you in our room tonight.”
Continue on to Chapter 22…