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.
The chemistry lecture ended, and all the new students popped out of their seats like water molecules suddenly released from a boiling pot. They flooded through the campus like a torrential downpour, headed to the dining hall and dorms.
All the new students were in for a surprise when they got there. The upperclassmen, who must have been more prevalent than Katasha suspected at breakfast, had taken all the new student’s mattresses, shed them of their bedding, and created giant stacks of them in the dorm courtyards. The brightly colored sheets and quilts, probably from all the new students beds, hung from the gutters along the roofs and from the branches of Greene Dorm’s elm tree.
“Oh my,” Jimothy said.
All of Tesseract Suite had stuck together when class ended, planning to walk back to Claire and Ivy’s room to begin work on their homework or maybe, to continue joking about imaginary otters and sentient reptiles.
“I’m not sure if I should feel violated by the fact that the upperclassmen clearly broke into all our rooms…” Ivy began.
“Or terribly excited about jumping into that pile of mattresses!” Preston said, finishing her thought for her.
“Gosh,” Turtle said, “I hope they didn’t do anything that might hurt my aquarium.”
Claire and Jimothy also looked a little nervous, but then Katasha weighed in with the simple statement: “That looks fun.”
With a rumbling throat and dilated eyes, she looked at the line of students waiting to climb onto the roof. The upperclassmen had rigged up ladders and were helping willing new students climb up to the rooftops from whence they could leap into the springy stacks of mattresses beneath.
The rest of Tesseract Suite followed her gaze, and, one by one, they picked up her demeanor.
“It does look fun,” Turtle said, “That’s true enough.” He laughed, relaxing. “I guess the upperclassmen wouldn’t want to break anything. You know, do anything that would get them into real trouble. I’m sure they were careful.”
“Of course, they were,” Katasha said, almost dismissively. “Let’s get in line.”
To Katasha’s great surprise, when she dumped her backpack full of notes on the courtyard lawn and made a beeline for the ladder to the roof, the rest of Tesseract Suite followed her. She knew from last night that Turtle and Claire both had their doubts about heights, and Ivy and Jimothy had both sounded relatively serious about getting to work on their homework. Nonetheless, they all shouldered off their backpacks, leaving them in a pile around hers, and joined her in the line.
“I don’t think I’m going to jump,” Turtle said, “If that’s okay. I’ll just watch.”
Rung over rung, Katasha placed her paws on the ladder and quickly ascended to the roof. Jimothy and Ivy followed more judiciously. Preston, impatiently, climbed after them. As soon as Katasha mounted the roof, however, everything else vanished in the feel of the open air in her whiskers.
“Welcome to Isleywood!” a grinning upperclassman barked. He was tall and gracefully bushy with a flowing mane of orange fur flowing over the collar of his tunic — probably a collie. “Are you in this dorm?”
Katasha nodded, and the upperclassmen said, “Nice to meet you!” He held out a paw and helped her step close to the edge. “Now, make sure to land on your feet.” He had a whole routine of advice to offer on how to jump off the second story roof safely, but Katasha had already heard him give it to the last student who jumped. So, she cut right through his speech by saying, “Cats always land on their feet.” And, with that, she sprung off the roof and sailed through the air down to a springy bump landing at the bottom.
It was exhilarating. she got right back in line to do it again. In all she must have ended up jumping a dozen times. Her Tesseract Suitemates waited and watched for the first three jumps, then Claire suggested that she might go on in and start studying. Katasha wasn’t done jumping.
By the twelfth jump, however, the pile of mattresses had dwindled. Most of the other new students had tired of the game and taken their mattresses back, lugging them away in twos or threes. Katasha supposed she should see if her suitemates would help her with her own mattress. At this point, there were only a few mattresses left.
Katasha had to wonder about the students who hadn’t bothered claiming theirs yet, then she looked across the dorm at Cheshire Suite. The Cheshire Suite cats had moved a table into the courtyard, to complement Aaron’s cushy armchair. It was set up with a trio of chess boards, and the Cheshire Suite toms looked far too busy playing chess to worry about the state of their mattresses.
“Are you done jumping?” the collie asked. “I’m supposed to stay up here until all the new students are done.”
Katasha looked over at him and then down at the pile of mattresses. “Yeah, I guess so,” she said. She’d been standing there for a while. Her enthusiasm for jumping seemed to have slowed. “This’ll be my last jump,” she said.
“Great,” the collie answered. “Then I’ll meet you down there.”
Katasha bent her digitigrade legs one last time and sprang off the roof of Greene Dorm.
She wobbled a little as she lifted herself off the mattress pile at the bottom. She expected the collie to jump down after her, but apparently he’d taken the ladder. She supposed he wasn’t built for jumping. Since he wouldn’t be needing the mattresses to land on, Katasha allowed herself to topple backwards onto them.
The sheets from her bed, along with a few others, billowed lightly in the tree branches above her. Her heart felt light looking at them. She’d made it through her first three classes. She was a real Isleywood student now.
The collie took down the ladder and folded it in half. Then he came over and offered Katasha a paw to help her up. “My name’s Don,” he said.
Katasha introduced herself back, and then Don asked if she knew which new students the remaining mattresses might belong to. “‘Cause, it wouldn’t be any good if they got left out, and it rained.”
Katasha pointed at the Cheshire Suite toms, still playing variants of chess in front of the windows to their room. “And the other one is mine,” she said.
Don scratched at the fluffy, curly fur under his left ear. He was looking at the Cheshire toms. “They look… small,” he said. Then he looked back at Katasha. “And you’re definitely small. Tell you what, you tell me which room you want your mattress in, and I’ll get it there for you. Then, I’ll come back and help them.”
“Thanks,” Katasha said. It did look like Don could carry a whole mattress by himself no problem. It was hard to be sure exactly how much muscle he had under the thick fur that flowed over his upper arms, but he was certainly big, almost twice Katasha’s height. She told him her room number, and then said, “Do you need me to go unlock it?”
Don laughed. “If I needed that, then how do you think we got the mattresses out in the first place?”
Katasha dipped her ears in acknowledgment. Then, before Don finished hoisting up the mattress into his arms, she asked, “Do you know Howell? Do you know which dorm he’s in?”
“Redding Dorm,” Don said. He tilted his face so that his long, slender muzzle pointed at the dorm across the way. “It’s the other C-shaped dorm. The one with the courtyard facing us. I think his room this year is on the first floor, by the lounge.”
“Thanks,” Katasha said again. She figured that her suitemates would want to break for lunch soon, but, if she hurried, maybe she could find Howell first, lay that issue to rest, and be back in time to join them.
Continue on to Chapter 26…