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.
In the wake of the fight, Papa contrived to work all day Saturday, the day of the prom. In fairness, there was an unforeseen pileup on the freeway. Those often involved crushed ribs, broken limbs, and other serious problems requiring doctors. However, Katasha couldn’t help but feel that it made for a strange conflict. He’d made a lot of noise about worrying over her, but, in practice, he hadn’t bothered to even ask the name of her prom date. Now he wouldn’t be there to meet him. Sure, Papa was busy, but Katasha had trouble believing that was all of it.
Never mind. She’d deal with her punishment for… dating a dog? Sigh. She’d deal with it when it came. For now, Katasha felt jittery and nervous, checking the clocks every five minutes all day.
“Do you think he’ll be on time?” Katasha asked. It made her even more nervous and irritable that Dominic and Corina’s sweethearts had been there all day. Erik had come over right after breakfast, and Dominic had fetched Florabella shortly thereafter.
“I don’t know, Tash,” Dmitri said. “You’re the one who talked to him.” Dmitri was irritable too. His littermates suspected that he’d got in a fight with Renee, though, no one dared to ask about it. He and Renee had a volatile off-and-on relationship. Everyone was hoping that it would be “on again” for the prom.
“That was a week ago,” Katasha mewed. “It’s a four hour drive from Isleywood, and we know at least one freeway is stopped up.”
“I cannot believe that a college dog is driving eight hours to go to a dumb high school prom with you,” Dmitri said.
Katasha glared. “Yeah, well, next year, he’ll probably be living in the same building as me. Whereas you and Renee…”
“Whatever,” Dmitri snapped. “It’s not like I want a long distance girlfriend anyway.”
Which, of course, was exactly why he and Renee were fighting. Dmitri had made it perfectly clear that he intended to explore his options in college next year. Unfortunately, he hadn’t intended for his long term plans to leave him facing the prom dateless. “She’ll show up,” Dmitri said. “She doesn’t have anyone else to go with either. And she’ll still want to go.”
“Would you like me to call her again?” Corina asked. She meant the offer kindly, but, when Dmitri glared in response, she backed away. “Maybe Flora and I will go get ready.”
Flora nodded eagerly. She was a stunning white cat with long, flowing fur. She was a cattery girl — an orphan who’d never known her parents. Cattery record keeping leaves a lot to be desired, so, if Florabella had littermates when she was abandoned at the cattery as a mewling, shut-eyed kitten, there was no telling what happened to them. Consequently, she wasn’t used to the sort of close family dynamics that characterized the Blake household.
Katasha didn’t care for the idea of wearing a fancy dress that she would have to carefully keep clean and in generally good condition for any longer than she had to. So, she stayed downstairs with the toms.
“Have you heard about the loads of ancient compu-relics that have been unearthed in Boston?” Erik asked, trying to ease the tension with a change of subject.
“I don’t really keep up on that stuff,” Dominic said, sprawling comfortably across the plush sofa under the front window. Katasha was perched in the corner of the sofa to get the best view of the street running past their house. Dominic crowded her with his stretching, so she gave his tail a playful swat.
“Neither do I,” Katasha said. “I’m more interested in the future than the past.”
“History is interesting,” Dmitri said, bristling. “If you paid any attention to it, you’d realize that all the important science you’re planning to go study is just rediscoveries of work that previous societies have already done.”
“Right, Dmitri,” Katasha said sarcastically. Then, turning to Dominic she said, “You know, you really ought to stop fixing cars. I mean, someone else once fixed a car before. Clearly, it’s not important anymore.”
Dominic whipped his tail, lashing her with it. “Very funny,” he said, trying to sound ironic. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the fact that he actually looked amused. Katasha was glad she and Dominic were getting along again.
“I’m serious,” Dmitri said. “Politics and history are much more important tools for uncovering scientific innovation than direct scientific research. Do you really think that you could design a space station more efficient than the one that the European otters have been perfecting for the last half century? It’d be much more effective for our leaders to develop a diplomatic relationship with the European otters and license their patents.”
“What?” Dominic said. “Technology made right here in the U.S. of M. by the honest labor of hard working dogs and cats isn’t good enough for you?”
“I didn’t say that,” Dmitri said, twitching his tail. “I’m not the one complaining about our lack of a space program.”
Everyone turned and looked at Katasha.
“We have a space program!” she said.
“Sure, and right after our space program is done re-inventing the wheel, it can move on to re-inventing the wheel station,” Dimitri said referring to the otter space station in geo-synchronous orbit over the equator. “Or we could just talk to the otters, and maybe we’d have our own space station during our own lifetimes.” Dmitri went on to explain how much further advanced the state of space engineering, rocketry, genetics, and basically everything else that got studied at Isleywood was in Europe.
Dmitri’s tirade brought the room right back to the state of awkward silence that Erik had been trying to escape. After a polite wait — in case anyone actually wanted to respond to Dmitri’s tirade — Erik tried again.
“Anyway,” Erik said. “They think these compu-relics may have been the computer system of a massive academic institute from the human era, and they’re in really good condition.”
“So…” Dominic said, “These are plastic boxes filled with copper and silicon pathways encoding a bunch of encrypted machine code? Right?”
“Well… yeah,” Erik said. “But someone will figure out how to translate the data some day.”
Katasha was only half listening to the conversation. Her other ear was straining to pick up the sound of a car approaching. So far, no luck. The only cars she’d heard so far had invariably passed on by. “Of course, when they do translate it,” she said, grumpily, “it’ll probably turn out to be a bunch of recipes for disgusting human food.”
“Actually, we’ve been discussing that question in debate class,” Dmitri said. He went on to explain how all the dogs in the class were really excited about the possibility of proving the deific nature of the human race by dint of translating their writings. “It’s like supplemental chapters from their holy book for them.”
“Huh,” Katasha said, pondering. “I wonder why Blue is in astrophysics instead of computer archeology then? He was about as passionate as you could get about First Race doctrine.”
“Another dog you’ll be going to college with?” Dmitri asked acerbically.
Katasha might have answered him, but a large, silver clunker of a car rounded the corner. Katasha’s shoulders tensed, realizing this was the first car she’d seen while waiting that looked right — big enough for a medium sized dog and beat up enough for a college student. It slowed down as if looking for the right house, and Katasha was able to make out the driver well enough to be sure. “That’s him!” she said, jumping up off the couch. Dominic grumbled as her movement unsettled him.
Katasha was torn between her eagerness and nervousness. Part of her wanted to greet Howell at the door and start talking to him right away. The other part was terrified and wanted to hide. In all honesty, Katasha had hardly ever talked to a dog before. Not as equals. Not as friends. Not as a potential boyfriend…
Nervousness won out, and Katasha scrambled for the stairs. “Let him in and tell him I’m getting ready!” she called back. Maybe she’d feel more confident wearing her stunning prom dress. She hoped so.
Upstairs, Corina was draped in apricot ruffles, and Florabella’s snowy white fur was gracefully overflowing her form-fitted dress of magenta silk. The two she-cats were standing in front of the mirror, talking to each other. Next to Florabella’s pure whiteness, the black fur on Corina’s face and ears made her look masked. It gave her a dashing air. Secretive. Debonair.
In contrast, Florabella’s golden eyes set in her face of pure white looked guilelessly innocent. Nearly angelic.
“Howell’s here,” Katasha said, feeling panicked. She could hear him knocking on the front door downstairs. The door was answered. Voices… Mama and the toms were talking to him. Katasha could tell Howell’s voice apart easily. It carried much better than any of the feline voices.
“Calm down,” Corina said. “We’ll get you ready.”
While Katasha craned her ears to pick up any hint of the conversation Howell was having with the rest of her family downstairs, the two angels of feline femininity in her bedroom helped dress Katasha, buff her fur with a light oil, and chatter lightly with her to keep her nerves down.
“You look beautiful,” Florabella said when they were done. “You should dress like this more often.”
“I know,” Corina said. “I keep telling her that, but she won’t wear anything but black tunics and vests.”
Katasha saw herself in the mirror, transformed. Her face was lighter than her sister’s due to her subtle tabby striping, but the midnight blue of her dress was darker than Corina’s apricot. The combination of starkly dark-and-white fur and a pastel dress on Corina created a sophisticated contrast, nearly ironic — her clothes were soft and colorful while she herself was angular and striking.
On Katasha, however, the fur and clothing were more of a piece. The effect was simpler, more straightforward but no less stunning. “I never look like this,” Katasha said, trying to make sense of her changed appearance. It was only a dress, but it changed her look entirely.
“Are you kidding?” Florabella asked, her voice filled with tinkling laughter. “You always look like that. I can’t believe how beautiful you two are.” She ran the brush over Katasha’s shoulder again, and down along her arm to where her tabby gloving started.
Katasha looked at her own round blue eyes in the mirror. She looked so utterly feminine and feline in this dress. She didn’t think of herself that way. For a moment, Katasha tried to picture the cat she saw looking back at herself as something else. How would she look if… she were a dog? If her ears flopped over, instead of pointing triangularly up? If her muzzle were longer, squarer, more pronounced?
“Sometimes,” Florabella said, interrupting Katasha’s reverie, “I wish I were purebred like you.”
“Purebred?” Katasha said, surprised. “Mama’s a tabby. Look at my stripes.” Katasha wasn’t complaining. She liked her stripes, but she was a little confused how Florabella could mistake her for purebred.
“You know what I mean,” Florabella said. “You’re both Siamese. I’m…” Her golden eyes looked troubled. “Well, no one knows quite what I am.”
“Your my brother’s girl,” Corina stated matter-of-fact.
Katasha couldn’t imagine wanting her own identity to be defined that way — as a cat who belonged to someone else. Yet, if you were going to belong to someone, Dominic was a good choice.
Either way, Florabella wasn’t offended. When she looked up at Corina, those golden eyes had changed from troubled to glowing. “You know,” she said, “he’s asked me to move in here.” Florabella whispered the words, as if they were too good to say aloud lest they stop being true. “After you all leave for college.”
Corina embraced Florabella immediately. Apparently, this news made them as good as sisters. Katasha prickled a little, feeling jealous. She was Corina’s sister. “Did Mama okay that?” she asked. Katasha realized for the first time that her family house might change after she was gone. Until that moment, she’d always pictured it pausing — frozen exactly as it was — waiting for her to return. Like a museum. Forever.
Florabella didn’t get a chance to answer Katasha’s question, though. By the time Corina released her from the sisterly embrace, there was a knock on the door. Mama poked her head in and said, “The toms — I mean, the boys — are ready. It’s about time for you to go.” Then her green eyes went all soft and gooey as she saw her daughters in their prom dresses.
It was all about as much girly, feminine, felinity as Katasha could take. On the bright side, she no longer felt nervous about seeing Howell. Instead, she was relieved to escape downstairs.
Continue on to Chapter 7…