Day Five

“STUFFING YOURSELF IS A bad idea,” I said, watching Wally eat the food scattered on the floor.

It had taken some tearing and ripping, but we had managed to release the food from its canvas container this morning. There was now food scattered all over the basement floor, and Wally seemed to be doing his best to gather it all into the safety of his stomach.

I had gone through book after book looking for where I had come across the word zombie, but had found nothing. I was sure it was from a TV show. One Wally’s pets watched after Connor was in bed, usually with me curled up next to him.

“Wally …,” I started to say, but a noise above us interrupted me.

“The pets!” I exclaimed, bounding away and taking the stairs two at a time. Wally was calling for me to stop, but I hadn’t scented my pet in days and I was too excited to slow down.

I careened around the corner into the kitchen to stop suddenly in front of three humans I had never sniffed before.

My ears flattened as they all turned towards me, their arms raised in aggression.

“It’s just a cat,” one said, lowering his weapon slowly.

“How do we know it’s not a zombie cat?” another demanded, advancing on my position.

Part of me wanted to run away (okay, let’s be honest here, most of me wanted to run away), but Wally was beside me, so I followed his lead and made myself as big and intimidating as I could.

“There are no zombie cats,” the third said, returning to his looting, placing cans of our pets’ food in his backpack. Wally hissed at the pack of humans, who ignored him, focusing instead on their nefarious deed. They were worse than raccoons, looting and stealing our pets’ food.

“Pickles, count everything they take,” hissed Wally from beside me, “we will at least report our losses if we can’t stop them, I swear it.”

From the messages flying off his whiskers, Wally was about to jump onto the counter and take a swipe at the nearest human when the first thief pulled out of one of Connor’s little juice boxes. That was low, to steal from a baby animal. I growled low in my throat to warn him to put it back down.

“I hope the kid got out okay,” he said, his eyes sad as he held the small box in his hand.

I felt a chill run down my spine. Did he know something about my pet?

The other two humans stopped their scavenging at his softly spoken words.

“The whole family is probably lying low till we hear something on the radio.”

“Hear what?” I hissed. “Where is my pet?”

They ignored me, their language skills as limited as their eyesight.

“We might even meet them on the road,” said the human, replacing the juice box in the cupboard and hefting his backpack.

They turned and walked past me, their bags full of our food, and it was only at the back door that the sad one locked eyes with me. He bent down and unlocked the cat door, pushing it so it swung, showing me our backyard. Then he was gone.