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Space Cats from Space
By Nicki Ivey
Book Actions
Start ReadingLength: 213 pages2 hours
- Publisher:
- Ivey Books
- Released:
- May 20, 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781370976188
- Format:
- Book
Description
Sarah just wants to write enough books to quit her day job. She does not want police officers to come to her door. She does not want some idiot to total her car. In fact, she really ought to stay away from cars altogether.
Except that's not how Sarah's life is working out. She's got four cats, and they can talk. To her.
In English!
And they're dragging her down their rabbit hole of intrigue and secrets, whether she wants to go or not. Now the question is whether Sarah is willing to accept this new world and the talking cats that come part and parcel, or if she wants the entire situation to return across space from whence it came.
Book Actions
Start ReadingBook Information
Space Cats from Space
By Nicki Ivey
Length: 213 pages2 hours
Description
Sarah just wants to write enough books to quit her day job. She does not want police officers to come to her door. She does not want some idiot to total her car. In fact, she really ought to stay away from cars altogether.
Except that's not how Sarah's life is working out. She's got four cats, and they can talk. To her.
In English!
And they're dragging her down their rabbit hole of intrigue and secrets, whether she wants to go or not. Now the question is whether Sarah is willing to accept this new world and the talking cats that come part and parcel, or if she wants the entire situation to return across space from whence it came.
- Publisher:
- Ivey Books
- Released:
- May 20, 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781370976188
- Format:
- Book
About the author
Nicki Ivey never trained to be a writer. In fact, she's never done anything she's been trained for. After training to drive trucks, and getting an Associate's Degree in Computer Programming, she promptly got a job for a real estate company in their Marketing department and hasn't looked back since. But writing has been in her blood since a 4th-grade picture book about a cat that ate a mouse. When National Novel Writing Month changed her life in 2003, she's had "Career as Writer" engraved on her soul. Finally, it's time to give her heart what it wants. You can read Nicki's blog at Nickified.com, where she talks an awful lot about writing.
And her cats.
Of which there are four.
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Space Cats from Space - Nicki Ivey
One
Once upon a time, in the fairly ordinary living room of a fairly unusual woman, there was a cat. Clyde, the cat, was taking a bath. His fine grit tongue combed through his long, dark gray fur. His stripes and dots were muted, the pattern on his fur demure and understated. Each stroke of his tongue further cleaned the hair he’d dusted in the litter pan only moments before.
It was clean litter, mind you. Clyde had standards.
He sat with one leg in the air above his head gently grooming himself, performing acrobatics no human dared achieve in the company of strangers. He wanted to appear at his best when the time came for his meeting. Patiently, he worked through a knot and nibbled at an itch. When the monitor before him glowed to life he tucked his legs beneath him and sat up at attention.
He stilled the flicking of his tail that revealed his irritation at being kept waiting, wrapping it around his front legs.
Clyde knew he looked amazing that way.
Lieutenant Fluffybutt,
a voice barked before the television had completely awoken from its slumber. The image of the admiral followed shortly. She was a statuesque shorthair with distinct calico markings. She was one of the most beautiful felines Clyde had ever laid eyes on, he reflected. But she was also one of the most powerful. She pulled him back to the task at hand with a short command. Report.
Clyde straightened, displaying pride in his family name. To be a Fluffybutt was a very high honor, thanks to his mother. He held his ears forward, and his head as level as he could manage while still looking up to the image of the admiral.
We are making good progress, sir,
he reported. His ear twitched, and the packet of data that he and Inky had prepared was sent through their video connection and appeared on display for the admiral. It contained biofeedback from their female human, results that proved they had chosen wisely. We should be ready for Revelation in approximately three days.
The admiral nodded, appearing satisfied. And your female. Will she accept?
Clyde wanted to be confident. He wanted to assert that their human female was, of course, capable and willing to handle whatever news they had to deliver.
But he knew that wasn’t the case. The data files were full of teams that had adopted humans and failed. While everything progressed well up to a certain point, people were just too different than felines to correctly extrapolate their reaction to the Revelation.
Sarah Ever showed much promise. She talked to Clyde and his brothers. She carried on conversations with them as she would with another human. She took all four brothers when she had only made the promise to keep two, and cared for the Fluffybutts as humans had been witnessed caring for their own young.
She even allowed Clyde to lay on her lap when she worked.
Clyde sat even prouder, were it possible. Nothing is guaranteed until the Revelation, Admiral. But I am not aware of any human scoring so high on the tests we’ve issued so far.
Sarah even pretended to understand him and her brothers when they meowed at her strange, monologue conversations with herself. So if she wasn’t ready for the Revelation, she showed signs of willingness to accept it.
His tail hid the crossing of Clyde’s front paws.
The admiral nodded. Her own tail flicked, her impatience showing. Don’t wait too long. I expect to have significant news in your next report.
The television clipped off, the connection terminated from the admiral’s end. Clyde relaxed, his posture softening and his ears flicking around to listen to his surroundings.
He could hear Sarah upstairs, her breath even in sleep. She wasn’t vocalizing as she rested, which meant her rest was peaceful. Clyde’s brother and captain, Inky, was taking his rest on the portion of the bed the human wasn’t sleeping on, which meant Clyde couldn’t join her and attempt to elicit some sleepy scratches when she rolled over.
Standing, he padded quietly out of the room. Clyde’s delicate movements were in contrast with his large form. He was the largest of the brothers, and he enjoyed the freedom it allowed him. While Pinky and Blinky would occasionally start a fight, as young cats tended to do, Clyde could always end it.
It didn’t matter that Pinky outranked him twice as the Commander, and Blinky barely did the same as Lieutenant Commander. No, Lieutenant Clyde suited him just fine. The titles were for formal occasions anyway.
He entered the kitchen, the scent of fresh litter attracting him again as it always did. Sarah had poured new sand in their box after cleaning it before bed, and so far his brothers had not soiled it. With his long fur, a good roll in the sand was just what he needed to release the lingering tension from his meeting with the admiral. As short as it had been, dealing with prominent leaders was Inky’s strong suit, not Clyde’s.
He was grateful the job was over and took the time to celebrate a job well done.
Chapter Two
That fragile moment between dream and waking was the window Pinky and Blinky took turns exploiting. It was when Sarah was still asleep, but showing signs of wakefulness. Her eyes were still shuttering back and forth beneath her eyelids, but her consciousness was rising to the forefront of her brain.
It was the time when she was most susceptible to suggestion, allowing their team to influence her psyche without risking a complete shutdown of the mission. If they proceeded with the Revelation and she was unwilling to accept, or even consider it, all was lost.
Tonight Blinky was overseeing Pinky’s session. With one nanite-enhanced paw, Blinky kept pressure on the human female’s temple. The feedback sensor sent information to his third eyelid where he could see and monitor her vital signs.
Their team was trained to do the work manually, through visual observation and monitoring of her pulse if necessary, but the tech made everything infinitely easier.
Sometimes, though Blinky wouldn’t admit it, he would still do things the hard way.
But tonight they were too close to the Revelation to have anything but the full range of information available to them. Pinky’s voice was soothing in the background. He told Sarah what would seem to be fantastical stories to her if she was awake, things that so far their team had only found reflected in human broadcast and literary fiction.
Things that were a part of their feline team’s daily lives. Science beyond the current dreams of many humans. Things that might be considered magic, under certain, uneducated circumstances.
More than one human brain strained and shattered under the stress of trying to reconcile the things they knew as truth with the facts that had been kept from them. The fragility of the human mind was precisely why artists seemed to have a better chance of making it through the Revelation than scientists. Despite the high intelligence that human pursuers of truth often displayed, it was the willingness to accept what seemed like fiction as reality that gave artists an initial advantage.
They also had luck with the young, and librarians.
Sarah herself was an artist. She created literary fiction on a moderately regular basis, although her daily sustenance was derived from a job where artistic creation wasn’t a primary requirement. Still, Blinky had bargained that she would be an ideal candidate, and so far he had been right.
Pinky was finishing reading from the information dump that had been provided to each of them so even if only one member of their team had successfully integrated into the target’s home they could have attempted to carry out the mission. But the brothers had lucked out. Sarah had lost her previous feline companion to age, and she was willing to accept all four into her home.
It was virtually unheard of, but a blessing that Blinky counted every day.
She’s waking,
Blinky said, interrupting the last of Pinky’s lines. He watched Sarah’s vitals change from data indicating sleep into information predicting wakefulness.
Pinky stopped reading, allowed his third eyelid to retract, where his speech for tonight had been displayed for him and yawned. He pressed his front legs forward into Sarah’s soft stomach tissue, then pressed forward on his front legs so he could stretch his back legs also.
It’s just as well,
Pinky said. I’m ready for a break.
Blinky stopped kneading Sarah’s temple. We’ll be able to rest soon. I think two more nights of this and she should be ready. Hopefully, some of her writing will integrate what we’ve been feeding her. A sign like that surely would be what Inky is waiting for.
Pinky nodded, and stepped down onto the bedside table, then jumped to the floor. Give me a few minutes with the litter, and we can start to wake her up.
Blinky nodded, and ran his tongue through the fur on his forearm, wiping at his forehead and preparing for the wake sequence.
Chapter Three
Sarah woke to a cat pouncing on her toes.
Or perhaps multiple cats.
And woke
was an exaggeration for what happened. At first, her unconscious just worked the biting teeth and sharp nails into a dream. Kicking at the annoyance didn’t stop it, however, just exacerbated it.
Holding still didn’t help, either. When the pouncing stopped, the cries started. High pitched calls from young cats who were still growing and needed multiple daily meals. Their pitiful wails drug Sarah far enough out of sleep to realize that she needed to pee.
She threw the warm blanket back, immediately assaulted by the cold air in the bedroom. Gooseflesh broke out over her exposed arms and calves, and Sarah resented the level of consciousness it brought. Still, woke
would be a stretch of the truth as she stumbled down the hallway. Small, loud, and hungry furry bodies did their best to trip her down the stairs, at which point Sarah would be close enough to drag herself to the food bucket before dying from whatever internal injuries such a fall would inflict.
But they failed to trip her. Sarah made it to the safety of the bathroom and closed the door behind her. Her toes had enjoyed a blissful two minutes of rest before she washed her hands. Several degrees closer to awake, she opened the door to the bathroom to find four small bodies looking at her, searching her expression and studying her body language to ensure she was about to follow them downstairs and not trundle back to bed.
I’m coming,
she muttered in a voice still thick with sleep. As one the adorable feline herd got up and raced down the stairs as if her tone indicated in Kitten that she did intend to follow through on her word.
Sarah followed, although not nearly as quickly. Her hand gripped the old wooden banister on the stairs tightly, resting her weight on it. She needed to be sure her feet would
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