By Carolyn Cott ©2023

Chapter 1 – The Alley

It’s been three days now since the cat appeared in Ollie’s alley. He thinks of it as his alley because he’s been there how long now? Two months, maybe four. He remembers arriving there. There was snow.

The man had unchained him, pulled him into the car, and drove. Ollie wanted to enjoy the car ride, but something was very wrong. The man hunched over the steering wheel, his jaw tight. The children weren’t there, although the back seat smelled vaguely of peanut butter, and the woman wasn’t in the front seat, turned toward and talking to the children.

The man stopped on a deserted city street. Looking both ways before opening the back door, he pulled Ollie out by the scruff of the neck and sped off.

Ollie ran after the car as it moved farther away, turned a corner, and was gone. He memorized the place where it had turned. Panting, he sat down, only then noticing the cold. The sun had just risen, casting chilly light on the blank faces of the buildings. A tattered awning blew in the wind. A spear of an icicle crashed onto the sidewalk.

•

Ollie ate snow but it wasn’t enough to quench his thirst and it made him shiver. He wandered the streets, looking for a familiar landmark and searching for food. Then he found the alley that smelled of food and garbage.

Ollie tucked himself behind a stack of wooden pallets and lay on a pile of cardboard where he felt relatively safe. A man in a stained apron pushed open a door with his foot and heaved a delicious-smelling bag into a dumpster. When the door clanged shut, Ollie scampered up the stack of pallets and into the dumpster, tore at the bag with his teeth, and ate.

He developed a routine of wandering the streets at night hunting for food and returning to his alley in the early morning before cars and people arrived. He learned it was not good to be out when people were about. There was an afternoon when boys chased him: chubby-cheeked boys in blue uniforms, dragging book bags and pitching stones at him. Most whistled past, but one hit him. Ollie yelped and slowed down. They were almost upon him when he ran again, cutting across a busy road, and losing them. Returning to his alley exhausted and thirsty, Ollie went to the base of a downspout and drank the small amount of water there. He slipped behind the pallets, curled into a tight ball, and slept.

•

Ollie frequently dreams of home, of his children, of the bowls of fresh food and water. When he wakes, he holds onto the memory before opening his eyes.

One morning Ollie smells something new. With his head still resting on his paws, he scans the alley and spots the flash of a ginger-colored cat, skinny and in pursuit of something at the far end of the alley.

Ollie rises and stretches, keeping an eye on the cat. The cat pounces and misses a mouse that leaps into a small hole in the wall. She then saunters into a narrow beam of sunlight slanting down between the buildings and washes herself, the sun sparking on her ginger fur. She lies down, curls her tail neatly around her toes, and closes her eyes to slits. She knows the dog is there. She is watching.

– to be continued –