Un-Un-Cat — Episode 2. Hello, World! — (live long and prosper).
The Dog zoomed down from lunar orbit towards a target contact, a Cat named Utah. A long-haired mostly white fur with spots of brown and grey well-fed Cat-person sitting in the morning sun of an open doorway of a tidy yet rundown cabin.
Just to clarify Utah the Cat, lived in Idaho, not Utah and was a sentient Cat-person not an Earth cat.
Utah’s family had lived in the same place for two generations, so her folks didn’t feel like they were really from someplace else anymore, and Utah who was born in Boise certainly didn’t feel like an alien from another dimension. She lived rather happily as a recluse on her Grandparent’s land via her Uncle Jack’s cabin in the middle of nowhere on a bit of rocky mostly tree-covered land in the hills between two forks of the Lachsa and Saint Joe River.
With a shimmer of sparkle bubbles a large metal egg apparated into thin air. The bright cloud of a flash not quite as bright as sunlight just left of the Cat’s line of sight, barely got her attention. But, the soft thud as a large human-sized bluish-grey dog with long stringy fur dropping a couple feet from the shimmering egg to land crouched on all fours sure did. The Cat’s hair stood on end, an involuntary hiss nearly choking her.
But then, the dog stood up on his hind legs like a person and spoke? “Hello world!” hand extended in a gesture of greeting learned from watching TV, tongue out in the warm summer air, tail wagging, pant, pant, pant. The dog sat down beside her. Pant, pant, pant. Then feeling how cool the crude cobblestones steps leading up to the cabin were, the dog stretched out in the shade there, looking out, and then up at the Cat, every few seconds his ears pricked waiting for a response.
The Cat smoothed down her hackled fur a bit, licking one paw. She studied the dog through squinted eyes, a twitch in her tail flicking as she talked. “Dog? Where did you come from? You are not from around here, are you.”
“I um… Nee Rooouooo… Pardon my translation complication, let’s just call my home planet Loam. Yes, what this planet calls dogs are the dominant intelligent life form on my home planet. I transported here, to your front stoop. Not all the way from my home planet of Loam. How would an Earthling say?” The big Dog paused thinking for a couple pants, tail still wagging a little faster then the cat’s tail twitched. “My spacecraft is parked in lunar orbit.”
“I see.” said the cat, her hackles smoothed now, she sat up as straight and tall as she could. As a short, fat fluffy long-hair Cat, this was not very tall at all in contrast with the huge dog settled on the stair below her, but they were nearly eye to eye when she sat up straight. “My name is Utah Green, but folks who know me call me U.G… like You Jeee, with a nice twang when they holler.”
“HellooOo U..Jeee.” repeated the Dog howling a little. Grin, tail wagging faster for a few twitches. He saw the cats tail wasn’t moving at all now. Then the Dog settled on the cool step again. “My name, again,” pant, pant. “A few billion light years worth of apologies for translation problems. My words will smooth as my A.I. Critter here, gets acclimated.” The Dog petted an area of fur clinging to his chest near his neck that U.G. had not noticed before.
“AI-C sorted a table of the most common human names on Earth and I selected from the least provocative or offensive name translated from please call my species Dog. And my language Dog. My Earth name is Lee.” Unintelligible Dog warbling for a bit. “So you see, how Neu Tac Roof! Roof! Roof!.. The root word is a root plant very similar to carrot, tho more tasty and less like stick then branch. Stick, carrot, whoof, Lee meaning something like the idiom ‘The carrot or the stick’.”
“Lee is a nice name. Did you just mention food?” asked the Cat, she could hear his tummy grumble. Very aware that such a large Dog being hungry probably wasn’t a good thing to ignore and not at all sure about where to start asking questions about the furry lump clinging near his neck that had moved up onto the shoulder closest to her.
“Yes, thank you for asking, I am a bit hungry.”
“Mealtime!” Said the Cat, jumping up the instant the big Dog said the word ‘hungry’.
“Yes please.” Lee staggered to his feet. “Must adjust, space legs, feel a bit sluggish after such a long trip.”
U.G. didn’t ask how long Lee’s trip was, she made a beeline into the simple yet well-stocked cabin kitchen to dig up some food. She hadn’t brought enough upstairs to feed such a large uninvited guest. So, the second half of their meal was served from U.G’s basement pantry. “I smoke and can everything. I don’t know why more people don’t can turkey.” She explained to Lee. “I hunt or fish only as much as I need of course.” Three large mason jars of smoked turkey in a salty turkey soup broth and a jar and a half of pickled root vegetables with garlic later. She found herself peeling dried garlic cloves and explaining the pungent bulb as a flavor enhancer to a very captivated and happy Dog.
“Turkey, it’s a big bird? That’s great, but this garlic is incredible! The most aromatic flower bulb I have ever had the privilege to sniff. May I send a sample home? My people will be thrilled!”
“Yes.” U.G. didn’t see why not, and changed the subject to the furry thing that seemed to be repelled by the garlic and had now crawled up onto the top of the Dog’s head cowering behind his ears and had turned from camouflaged blue-grey that matched Lee’s fur to a sickly pea-soup-brown. In this position on the Dog’s head while clashing it appeared like some sort of a horrible cross between an octopus and an ugly wig.
“Your Aye Eye? What’s that?” She asked, pointing with her stare while forcibly smoothing down her hackles, again.
“Aye eye?” Lee paused and looked up following U.G.’s stare. “Yes. My A.I.C. We didn’t scan anything like them on this planet. Closest Earth species is an Octopus. Except, this one is artificial, like a biological robot. A.I.C. stands for Artificial Intelligence Critter. It does all my data scanning, language translation and records data to send home.”
“How? What?” U.G. hissed softly.
“Don’t worry, my friendly AI-C is a telepathic-parasitic-pet-animal, but, doesn’t bite large mammals like us. AI-Critters eat insects and other tiny pesky things, mold, dust mites, fungi, um…bugs. If I understand correctly the general term humans use is bugs. The AI-Cs eat pretty much anything that it deems to have nutritional value and is small enough to fit into its tiny mouths.”
“Mouths?” Asked U.G.
Lee coaxed the AI-C to let go and flipped the furry thing over like a starfish. Under the base of each of the eight furry tentacle arms was a small beak-like mouth.
U.G. put the garlic away in the cupboard and the AI-C turned itself blue-grey matching the Dog’s fur again.
“Huh.” Said U.G. “Never seen anything like that before.”
“Not on your ancestors home dimension either?” Lee asked, placing the AI-C back on his chest cradled protectively under one large paw like it was a puppy.
“No,” U.G. said racking her brain trying to recall if her Grandfather ever talked about artificial robots or any strange creatures from the Cat-dimension in his travel logs and nothing with eight limbs and fur came to mind.
“I bet it’s a good thing I am a Cat-person, not a human.” She said after watching Lee sniffing around the room for a bit.
Lee didn’t answer for a while because he was busy nosing all around the entire cabin. Tho, this didn’t take too long because it was only a one-room cabin with a cobblestone rock and dirt floor, old wood stove, a hutch that served as her cupboard and bookshelf, rickety old shelves of canning jars in the basement and almost no furniture other than U.G.’s bed, and a small table with two simple stools, actually just rounds of uncut firewood used as stools.
After a few minutes of sniffing every corner, box of tools and provisions, including the roof for some reason. Lee returned to the cool front stoop and U.G. who had settled in the shade, now farther down the porch. Her far away gaze seemed to be focused on the view of the dirt driveway that wound through the trees in the valley below the cabin as if she was thinking about going somewhere, maybe a plan to lead the big Dog away from her cabin. Lee glanced in the direction where she was attentively looking, but heard nothing bigger than the cacophony of birds chirping.
“Well.” Muttered Lee.
“Well?” U.G. asked, wondering if the Dog was passing through like most folks who visit this far out in the middle of nowhere.
“You have a well.”
“Yes. Well water. So?”
“Yes of course. An outhouse. No plumbing. A couple of holes in your roof, cracks where one can see daylight in-between the paneling boards, no insulation, no door-jambs, and the power is that dead electric line?” Lee pointed with one paw at a crude black-rubber-box with two glass fuses and four plugs, and a single electric wire that ran from the corner of the roof to a pole that was leaning, one of its vintage glass resistors broken off. “Since there’s no electricity, then the wood stove is everything. Heating and cooking.”
“Yes….so?” U.G. said trying not to growl at this nosy uninvited guest. In-spite of him, she was happily full from the meal that was actually her lunch. She had stretched out taking a break from bird watching and closed her eyes, only bothering to open one eye to glance at the antique junction box Lee was pointing to.
“Super. If I’m going to be stuck on this planet, the least I can do is fix up this stone shack.” Lee barked cheerfully.
“Fix up? Stuck here?” U.G. said, suddenly startled awake.
Story continues ( 17 years later, 1994 ) Un-Un-Cat — Episode 3. The house that Uncle Jack built.
