Un-Un-Cat — Episode 4. Nothing to fear, food, and point of view.

Lee’s mission was to be the ambassador for his people, to seek out new foods and send samples home to the Dog-planet. True to the social Dog-person he was, he wasn’t about to hold-up and hide anywhere for long without a walk or a trip out exploring. The first drive to town a few days after he landed on Earth in 1977 was to the hardware store to get plumbing parts. As a costume for encounters with native human Earthlings Lee dressed in an old blue-grey jumper from the corner gas station, if it wasn’t for the grease stains, the well worn in garment matched Lee’s fur almost perfectly. U.G. the Cat-person second-generation immigrant Earthling had found an old baseball cap for Lee to tuck his floppy ears into and loose-fitting work boots for his hind paws. They didn’t want folks to mistake him for a very large wolf or worse a werewolf.

U.G. wore whatever suited her, on that day it was a wild polyester flower-power jumper mostly covered by a light blue blazer and a blue bandanna to hide her pointed Cat ears. Neither of them bothered to tuck their tails U.G.’s experience was that folks ignored them when they kept at a safe distance. U.G. joked “I Like people, at a safe distance, as long as they aren’t bothering me.”

Lee didn’t think U.G.’s jokes funny at all. “I like people, a lot… They smell great!” Lee had his nose out the open truck window as they were driving through the streets on the outskirts of town. “We must stop and eat some of this Chinese food.”

“Okay. After we shop. I know a place my Dad liked.”

U.G. knew enough about restaurants to know they would be slower after their lunch rush. The hostess barely glanced at them, seating them at a small table in the back. But, the waiter took one look, saw a very large dog and a giant cat and backed into the kitchen at a near run. A racket of banging pans adding to the din of an argument behind the kitchen doors in Chinese U.G. could not understand and Lee could via translation by his AI-C (Artificial Intelligence Creature). “They don’t serve Dogs, and they keep taking turns peeking out the doors because they don’t believe a dog is dressed, seated at a table reading a food menu.”

“Uh oh.” She said and walked to the front counter for a to-go menu.

The lead cook came out waving his hands and shouting. “Get out! No dogs here. Get out! Shooo.. No dogs!”

U.G. faced him with an unintentional slight bow while holding out the pink to-go menu hoping to get his attention away from Lee. “May we order, this, this and this?”

“To-go?” He asked still yelling.

“Yes. To-go please.”

Lee was more confused than phased by the man’s barking. “Now, wait a minute sir…. U.G. I’m not sure if that is what I’d like for lunch or not.” Lee was looking back and forth from the to-go menu to the full menu, it had a lot more entrees that interested him.

The man paused staring at the talking Dog while he was speaking, shocked for a couple blinks, recovered then started yelling again. “No. Get out. Get out.”

They started to head back to the truck when Lee noticed a very old lady seated on the back steps outside of the restaurant.

“Hello. Are you the matriarch of this establishment?” Lee asked politely.

U.G. was now the one startled, hearing Lee speak Chinese. After talking back and forth with the lady in Chinese for a little bit he turned to U.G.

“They have a full menu and an American to-go menu. We may order some dishes off of the full menu and wait here for the food to take home with us in folded paper boxes, if we let her pet our faces.”

“What?” U.G. tried not to frown as the soft old hands gently brushed her whiskers, but getting close to the tiny lady she saw that she the grandmother had cataracts and was probably nearly blind.

“She says Cats are good luck and that your fur is much nicer than mine.” Lee said after letting the lady pet his wooly ears. “I’m trying the soup with tripe and tendon. What do you want to order?” Opposite in tastes about most everything, U.G. wanted to order sweet and sour shrimp and cashew-nut-chicken from the to-go menu. Lee turned up his nose at too much starchy syrup on her choices but they agreed to order all three dishes and add the house special fried rice.

A grandson came out of the kitchen with their food and took their money. “I’ve heard stories of the Cat-people who lived in the hills. But, a Dog who speaks Chinese, and her dialect too. Now I’ve seen everything.” the teenager said to them.

“Keep the change for the tip,” U.G. said.

His Grandmother smiled and waved goodbye but he didn’t smile, just stared.

— — —

The next time they ate a meal in town, (it was 1978) they stayed in the truck and got burgers, fries and milkshakes from a drive-thru window. The teenagers working there and a middle-aged lady smoking and hanging out near the fast food joint laughed at Lee and asked to shake his paws. “It’s okay U.G,” Lee assured her.

After they got their order and had parked to eat, the conversation continued. “It’s a greeting that human do. Shake hands. I’ve seen humans shake hands with Earth dogs too.”

“Really? When?”

“On TV broadcasts and in movies.”

“You have a TV?”

“No. It’s ah… I’ll show you when we get home. The AI-C transmits data telepathically.”

“Did people laugh at the pet dogs when they shook hands?” U.G. asked.

Lee paused licking the top of one of the three flavors of milkshakes he had ordered. He found he had trouble with straws and preferred to lick the milkshakes or dip french-fries in them. “Sometimes they did laugh at the little dogs. More often they say ‘good-dog’ in a very serious tone, almost like baby-speak only slower.”

“Ah ha.” U.G. rolled her eyes.

“I know, I know you only like people at a safe distance, as long as they aren’t bothering you. But, even when they laugh at me I still like them.” Another pause as he got his nose stuck in the bottom of one of the paper cups. “Well except for when they get scared of me when I get too close trying to greet them.” He admitted sadly thinking of an elderly couple they met on the sidewalk, the couple were walking their tiny yellow dog. The dog yapped shrilly at Lee and the people screamed and ran away.

“Telepathic TV?” U.G. asked, and wondered to herself. “Can the AI-G read my mind?”

As if trying to answer, the AI-G around Lee’s neck reached out extending a tentacle towards her ear.

U.G. batted a paw at the furry little critter reaching too close to her, again. Then she thought better of it, and cautiously shook the tip of the AI-C’s furry little limb. “You shook hands with the Lady, I can…” She stopped speaking because it spoke to her.

“Yes. Ear is the body part mammals hear most clearly with. Testing, 1. 2. 3.” The AI-C said counting the handshake gesture in a soft but clear voice in U.G.’s mind. “We knew better than to try and get too close to any big cat.” It continued and she saw a clip of a panther drawing blood with one quick swipe, scratching a zookeeper who got too close to the opening of his cage. “But, we also knew before we landed that you were not a wild animal in a zoo cage. Sentient.”

“How what?!” U.G. howled out-loud, sounding a bit like the panther’s growl.

Lee, apparently “hearing” everything, the AI-C said to her in his mind as well cheerfully added to the conversation. He warbled in Dog-speak and the AI-C translated, like they had been doing the entire time, but U.G. didn’t realize the voice she had been hearing all along was the AI-C. “We knew with one quick smell around your place that you didn’t have any buried carcasses. Don’t worry U.G. the mind-reading is a distance thing and it only talks when in direct contact, about things that interest me, like food.” Lee warbled like a Dog and the AI-C “dubbed” telepathically.

“Not fair.” She half meowed half muttered in English. You know how paranoid I am, about everyone, all the time… And I can’t help it. She thought loudly, squinting in a pout.

“It’s past time for this AI-C to hatch an offspring. I haven’t let any of its eggs hatch because this one will stay with me while I am here. Can’t let AI-C’s hatch without a host-mind to read, they go feral.” Lee said with a very serious tone.

U.G. was less than thrilled about the idea of having feral critters from the Dog-planet running wild all willy-nilly around her house.

“No. Just one. Just one for you, to be your personal AIC.” No civilized Dog on my home planet would ever be caught dead or alive without an AI-Critter. Lee said, half out-loud, half telepathically as he leaned towards her to let the AI-C reach out and touch her paw again.

This time U.G. imagined Lee and the Critter carefully bundling up samples of food inside empty egg shells. Each tiny speck of food had smell notes in many colors of wavy text. She was amazed she could read Lee’s handwriting inside the AI-C’s vision. She sure couldn’t read the mess of paw prints and scratch marks that the human-sized Dog called handwriting on things he marked in the world. Lee thought it was strange that U.G. was more focused on his handwriting than food.

The smell diagrams were very important to the Dog-people. Perhaps more important than the tiny samples final state when it reached its destination. After being sealed inside the artificial eggs in clear goo that looked like egg-white, transported up to the ship in orbit, then frozen in a tiny stasis bubble to skip like stones approximately 42-to-50 year-hops, for 52 jumps until it reached the Dog-planet. The diagrams would tell the story of what was left of the samples. And U.G. could feel their focus, their goal for their exploration was all about the food. Nothing was more important or held more value to the Dog-people than food.

“It took you 2,407 years to travel to Earth?” U.G. whispered softly, amazed, it finally dawning on her, how very, very far away from home Lee was.

— — —

By the next year, 1979, when they went to town U.G.’s newly hatched AI-Critter had learned her vocabulary and grown cat hair camouflage to match her perfectly. She loved that silly thing more than anything that ever stuck to her fur in her life. If she had a question she just thought about it and her AI-C would answer. If she was afraid of something, it would seek to find out what it was. It didn’t matter if what spooked her was a bird rustling the bushes behind a tree where she couldn’t see it or if it was slippery rocks in a raging river she didn’t want to cross. Her AI-C would figure out the best place to cross and when to jump as a defense mechanism, as long as U.G.-the-host was safe, then the Critter was safe.

U.G. was looking forward to trying her newly trained AI-Critter on a human the next time they went to find a meal at a restaurant. Also, a big plus, talking with clerks at the store was easier then she had ever experienced; the effort it took for her to hold her mouth right to speak clear English was exhausting. To her happy surprise, the AI-C not only translated for them it told the lady, “Don’t worry, maybe it’s not an over-sized chubby house-cat wearing a pink summer dress shopping for window boxes talking to you right now. Perhaps, it’s just a slovenly lady.” And the lady only saw as much of U.G.’s actual furry face as she wanted to see. The same with the people who loaded the packing crates of framed glass into her truck. One guy totally saw them as they were, a giant talking Cat and Dog walking on their hind legs, and seemed curious but polite. The other guy just focused on the work they were doing.

“Why do you insist on telling them that you are a Dog-person?” She said, and when she assumed they were a safe distance from Lee and his personal AI-C she wondered, “Silly Dog, do you not know how to lie?” The AI-Cs sure know how to bend the truth.

When she return to the cart Lee told her enthusiastically, with his tongue sticking out just a little too much for a Cat or a human, but normal tongue out for a Dog. “He’s an artist, he draws cartoons! Really good cartoons. Thanks for sharing a couple of them with me Stan.”

“Were dining in. Let’s go for pizza!” U.G. hadn’t been this happy around humans ever.

The kid at the counter had glazed-bloodshot-eyes like he was very, very tired.

“He can barely keep his eyes open and he smells funny,” Lee observed.

“Humans always smell funny. That kid is stoned.”

“No they don’t smell funny, I like… Oohh do you mean hair spray. Yeah okay, almost all artificial human olfactory products perfume or deodorant smell funny. What makes him stoned?”

“One half, every-topping-we-have and one-half cheese.” The big blonde haired kid giggled softly as he slid their pizza onto the large round metal tray from the oven. “That’s a funny pie and dude you look like a giant talking dog and your girlfriend looks like a big fat cat. Dude, Ha, ha. Did I say that out loud? Sorry.”

They took their opposite pie and left the giggling pizza guy at the counter. Lee with uncharacteristic restraint only took one sniff at the many new-to-him-food-smells on the pizza and didn’t eat.

The AI-Cs’ questioned each other struggling with the mud of confusing thoughts. “Both Dog and Cat person is too sad to eat?!”

It’s totally changed my perspective on life, the way the Critter shows me how the humans see me. U.G. thought and sat there also not touching the hot delicious melty cheese slices on her half of the pizza. She spoke very softly so only Lee could hear. “My mother came from a dimension where a lot of stray cats go hungry. She was really fat. I could care-less what humans think of Cat-people. But, my mother suffered from diabetes and eventually died because of all the human food she ate, and I never thought about it before, like never. I never thought about how it could happen to me too, if I don’t take better care of myself.”

“We can box this pizza up and eat it for breakfast. This is a lot of human food.” Lee whispered back and gave her a bit of silence by going to fetch a pizza box.

“Humans smell complicated and they eat too much fat and sugar.” The AI-C whispered trying to support the mix of emotions and memories it couldn’t completely process with any sort of tact. U.G. realized it wasn’t an insult to it to show her, her weight, it was to the AI-C’s benefit to help her with anything that could hurt her, whether she knew to be afraid of it, or not. It’s going to be okay. I’ll work on eating better so I won’t get sick and leave you. She thought resting her paw on the AI-C’s tentacle that had reached up pet her ear.

Behind her, she heard a faint commotion as a man exiting the bathroom with his son got a close look at Lee’s face, the son whimpering as Lee almost collided into them before hiding behind the empty pizza box.

Up next — this story just getting started, Un-Un-Cat — Episode 5. Lonely, Dog from a Galaxy far, far, away, learns how to make friends on the internet.