Chapter Seven: Everyone Needs a Cat

  I did not need a cat.

  No, really, I did not need a cat.

  But somehow, I found myself saying, “You may stay here as long as you like, General. I picked up some food at the store for you today. Would you like your dinner now?”

  The twitch of his ear conveyed his relief. That would be much appreciated, he said with a dignified meow. I see that you are a very superior Human Servant.

  The corners of my lips lifted as I tried to smother my smile, but Zelda’s hackles rose.

  Servant! She sputtered with her fur. My person is not your servant.

  I opened my fingers, palm down, telling her not to argue with him, that we’d discuss it later.

  Smoothly, I said to him, “Meals are served in the kitchen, but until you and the pack have had a chance to get to know one another, you might be more comfortable in here. If you’ll wait here, I’ll be right back.”

  That will do. Thank you. The General had a touch of humor in his tone. It was just a touch, but it felt like a good sign. He really couldn’t spend the rest of his life in my dad’s office.

  I closed the door behind us as we exited the office. Riley was conked out on the dog bed by the fireplace, but Bear was on her rag rug. She thumped her tail a couple of times as we headed toward the kitchen, eyes open, but without lifting her head. She knew it wasn’t a meal time, but she was always interested in events taking place near food.

  She got a lot more interested when I opened a can of cat food and dumped it into a small bowl. I held it up to read the label, because I had no idea how much food cats were supposed to get, and she whuffled her nose under my arm.

  Smells good. Her entire back half was in motion. Good food?

  “It’s cat food,” I told her. “For the cat that was visiting us this morning. I need you to be nice to him, okay? And if you are, I’ll let you lick out the can.”

  I knew perfectly well that dogs don’t understand human languages. They may pick up a few words here and there, but they’re like people traveling abroad who can say thank you, hello, how are you, and then nod politely when their host responds, understanding nothing. Bear knew walk, outside, treat, and words for mealtimes, but that was about it. Everything else was blah-blah-blah, and complicated sentences were beyond her.

  Or at least they had been. Was the System changing my dogs as much as it was changing me? While I was looking down at her, earnestly telling her to be nice, I used my [Analyze] ability.

  Name: Bear

  Species: Canine

  Class: Scout

  Level: 3

  Condition: Optimal

  I focused on her class until the tooltip popped up.

  Scout—A common class attuned to exploration and awareness. Scouts range ahead of their companions, quick to investigate new territory and uncover both dangers and opportunities. Innate abilities emphasize perception, initiative, and survival instincts, such as sharp sensory awareness, directional tracking, and danger sense. Class progression may deepen sensory acuity, stealth, or adaptability to varied terrain.

  That… sounded like Bear. The System was so weird. Was it taking our strengths and making them stronger? Forget well-rounded, just going all in on one way of being? I guess that wasn’t so different from life, really. People picked their jobs and then stayed in their lanes. What the System was doing wasn’t so different.

  I didn’t like it much, but I should probably learn from it. I still had some free attribute points to allocate. I’d try to get to that later, after I fed the cat, printed out my survivalist tomes, did the rift management tutorial, got some sleep… Okay, I’d get to it eventually. Hopefully before I had more monsters to fight.

  I put the cat food can on the floor for Bear to appreciate, and took a tray with a bowl of food and one of water into the office, closing the door behind me, all dogs on the outside. Zelda might be a little vexed by that, but it wouldn’t hurt her, and the General deserved some peace while he ate.

  I set the tray on the end table next to the chair, not letting myself think about the number of times I’d done the same for my dad near the end. Well, not cat food. But soup and coffee. Put it this way, serving someone food in the office was a familiar experience.

  “I’m going to be using the printer in here for a bit,” I told the General as I moved over to the desk and started rummaging.

  The General stepped off the back of the chair, not a jump but a careful drop, landing on the table next to the food with an almost soundless thump. He sniffed the food, and began eating.

  “After you’ve eaten maybe we can talk a little more about where you came from and how you got here. I’m sure your people are worrying about you.”

  The General lifted his head from his food and meowed. They are not, the meow said, with immense finality. He returned to eating.

  I paused, paper in hand, then continued loading the printer. I wanted to ask, and I didn’t want to ask. If these were normal times, I’d assume he’d been abandoned in the forest. But something about the way he’d said it…

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Not too obviously, I hoped, I used [Analyze] on him.

  Name: The General Ulysses S. Grant

  Species: Feline

  Class: Prowler

  Level: 1

  Condition: Stable - recovering from trauma

  He was in the System, which meant, I thought, that he’d killed something. Fought back against something trying to kill him. Or… his people?

  Maybe I was jumping to conclusions.

  The Prowler class tooltip read:

  Prowler—A common class for the roaming independent. Prowlers are territorial scouts and opportunistic hunters, thriving on adaptability and solitude. Innate abilities include stealth, wide-range patrol sense, and resilience when alone. Class progression may emphasize environmental blending and resource acquisition.

  Independent and solitary. Well, he’d fit right in. But maybe that was a good sign. Perhaps he’d already been a stray, living in the forest and thriving until the System came along and made it too dangerous. He didn’t seem feral, but he wouldn’t be the first farm cat to survive in the forest.

  The General ate quietly, and then we sat in silence while I skimmed books on the computer and the printer shooshed out pieces of paper. I’d had so little idea of what was going to be helpful to me. No book was going to teach me how to be a better fighter. Unsurprisingly, the books I found on the subject tended to be about clear communication and appropriate boundaries, not killing monsters quickly.

  I’d bought a wilderness survival guide, but I wrinkled my nose as I skimmed it, before deciding not to print it out yet. It wasn’t going to be as useful as I’d thought, because come hell, high water, or mana-crazed monsters, I intended to stay in my house.

  The description of the passive ability for my class, Verdant Sanctuary, said, “Territory under Guardian protection develops natural defenses over time.” I was pretty sure that meant my home base would become safer the longer I was here. If I had to leave, I could use Wild Sanctuary, of course, but it had a time limit. Verdant Sanctuary didn’t say anything about stopping.

  But still, I’d need water, food… plumbing? I glanced at the General. I didn’t have a litter box or litter, but obviously he could teleport outside to take care of his needs. I was oddly uncomfortable asking if that was fine by him, but it would have to be, because I was not driving fifteen miles to the nearest pet store to pick up kitty litter. How much longer would cars work? Did cars work? I didn’t intend to find out the hard way for anything less than absolute essentials. Kitty litter was not one of them.

  I would have to figure out plumbing, though. That bath I took this afternoon might be the last for a very long time if the water stopped soon. I had my water bottle, so I’d be okay for clean drinking water, but I should drag out the rain barrels that were in the shed. I put that on my mental list for the morning.

  I’d gotten several books on gardening and foraging in Florida. I was less than enthusiastic about the idea, not being a fan of things that involved bugs, dirt, and sweaty work outside, but if my survival depended on it, I’d manage. I had no idea where I’d find seeds, but I’d figure it out. Or maybe we’d be eating a lot of mana-crazed squirrel meat. I wondered if the meat was poisonous if the animal it came from was mana-crazed. I didn’t want to learn the hard way, so I’d have to keep an eye on Bear.

  The prepper’s handbook was less useful, for the obvious reason: it was about preparing for the disaster, not enduring it. Good news, now I knew what ought to be in my first aid kit, the best packaged meals to buy, even recommendations for weapons, focusing on easy to access ammo. It was too late for all that, though. I stopped reading before I even made it to the end. The author should have called it the Shopper’s Guide to Survival, instead.

  Yawning, I shut the open windows on my computer screen and turned off the monitor. The printer was still printing, but it would be for a while.

  The General had returned to his previous position on the back of my dad’s arm chair. His eyes, half-slitted, regarded me as I turned to face him.

  “Will you be okay in here tonight?” I asked. “Do you need anything else?”

  A slow blink was his only answer. That was probably as close to goodnight as I was going to get.

  I left him to his perch and stepped back into the living room. Riley barely lifted his head from the dog bed, but Zelda and Bear were already watching me expectantly. Of course. Last pee time.

  Most of the time, I let them out back. Not that it made the slightest bit of difference which door I used, but I was more likely to be sitting in the sunroom this time of night than in my dad’s office or on the couch.

  Tonight, though, I didn’t want to go in the back yard. The rift was there, and I didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to think about it, and definitely didn’t want Bear jumping into it again.

  I crossed to the front door, slipped on my sandals, and grabbed one of the leashes hanging by the door.

  How much did I trust Bear? Enough to not make her wear a leash right away, but not enough to let them outside without having it close. If I had to go running into a rift again, I was doing it with shoes on, leash in hand.

  I opened the door. The dogs trotted out ahead of me into the darkness, tails swishing, already heading to their favorite corners. Crickets chirped, a barred owl in the distance gave its distinctive long hooting call, and for a moment it felt like a normal night.

  Only for a moment, though. My solar lights were on, marking the walkway to the driveway, with one tall lamp post shining out across the grass, casting shadows along the fenceline.

  Shadows that didn’t belong there.

  Heart racing, mouth abruptly dry, I opened my mouth to call the dogs back to me.

  Then I closed it again. The shadows weren’t moving. I took several steps away from the door, across the porch, and stopped at the top of the stairs.

  Yesterday morning, I’d spent hours hacking at the bougainvillea. I hadn’t managed to rip it out of the ground, but I’d at least cut it down below the fence line before the System arrived and threw me into the challenge scenario.

  Now it was back. Sprawling like a dense, thorny wall, vines reaching up and out like tangled whips.

  Goddamnit.

  That was Verdant Sanctuary? Seriously? Nightmare bougainvillea?

  I rubbed absently at my leg, remembering the bite of goblin claws, the way the bougainvillea from Verdant Reprisal had shredded their bodies. I knew exactly how deadly the plants could be, but still. Couldn’t I have had some nice blue energy wall like the enclaves? An electrified chainlink fence, maybe?

  But no, the System gave me bougainvillea. I shouldn’t have been surprised.

  The dogs seemed utterly unconcerned, doing their business just as if it was an ordinary night. Riley was the first to finish, slipping past me to go back to bed as soon as he was done. Zelda sat next to me on the porch, and we waited for Bear together.

  Bear took her own sweet time, but I didn’t rush her, just kept watch to make sure she didn’t head toward the rift. Finally she finished and joined us. I stood on the porch for another minute, looking out into the darkness, before waving the dogs into the house ahead of me.

  Bougainvillea wasn’t going to keep us safe. I already had plenty of plans for tomorrow. The rift tutorial; the rain barrels; sorting through my camping supplies; testing my generator; printing more of my information binge; searching the shed for seeds and supplies… but I should probably put expanding the fence to block the driveway on my list. Maybe I should even block the road.

  We’d been lucky so far, with our quiet day, but no luck lasts forever. If my house was becoming my sanctuary, it was going to need some work.