Leonard (My Life as a Cat), Carlie Sorosiak [7 ebook reader .txt] 📗

Olive frowned. “Why would you risk it, then? Earth is dangerous.” Before I could respond, she added, “Are you always a cat? Like, are there just a bunch of cats, floating in space? Sorry, too many questions. It’s just all so much . . . But how does it work? I want to know everything.”

I stretched my paws, flexing my toes. What I was about to write would require concentration, stamina, and punctuation. I still hadn’t figured out capital letters on the keyboard, but commas and periods, those were fine. My chest fluttered, because it was rather scary—getting the words right, putting your fate in someone else’s hands. As I clacked away, Olive read over my shoulder.

i wanted to be human and was supposed to be, I typed. but there was a mistake, i miscalculated the formula. my species is pure energy. we live as one, much like the drops in your ocean. humans should not know about us, but i believe in the goodness of most people, the goodness in you, and i am stuck here, i miss home and i do not want to die, so i need your help getting to yellowstone national park by july 21 at 9:01 a.m., coordinates 44.4605 degrees north, 110.8281 degrees west. please. please.

I typed please twice for extra politeness.

Digesting my message, Olive puffed out her cheeks with air, and then squashed her face with her palms.

I added, i hope this is not asking for too much. please.

“I’ll help you, Leonard,” Olive said uneasily. “Of course I’ll help. It’s just that I still have so many questions, and—” She snapped her gaze to me, dark hair whipping. “Wait, should I still call you Leonard? Do you have another name?”

leonard is nice, I told her honestly.

“Good,” she said. “So, we have to go to Yellowstone specifically?”

yellowstone is my pickup point. my entire species must collect me. they have other stops along the way, to collect other travelers on other planets. they will know to find me at yellowstone, nowhere else.

Olive bit her lip. “The thing is, I’m only eleven, so I don’t really have a car . . . or know how to drive, or even really know how to ride the bus across the country, so . . . I’ll have to think of something. But I will think of something, okay?”

She didn’t sound too convinced.

Strangely, I still had faith in her.

We pulled more blankets into the fort, the three of us huddled together. Stanley let out a gigantic snore, and I curled into a loose ball, resting my muscles. It was actually rather nice, falling asleep in a tent. As a ranger, I would’ve spent a great deal of time beneath a canvas sky at night, and in the daytime identifying wildflowers, cooking stew.

“Hey, Leonard?” Olive said, very awake, just as I was drifting off. “You don’t have to worry. I’ll keep your secret . . . And I wanted you to know, I think it’s sad that you didn’t get to be human. You would’ve made a really nice one.”

Silently, I told her thank you.

“I’m not sure how to ask this,” she said. “Are there, like, any human things I can get for you? Anything you really want? Just think about it.”

I didn’t have to think about it. I already knew. Gathering the last bit of my strength for the night, I waddled to the keyboard.

And I typed: raincoat.

It had a hood and little black buttons. The yellow material was stiff—stiffer than I thought it’d be—but once Olive slipped it over my forelegs, down across my back, I found that I could move quite nicely. Gazing at myself in the bathroom mirror, it occurred to me that I looked somewhat like Olive in the flood. Our raincoats matched, almost exactly.

“I hope it’s what you had in mind,” Olive said as I twirled on the sink basin, examining myself from all angles. It fit snugly around me, stopping right before my tail. “I got it from Mrs. Kowalski down the street. She has this tiny dog who doesn’t use it anymore.”

Would I have preferred an umbrella? Would I have liked to clasp my human fingers around the handle and skip in rubber boots through the rain? Of course. But this was the next best thing—and I must say that it meant a lot, for Olive to deliver it so quickly. It was barely ten o’clock, the morning after our talk, and plans were already in motion.

“So here’s the way I see it,” Olive said as I jumped down from the sink. She was perched on the edge of the tub, bare feet tapping the tile floor. “I’ve been up all night thinking about how to get you to Yellowstone, and I realized that I can’t do it by myself—not without driving a car and breaking the law. I’m going to have to ask Norma for help, which means coming up with a good excuse to go.”

I nodded, ears forward. This seemed reasonable.

“But there’s a catch,” Olive said, grimacing. “She has this huge event on July eighteenth. It’s a Save the Sea Turtles thing, and it’s a really big deal for her job. Turtle Beach puts on a humongous festival for a week ahead of time; the whole town comes together. Norma has a bunch of planning to do ahead of time. And I know she won’t miss it, no matter what I tell her, so . . . Could you wait that long?”

Could I? Theoretically, yes. If we left the evening of the eighteenth, that gave us two full days of travel, plus the nights—plenty of time. But waiting until nearly the end of July was risky. What if Norma said she’d take us, and then changed her mind? What if something happened to me in the meantime?

“Waiting could be dangerous,” Olive said, like she was reading my thoughts. “But based on Google maps, it’s only thirty-four hours in a car, and I honestly can’t