Published: January 19th 2025, 9:11:46 pm
Since everything else is on hold for the time being until the Housepets Omnibus is done, I at the very least figure I should share part of the bonus content that's going into volume 2. This was one section of Housepets: An Infinitesimally Brief History Of The World that I have deemed the only salvageable part of the entire thing. Even then, it badly needed a rewrite.
I'm gonna do two more passes on this; currently I'm not certain if it feels fully coherent as a short story, the theme isn't terribly strong and Sabrina doesn't really have a character arc, so I'll need to think on it a bit more. If you have any thoughts of your own let me know. Google docs version for specific commenting if you like: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RDE-1oex8C09bAB_kzQgncx94-URA3AcqOqFmKTfceM/edit?usp=sharing
--
In the north end of the Arizona, several miles outside of the Navajo Nation, our jeep broke down. This was not the driest part of the state, though I am pretty sure it was close to, and it was far outside the lowlands which at least got minimal rainfall. Fortunately, it was just after sunset, which for the desert was the most reasonable part of the day temperature-wise to just sit and wait.
My dad called automobile assistance and they said they would be there in four hours. We had water, of course—my dad had spent too long in the desert than to know to travel with less than a week’s worth, and he usually traveled with at least a month’s. There were six gallons in the blue cooler, and they were on ice, so we were not in any danger of dehydration. Also in the back was five pounds of buffalo jerky, a grocery bag full of bread, soup and sardine cans, and a small car-powered burner and a pot so we could also cook all of it. And before you ask: also a can opener. There was nothing that could go cartoonishly wrong about this whole ordeal, as my dad always had the foresight to prepare for these sorts of things.
That was up until, approximately six inches from my head, an arrow sliced through the canvas roof of the jeep and sunk into the seat liner with a thunk.
“DAD!” I shrieked. I tossed the book I was reading so hard I could have torn it in half, then backed into the door of the jeep like I was going to drill right through it. My eyes were fixed pointedly on that arrow—roughly hewn, fletched with local feathers, and brightly painted.
Coyote arrow.
My dad immediately seized me by the arm and yanked me out of the back seat, to hide on the floor of the front. I did so, cowering and shaking as he grabbed his service revolver. He snapped open the passenger’s side door—the opposite side from where the arrow fell—and ducked behind the wheel. If he’d intended to use the jeep as cover, it didn’t really matter. Through the open passenger side door, I saw them. Coyotes appeared out of the brush surrounding the road. Three or four of them wielded bows all fully nocked, but all the rest, at least a half dozen, had long-barreled Winchester rifles.
I can’t explain how hard I was shaking. I tried to hide, but how was I supposed to survive if I wasn’t aware of my surroundings? I peeked out the window counting on my black for to let me blend in with the shadows in the jeep.
Dad, don’t do anything stupid…
“Put the gun down,” ordered the cleanest-looking male, who spoke with a mix of a Navajo and a southwest accent. He was the only one with any clothing on, a denim vest. “And get down on the ground. You, cat! Out of the car. I want you where I can see you.”
I hesitated. I thought, maybe if I just stayed put, the coyotes would soon think they were mistaken and nobody was in the car. But not wanting me to get hurt, my dad carefully pulled me out and curled his arms around me, protecting me with his body.
I was crying. Even then I could hear more shuffling paws from all around—there were so many more. Twenty? Thirty? One of them had a crowbar, and approached the back of the jeep.
"I’ll cooperate!” My dad said, “Don't damage the trunk!” The others tightened their bowstrings and raised their guns when my dad reached into his pocket, and he tossed the lead coyote his keys. The coyote caught it in midair, and went through the keyring, trying all the keys.
“Sweetie, it’s okay,” My dad said under his breath, tried to reassure me.
I wasn’t terribly reassured. “They’re gonna kill us!”
“They are not,” Dad said. “If the pack’s survived this long, they know that killing tourists would be bad news for them.” He sighed. “Should have gotten a rental for the local license plate...”
The leader finally cracked the trunk open. They whooped and howled at the sheer amount of preserved food.
“There, you got what you wanted,” my dad said, “can you let us go now?”
The head coyote snapped his gun upward and paced around us as the other coyotes hauled the supplies into a beat-up shopping cart, likely stolen from a supermarket at least fifty miles away.
“Wallet,” he said.
My dad pulled it out of his back pocket and tossed it on the ground. The leader, keeping the rile pointed at my dad’s head, scooted the walled back another five paces with his paw, and only when he was certain he was out of reach, he picked it up and opened it—taking from it only the three fifty-dollar bills my dad kept. Cash was cash, and it wasn't like they were barred from using it if someone were willing to sell to them. He dropped the wallet on the ground and shoved the bills into his jacket.
“You’ve been awfully compliant,” the coyote said. He narrowed his eyes. “Let me guess. You’ve got traveler’s insurance.”
“… I travel too much to leave home without it.”
“Dog, I hate humans,” the canine growled. “You have so much damn money that you can just pay money to get money. So if you’re gonna get it back anyway, maybe you wouldn’t mind parting with something else—what's wrong with the jeep?"
My dad almost had to roll his eyes, though from my position on the ground I could tell this was trying for him as well, no matter how level his voice seemed. "Tires went out, both on the right side. Triple A is going to be here in fifteen minutes." That was a lie of course, we still had about three and a half hours but the coyotes didn't know that.
The head coyote sneered. Even if he didn’t believe my dad—and why would he, this was the middle of the Arizona desert and we’d only been sitting there half an hour—he didn’t seem like he was willing to take the chance. Grand theft auto had some particularly harsh consequences for wildlife.
He turned to the others. “Strip the car of valuables and be quick about it. Setting Sun, Fortune Favors, Fridge, you three grab the cart, head for the rocky hideout and do not wait for us. Everyone else, follow them as soon as the car’s clear.”
As terrified as I was, I could help but grow deeply curious. “Fridge? Really?”
“Hey, it’s a luxury,” the leader huffed. “Speaking of, if you called someone that means you got cell phones. Drop those, too.”
Dad pulled the cell out and tossed it on the ground as well. The head coyote pocketed it with the cash, obviously hoping to clear it out and take it to a no-questions pawnbroker, the sort that services the desperate outside of casinos.
“The cat, too. I know pets carry valuables.”
“What!” I yelped, burying myself harder into my dad.
Dad curled his arms defensively around me. “Leave her out of this!”
“Dog, it’s just a dang cat.” The coyote lifted the rifle at us again. “Last thing and we’ll be out of your hair. Come on.”
“Haven’t you taken enough already?”
“What does it even matter to you?” The leader barked. “You go crying to your insurance and you’ll get it back soon enough.”
“Don’t you dare—”
One of the coyotes struck him across the face with the butt of his rifle. He was thrown, me along with him, sprawled out onto the dusty ground. I coughed and wheezed, trying to scramble my way away.
“Blackjack!” The leader called to that one.
Another, very large coyote seized me by the arm and tossed me down onto the ground, away from the protection of my owner.
Pinning me down, he forced off my collar and checked the inside of it too. That’s where us pets kept anything we needed—wallets, cell phones, and the like. He took both from mine. Shaking, I tried not to breathe too loudly—which was easy, as he was crushing my chest with his foot.
“There's another,” he said, tossing the somewhat cheap clamshell over to the boss. He checked my wallet, but there was nothing in there but my ID and license. Growling, he tossed it to the side as well.
Then he noticed a glint from the tag dangling off my collar.
It was an ankh; my dad had picked it up at a novelty shop when we were in Egypt. I am pretty sure he overpaid for it—this sort of thing they loved to gouge Americans for. But when he saw me eying it, how much I liked the contours and the symbol itself, he paid what the man said after a half-hearted attempt to haggle. It was not made of gold, and it did not particularly look like it was anything but painted a glossy yellow.
The coyote took it in his hand and snapped the thin chain that connected it to the collar.
"Don't touch that!" I shouted. At that point, I wrenched myself out from under him and sank my teeth into his leg.
“YOW!” Blackjack shouted. I will not repeat what he said after that, because it was quite naughty and I'm fairly sure that you already have the gist of it. He grabbed me by the scruff and hurled me down the road.
I am, fortunately, a cat—unfortunately, landing on one’s feet means having the self-awareness to know where your feet are, and the first time I struck the pavement was with my head. It was only a glancing blow, and I managed to twist around and catch myself on my hands and feet before any more of me shattered against the dust and asphalt.
My dad started shouting something again, but the butt of the rifle met him in his face, and I was suddenly very dizzy from where I hit my head. I remember there was the shuffling of paws, and somewhere in the darkness, the flash of red and blue in the sky.
---
I woke up several hours later. It was dark, I was stuffed behind a dry and cracked log, and nearby there was a fire going. I smelled only three of the more-than-a-dozen coyotes. The one I had bitten—Blackjack, being at least a head taller than the other two—was most prominent, as he was next to the fire looking exhausted, and the wound on his leg was poorly bandaged. I didn't move, and I tried not to open my eyes too far lest they caught a glimpse of my eyeshine and start making demands of me.
I quickly learned that I was tied up; this I figured out by attempting to move my hands and finding they were bound behind my back, and that was tied to my waist. My legs were also tied together, and I had a thick white cloth, probably the same material they used for the coyote's bandage, stuffed into my mouth. My collar was still missing.
“Why'd you have to go and drag the cat along!”
I craned my neck slightly over the long and toward the fire, not enough for them to see in the corners of their eyes. A small glint of yellow told me that the one with the wounded leg tied the chain of my collar around his wrist. The ankh was dangling from it.
“Firebrand, listen to me!” The third one—female—was shouting at the leader. “We're not going to have any end of trouble if they don't find her alive!”
“That's why we needed to take her!” the leader—Firebrand, in the denim jacket—said, huffing weakly. “It’s a strategy my grandfather used a lot. When you’re in big trouble, grab something very valuable, split up, and run. Then when you’ve gone far enough, you drop it. They’ll spend all their time chasing us, and that gives the rest of the pack time to relocate. They’ll be so relieved when they find her alive, they’ll forget about the rest.”
He took a drink from a glass bottle, and I was pretty sure the semi-clear liquid inside was not water.
“How far’s far enough?” asked the female.
“Three days, maybe,” the leader croaked. “We'll have to work our way back north, then we hide a few months, then rejoin with the pack once the heat’s off.”
“A few months!” Blackjack protested immediately.
“Look, we’ve done it before. Two months at most. Us three, we’re a small enough group to go dumpster diving.”
“Yeah but you get to be with New Horizon,” Blackjack said.
“Hey,” the female—New Horizon—said, “I love you both, don’t forget that. Besides, we might end up meeting another female.”
“Either way, I'm not going back to Vegas.” Blackjack turned and spit on the ground, “They have a million dumpsters in that city and each one seems to be accompanied by armed guards. Lights are on all the time, can't move a whisker without someone crying rabies. Humans. Rolling around in food… and they don't even let us steal the garbage. Steal garbage! That's got to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard.” He snatched the bottle from Firebrand and took a long swig.
Firebrand snapped at him and shoved him over, but another interceded in the fight before it could go anywhere.
“Hold it, hold it!” the female said, “Blackjack's wounded, alright? Don't make it worse. We have no medicine, and I don't think what we had is working too well as it is. Especially if you keep drinking it.”
Blackjack did look bad. Despite his size, like all wild coyotes he was quite scrawny, but he almost collapsed like a bag of fur filled with bones. The female lifted Blackjack up again and checked his pupils in the firelight.
“No, it's not good,” said Horizon. “Get the cat. See if she knows anything.”
The leader swept his muzzle toward me. I quickly made like I was being stirred awake and had not been paying attention until I felt their calloused hands on me.
I quickly found myself on the stone that Firebrand was sitting on, unbound and the gag removed from my mouth. I think it was overkill, anyway, as I would not be able to survive in the desert or even find my way anywhere without these coyotes. Firebrand was probably the least pleased to think I was still here, even if it was his idea to drag me along. Horizon, who seemed to know a little bit about medicine, shoved the top of the bottle in Blackjack's muzzle and made him drink at least half a cup more. Blackjack coughed and sputtered. Horizon turned to me.
“Have you had your shots?” she asked, not looking pleased.
I looked confused, but I thought maybe I didn't need to act quite so much when the leader shoved me after a half second delay.
Firebrand snapped. “Answer New Horizon or else you're our next meal!”
“No!” I said, “I mean… yes! Yes I've had all my shots, rabies, feline leukemia, everything.”
Horizon took me by the jaw and glanced inside my mouth like my dad did when I ate something I shouldn’t have—not that I had since I was a kitten or anything. “No abrasions. Seems like it was bad luck. You got Blackjack really deep, you know.”
I winced. “How deep?”
Horizon hesitated, clenching her teeth. She seemed far more worried than angry—all of them did. After hesitating long enough for it to be awkward, she unwrapped Firebrand’s wound, and winced. She then sniffed the wound, and winced even harder. Finally, she said, "… we need the vet."
Firebrand cursed. “We just got a hundred fifty from that target, now we're gonna have to waste it all on stitches again… you know how much food that could have been? We can't catch a break…”
“I say we eat her anyway!” said Blackjack. The leader turned and clocked him in the face, which he took and just accepted, curling his tail around himself.
“Any more bright ideas?" Firebrand asked.
Neither of the others responded to him. Blackjack reached up and tugged Horizon down by his scruff. “Give it to me straight. What are my chances?”
Horizon pulled away. “If we get to the vet, and so long as it doesn’t get worse too fast, you’ll be fine. But it's about forty miles from here.”
“So I'm a goner…” Blackjack slumped.
“Don't say that! Don't even think that!”
“Then we don’t have a choice…” Firebrand sighed. “Douse it and let’s get going.”
Horizon buried the fire and scattered it. The desert was freezing without it. Firebrand removed his jacket and wrapped it around Blackjack. Horizon then conscripted me to help carry him. I was far shorter than any of them, but I soon realized that Blackjack needed something warm on as many sides of him as possible, because he was shaking terribly. The fluid he’d drank seemed to only make him need to stop and mark the cactuses we passed more often than necessary.
We walked for hours, dry, heaving, roughed up and dirty, until we were exhausted, and then we walked some more. The coyotes at the very least had a particular vet in mind and knew how to get there, but it didn’t make the trek any easier. My stomach growled—I wished I had broken into some of our food when we had the chance.
When I was reasonably certain they weren’t actually intent of ripping out my throat and leaving me for the vultures, I finally started asking the main question that’d been on my mind all day. “...is my dad okay? … You didn’t kill him, did you?”
“No, I barely tapped him,” said Blackjack. “I swear. Dog, I’m not gonna get put down for killing a human.”
“He was bleeding!”
“Just a little!”
“You don’t know that!” I tried to shout, but ended up in a coughing fit from all the dust in my lungs. “You don’t know—I’ve heard of people getting hit once and falling and dying because some artery or another popped in their head and that’s it… Goddess help me, I’m gonna die in this desert. You’re gonna drop me in the middle of nowhere and I’m going to be an orphan again, and I…” I was crying, but I’d become so dry that I couldn’t make any tears.
“You’ll what?” Blackjack growled. “Have to live like the rest of us?”
“I’m a housecat!” I protested. “I’m not suited to—”
He suddenly vaulted forward and would have probably broken his nose had Horizon not caught him at the last second. Firebrand had everyone take a break for a half hour until Blackjack recuperated. They were already talking about making a drag stretcher from the jacket if he couldn't pick himself back up. That sounded horrible—the desert wasn’t exactly made of soft sand, and even if it were…
Blackjack was curled up in the too-small jacket, and I think the other two forgot I was even there, because I was still sitting next to Blackjack, huddled up with him.
“I don't want to die,” he whimpered. His bones were knocking together so hard they sounded like dishes rattling in the back of a car.
Nobody else was nearby, so I was pretty sure he was talking to me. It might have been the fever, because I don't know many other reasons a wild canine would talk to a domesticated cat, especially one that attacked him.
“You're not going to die," I said, "how old are you, anyway?”
“Six,” he said.
“That's not terribly old,” I said, lying a little given how much shorter life expectancy was for ferals, “you'll be fine.”
He didn’t respond. I felt his hand—the one on which my ankh was still tied—and he felt cold, colder than he should have even in the desert night. My ears fell.
“Look, I'm… I'm sorry,” I said.
Blackjack suddenly became agitated, and he tore the ankh off his wrist and shoved it back into my hands. “Just keep it! Keep it, alright? I didn't even want it that badly!”
I was now shaking almost as much, and I curled up, gripping the ankh in my hands. I didn't have anyone to lean against but him—so I did.
“I'm so sorry,” I whispered, choking up a little, “It's just… my dad gave it to me. I mean, my owner.” Wild animals were often uncomfortable when domestics refer to their owners as their parents. If it bothered or confused Blackjack, he didn't show it.
“He seemed decent for a human,” the coyote said, “Haven't seen so many try to stand up for their pets twice.” He shook his head. “I bet you love him a lot, don't you?”
“Sure do,” I said.
“I didn't want to take you along,” Blackjack said. “Thought it was stupid. They'd give up before they started if we left you where you were.”
I didn't realize it until it was happening, but I was learning into his side and he was weakly stroking my fur in soft circles. I was about to pull away, but I realized I didn't want to leave just then. For as aggressive as he had been, he hadn’t actually gone out of his way to touch me forcefully. I’d always been overly-empathetic, but seeing him like this, I couldn’t help it. Didn’t matter what he’d done to me, I felt so bad for him.
“It's always been like this,” he said. “For at least ten generations. Even after the humans wiped out the nomads on this continent, sent them to live in the barren deserts, we were still able to live like we had for a thousand years. With the big fire pits and dancing. My grandfather was a shaman of his pack. He used to tell me the story of how the settlers came through… it doesn't… it doesn't really make sense in English, unless you tell it just right. It sort of requires context that's provided by a well-placed bit of pyrotechnics in the fire.”
I was quiet for a moment. But looking down at him, he was so weak. He needed to stay awake if there was any chance of getting him through the night. “Tell it to me anyway,” I said, “I like listening to stories.”
“Well, the sky came down to earth. The sky had two uniforms. Dark blue for the starless night, dark grey for the cloudy day. Never did much out here besides the night sky's rolling from the sea to the gulf. The dark blue came from California. We'd heard so much about California, we started making up stories about it. Even now when someone talks about California I think of someplace unreachable, like what heaven is to a filthy bandit like I am.”
“Why don't you go there?” I asked.
“Because I know,” he winced, shifting off his swollen leg, “I know that it's just the same as anywhere else. Maybe less desert, but wherever there is plenty of food, there's just more animals and people to compete for it. It's always been like that. It always will be like that.”
I gently eased him back down. “Go on with your story,” I said, quietly.
“When the bullets were flying, it was like rain,” he said, “they needed to feed themselves, and we needed to feed ourselves. After the night banished the storm, they killed cattle left and right, building the straight lines to the sea and the metal horses that continued to run faster and faster. Always going toward the sea. And they killed off so much of the buffalo doing it, we had to eat something. So we ate their cattle, but when we did so, we were branded as bandits and thieves and cowards. Forcing us into the deserts and the mountains. The pack was never the same after that, and my grandfather called it…”
He paused.
“What did he call it?” I asked, leaning forward.
“… the end of the world,” he said. “And you know, sometimes I think that's the truest thing I've ever heard. Because it wasn't long after the world ended we lost every scrap of pride we had left and we're left wandering through this barren wasteland until we die. I watched my grandfather die of illness that the vet would not fix because we had no money. I watched my father get shot for poaching, and my mother get shot simply because she dared get within thirty yards of a chicken cage.”
At this point, he broke down sobbing. I got to my knees and embraced him tight around the neck. My eyes were closed quite tight, and his embrace was so firm that I did not notice anything else, until I was suddenly thinking about alternating red and blue lights.
And I opened my eyes, and there they were, on top of the black and white sedan with the reinforced bumper. There were two of them, in fact, and behind them several yards, a vet ambulance clearly intended for me.
Firebrand and New Horizon suddenly sat up, clinging to each other for dear life. When the car doors opened, both put their hands to the sky and stood. The sheriff climbed out of his car, two deputies from another accompanying car holding up shotguns trained on the pack. Neither of the coyotes dared reach for a gun or bow.
My dad climbed out of the second car, and I think I nearly shrank back into the blanket. But then he said my name, “Sabrina?”
And I jumped to my feet anyway. “Dad!”
We met each other in front of the sheriff's headlights and embraced each other tight. The medics tried to pull us apart but my dad waved them off for the moment. “Dad, how on earth did you find us?”
Dad pulled away for a moment and took my left hand and tapped on my wrist. “Locator chip. It was a new thing so… I had them put one in you on the last vet trip.”
“I knew that shot hurt too much!” I pretended to be grumpy.
“Looks like we found our banditos,” said the sheriff, as though saying it in Spanish somehow made it charming. A third car pulled up, marked animal control, and the other officers bound Firebrand and New Horizon with SWAT-like plastic handcuffs. I glanced back, almost confused even though I had a clear idea of what would happen should they ever have caught up.
“What are you doing!” I demanded.
“Taking them in,” the sheriff said.
“They're not dogs! You can't just drop them off in the pound!”
All the coyotes looked up with genuine shock and I stood up for them in front of the leader, spreading my arms wide. “Are you going to shoot them? Are you going to put them down for being bad dogs?”
The sheriff wiped his brow, uncomfortable. “Well…”
“If Sabrina is fine, I’m not going to press charges,” dad said. “That means they’re still covered under the Wildlife Protection Act. Hold them if you must, but release them. And do not pursue the rest of the pack.”
The sheriff blinked. “Really? You sure about that?”
My dad stood up and approached the sheriff. “Sir. My name is Stanley D’Angelo, anthropologist with a focus in animal cultures. This is not the first time that I’ve been in this situation. But I’ve always been of the opinion that animal cultures are not that different from human ones. If these coyotes were from an indigenous tribe of humans, would it really make sense to eradicate them, when we put them in this spot in the first place? We have a word for that, at least when it comes to humans.”
The sheriff shuffled uncomfortably. “That’s… that’s your right, Mr. D’Angelo. But if the coyotes are robbing cars again, that is an issue for the state to handle.”
“I don’t expect otherwise,” Dad said. “But I am not going to be a party to this. So far as I’m concerned, we’re even.”
“What about him?” I pointed to Blackjack, who had not moved from his spot. “He needs medical attention, now!”
The sheriff sighed. “We can't afford to give medical attention to every wild animal.”
“Then I'll pay for it,” my dad said, “drop him off at a wildlife rescue.”
The sheriff shrugged, and that seemed to be that. Animal Control sealed a muzzle around Blackjack's mouth, but he did not struggle as they move him into the stretcher intended for me. Firebrand and New Horizon said nothing as they passed me by—I expected them to be furious at me for getting them arrested, but they were both surprisingly… relieved.
They said nothing else to me. But I don't think I needed them to. Sure they were filthy, and prone to violence, but when I saw New Horizon look out at me with genuine thanks, it took me all my strength not to break down crying—at least until I was back in our lightly-damaged jeep, alone with my dad.
----
Blackjack, his leg permanently injured, was deemed unfit to return to the wild. While his friends left, he was directed to stay at a wildlife refuge. I gave Blackjack a long hug before I left.
The refuge animals don't often get as many niceties as the zoo animals, but phone access is at least one privilege, and it's far better than being locked away in a pound or released split from the pack. I got a few calls from Blackjack for a while. The last time that he called me, he said he was breaking out.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. “And why break out at all? You’re safe there. Comfortable. Having a bum leg is going to make it all the harder on the outside.”
“I know,” Blackjack said. “But I can’t do it. I can’t do this knowing that Firebrand and New Horizon and the rest of the pack are still out there while I’m safe in here. It’s not right.”
“I could warn the refuge, you know,” I said.
“You could.”
There was a long pause between us for nearly a full minute.
“Sabrina,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
I blinked. “That’s new coming from you.”
“I just… I don’t know if I rightly like humans or cats still, even if some of you can be nice. But if some of you can be nice, then there’s no longer this impassable canyon between us. You’re not forces of nature or demigods. You’re not a faceless enemy or prey. You’re just not that different from us. And knowing that makes it a lot harder to rob anyone.”
“Careful,” I said, “This is how dogs became domesticated.”
Blackjack let out a yipping, coyote laugh. “I don’t think we’re in danger of that. But you never know… it might happen someday.”
I smiled though I knew he couldn’t see me. “Are you sure you’re going to make it back in one piece?”
“Sure will,” he said. “I met a very cute female here and she wants to come with me.”