The Great Adventure

The hours passed and the animals’ tree lazily floated along. Tabitha eventually woke up, and she and Peewee watched as the world drifted by. It wasn’t the world they knew. The water remained deep. Broken trees and power lines were strewn everywhere. They passed through places where the houses were nothing but floating piles made out of of hundreds of pieces of wood. Here and there they would see a dog or a cat perched on a roof, looking as miserable and hungry as they were. Once in a while they even saw people stuck on roofs, and some of them would wave at the animals as they went by.

The day wore on and the high noon sun came and went. They began to see helicopters flying overhead. Tabitha was at first very excited by the choppers. She would stand on her tree trunk with her ears straight up and woof and whine, wagging her tail, trying to get their attention. Maybe the Old Man was in one of them! Maybe he would finally come! But the helicopters just passed over them and flew on, rescuing the humans and ignoring the animals. After too many disappointments, Tabitha gave up and just sadly watched them fly by.

They occasionally saw drowned animals in the water. Tabitha would sniff in their direction and whine. Peewee just remained in his John Wayne pose, poker faced, watching everything, not missing a thing and not revealing anything.

And so they floated on and on, sometimes sleeping, mostly just gazing. Tabitha had plenty of time to relax her tired muscles. The day passed into night and the night into day again and still they drifted. When morning dawned they found themselves in the middle of nothing but water. There was no land to be seen anywhere. They sailed on and on and eventually, in the afternoon, they saw land in the distance. A few more dreamy sleepy hours went by and, finally, their tree came to a stop. It had reached shallow water and its branches became grounded. Although they were by now very very hungry, both Peewee and Tabitha were at least rested.

Tabitha nervously stepped back and forth on the tree trunk, looked at Peewee, whined a little, looked at Peewee once more, and then very reluctantly jumped into the water. She wasn’t at all thrilled at the thought of having to swim again. But Tabitha knew that she had to eat, and that food wasn’t about to come to her as long as she stayed on the tree. Peewee, who had probably come to the very same conclusion, again leapt on to Tabitha’s back for the ride. After all, why get all wet if it isn’t absolutely necessary?

Luckily for Tabitha the swim didn’t last very long this time and soon she felt some land under the water. Her feet sank into a muddy muck, but she could walk instead of doggy paddle and trudging through that was certainly better than swimming. And besides she was a terrier dog, so muddy muck didn’t bother her all that much. In fact, if truth were told, the Old Man was convinced she actually loved the stuff, seeing how sometimes she would dig and roll and frolic in mud until she was totally and completely covered in it and she looked like someone else’s dog.

But for now the mud was under shallow water so Tabitha just plodded through the stuff with Peewee on her back. As they went along the water got shallower. Soon Peewee saw that Tabitha was pretty much out of the water so he hopped off of her back. What a mistake! Straight into the disgusting wet sticky earth! Evil, foul, revolting stuff it was. And he was up to his elbows in it! And to make matters even worse, as soon as she felt her back free of Peewee, Tabitha shook herself in that vigorous sort of way that only dogs can do, completely sliming Peewee with water and mud. Peewee was now almost as dirty and wet as Tabitha. As he took each step he tried to shake the muck off the paw he had just lifted. Step, shake, step shake. But it was no good. As soon as he put the paw back down it immediately became as revoltingly dirty as ever. There was no avoiding the vile disgusting stuff. Peewee was beyond humiliated. He was debased, degraded and thoroughly mortified.

Tabitha, on the other hand, was so happy to be out of the water (and free of a cat’s piggyback ride) that she bounced with a spring in her step as she made her way through the mud. The concept of bouncing through mud with a spring in the step was beyond Peewee’s comprehension. With a resigned and downcast face he dragged himself behind the frolicking dog.

Soon they were on dry ground. The two filthy animals looked around. They had landed in what seemed to have once been a suburb, but it was difficult to recognize much now. The streets here were a mess. Everything was a mess. Most of the houses had been heavily damaged or destroyed, smashed into thousands of little bits. Those left standing had walls and roofs leaning in different directions at all sorts of crazy angles with big gaping holes in between. Not many trees were left upright. Those that were had lost many branches and most of their leafs. There were haphazard piles of splintered lumber and plywood all over the place. It was hard to tell shattered tree wood from shattered house wood. Street signs and telephone poles stuck out of the piles of fragmented wood at odd angles. There was broken glass and crumpled metal everywhere. And strewn far and wide were all the things that people kept in their houses, the things that once made them a home: clothes, furniture, appliances, photographs, things that were useful, things that weren’t but were meaningful, all sorts of things. They were all garbage now.

The animals stopped and stared for a moment. They had never seen anything like it. This wasn’t the world they knew. There was something very wrong with this world. But the two were by now so dirty, unkempt and haggard looking they seemed to fit right in with their surroundings. And because they were so beyond being hungry or starving or famished they didn’t dwell on what they saw. Instead they immediately set off scavenging. They each trotted off to look for whatever they might find, but stayed well within sight of each other.

The pickings weren’t bad. The contents of knocked over garbage cans and wrecked kitchens were to be found scattered amongst all the debris. Tabitha discovered an unopened package of roasted peanuts under some wood planks. She held the bag in her paws and pried it open with her teeth. She was hungry enough to eat them, shells included. She next found a half eaten box of doughnuts. She wasn’t the kind of dog who likes sweets too much, but she gobbled them up anyway. She next found a package of ground meat, a little old and slightly smelly maybe (for a human), but excellent dining just the same (for a dog). After that, with her stomach pretty well satisfied, she was much pickier in her pickings.

Peewee meanwhile noticed a broken door leaning within some wood planks that had once been a wall. There was a gap between the door and the frame and Peewee gingerly squeezed through and found himself in the remains of a kitchen. The first thing he noticed, there among all the other stuff that had crashed on to the floor, was a bowl of fruit. And to his delight he found a crushed mango. Peewee immediately began to devour the fruit oozing out of its split peel. Cats aren’t supposed to like fruit, but Peewee always loved mangoes (and melons). As far as he was concerned he had just hit the jackpot. Before long, his entire face was covered with the yellow fruit (on top of the by now dry mud) and he purred contentedly. Moments later his face got even dirtier as he as he licked up some broken eggs.

An hour or two of scavenging provided the animals enough food to completely fill their stomachs. Feeling satiated and satisfied for the first time in two days, they trotted off down the street. After a while, as the lengthening shadows of the late afternoon slowly dissolved into dusk, they heard the sounds of an approaching car. Tabitha wagged her tail in anticipation. After all, a car meant humans which meant that just maybe it was the Old Man. Peewee, on the other hand, felt uneasy. He didn’t know why, but as the sound got closer he became unsettled and worried.