The Year of the Cat: A Cat of Strange Lands: The Year of the Cat, #4

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Dean Wesley Smith, Annie Reed and 6 more

Cats roam everywhere on the planet. Everywhere. Their breed names often betray their place of origin—or their strange origin story in some now-lost land.

This collection honors that feline diversity in odd ways as much as possible. And the strange lands that cats not only originate from, but find themselves in.

These cats prowl in a witch's hut, an enchanted shop, post-apocalyptic cities such as Las Vegas and Seattle, as well as across an ancient land where they once ruled as gods.

Come settle in for a journey through the kitty-cat cosmos.

Includes:

"Cat Web" by Meyari McFarland

"Burning Bright" by Leigh Saunders

"The Poop Thief" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

"Cat in a Different Place" by Dean Wesley Smith

"A Silly Question" by E. Nesbit

"The Witch's Cat" by Manly Wade Wellman

"Life, with Cats" by Annie Reed

"Night of the Hogtied Alien" by Stefon Mears

"Fur Tsunami" by Kent Patterson

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Aug 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393597773

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

Book preview

The Year of the Cat: A Cat of Strange Lands

The Year of the Cat: A Cat of Strange Lands

Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch

WMG Publishing, Inc.

Contents

Introduction

Cat Web

Meyari McFarland

Burning Bright

Leigh Saunders

The Poop Thief

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Cat in a Different Place

Dean Wesley Smith

A Silly Question

E. Nesbit

The Witch’s Cat

Manly Wade Wellman

Life, With Cats

Annie Reed

Night of the Hogtied Alien

Stefon Mears

Fur Tsunami

Kent Patterson

About the Editor

About the Editor

Introduction

Cats are everywhere on the planet. Everywhere: and their breed names often tell of the place they originated from in general. Or their strange origin story in some now-lost land.

For example, right now Kris and I have a cat named Cheeps. He is white with orange coloring, which makes him a red-point for his breed, which is Birman.

Birmans are rumored to have originated in Burma as temple cats, but their true history started in France in 1919. He is our second Birman and it is amazing how a breed’s traits hold from cat to cat, even while their personalities are different.

So, with this collection, we wanted to honor that diversity of cats in odd ways as much as possible. And the diversity of locations that cats not only originate from, but find themselves in.

Here are titles of the twelve volumes of cat stories we are putting together.

--- Book One

A CAT OF A DIFFERENT COLOR

--- Book Two

A CAT OF PERFECT TASTE

--- Book Three

A CAT OF DISDAINFUL LOOKS

--- Book Four

A CAT OF STRANGE LANDS

--- Book Five

A CAT OF COZY SITUATIONS

--- Book Six

A CAT OF SPACE AND TIME

--- Book Seven

A CAT OF HEROIC HEART

--- Book Eight

A CAT OF ROVING NATURE

--- Book Nine

A CAT OF ARTISTIC SENSIBILITIES

--- Book Ten

A CAT OF FANTASTIC WHIMS

--- Book Eleven

A CAT OF FERAL INSTINCTS

--- Book Twelve

A CAT OF ROMANTIC SOUL

---

As with the previous volumes, it was not difficult to find stories to fit this title, especially since cats are strange just in general. In fact, the really hard job was to cut down the number of stories to nine.

We hope you’ll enjoy the ones we did decide to go with.

Enjoy the ride.

---

Dean Wesley Smith

Las Vegas, Nevada

Cat Web

Meyari McFarland

Kris says that Meyari McFarland’s story in this volume is one of the most creative science fiction worlds she has ever seen, and that is going some considering Kris edited The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction for six years.

Meyari lives up in the really, really wet area of Washington State and says she enjoys it, which in my opinion makes her perfect for writing really wonderful and dystopian science fiction.

Rain dripped down the back of Eko’s neck, carried across space on a crisscrossing web of wires, ropes, bridges, belts, and the ever-present blackberry brambles that had turned the Web above Drowned Seattle into a hanging garden. Never failed, she’d pull her collar up and close to her neck, tug the brim of her hat down to overlap it and not three seconds later a drop of rain would find its way into her coat.

Soaked to the skin, that’s what she was. Life’d be better if she had a cat’s fur. At least then she could be wet and not cold and miserable.

Again.

Had to be the fiftieth time in the last hour of hauling her catch up from the sea so far below. Just as annoying this time as it was the first dozen times, but there was no point whatsoever to fussing over it. Much as Eko wanted to sometimes.

The rain would keep falling. The sea would keep rising. The rich assholes who’d destroyed the world would keep right on leaving Earth for their shiny new space stations, leaving the trash and the wrecked climate to everyone else.

Especially the cats.

That was definitely the upside of the end of the world: all the cats were now free to live their lives. Eko hummed as she slid her Blake’s knot upwards, all her weight on her feet. Slide a foot up, stand and secure, shift the knot, repeat a million times until her legs shook and she had to hang in the harness, rotating her feet and shaking her arms out.

It was slow, patient work, only necessary because Eko was, sadly, much larger than her cats. They had a beautiful trail up into the Web. She still hadn’t sussed it all out yet, not that Eko could walk that trail even if she was fifty years younger.

Minx was the one easiest to track as she clambered up wires and through brambles. She’d chirp and mrrp at Eko, stopping and watching until she was certain that Eko’d made it up past whatever obstacle had slowed her down.

City, the little devil, never waited or cared if Eko was doing all right. He just dashed ahead and yowled when Eko finally found his stubby tail caught on a power converter that he didn’t want to jump from, or hidden away in a blackberry bramble that’d sprouted out of a tiny pocket of debris left by the wind and weather.

Mrrr.

You hush, City, Eko told him as she rested. I’m almost home. You’ll get your fish heads soon enough.

His eyes narrowed at her as he licked his chops. Not the brightest of kits, her City, but he sure understood fish. Whoever’d taken his tail deserved to be tossed from the highest spire right down into the sea for the great whites and giant Pacific octopus to eat. How’s a cat supposed to jump when he has no tail to counterbalance?

Minx chirped at Eko, long plume of a tail swishing as she chivied City into their dangling shelter.

Yes, yes, I’ll be right there, dear, Eko replied. No fussing. I’m almost home.

Minx rumbled a quick purr, watching as Eko started working on heading back upwards again. The wires supporting and stabilizing their shelter were a complicated web in their own right. Her climbing rope threaded through them in the one safe place for a woman and backpack-basket full of fish.

Eko and Hildred had needed help from those nice boys just up the Web to make sure the attachments were secure. They hadn’t been a bunch of help on the hauling of discarded bits of metal roofing and cannibalized aluminum struts for the floor and walls, but the boys had been kind enough to loan Eko and Hildred tools to work with.

In return, Eko always made a point of giving them a fish or two when she caught some. Come spring, when the rains eased up to foggy mist and the winds died down to a whisper instead of a howl that set the whole web to vibrating, Eko would plant a huge hanging garden off all their struts, complete with nice little rope bridges so that it would be easy to tend the plants and harvest what grew. So many food plants grew well in salvaged bits of plastic and tin that they’d have food to share with their whole neighborhood.

Such as it was.

Hard to call it a neighborhood when they all lived hanging from wires and struts hundreds of feet apart so that no one home would put too much stress on any given part of the Web. Weren’t enough support struts and wires, yet, for living cheek-to-jowl the way they would have back when Seattle wasn’t underwater. Made for a strange life, hanging in mid-air and living on the bits and pieces you could cobble together, catch, or grow.

Strange or not, it was a home, and a better one than living on the land had been back when Eko was young. There were lots of people living better lives since the rich people had fled. Made the world a better place the day they blasted off into outer space. When the next few shipments left, the world would be better still.

It wouldn’t fix the rising sea water drowning Seattle. Wouldn’t fix the storms that blew in constantly now that the Olympic Peninsula was a fraction of the size it used to be. It would, hallelujah—as her idiot of a husband used to say back before she pushed him off the Aurora Bridge to drown once and for all—keep them from making things worse.

How much you bringing up? Hildred’s head popped out from their front door. More of a sliding door in front of a tiny step that Eko was slowly climbing up to. I thought you’d planned on catching a couple of fish. You’re moving so slow I’d think you’d caught twice your own weight.

The salmon are running, Eko called up to her. She laughed as Hildred frowned and set to work putting on a harness so that she wouldn’t fall straight down from their suspended little nest into the rising seas below. It’s quite the sight. I got a bunch and they’re heavy, but I’ll get there yet. Don’t you move, girl. You’ve still got a sprained ankle.

It’s not that bad, Hildred complained with a thunderous scowl. And don’t call me girl. I’m only two years younger’n you, you old biddie.

Two years count, Eko said, cheerfully enough that Hildred threw a thorn-backed blackberry leaf at her and pulled her head back into their nest.

It was a nice nest, especially since they’d encouraged the blackberries to spread overtop of the domed roof. A little extra weatherproofing plus luscious big blue-black fruits to harvest just outside the door. Hildred hadn’t been all that certain about it at first, but now she seemed happy with it. Eko’d known it would work from the beginning. She’d lived under a bramble before they’d gathered enough wire and steel to start building. The dome was nicely familiar, like her old tent, but much sturdier. And safer, too.

It was amazing how the thorns kept everything but cats and mice out, all while the leaves protected their things from other people’s sight.

It’d taken six women, including Eko and Hildred, almost three months to pull everything they’d salvaged up from what was left of Seattle below. The rich people who’d left, they’d built the spires and towers and support struts so that they could stay above the waves that washed higher and higher every year. They’d built lovely little self-contained cities in their spires, rock-solid bases dug deep into the bedrock and reinforced by every means rich people could imagine.

Hadn’t taken long before they got bored and lonely, though, so they’d made the first bridges between the spires. Bridges and the glitzy tram that was now mold-stained and mildew-dimmed, and then zip lines for the younger rich folk who had a taste for doing dangerous things.

Took the common folk realizing that they were gonna drown, outright, for the Web to form. They’d raided every building, every factory, everything they could find in Seattle. What they’d found, they’d dragged upwards, parasiting off the sides of the spires like mistletoe that sucked the life from a tree while it gave the tree a whole new look.

Whole new fruit.

Eko hadn’t particularly wanted to live suspended up in the Web. Hadn’t had much of a choice of it when the cats outright moved out of her battered and perpetually damp tent hidden in the blackberry brambles at the top of Capitol Hill. She’d followed the cats, met Hildred, and found a place where she could just be.

You know, once they had their nest built.

Five hundred square feet of space suspended between two close spires looming above Capitol Hill. They were finally properly screened from the elements, water-tight and wind-tight, too. Best home Eko had ever had in her whole life.

It might not seem like a home to most. And in truth, she and Hildred had only just gotten the worst of the drafts closed off. Insulation made of cast-off Styrofoam and fabric shoved into the cracks before they covered up the struts with a patchwork of wood scraps and steel roofing in many weathered colors.

The roof did still leak in the corner closest to their makeshift kitchen, but putting a nice little spout in and a water-catch basin with a good charcoal filter had turned that into a benefit instead of a drawback. The cats always had fresh water to drink.

Hildred missed real beds with real mattresses. Said that a hammock couldn’t be as comfortable, no matter how many cats and blankets you packed into it.

Eko loved it. Her cats loved it. Hildred’s cats loved it. The hammock was the best sleep she’d ever gotten, swaying with their breath and the wind and the sweep of the cats’ tails, curled up in Hildred’s arms. It was good.

Even if she did have to haul fish up from the ocean below every few days. There was precious little electricity in their little home, certainly not enough coming from their improvised solar panels to power a fridge. Or, if Eko was going to dream, a freezer. Man, that’d be living, there. No way it was happening, sadly.

Well, pass it over, Hildred said once Eko made it up to the step.

Hold your horses, Eko grumbled at her. Or turn me around and take the basket off my back. It’s over the harness so it should be easy. No stressing that ankle, though. No doctor to come up here if you break it outright.

Hildred glared at Eko, the wrinkles going canyon-deep around her mouth. She didn’t reply, only turned Eko around and then helped ease the heavy basket full of gutted and kelp-wrapped salmon off Eko’s back.

Felt like getting a whole new set of lungs and a new spine