SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - By Akif Pirincci Page 0,5

cockroaches. Plus they can’t penetrate solid matter like this douche bag keeps insisting, no, they shoot laser beams from their eyes!«

So much for the state of mind of the »guests« at this establishment.

»I already thought as much myself, honey«, I comforted her. »But it could be worse. Imagine you’d have to pay taxes!« I moved on.

A red colored fellow, who crossed my path and seemed somehow awake, was actually just giving his lifetime confessions.

»... and then Mommy said, don’t go too far from my teats, Otti, oh yeah, I remember very well that she said that, because in the backyard there are dogs, she said, you know what dogs are? My son, they are very big animals who make very big poop but in opposite to us don’t bury it so that humans will step in it which dogs find very funny, me too actually, Mommy said ...«

Gustav could as well have brought me to a nuthouse which by the way would have been much cheaper for him anyway, if I was interpreting his angry bargaining with the Night Witch correctly. A total waste of time and energy. Because I would have rather poisoned myself with the consumption of dog poop than to endure just a single hour with these morons. Therefore I instantly entered the next level of my plan.

Like I already mentioned, Gustav was very busy with persuading the old witch to give him a price deduction before the plane took off with him inside. Both didn’t pay any attention to me because naturally they assumed that there was no escape from this clink. But there was, and what a simple one!

Sweating and blushing from all the disputing stress, Gustav had put down the backpack next to his feet. The essential time slot seemed to have opened for me. During a couple of gasps I felt far away from the view of the two discomposed negotiators as well of the nuthouse inhabitants. The latter preferred to watch the various threats from outer space anyway. I sneaked to the welcome counter very slowly, and when finally I reached the striking distance of my can opener’s elephant feet, I was out of danger that anyone might notice my secret mission. So I crawled inside the open backpack and made myself comfortable.

After a while I heard through the fabric that apparently they agreed on a price and now exchanged some final pleasantry. Eventually, my absence got noticed, too. Gustav worried about that a little, but the villainous guard said that it was quite usual for newcomers, shocked by the change of territory, to hide underneath the platform for the first couple of hours. Hunger would then cause them to leave their hideouts for the food bowls. With that she produced a guttural sound like a hyena in darkest night, which apparently seemed to be wicked laughter. He should care about catching his plane, because usually it would take a short eternity to find his little friend’s hideout in the middle of this mazed arrangement. Gustav kept acting somewhat worried but in his mind seemed to be far away already. In short, he willingly swallowed this Everything-is-fine-message. Or to put it differently: My plan had succeeded. But when he actually showed the impertinence to protest full of hypocritical sadness, that he would have loved to say a dearest goodbye to his beloved Francis, I would have liked nothing better than jumping outside of this damn backpack right into his hippo face, sinking my sharpened claws into it with ultimate passion.

2.

The end of a friendship must be one of the most painful experiences a sensitive creature can have. Of course this doesn’t mean that one can’t exploit this friendship while it’s going down the drain as long as it’s still useful. Trapped in Gustav’s backpack I followed this motto, squeezed between dirty socks and underwear, which due to their size of a moist sky diving school could have easily rescued me from my misery. Relying on the Night Witch’s calming words far too willingly, my ex-friend had left »Guesthouse Paw« head over heals as if he was getting rid of his sickening grandpa at the nursing home.

But the grandpa was still close on his heals, respectively was stuck in his backpack in the backseat of his Citroën. On the way to the airport I was able to stick my head out a couple of times and watch the highway, which seemed to fly by like a monotonous movie, without being noticed myself. The