Running with Cats

By: James Paddock

Narrated by: Josiah John Bildner

Three women in black gaze over the cemetery during Zach’s memorial in Texas and then again later in Montana as they prepare to mix his ashes across Lake Tanya so that the two, Zach and Tanya, can finally be back together. It’s the events in between that have their daughters, Reba and Christi, wondering if they’re on the road to a future as old maid cat sisters. Then Jaxton and Myranda Burchfield knock on their door wanting their help in finding out their origins. Were they several of the cloned babies born in the bowels of Sans Sanssabre in the early '90s? Also, what ever happened to Lance Evans, Sans Sanssabre’s second in command? Was anything done with the property after the company went up in flames?

“Take us there,” Jaxton says while placing a jaw-dropping amount of money on the table. Christi is excited for no other reason than Jaxton is fine-looking, about her age, and has his own Gulfstream. As far as Reba goes, she’s not excited at all. It’d mean two things. First was that she’d be returning to where smilodon still live, the saber-toothed cats that at one time viewed Reba as their—putting one word to the description—queen. So what if there was Blackfeet in her family tree? That was five generations back. There was no way she was the spirit of Knifetooth Running Cat that was coming to take back the Blackfeet land. Second, and almost as troubling, was that returning to that part of Montana could mean having to possibly interact with Matt Shwartzberg again, the guy she lost to her best friend 12 years before.

As the Gulfstream’s wheels touch the runway in Kalispell, Montana, Reba tries to put all her apprehensions aside. What could possibly go wrong?

©2022 James Paddock (P)2022 James Paddock