09/12/98 (Short Story)

December 9th, 1998

The forest is abnormally quiet today.

Besides the blizzard that hit of course. It’s calmed down a lot but it’s still going. Hard to see anything, and I can’t see the other watch towers yet. Everyone made it through fine thankfully. Rich said he heard some weird noises but we all agreed the loneliness was getting to him. It’s getting to all of us, truth be told.

I took a little walk through the fresh snow, not sure why but I’m glad I did. It reminded me of home in a way, and I found a cat.

A little trail of blood leading to the tiniest kitten lying on top of the snow, too small to even indent it. It was hurt, looked like it had been placed there by someone but there weren’t any tracks around either. I still can’t shake the feeling that I was being watched out there, though.

I took the cat back into my tower and warmed him up. I have no clue how he’s still alive or how long he was out there but by the time I’m writing this he’s already walking again - albeit slowly and stumbling. I couldn’t seem to pinpoint where the blood was coming from on him, almost like it wasn’t from him.

I named him Gatito, anyone reading this is welcome to suggest better names for him of course, that’s just all I could think of in the moment. He’s a little grey and white cat, a tabby I think. As soon as I get the chance I’m going to take him to a vet of course, but I can’t get very far with the storm still going so I don’t know how long it’ll be.

Eve just called in while I was writing, apparently there’s people camping out here or something in the middle of the storm. She saw some guy wandering near her tower and it freaked her out. It’s possibly they’re the one who dropped Gatito here, but why? And who in their right mind would go out camping in this weather? The parks long closed, us watchmen are the only ones supposed to be out here.

I’ll keep this blog updated best I can, maybe a little more frequently to update up about Gatito, plus anything else interesting.