#RainbowSnippets 22-September-2018 – Of Rats and Cats

Posted on by Addison Albright 20 Comments

I’ve joined the Rainbow Snippets group on Facebook. From their description: “Rainbow Snippets is a group for LGBTQ+ authors, readers, and bloggers to gather once a week to share six sentences from a work of fiction–a WIP or a finished work or even a 6-sentence book recommendation (no spoilers please!).” Pretty cool, eh? Don’t forget to “Like” my Facebook page and/or my Facebook profile while you’re over there checking out this fantastic group!

This week I’m once again snipping from Of Rats and Cats, a comedic short story that’ll be coming out at JMS Books sometime in November.

Blurb (tentative):

All he wanted to do was retrieve his newspaper, but Raymond is panic-stricken when a rat dashes through his open apartment door. No worries, though. Pandy is on the job! Except Kevin doesn’t want Raymond’s cat to eat his beloved pet…mouse.

Can Kevin rescue Corky before Pandy gets to her? Will Raymond’s upturned box of…um… personal toys and videos drive Kevin away, or will the pile of filigree undies Corky has burrowed into turn Kevin on?

No context needed, this is the opening scene. Note, the story is unedited at this time, so everything is subject to change. For an easy refresher of last week’s post, which began this thread, toggle open the spoiler tag, below.

Told from Raymond’s 3rd-person POV:

Of Rats and Cats – 15-September-2018

“Okay, already.” Raymond Gardner yawned, opened his eyes, and gave the short-haired tortoiseshell cat a scratch behind her ears to take the edge off the grumble in the tone he’d directed at her. Clearly, he wasn’t going to be able to ignore the wet nose determinedly nudging him, let alone the piteous caterwauling. He rubbed his neck where she’d been kneading and gave himself a mental kick in the ass for not trimming her claws when he’d thought of it yesterday.

He rolled to check the time on his phone, then flopped back onto his pillow with a groan and what his ex-boyfriend, Leon, would have called a drama-queen maneuver—although frankly, Raymond didn’t consider throwing a forearm across his eyes to be all that theatrical.

“Daylight Savings Time has been over for a month, Pandy. Get with the program.” But Raymond sat and stuffed his feet into his slippers anyway, because once Pandemonium decided it was feeding time, she wasn’t going to let up until the deed was done.

This week’s snippet:

Of Rats and Cats – 22-September-2018

She could wait until he’d shuffled into the bathroom to take care of business first, though. That was part of their routine, and Pandy apparently knew she’d already won, so she quit yowling and didn’t try to trip him while he peed and brushed his teeth.

After washing his hands, he filled the tea kettle and put it on the stove to heat before putting a fresh scoop of cat food into Pandy’s food bowl and replacing the water in the other. That was also customary procedure, so the cat tolerated the delay, although she seemed to glare from where she sat impatiently waiting. It was hard to tell if it was truly a glower, since it was the same expression she wore while purring whenever he scratched behind her ears.

Teaser 02

Of Rats and Cats is a short story, meet-cute, detailing the humorous get-together of two otherwise regular guys, leading average lives. The story ends with a solid happy-for-now where we are left to imagine them continuing their relationship as they traipse, without further issue, toward their eventual HEA.

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