Grass tickled his paws as he bounded out onto the lawn, taking deep breaths of fresh morning air. His tail was lifted high in the air behind him as he raised his nose to the sky, smelling the fresh after-rain scent and the dew heavy with the sweet fragrance of magnolia flowers. A ceiling of fog stretched high overhead, filtering the morning sunlight down to a gentle gray glow.
Cody barked and turned in a circle, prancing up and down with the sheer joy that every new day brought. He trotted around the perimeter of the yard, checking every leaf and flower wet with dew to make sure no deleterious acts had been carried out during the night. Finding nothing but a spiderweb hanging delicately between two white irises, he lay down in the wet grass, tail thumping against the ground as he stared out at the quiet street in front of him.
The fluffy black lab mix groaned as he lowered his head to the ground. He was beginning to feel age in his joints whenever he got up to play or sprint laps around the yard. The hairs around his nose had whitened until it looked like a minor snowstorm had happened just on the very tip of his muzzle. He sighed, bones aching.
“Hey, Cody! Hey, hey, Cody!”
A large German Shepard stood with her paws on the fence, tail wagging furiously. Despite being only a puppy, she was two times the size of Cody and twenty times more aggressive, snapping and snarling at anyone who went by. Cody instinctively shied away from her, despite her apparent good mood.
Ziva, the German Shepard, took no notice. “Do you want to play with me?” she panted, dropping off the fence to stare at him through the wrought iron bars. “I dragged the hose all the way over here. If we can get it through the fence, we can chew holes in it together!”
That sounded like a terrible idea to Cody. Unlike Ziva, he had never had any destructive tendencies, and the one time he had decided to chew up the hose he had discovered that it was an activity often associated with sudden spurts of water.
“What an awful idea,” said a bush that covered part of the fence. “You’ll get all wet.”
Despite its condescending tone, Cody privately agreed with the voice.
Ziva had different opinions. “Who are you? Show yourself!” she snarled, racing around in circles. “Come out or I’ll have your ears!” She pulled her lips back into a threatening leer, showing ivory teeth as sharp as a razor.
“No need for all that,” oozed the voice with mock hurt, and then the branches parted and a grayish-brown tabby cat strolled lazily out onto the fence. She looked as comfortable as can be on the precarious metal railing, her white paws padding along without so much as a waver.
“Oh, hullo, Runtling,” Cody said, sitting up. He stretched into a play-bow, warming up the muscles in his back before walking over to the fence. “You don’t usually come out this far.”
“Doing some morning yoga, there?” she said as way of a reply. “Some downward dog?”
“Hardy har har,” Cody responded, sitting down heavily. Runtling stared down at him out of amber eyes.
Meanwhile, Ziva had gone mad. “Come down here, cat!” she snarled, hopping from side to side like a maniac. “How dare you cross my yard?” Runtling and her sister, Tigger, lived on the opposite side of Ziva’s house.
Runtling daintily lifted one paw off the fence and began grooming it. “Your shed’s getting a bit overgrown with moss,” she said between licks. “You might want to tell your owners to check that.”
Runtling’s failure to faint in terror at Ziva’s threats infuriated her beyond reason, sending her quite literally into a tailspin. Ziva jumped up on the fence once more, her fangs suddenly inches from Runtling’s nose. The tabby jumped to her feet, fur fluffed up in shock.
“Easy, easy!” she said, struggling to regain her cool, indifferent confidence. “Are you a dog or a jackal?” Runtling gingerly reached out and pushed Ziva’s paws off the fence.
Ziva popped back up like a jack-in-the-box, but her rage had subsided enough that she simply stared at Runtling hungrily instead of attempting to relieve her of her head. The tabby cat ignored her, turning instead to talk to Cody.
They chatted for a while about this and that, discussing the impending rainstorm and the state of Runtling’s backyard. Ziva eventually took her paws off the fence, settling down in the grass to gnaw on the hose. Runtling relaxed noticeably after that.
Runtling was just finishing a great speech about her human’s lack of care for her lawn (“How can I be expected to sleep on anything that dry and prickly?”) when she was hit from behind with an explosion of water. Her eyes grew as big as moons, her fur spiking up like soldiers frenzied by a surprise bomb from the enemy. She let out an unholy shriek, flying off the fence like she was propelled by all the demons of hell. Cody got a full face of white belly fur as Runtling clawed her way over his head.
Ziva let out a great howl of laughter, prancing back and forth on her side of the fence. Her paws splashed in the puddle forming from the water still pouring out of the puncture she had put in the hose, but she paid the flying drops little heed. “I got you! I got you!” she hollered, tail whipping so fast Cody thought it might spin off. “I totally got you!”
Cody barked and backed up a few steps, retreating from the water that was now spilling under the fence. Runtling still clung to his back, her eyes rolling crazily in her head. He sprinted foreword, all thoughts of old age and creaking joints forgotten, and sailed over the fence.
He plowed right into Ziva, the surprised German Shepard stumbling back a few steps. His paws skidded in the mud puddle created by the broken hose, sending globs of muck into his coat. Runtling squeaked and flattened herself farther into his fur, protecting herself from the worst of the shower.
She pushed off his back, managing to land in a dry patch of grass. “You’ll pay for this, dog!” she hissed, eyes narrowed to slits. Her fur still stuck up in wet spikes, mud now dappling the back of her head. With a final snarl, she leaped into the bush beside them and clawed her way up onto the fence, disappearing into the greenery.
Ziva was too caught up in her moment of victory to be too annoyed at Runtling’s threat. “Woo! Yeah! Serves you right! Get out of here, cat!” she shouted with glee, still sending miniature geysers into the air. Cody blinked as a splash of water caught him in the eye.
Now that the adrenaline had faded, age had kicked in and the black dog knew from the aching in his bones there was no way he could jump the fence again. He flopped down in the wet grass with a sigh.
So that was how his owner found him — muddied, wet, and on the wrong side of the fence, thumping his tail on the ground in apology.