(((A/N: Sorry for the short update in the previous chapter. I just couldn't find a good cutting point. Here's a much longer one.)))
The Oddest-Looking Cat You've Ever Seen:
About five minutes down the road, Carley came upon a sign welcoming her to Portland, Maine. Another five minutes brought her to Augusta, and then Bangor five minutes after that.
Carley began to wonder how there were so many fake signs that were put in place as a prank that had not been removed by the authorities yet. Sure, every time she saw these signs, there appeared to be cities in the distance that disappeared a minute later, but she was convinced this was just the same city, disappearing behind trees every few minutes.
She began to realize something was up about two minutes after passing the sign for Calais. She came upon what appeared to be a border crossing, with the Stars and Stripes right next to the Canadian flag. Taking a map out of her backpack, she noticed that Calais was indeed a border town, crossing to St. Stephen, New Brunswick. She saw that the name of the river identified on the bridge to the border crossing was the St. Croix, the same as on the map.
Carley thought out loud, Ait would probably be pretty difficult to make a fake border crossing right in the middle of a main road. She put the kickstand down on her bike and leaned against it. "So if Ive actually encountered a plot hole, how did that happen?"
As Carley pondered what she was pondering, movement in her peripheral vision caught her attention. She turned toward the distraction, and almost returned to her previous gaze when her first glance identified it as just a cat, but turned back when her subconscious processed the information and pointed out an important fact.
"Since when do cats have blue and yellow fur?" she said out loud.
Since the cat was on a sidewalk about 100 feet away, Carley thought she must be having an optical illusion, but taking a closer look at the cat confirmed the colours. Aside from what appeared to be black, there were indeed blue and yellow regions on the cat. She could swear that one of the yellow markings formed a crescent shape, reminiscent of a moon, but in her mind this was surely just a coincidence.
Regardless, the first thought that came to her mind was, "that has to be the oddest-looking cat Ive ever seen."
Suddenly, a huge dog with a spiked collar (((A/N: pick your least favorite breed…unless that's a Chihuahua))) appeared from behind a bush and began running toward the odd-looking cat. Even more oddly, the cat didn't appear fazed, and stood still. Carley saw that the cat actually looked rather bored, and even rolled her eyes. But Carley was too concerned to care, since she felt that she was about to see a cat mauled to death by a dog because it was apparently too stupid or clueless to run.
"Oh, no!" she said. "That poor kitty is going to get mauled!" reiterating the previous paragraph's description of thought.
As the dog approached, the cat reared up on her hind legs and reached behind her back. Of course, cats can't reach behind their backs with their front paws, a fact that wasn't lost on Carley.
The dog jumped into the air a few feet before the cat, its jaws open, snarling, and drooling. The cat raised her arms (((A/N: or, front legs?))) above her head to abruptly reveal a wooden mallet much larger than her size, which she used to bash the dog in the head, immediately rendering it unconscious.
Carley started wondering what could possibly have been in the iced tea she drank earlier.
The cat put her hands back behind her back, and when the reemerged, the mallet was gone. She moved toward the dog, still on her hind legs as if she was bipedal. She leaned against the dog, reached behind her back again with one hand, and produced a nail file out of thin air. She then, of course, began to sharpen her nails, simply because this is one of the things that toons do after defeating a villain. Carley swore she saw and heard the cat nonchalantly whistling as well.
The black, blue, and yellow cat looked up at Carley and casually waved hello. That was enough to break Carley's near-trance, and she bolted in the other direction.