Excerpt:

Branwen pulled her coat up around her ears a little as she walked out of the building and toward her apartment. She had no more classes for the day, and since Medieval Literature had gotten out around four, she had plenty of time for that nap she had mentioned before meeting back up with Gwyn for dinner. The only downside was that the walk across campus and then a couple of blocks afterwards was a little chilly, but she could deal with that. Being a little nippy now was much preferable to the bone freezing temperatures she knew were coming in the winter. Not even the fierce winds that had been blowing through the city all day came remotely close to how miserable winter could be.
‘Though that storm might be,’ Branwen thought, looking up at the dark clouds that the wind was carrying closer. As she looked back to where she was walking, pulling her coat around her even tighter out of reflex, she saw a cat out of the corner of her eye. Though she had seen some of the neighborhood cats around before, it was an unusual enough occurrence that she stopped to take a look at it. She knew better at this point than to try to approach it. Her freshman year she had always tried to walk up to the cats she saw and pet them, but now she was a junior, and she had learned that most of the cats were skittish due to a combination of being accosted by drunk students and the kind of rough neighborhood that surrounded campus. There was not a cat she had run into so far that had not fled as soon as she had tried to approach it, which is why it was such a surprise when the cat stood up and began to walk towards her.
Branwen stood very still, just in case the cat suddenly realized what it was doing and ran away after all. The cat approached her at a leisurely pace, stopping about two feet in front of her as if considering something before continuing forward to wind its way around Branwen’s ankles. Branwen looked down at it, trying to decide if it would maybe let itself be petted. The cat was mostly white, with markings that looked almost red on its ears, paws, nose, and the tip of its tail. As she was studying it, it looked up at her and gave a little meow. Slowly, hoping that it really was as friendly as it looked, Branwen crouched down and held out her hand, which the cat immediately rubbed its head against. She began to pet it in earnest, and though she wasn’t quite sure over the sound of the wind in the leaves rattling in the tree next to her, she could have sworn that the cat was purring.
All at once, the cat darted off. It ran across the street, sitting on the sidewalk opposite Branwen for a moment to look at her before disappearing around the corner of a house.
“Better find someplace warm to hide from the storm tonight, kitty,” Branwen muttered as she stood. She was about to continue her walk to her apartment when she heard someone calling her name. She turned back toward campus to see Gwyn jogging towards her.
“Hey, what are you doing out of class?” Branwen called.
“Are you kidding?” Gwyn replied, slightly out of breath as she came to a stop next to her friend. “It’s six thirty. I tried to call, but your cell phone was out of service. I was coming to check on you, I thought maybe you were still napping or something and would want to be woken up to eat.”
“Six thirty? But I just stopped for a second to pet a cat…” Branwen trailed off at the look of complete confusion and worry on Gwyn’s face. “Never mind, let’s go eat. How were your last two classes?”
As Gwyn began to complain about her philosophy professor, something that Branwen had heard about continually this term, Branwen glanced back to where she had seen the cat run off to. She could have sworn she saw the red tip of a tail disappearing once again around the house, but when she considered it she decided it was probably just a leaf, blown off its tree by the unending wind.