Stray Cat Strut
an excerpt

The year was 2027, and then it wasn’t.

Through the fabric of space and time, a large double-refrigerator traveled. On its front was a panel of numbers, glowing faintly in the darkness of space-time.

Space-time didn’t really have a colour, per se, but it didn’t exactly not have one either. It was something to looking at the back of one’s eyelids – was that darkness a colour when your eyes weren’t open to look at it?

Traveling refrigerators were commonplace nowadays. A hundred years ago, it would have been unthinkable, but now, many cats traveled in refrigerators. Not many cats were bounty hunters, however, like this one.

The year was 1943. Jairo Closs let the refrigerator settle to the ground as he shifted into his destination year and stretched out. That had taken him just under an hour and a half, which had given him enough time to take a brief nap before he went out and hunted down this character, Cemil Appotive.

Cemil was short, scrawny, blonde, and resembled a rat. Which was a good thing, seeing as he was one. He’d performed the illegal deed of gambling on greyhounds and was now under arrest. But no, he couldn’t come quietly, no. They never did. He instead decided to jump into a refrigerator and travel through time.

He was now fair game for any and all bounty hunters. Jairo Closs hoped another one hadn’t found him. He needed money to eat and pay rent, and this would pay well – it would probably cover him for at least a month.

Paying for bounties was a complicated, if slightly unfair situation. Usually based on one’s age, for every year you traveled, money was given or taken. If you traveled forward in time, you had to pay that much money, but traveling backwards allowed you to earn money. This was only if you were chasing bounties – traveling for fun allowed you to go forwards or back. After you had to pay a few times, though, traveling to the future lost its thrill, Jairo thought to himself without any humour. Jairo wasn't sure who had come up with the rules, someone who apparently had no clue how money worked, but that wasn't important now. No, that was Cemil.

Now, where was he?