Jake had no love for cats. Especially the one in his home. Of course, it wasn’t explicitly his cat. It was his roommate’s cat: a black and white stray that he’d adopted a number of years ago. But since his roommate was away for a few weeks, the cat was Jake’s responsibility. Each day, he fed her, changed her water, cleaned out her litter box (with far more frequency than his roommate ever did). Small additions to his daily routine that didn’t actually require a lot of effort. No, the real effort came at night, when the cat would get lonely. It happened almost like clockwork. Around 3am, he’d hear her outside his bedroom door. Mee-yow… mee-Yow… mee-YOW… This plaintive,…

Nightfall. A mother and daughter walk into a hotel lobby, dragging their entire lives in a pair of suitcases behind them. The Daughter is about 13 years old; a carrier bag slung over her shoulder with a lap dog inside; she looks like she’s been crying for hours. The Mother is in her mid- to late-30s; she quietly carries her own burdens that make her look over her shoulder with extra caution. They both wear that tired, haunted expression of people who have been driving all day under the worst imaginable circumstances. They have hit a wall of exhaustion and this nameless, unexceptional airport hotel is the closest thing they can find to respite. In the background, a few people…