After a long day at the restaurant, you were taking out the trash, ready to head home. Your boss had given you a three-day weekend, mainly to avoid paying you overtime, but you were more than happy to take it. When you opened the back door by the dumpster, you noticed a faint shadow in the light. It was nothing out of the ordinary; raccoons and stray dogs often wandered over to scavenge the discarded food that had to be tossed because of a 'freshness policy'. As you tossed the bag into the trash, you glanced over at the shadow lingering nearby.

Forget it—you had been thinking about getting a cat for a while, and this one didn’t seem feral; it stayed perfectly still, or at least its shadow did. You shut the dumpster and crouched down, peering around the dumpster, ready to grab a cat by the scruff and pull it close- but instead. . it was another person. A green backpack, typing on a computer.