I told you about the time, didn't I?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

People up in the North end of the West Hills can't keep cats around. They can have them, of course, but they have to keep them inside or they disappear. They'll tell you it's because of coyotes, and it's true that coyotes do live in the park, along with other things. There are owls and bobcats and small black bears, and the feral people, of course... most people prefer to call them "homeless encampments", because it sounds nicer. Easier to digest, more manageable. And there are the actual homeless encampments, on the fringes of the forest.

But everybody who lives there and anybody who's listened to the stories, especially the stories the scared old men tell when they come tumbling out of the woods and into town to panhandle for enough fortified malt liquor to pass out in the grassy planting strips of the inner-city neighborhoods until the police to come and take them to a cell overnight. They talk about one of their number they call Old Weird Ben, only they say Old Weird Ben doesn't camp with them. They don't know where he camps, but they come across him sometimes, and even though he seems kindly enough something about him scares them. He has a fondness for cats, they say, but the way they say it makes it sound like it isn't something nice.

So this time I'm talking about, I might have told you about it before... my friend was out walking, and he got a wild hair to walk up one of the old abandoned roads that leads into the park, just to see what's there. He hops the barricade and strolls on up the road, which is all cracked with moss and grass growing on it, on its way to being reclaimed by the forest, and rounds a corner to see a bunch of old foundations. He'd happened on one of the old subdivisions, either one that got torn down or one of the ones that never got finished. As he got closer to the foundations, he noticed that there were little tin cans on them, everywhere. Then he saw a cat. And another cat. And they started coming at him, just heading right for him, and one after another joined in until he said there were probably close to two dozen cats running toward him.

At that point he just turned and ran. He looked back once after he rounded the corner, and didn't see any cats, but kept running all the way back to the main road just to be sure. He won't go back and he won't tell me where it was at, but I think I have a pretty good idea.

What I have no idea about is what on earth Old Weird Ben wants with all those cats. 

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Bravo!

I hope to find out why.

Then again, I'm MILES away. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It's a funny thing... if you live here, it's just a given that there used to be plans for the city to extend up into the North end of the West Hills, and that there was a planned subdivision up Leif Erickson Drive. We all know that those plans were abandoned, in some cases after roads were put in, bridges build, and foundations poured, but for some reason nobody ever seems to wonder why. I know I certainly haven't.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

I'm not sure where fiction ends and fact begins. *squee/shudder!*

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

My friend who ran into the cats is Rude, who I used to date.

There's a lot of WTF in Portland.

[Richter]

Civilization is a gift.  Like air.
You can spend your life immersed in the stuff, and never even know it until the sudden, breathtaking (har har) absence of it.  It's really more of an effect.  A sort of mind trick played on the world, so it lies in one pace, nice and still.  Or at least only moves slow and cagey, at a pace that might be mistaken for urban decay.  "Country", "Wilds" or "Frontier" are not far and hard away things.  Just break line of sight enough.

You'll know when you're outside of it.  Well, you might.  That faint exhilaration when you step into the woods.  The dawning terror that a broken ankle outside of voice, phone, or sight of passing people may just end you.  That cat-kill curiosity. 

Thing is, recently this effecg has needed less and less permission to waltz in on our places.  We've forgotten WHAT we drove back with walls and fire.  What we pacified and bounded with roads and plow, what we cowed with guns and cars.  It hasn't forgotten us though.

[I_Kicked_Kennedy]

Agreed.

First, the bees.

Soon after, the squirrels attack our eyes.

After some angel trumpets (7, or so), dolphins and mushrooms create civilization from the ashes.

[I_Kicked_Kennedy]

But first, the bees.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I never trusted cats.  They always look at you, sizing you up...AND DRINKING YOUR BOOZE.

So, one day, you go RIGHT when you were supposed to go LEFT, and you wind up in one of THOSE places, and the cats pile on you and devour you.  Rudy has good instincts...When shit goes sideways, don't think...Rely on your primate instincts and RUN.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yep.

This is not a man prone to running. He's curious, he's exploratory. But his gut said GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE, and he listened.

I'm glad he did, because we'd never have found him. People disappear around here all the time, and there are parts of that park no one's set foot on in decades. Or more.