"What's up Max!" Roxy greets me. The Earth of 3082 is a lot different from the one 1000 years ago. In 2164, a plague struck the Earth which wiped out all humans and animals, except dogs. Now we are all the 'top dog' on the newly named 'Planet Woof '. Roxy is one of my best friends, and one of the best professional fetch players in the world.

"Not much Roxy. How was your competition."

"It went okay," she replied, which for any other dog meant that it was an amazing performance, "I didn't return the ball to the robotic thrower fast enough and took third place."

"That's great, Roxy!" I try to cheer her up, "I would be dead last in that competition." My breed was a dachshund and our legs are very short, so we're slower than most dogs.

"The dog who took first place looked suspiciously like those oddly delicious looking things in our history textbooks," Roxy responded, "What are they called?"

"Cats," I supplied her with the word, "The old fashioned way to get in exercise was to chase them."

"Yeah, those," she responded, a far off look in her eyes, "I'm going to investigate." Then she ran off.

"Wait!" I yipped at her, but she was already too far away to hear me. I was going to have to follow her scent to catch up to her.

A few hours later, after following her scent around bends and curves, I stopped outside the Pawsh Hotel, the place that houses the visiting athletes for the fetch competitions. The first place dog must be staying here, I thought to myself, as I pushed the doors open. I stopped at the front desk and asked if they had seen an athletic Great Dane.

"One just went up to the third floor, room 228," the clerk told me. Excited, I ran upstairs to the room he told me, and found Roxy standing in the doorway of the room, blocking the escape of another dog.

"Tell me where the others are!" Roxy snarled, "or else I'm telling the cops." She stomped a paw down to get her point across. I was wondering why Roxy was threatening another dog, until the dog's floppy ears fell off to reveal pointed ones, like those of a cat's. Suddenly, I knew what was going on.

"We have been in hiding since the apocalypse," the cat said, "With no humans to pamper us and take care of us, we felt hopeless, but when we heard about you dogs living your best life up here, we had to investigate." Suddenly, more cats appeared from vents and under tables.

"We wanted to investigate to see if we could take over," a vicious looking cat snarled. Then they charged.

The apparent leader, a flat-faced ball of dark and white calico fuzz, sat on her haunches with a villainous smirk as the wave of fur rushed around her.

The cats darted in and out and between Roxy's pillar-like legs, just quickly enough to avoid the flashing snaps of her teeth. Roxy spun and snipped and barked in frustration, catching nothing but air, empty strands of fur, or, once, her own tail. They prodded and nipped at her heels until she was a sweaty mess. Tired, her feet tangled and the massive Dane came crashing to the floor.

I still stood down the hall, in shock and frozen on my shaking stubs of legs. Roxy was the strong one. She was the one that won trophies. That could reach things on the top shelf. Dane and Dachshund. She was top dog, and I was barely a dog. And these evil critters had just taken her down.

In two sniffs, the mob of felines took up the end of the hall carpet and rolled Roxy into a great helpless burrito. For extra measure, a slinking black cat with ghostly green eyes snatched a lampshade from the room to stuff over Roxy's still dangerous muzzle.

The leader approached the Great Dane with calm menace.

"I don't think you'll be calling the Shepherds," she said. Roxy growled through her bound maw, and the calico slapped the lampshade and Roxy's head back to the floor. "You're about to be cat chow."

There was a weak creaking noise, like the trusses of a bridge about to crumble, and every cat spun toward me, their slitted gold or green eyes piercing into whatever part of my brain had just made me, I realized, whimper like a pup.

A fat bi-color looked to the calico. "We can't have witnesses, Bubbles."

Bubbles sneered as if she'd spotted a rat in her food. Before she could speak, Green-Eyes purred, "Oh, good. Hors d'oeuvres."

A mangy tabby casually licked her paw like she was washing up before a meal. Another flexed his claws into the door jamb, and the image of a chef honing his knife on steel came to mind. Green-Eyes grinned and began stalking toward me across the carpet like a plume of noxious smoke.

Move, Max... Move!

There were so many of them, and most nearly as big as me. I looked at Roxy's bulk wrapped in the rug and whined again, despite myself.

Green-Eyes loaded his weight to pounce.

Bubbles let out a commanding hiss, just as the ding of the arriving elevator sounded behind me.