She got the hint.
Who: Katniss What: A morning in the life Where: Her home Status: complete Rating: PG-13 for ugly cats
Soon she'd have to get Prim up and ready for school. Coax her mother out of bed, though that had gotten easier the past few years. Even more recently when her mother had gotten a job. Leaving Nevada had been the best thing they'd done.
Katniss remembered the dead, glassy look in her mother's eyes as she'd bled away her father's death benefits into the loud, obnoxious slot machines. The hatred and anger she still felt when she let herself. When she wasn't too tired to do anything but force herself through the day. These days, those light eyes looked at her with weariness, but life. She could almost bring herself to forgive her mother. Almost.
However, it was the quiet hours before dawn. The time of day that Katniss truely had to herself. When she could sit on the stairs outside their tiny apartment, watching the few stars visible through the blinding light of the city. In the distance, the sun was beginning to peek into the sky, stretching rays of pink and orange towards the heaven, like colorful fingers.
Katniss was tired. It had sunk into her bones. She hadn't seen a tree or meadow that was truely wild in years, and she knew if she could she would wake again, like a plant sprouting from the long winter. But she needed to work. Not for the first time she resented her mother. It wasn't fair, but that was the way it was. It wasn't fair to her or Prim, either. She barely made it in school.
Six hours of school, four working the register at Wal-mart, four more manning the fry station at a fast food joint. On weekends she worked the docks, helping catalog cargo coming off the ships. That added another fifteen hours or so on top of her forty at work, and thirty at school.
The rest of her time was spent caring for her sister. So time to herself was truely a precious thing. Time to reflect. On the hopes and dreams she'd never really expected to have. She could feel her father's presence, sitting next to her, his arm, comforting arm wrapping around her shoulders.
Her reverie was interrupted by a horrendeous yowling. She turned angry eyes onto the cat. It had shown up a few days ago. It was the ugliest, meanest cat she'd ever seen, and she knew if Prim ever found out about it she'd beg to keep it, "Shoo, you! Go! I'm not gonna feed you! Go away!"
The ugly beast hopped onto the step next to her, glared at her, then licked himself in the balls.
Katniss gagged, and got to her feet. She got the hint. It was time to stop daydreaming and go back to her real life.