“She stumbled back a step. “Carlos was the…?”“Panther, aye.”“He’s a cat?” And her boss was a dog. She shook her head. Was her next door neighbor a goldfish?”

“She turned to the sunlight    And shook her yellow head,And whispered to her neighbor:    "Winter is dead.”

“Irma Nail, who lived next door to Gordon, was setting off as usual for her morning paper. She was not easily distracted from her routine, even by the apocalypse. She stepped out of her house in her purple rain boots, muttering about the freakish weather, and glanced up at the sky just as a wolf fell out of it.'Outrageous!' She snorted as it lay stunned at her feet. 'I've heard of it raining cats and dogs, but this is ridiculous!' and she stepped over the stricken beast, putting her umbrella up in case more wolves should tumble, uninvited, from the sky.”

“Then I asked her if she wanted to to the funeral, and my God, the look on her face. You'd think I'd asked her to drown the neighbor's cat."Admittedly, drowning the neighbor's cat didn't really clue me in as much as I would've liked. "So, she was angry?"He blinked back to me and stared. Like a long time.”

“Ico made to charge her again. The queen raised a clawlike nail, but Yorda stepped between them. Without a word, Yorda stretched out her arms in front of Ico, holding him back. Ico looked into her eyes and she shook her head, pleading with him.”

“My mother could never have said she loved fall, but as she walked down the steps with her suitcase in hand toward the red Monte Carlo her husband had been waiting in for nearly an hour, she could have said that she respected its place as a mediator between two extremes. Fall came and went, while winter was endured and summer was revered. Fall was the repose that made both possible and bearable, and now here she was was with her husband next to her, heading headlong into an early-fall afternoon with only the vaguest ideas of who they were becoming and what came next.”