Three beginnings, one end

Here's the beginnings of three different stories. You tell me which one you want me to finish.

1.
My paws are cold. The grit at the side of the road we've been trotting feels like thorns each step I take. He kept us going all night. Nowhere to rest anyway so I guess it's not so bad to keep going. Except a thunderstorm is building. I sniffed it. Smells like a lake up there it's such a big one.

He's got me worried. Just like the rain ends up in my nose, so does he and I can tell he's not feeling so good. When we do stop, he sleeps long hours. He sleeps so deep that trains don't wake him. I have to stay awake then, or I can drift off to sleep but keep one ear up and ready. I sleep on my tail so it's not so comfortable or I lick my paws to stay awake.

Once, during the best time we were together, we were in the mountains. It was summer. The air was cool though and we slept on pine needles and thick bed of them. My fur would smell like a tree and I'd bite the slivers out of my fur. There were wild strawberries and he'd spend hours collecting them and I'd find mice and small birds and gobble them up. It was quiet at night and I could drift off pushed up against his side under the dark night, a canopy of trees. I'm not scared of big animals like I am people.

We walked all the way here from there. Except sometimes we ride in cars. When we do he opens the window for me and I get to stick my head into the wind and feel it whoosh through my teeth and over my tongue.

When I dream I dream I'm running that fast I'm hunting mice and rabbits and birds and swimming in mountain streams.

I dream of wild wolf howls and I howl back an answer I run away with them. He becomes a wolf too. We are part of the pack we live in the den. We hunt at night and sleep in a huddle during the day. He chews through my collar and it drops to the ground. I lick his wounds.

2.
Bun was a doubtful cat. Always questioning her feline abilities. She'd hesitate before jumping on to a chair or window sill as if she were judging, then rejudging the distance; gauging the height she'd need to jump again and again.

I never doubted her. She always made it. She always heard my keys at the door and sat waiting on the step as I entered the house. She knew me and she was always there.

Even now, buried underneath the bright forsythia she is ever reliable. She is there in my dreams each night, brushing past her scratching post, curling around my ankles and warming my toes as she perches near my feet.

Bun still needed to tell me something it seemed, and so I paged through the yellow pages looking for pet psychics. I needed to know! What was it she was meowing to me in my sleep?

There was only one. Reginald P. Bryce, C.P.P. (Certified Pet Psychic). And so I dialed his number.

"Hello?"
"Yes, I'm calling to make an appointment."
"Oh yes! Your...bird...She's not eating."
"No. My cat."
"Oh, of course! I see it now. Your cat's not eating."
"No! My cat's dead!"
"Well, good god, honey! Why are you calling me then?"
"She keeps coming to me in my dreams! I think she's trying to tell me something."
"That's serious. You better come in right away."

3.
Jack stretched his long legs out and unwound them from around the bar stool. He kicked them out in front of him and looked around.

Smoke filled the rool, making the far side filter out like it was behind a gauzy curtain. He loved this place. Nothing better than a stiff drink in a seedy New Orleans' bar.

Madame Julia sat in one corner at her usual table. A blinking tourist sat across from her enraptured by her dramatic tarot reading. The Madame was a little black cat of a woman who could bristle and purr on and off like an alternating current. Her eyes narrowed into slits as she read the magic cards and wove them into fate.

The old bum from the corner crouched other end of the bar. Seemed he was always there spending the change he'd collected by honking out some made-up garbage on a rusted harmonica. The songs were so bad that Jack swore the man must be deaf. He never talked to anyone--just sat there swilling cheap beer all night long.

Jack got up and walked round the bar and sat down next to the old man. He could see the wrinkles in his face, creased with grime. Jack threw a few coins down on the bar. "How about you play us a little tune?"