On a cold November night in 1980, my MC has found a tiny kitten behind a dumpster at work. MC lives in the West Village. Can he believably sneak it onto the subway under his coat? Or does he need to cab the kitten home? (MC would absolutely do this.) ETA: Year is 1980, so they may or may not have had security cameras then. More likely not? MC is a waiter who picks up side gigs as a cater-waiter, so the scene can have him find the kitten at a cater-waiter gig anywhere in Manhattan. MC's gig has him arriving home late at night, around 12:30 A.M. Thanks East-Coasters!!!
I would assume so yes. Why wouldn't you be able to? You could do it today I'm sure, all it takes is willingness.
I ask because depending on the time and route, it could be almost impossible in present-day Los Angeles, due to the amount of security cameras and security officers around. In LA, you can't even bring food or drinks, much less a kitten. ;-)
How tiny is the kitten? I took a tiny kitten to school with me for 3 days in the 90's. I'd bottle feed him in the bathroom between classes and he slept in my sweatshirt pocket, curled around my hand during classes. No one ever knew.
Even if they had security cameras, it seems unlikely that they would send out security just for a kitten threat. As long as he's not actually releasing the kitten in the car and twitching yarn for him to play with, I'd think he'd be fine.
Found this - looks like the last thing anyone would have been concerned about is a kitten... Click me
I think this is winner here. You can fit a kitten in a pocket, ergo you can sneak it pretty much wherever you like.
OMG that's adorable. You are a kind person. Tiny. I'm still deciding if he's been weaned or not. He's based on a cat we had, who as a kitten was tiny enough to comfortably stand in the palm of my hand. Part of my concern is whether or not the poor thing could get crushed on the subway in his pocket at that hour. (At rush hour, I'd definitely have MC cab him home.)
Thank you. He needed to be fed around the clock so I didn't have much choice. I would say the crowded halls of my school would be of similar crush intensity (and I'm a tiny person who was often .... not seen... at least until I shoved back), that's why I kept my hand around him at all times, both to keep him warm and for his protection. I think he would be safe in a pocket, yes. If he's weaned, he'll be more active, so that may be a concern.
LOL-- in theory you can, but some kittens have other ideas. Some kittens, like the one the kitten character is based on, are too noisy for sneaking anywhere. Ours was so noisy I had to sleep on the bathroom floor with her for a few nights to try to keep her quiet so the landlord wouldn't find out. (Open concept apartment + tiny, nocturnal, curious kitten=lots of potential danger, so at first at night she had to be confined to the one room that had a door.)
Ooh, I hadn't thought of noise. In the eighties, I wonder if anyone would stop you from playing a boom box loudly, to drown the sound of the kitten? But by the time your precautions become that elaborate, the cab would start to look so much easier.
Sure, but seriously it's a kitten. They sleep a lot and they like being cuddled. Maybe you wouldn't want to put it in a jeans pocket or something, but in a coat or in a hoodie? Yeah, no problems. Sure, maybe it moves, maybe it makes a noise but the subway is loud and how much attention is anyone paying really? It's not like a kitten is some contraband item. It might be a ballache to get clawed at and so forth, but if you need to move a kitten about then there's no big deal. Last week I saw a girl on the train with a chinchiller in a box. No-one cared. I've seen dogs on the underground too and no-one bats an eye as long as they are well behaved.
Thank you! You actually just made part of my story verifiably more credible. Going on anecdotal stories I'd had the MC, who has old- world manners, refuse to take his girlfriend on the subway. When she's with him, they cab around town. She grew up in NYC, so she thinks he's sweet but ridiculous. When she's not with him, he takes the subway.
I love your creatively sneaky mind. That's great! Unfortunately it has to be the coat, for the way he reveals the kitten to his girlfriend.
Consider giving him a coat that has a hole in the lining. When I was a teenager I had a kickass leather trench coat that, over time, developed a hole in the left hand pocket. And that made it trivial to hide pretty much anything in it as long as I was standing up. I once stole sixteen pint classes from a pub all at the same time like that. And the number of times I had bottles of spirits as we walked through alcohol control zones was, well, it was a very useful garment (I still have it too ). So even if you don't want him to just drop it in a pocket like that you could easily sneak it inside the lining. That'd give you as much space as you need for a kitten to roam around without being obvious.
Thank you for that visual. As a West Coaster with vertigo, it's been quite a while since I've done a subway ride. I'd forgotten how loud it can be, meowing kitten or not.
Yeah, it's a funny thing actually; I'm used to riding the underground with headphones on, but man is it loud without anything on. There's other people and clanking machinery. You might get funny looks, but if you just fake cough over the meows then you'll do fine.
I love the coat lining thing! Works perfectly because MC is a composer who defected from Soviet-era Russia, and I could see him having used it to sneak home black market sheet music.
The key to not getting caught is for people not to think there's anything to see. And the old 'hole in the coat' routine is really useful for this. There's nothing to make anyone think there's something they should investigate. Just a coat that drapes a bit weirdly but whatever, not a big deal
Thank you, all of you, for your input! You're all gold. I'm going to go let all this percolate during lunch, then write the scene. It was time for something lighthearted comedic in this book, and you all have helped tremendously.
In the 80s? You could probably sneak an alligator on a NYC subway. Would he even need to hide it? Is there a law or something? Just curious...
In the '80s? You mean that time when stringing a banner from lightpole to lightpole across a crosstown street that read, "Police are watching this crack block" was considered effective law enforcement? Those '80s?