Request #658 from Denise

I read this back in high school in the early 2000s (2001-2005). I remember the book had a cream color, with browns and oranges depicting a scene of some futuristic landscape or something similar. The aesthetic felt very 1970s.

The story is a post-apocalyptic story, which is revealed partway through the story. The protagonist is a female, whose caregiver is non-human, female, and has feline traits. The protagonist and her caretaker live in a facility with another member of the caretaker’s species, a male.

The protagonist has vague memories of another human, and as the novel progresses, it’s revealed that the male caretaker is raising a boy, and that the girl and the boy used to play together as babies, until the boy hit the girl, and the caretakers separated them, fearing the violence that destroyed human society had already started. 

The boy and the girl, who are both teens at this point, eventually meet again, and begin a friendship. At one point, the boy suggests having sex, and explains he has a contraceptive in his body so there’s no risk of pregnancy, but the girl declines.

The caretakers’ species process the flow of time differently than humans, with the metaphor used later on being that to humans, time is a series of rooms that you can only go forward through, but can look back through past doors and rooms, while the caretakers’ species experience it as entering a room, and all the other doors close behind them.

It’s discovered that the boy’s parents died before they could come back for his embryo, but the girl’s parents decided they didn’t want her anymore. Later on, the caretakers leave after having spent more time together, only to reunite near the end of the book, while the teens set off to explore the world outside the facility. 

They eventually find an old, possibly ancient, database? that tells them about the apocalypse, and somehow, there’s a signal sent out? that brings a ship in to land where the teens are camping. On board are the caretakers, some of their people, and the descendants of those humans who were alive when the caretakers’ species arrived. I remember the spokesman for the humans on the ship had yellow eyes.

If anyone has any leads, I’d be grateful.