I kept trying to come up with ideas.
“Maybe I could….”
“Oh Mele, give it up. What’s done is done. How could you change anything now? We’ll all just have to live with it.”
I nodded, feeling sad. “You’re right. And anyway, Silver deserves his moment in the sun.”
“Yes he does.”
We looked at each other and we both knew what we said was true—but that we didn’t care as much about what Silver felt as we did about Sami. He was our baby. Silver was like a good friend who was travelling through. Sami was family.
It wasn’t easy, but I finally got to sleep about midnight, only to wake up at three, immediately reacting to the urgency in the air. Slipping out of bed, I padded my way to the back door and let myself out. Somehow, I knew Aunty Jane would be waiting for me.
“Something must be done,” she said, sternly and without preamble. “Sami must not be dissed this way.”
It was amusing to hear an old Hawaiian lady in a straw hat, ghost or not, speak in modern day street language, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it. She was right. Something had to be done.
It might seem odd that she knew all about the situation when neither Bebe nor I had talked to her, but that is just the way it is in our family. We expect it. She doesn’t know everything, but she somehow knows enough to surprise you every time.
“What can we do?” I asked. “I’ve spent hours trying to think of something. There’s just nothing we can do at this point. It’s too late.”
“Never too late,” she said adamantly. “I have ideas. I think I’m going to make him tell his own story.”
I grimaced, shaking my head. “How in the world are you going to do that?”
She gave me a superior smirk. “You just wait. You’ll see. I got ideas.” She tapped her head for emphasis. “You got to believe.”
I yawned. “Right now, I got to sleep. Tell me all about it in the morning, okay?”
She nodded, a faraway look in her eyes. “You go sleep. I got ideas.”
I had no doubt. Shaking my head, I went back in and headed for bed. But it was a long time before I got back to sleep.
And in the morning, I found this story on my computer, along with a note from Aunty Jane:
“This is in Sami’s very own words. He dictated and I typed for him. Read it and learn something. Take this in to your stupid panel and show them. Sami is a very special cat and they can’t ignore that. He needs a place in that calendar.”
A Sami-Eyed View of How Things Are
The Bird Raider.
This is my story.
Author's Note
To My Readers, from Sami the Cat
Cats do not talk. That is not due to any deficiency on our part, but because of our own particular sophistication. We can say more with a certain flatness of the ear or a twitch of the tail than any dozen human words can. But this is a story—a true story, but still a story, and typed stories are for humans, so I have taken the liberty of dumbing down the elaborate and elegant way of cat speaking so any human can follow it. That means using words, sentences, phrases, things no real self-respecting cat would ever deign to use, but I am a very generous animal, and so will make this great concession to you, the human reader. Please understand that everything is much funnier and more thrilling in the original cat-ish.
Other animals will be shown to speak as well. That is because cats, besides being sophisticated communicators in our own right, have an uncanny ability to understand the particulars of any other species’ form of communication. In order to keep you, the poor human reader, from getting completely lost, these lower animals will have their particular forms of communication rendered in dull old human speak as well.
You’re welcome.
Chapter 1 - Sami Accused!
It began while I slept. This was a most ingenious sleep, with me curled into a black ball and holding my paws over my eyes (just the right size paws, too - not the big glonkers like you see some silly cats tripping on, nor the overly slim show-offy paws like that horrible gray cat who has recently invaded my home).
I dreamed, the way cats dream (fabulously) of chasing things that were at once easily caught, and that always got away so I could catch them again. In my dream they had mouse-tails, at least at first… then they became all feathered and yellow. I was snatching these mouse-tailed yellow birds right out of the air. Elegant leaps, excellent posture…
And then my heightened senses, full of the smell of feathers, warned me that something that was not a dream was invading my sensibility. I was indeed smelling feathers, and hearing the sad coos of some bird who had met with misfortune.
I awoke all at once, and saw yellow. I would say canary yellow, but the bird that was at my feet, struggling to get up, was no kind of canary. It was a large bird, much larger than I would normally hunt, with one tucked under wing and a long, orange beak that opened and closed, not letting out a sound.
“Why’d you wake me up?” I demanded. Not that I’m unfeeling, understand, but in these situations if you don’t take a firm hand the poor creatures might just start panicking.
“Agh, I’m done for!” the bird said, writhing on the ground, sending feathers left and right. “Done in! Bereft of life! Squawk!”
I got to my feet, stretched magnificently, then trotted over to the poor thrashing thing. Its eyes were wide and scared, and one wing did indeed look badly bent. There was no bleeding, though, and for all the thrashing and shouting the thing did seem to be mostly okay.
We were on the corner of my caretaker’s very large property. She grows plants so there is green and growth all around us. The place was also swimming in flowers of many descriptions, but being a mostly meat-focused animal, I couldn’t name a one of them. We were also near a large fence, which was itself overgrown with green leaves and vines. I could only imagine the bird came in from over that fence. There were feathers still floating in the air from that direction. The poor dumb flier must have been tossed overboard. Hmm…
A cat of no feeling would have taken advantage of the poor animal. But I am Sami, well-respected amongst animal kind as a thoughtful cat (and I was full, having just eaten in the kitchen of my current caretaker’s house) so I just nudged it a bit with my nose.
“Can you walk?”
“Walk? Walk? I’m a bird, I do not walk! I fly or nothing!” it said, seeming to forget its mortal agony, so busy being offended by my suggestion.
“Well, then, I suppose you’ll have to let me carry you to help,” I said. Perhaps I inadvertently licked my chops at the moment, making the bird nervous. But he flopped away from me on one wing, squawking as loudly as he could.
“Help! Help! Rabid cat! Bird killer on the loose!”
My patience is not infinite. I cannot spend all day trying to talk a literal bird-brain into doing what is best for it. This is where taking a firm hand comes in. You have to set the rules, and then stick by them, even when the people (or animals) you’re trying to help insist on screeching, squawking, protesting and in general making themselves look very silly indeed.
So I stepped forward (silent as ever, despite the dried leaves and rustling undergrowth beneath my fine paws) and I nudged the bird with my nose. He screeched louder, and tried to roll away from me.
“Come on, bird,” I said, my ears flattening. “I’m going to carry you to where you can get some help. Or do you want me to leave you here in the middle of nowhere?”
“Help!” he squawked, louder than ever. “Help!”
This time, his squawk was answered by a woman shrieking even louder.
And that was the beginning of my real problems. Like many cats, I have people I let take care of me. In their human words, they call themselves “owners” which, if you know what it means, and if you know cats, you then know how ridiculous that notion is. I am no more someone’s property than is the wind or the sun or any food that is left out where some enterprising feline can get to it. I stay with these women (there are two of t
hem) because it pleases me, and because they often require my aid and I am a creature of deathless generosity.
Which, I might add, is almost never properly appreciated or repaid.
So one of these woman shrieked. She’d heard the bird, taken one look and made a judgment call. The wrong call, of course, but that was par usual.
Yelling out, “Sami, no!” she rushed forward.
She was not a small woman, and did not come at me with anything like the speed needed to really stop me (or any halfway decent cat) from doing whatever the heck he wanted to do. But all I wanted was to bring the bird to her, so I decided to forgive her misapprehension of my intentions.
Even so, she shouted, “Shoo! Shoo! Oh, no, Sami, look at the poor thing!” and reached out to grab the bird, giving me dirty looks all the while.
“Help!” the bird squawked. “Mad woman! Evil woman! Help!”
Birds, it should be noted, are stupid.
But I forgive, after the proper amount of time, so I meekly followed this human female (Bebe, she is called by the other two-leggers) back to the house while she cradled the squawking and complaining bird all the way to the front yard.
This was when things began to get bad, because more people were there. Bebe was taking the whining winger to the other local human, the rather pretty young woman named Mele.
Of all humans, I think Mele might be the most tolerable. She helps me to practice my dearest hobby, which is uncovering those human activities which they call among themselves “crimes”. I prefer to think of them as simple bad manners, and between Mele and myself (mostly myself) we’ve gotten to the bottom of at least three instances of humans behaving badly.
Mele, of all the people in this growing crowd of humans of my acquaintance, is one I might even deign to call my pet. So it was a minor blow to my faith in her when I heard her say, “No! Sami didn’t, did he?”
Of course I did not, ma’am. If I’d brought down that bird, he’d never have been heard from again.
But chaos ensued, women throwing up their hands and shouting at each other and saying, “Sami!” in tones that a less balanced, more sensitive cat would take to heart.
I, having done my good deed of not attacking the bird, slunk away unappreciated, as always, thinking I would resent the incident for a few hours before allowing my greater nature to take over. I would allow the women to fawn over me later that day.
That was before cars pulled up out front, and practically before her engine was turned off, I heard a woman scream, “Your cat! Give me your bird-killing cat!”
I kept moving until I was just under the open kitchen window, where I could in a leap either get to the flower-laden backyard and move invisibly, or in another leap hide inside the house in one of a thousand places only cats know.
And, from that position, I could hear the new screaming woman, and her companion who pulled up in a van that had an engine that sounded like an animal continually clearing its throat - gunga, gunga, gunga. He stopped the gunga and came out after the woman, while Mele and Bebe stood mute on their front porch.
“That’s a rare golden parakeet and oh my Goodness, look at it--look at it! I’m going to have your cat put down!”
Bebe and Mele were shouting back at her, trying to calm her down. But as usual, shouting only brings on more shouting. Humans!
“I’ve seen him!” the strange woman yelled. “That fat black cat skulks around all over town, and he’s been attacking my birds! Five in the last month! Five gone, and all to feed that slob of…”
I quit listening to her, feeling much put out by her inaccurate descriptions of both my fine figure, and of my behavior. I do not catch birds, particularly not big bright yellows ones. So garish. I’d as soon never see a silly looking thing like that idiot that was still squawking.
“Done in! I’m done in!” over and over again.
“Hey, Sami,” a very dull, goofy voice came from the other side of the window. Cats do not, as a rule, roll their eyes (it’s an indelicate gesture. Very human.) But I did the equivalent, looking everywhere but where the voice came from, showing justified contempt.
“What do you want, Silver?” I replied, keeping my eyes on motes drifting in a shaft of sunlight, not at the gray and dumb cat who had invaded my household and made life a trial.
“Just saying hey. Sure is a lot of shouting out there. Seems they’re mad at some cat,” Silver said. I deigned to glance at him just to make sure. Yes, he was looking very thoughtful about having pointed out the obvious.
“It’s all nonsense,” I said, turning away again.
“Huh, so you’re not hiding from them?” Silver said.
“No, of course not,” I said, bristling with feline pride.
“So if I were to, say, knock over this pot…” Silver said, reaching through the open window with one gray paw and shoving a pot resting on the sill over, sending it clattering onto the ground with a rustle and a clang. “You wouldn’t mind?”
“There he is!” the woman shouted, looking just around the corner of the house. She began running toward me, murder in her eyes.
“Hey, that is private property!” Mele shouted after her, and then Bebe came, and the man followed up behind her. He was some kind of worker, wearing coveralls with his name written on the pocket, a hat that said something (I do not read - it’s a crude way to communicate) and had a picture of a possum on it.
All four were chasing toward me. Instinct won out, and I bolted, inches ahead of the chubby sausage fingers of the angry bird woman. I feinted left, then dove underneath a flower bed and ran through.
There is a big Hawaiian statue halfway down the path, and I raced around it, hoping the thing would fall over and block my pursuers - I’d seen it happen before. Unfortunately, I am too light of foot and perfectly weighted, so the statue did not budge in my feline wake. It did give me a bit of cover so I could go into the larger yard, and race and race until I had some idea where I was going.
There’s a shed in the center of the yard, one that is only accessible to people through a lockable door, but has (like so many human places) a few hidden access ways, if you can squeeze and make yourself small.
I, being feline, could do so with no trouble.
In darkened shelves, moving so quietly that even the spiders did not notice my stealthy passage, I came into the shed. It is not my favorite place to be. Too many smells from human chemicals, too much must and shadowiness - we cats love the shade, but the shade is only nice because it used to be in the sun, and now it is not. Places that never saw the sun get musty and unpleasant and very unfeline-friendly.
And I have an enemy in a caged area attached to the shed. He came into the household at about the same time as the dastardly Silver, but he doesn’t even have the benefit of being a proper pet.
He’s another bird, of course. A parrot. The Parrot has a name, but I don’t know it and will not learn it.
Luckily, there was someone else in the shed, one of the human types who I genuinely like, and don’t just tolerate as evidence of my finer nature.
Aunty Jane was huddling behind the parrot cage, looking through a crack in the shed door, whispering to herself in a human language I don’t understand, but like to hear. I think it’s some kind of island language. Maybe Hawaiian. I don’t know, I’m no Humanologist.
“Oh, Sami, things they not looking good for you,” she said, without even having to see me to know I was there. Very feline of her.
“A good long nap will sort this out,” I said… though perhaps I was just trying to convince myself.
“I don’t know. These people, I think they stay mad.”
“Eh,” I said, rolling to my side and stretching out. “I might need a skritch,” I said, but Auntie Jane just kept looking out the door.
“Sami, Sami,” she said, pressing her face close to the crack. “I think you need to go.”
The nap urge is not a whim for kitties. We have brains that work overtime, seeing and hearing everything. So we need to r
est them lest they overheat, and we get like birds. That is why you see cats yawn so often. Their brain is cooking, and needs to be cooled off.
And sometimes even our lithe and perfectly crafted bodies don’t act just like they should. Sometimes, we’ll see the corner of something, and decide that for the good of all cat-kind we need to see what happens when we pull it. So when my stretching claws came in contact with fabric, I am not to be blamed for pulling it down… nor what happened next.
Because The Parrot was underneath that fabric, in his cage, ready to squawk. Humans think Parrots are super smart because they can repeat silly human words.
I think they’re dumb and mean, especially The Parrot, because the second the fabric was off his cage, he screeched, again and again, “Here’s the Cat! Here’s the Cat!”
Chapter 2 - The Chase of Sami
The first of the humans in the door was not the women I knew. Them I can deal with. I know what makes them go, “Aw.” It was not even this new and terrible grasping wholly anti-cat woman who’d been shrieking. Who knew what made that type tick?
It was the man in the possum hat, with the scraggly beard and general sense of malevolence. He threw the door open, and Aunty Jane barely had time to disappear before he could see her.
See, one of the nice things about Aunty is she doesn’t take up much space. I’m not sure what it means, what the humans call her. She comes and goes the way she wants, so they say she’s a “go-est”. I haven’t quite figured that one out but it’s none of my business. I was busy hiding away from some man in a hat.
But the strangest thing happened. He flung open the door, and when he had the chance to grab me, he didn’t. He stopped and stared at that parrot, like it was doing some kind of human hypnotizing dance (which, believe me, would have been useful).
I took the chance, and sprang past him in fine, swift, cat-like fashion. It wasn’t until that bird woman screeched “Fred!” that he even reacted, diving far too late to catch me but not, I’m afraid, too late to crush some of Aunt Bebe’s prized something-or-others. Flowers with white petals that sprang out and about and were quite handsome, I supposed, but now just quite useful as they covered my running away.
Mele's Ghostly Halloween Caper: Plus Sami's Story by J.D. Winters and Dakota Kahn (Destiny Bay Cozies Mysteries Book 6) Page 9
