Saliva flew from Lucius’s mouth as he barked orders to his men. His face was marked by a big, stupid grin, and his fat belly shook as he watched the terrified Caterwaul trying to escape.
Everything about this Felino underboss repulsed him. But there was one thing about his appearance in the windmill that particularly angered Caterwaul. There, sitting on the top of Lucius Jr.’s enormously grotesque head, held in place only by the use of a strap, was Gerhard’s sailor’s cap.
Caterwaul was shaking as he climbed, terrified and angry at the same time. He thought he was done for. Surely the Felinos would get him and do all sorts of terrible things to him. And to think he had gotten so close. Well, at least they wouldn’t hurt his beautiful Muse now.
Pudding pulled Muse back into the farthest and darkest corner of the cushioned room, trying to get her cousin out of sight.
“Caterwaul said that you’d keep us safe,” she whispered to the guardian brothers. Juan nodded that he understood and took up a defensive position at the front and left of Gerhard. At the same time, Feliz took up a similar one on the right.
The smaller brother was smiling as he tapped his oversized claws on the stone floor like a piano player practicing his scales. He had incredible dexterity and could snap his claws in or out with blinding speed. Pudding imagined the amount of damage he was capable of inflicting with those razors. Feliz was itching for a good scrap.
Juan scanned the room for pillows with rope tassels on them. He saw three. “Grab those cushions with the ropes attached to them and bring them here,” he spoke quietly to the frightened Pudding. She was scared, but she moved forward to do what he asked. Muse squeezed Pudding’s paw as if to beg her not to move; she was trying desperately not to cry.
“I’ll be right back,” Pudding whispered to her cousin. “Don’t worry; I’m right here with you. I’m not going anywhere, I promise.” Once she had gathered the three pillows with the tassels, Juan instructed her to make a slit in the center of the fabric covering each. She then loaded them with four good-sized rocks and slid them down into the corner opposite the tassel.
“Can you lift them?” asked Juan. “The cushions . . . Can you still lift them?”
“Yes . . . I think so,” said Pudding.
“Good. Now here is what I want you to do,” he leaned forward and whispered something in her ear.
“Hey, tough guy,” shouted Lucius Felino Jr. to the fleeing Caterwaul. “Where do you think you’re going, tough guy? The family’s here, and everyone wants to meet you.” He let out a huge, satisfied laugh. “You’re not so tough now, are you?
“Why don’t you crawl on back down here now, so as I can make the introductions . . . you know . . . all formal and proper-like. After all, just because we may be animals doesn’t mean that we gotta act like animals, if you catch my drift.” He was laughing hysterically at his own weak joke.
Caterwaul heard all of this, but kept moving. He knew that Lucius Jr. was only taunting him. He knew they would torture him mercilessly if they caught him. More than likely, he would be killed. He remembered the powder he had taken from the sycamore seedpods. Turning swiftly he removed his pack. The pursuing Felinos were still quite a ways off.
He grabbed the piece of folded up paper he had placed the seeds in and opened it. He had more than enough for one use, but then it would be gone. It’s one and done, he thought. Oh well, now’s as good a time as ever.
He was now positioned on a narrow, wooden ledge between the fourth and fifth level of the windmill. He pressed his body close to the wall, hoping that the Felinos would not see him hiding above them when they reached level four.
About a minute later, they were right below him. There were three of them, and they appeared confused. Their sense of smell indicated that they were close, but they did not know exactly where their quarry was. The one who appeared to be the leader placed his paws on the handrail and raised himself up to signal to his boss below that they had lost him. He shrugged his shoulders.
“Trust me, he’s up there!” shouted Lucius Jr. “Find him. He can’t have just disappeared.”
Caterwaul smiled. As a matter of fact, he could disappear. But that was an ability he dared not use right now. Use of that particular incantation, like most of his more powerful ones, drained a terrible amount of energy from him. If he were to use the spell, he would be useless if they later found him and it came to blows. Besides, he didn’t dare do anything that might leave Muse unprotected.
Two of the Felino bruisers came into view near the cushioned room. Muse saw them, and it looked like she was about to explode with fright. She started whimpering for her cousin and pointing toward the big, muscular cats. Pudding put her finger to her mouth to quiet her cousin, but it was a lot to ask of the terrified cat.
“I see Gerhard over there. Lying on those cushions,” said one of the Felinos to his buddy. “It looks like he’s pretty much out of action from the beating we gave him earlier. I don’t think he’ll present any problems, but go tell the boss that he’s here anyway.”
While the second thug turned and ran back to where Lucius Jr. was, the first one approached the prone Gerhard slowly. Gerhard was unconscious, and his breathing was erratic. The Felino bruiser soon stood directly over his near-lifeless body. The gray foreigner had been seriously hurt. He was only inches from the great and final finish line marking the end of his life.
How easy it would be to snuff out that life, thought the bruiser. He popped out his index claw and held it precariously close to Gerhard’s throat. All it would take is one swipe, he thought.
Suddenly the large Felino’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he went limp. As he fell backward, he tried to stop his fall by grabbing at anything he could. He found nothing, and he toppled. As he looked up, the last thing he saw before blackness was the wide-smiling Feliz shaking a fur-covered paw at him.
Caterwaul waited until all three of the Felinos chasing him were bunched closely together, and then he sprung toward them. As he leaped, he opened the folded paper containing the “itchy powder” from the sycamore pods. The dusty fibers spread out, covering the three Felino thugs below him. As he landed, he took off in the direction of the fifth level.
“There he is. Grab him,” shouted the leader. The three soldier cats barely made it as far as the stairs up to the next landing before they started itching uncontrollably. “What in the world?!” the lead cat shouted as he doubled over and began scratching himself.
All three of the Felino soldiers were affected by the seed fibers. They gnawed and pawed and swiped at their flesh with their open claws, tearing long, red gashes in their skin. It was as if all three of them had fallen simultaneously into a bucketful of fleas. The cries they let out were horrible. Everyone on the ground wondered what awful thing was happening on the fourth level. Suddenly it became clear as one of the incapacitated felines fell flailing to the ground below. He landed on one of his fellow ruffians with a splat.
Then a second cat came tumbling through the air. This time the cat seemed so preoccupied with something on his skin that he had no idea that he was hurtling toward the ground. This time those on the ground were sensible enough to move out of the way, and the cat landed hard. He shrieked in agony, but still he didn’t stop scratching his itchy skin.
“Please don’t throw me over,” the leader of the three cats pleaded. “I promise you I’ll go away . . . you’ll never ever see me again.”
Caterwaul wasn’t fazed. Grabbing the Felino by his fancy collar, he dragged him to the edge of the platform. Looking fiercely at the squirming cat beneath him, Caterwaul snarled, “This is for Gerhard,” and kicked him over the edge. The tomcat screamed, twisting in terror as he fell and landed on his back below.
Now furiously defiant, Caterwaul jumped up onto the top of the handrail and shouted down to Lucius Jr. “Is that all you got, you fat sack of sandbox droppings?”
On the ground below, Lucius Felino Jr. roared. He was foaming at the mouth now, and copious amounts of
thick, white drool flew out of it in all directions. “I want him dead! Now!” he screamed to his remaining men. “You hear me?”
Noticing that one of their companions had not returned from his investigation of the unconscious Gerhard, two Felino soldiers went looking for him. As they neared the incapacitated cat, Juan and Feliz sprang at them from the shadows. The cats appeared to be evenly matched, though the fight was fierce. For a while it looked like Feliz might have the advantage over his opponent, but then looks often deceive.
The much larger Felino soldier was tough as they come, and he was more than able to withstand the swipes of even Feliz’s oversized claws. Feliz swung his paws at him repeatedly, but still the Felino kept coming. Finally the big cat was able to knock Feliz over onto his back. It was over. Feliz could feel the larger cat’s paws pressing tightly against his throat as he lost consciousness.
Juan was holding up well against his opponent, but now that Feliz was out of the fight, he knew his time was short. There was no way he could take on both his man and the cat that had just KO’d his brother. Especially since Feliz was acknowledged by most of Harsizzle as the better fighter of the two.
Frightened, Juan flailed out, wildly throwing his paws out in all directions at the same time. He was starting to panic. They had him in a vulnerable position with his back up against one of the pillars separating the cushion room from the rest of the old windmill. They moved toward him from two directions, making sure that he could not get away. At that moment, something large and heavy connected with the face of one of the Felino cats. He cried out for an instant before falling over. The gangster was knocked out cold.
The remaining Felino soldier spun around to see who or what it was that had just crushed his companion’s face. It was Pudding, and she was angry. In her hands she held one of the ropes, which were attached to one of the tasseled pillows. With the rocks inside the pillow it was very heavy, and it was all she could do to keep her balance as she spun it around her body. Following through, she delivered a ferocious uppercut with the pillow, hitting the second thug so hard in his soft belly that it literally lifted the cat off his feet.
She was wild-eyed and full of fury, snarling as she held on tightly to the rope tassel. Juan moved in to calm her down. Her nostrils flared, and she looked back at him with crazed eyes. She was trembling from the sudden adrenaline rush. It looked for a moment like she might lash out at her protector. Then suddenly she was back in control. Sanity returned to the young cat’s eyes.
Pudding was starting to tear up. Never in a million years would she have thought she’d have to do what she did that night. Looking back and seeing that her cousin was still safe, she dropped the pillow and sank to the ground weeping.
Juan motioned to Muse to come over and together the two of them wrapped their arms tightly around a very scared, very brave, chocolate-colored kitty, who just might have saved all of their lives.
20
What Goes Around
There were now three more Felino soldiers on his tail. “Bring ‘em on,” thought Caterwaul out loud, “I’ll take out the whole family . . . every last rotten one of them.”
He looked around for his pack, but it wasn’t where he thought it was. Then he remembered he’d left it hanging on a nail above the ledge between the fourth and fifth levels. He was now on the sixth level. To get to it, he would have to give up some ground and head toward his enemies.
But did he even have time to go back for it? Probably not, he thought. It was too dangerous, not worth the risk. Plus, these new pursuers were moving up the stairs between levels at a good clip, much faster than the first trio.
His rush of adrenaline was subsiding, and suddenly he was reminded of the pain in his leg from when he had stepped on the hidden cat. Reflexively his paw flew to the spot where the cat had tagged him. It was still bleeding slowly, and there was a piece of fur-covered skin hanging loose from his wound.
“Owwwwww!” he shouted, as everyone does when they first discover they have been cut. “This is going to slow me down.”
He then realized there might be a way for him to use his injury to his advantage. At the end of the sixth level, there was a small window. Through it, he could see one of the wooden blades of the windmill. It wasn’t moving.
The windmill was the kind often used to pump water for irrigation. It had been turned off before the event. The party planners didn’t want to leave it running for fear that it might somehow stop and cause a sudden swell of water. He understood this perfectly because he knew how most cats felt about large amounts of water.
He yanked the hanging bit of skin and hair sharply away from his body. He could hear a loud tear as a clump of his leg came loose in his paw. Caterwaul wanted to scream, but he didn’t dare. Instead he moved methodically toward the window, making sure to smear the blood from his piece of now-unattached flesh, leaving a trail on the boards going up to the window. He then dropped the clump of skin out the window. It bounced a couple of times on the outside of the windmill before landing silently in the weeds below. He then backed away quietly and hid behind a red canvas tarp.
By the time the three Felinos had reached the sixth level, they were out of steam. The one in the lead position was sucking in air like he had just run a marathon. Between his loud deep breaths, he managed to get out two words, “Find him.”
The other two cats spread out to search the level, but none of the three cats were in any shape to do it right. Meanwhile, the first cat had discovered the trail of blood and was following it toward the open window.
He was still gasping when he got up to it, and he put his paws up on the sill for a better look. He could see the signs of blood on the outside wall and assumed, as Caterwaul had hoped he would, that his prey was no longer inside the windmill.
Turning back to his companions, he called, “He’s gone. He went out this window. Probably long gone by now.” He was still breathing heavily when he told the others to head back down to inform Lucius Jr.
Juan was trying to get Feliz to his feet. He had been out cold for nearly half an hour before any sign of consciousness returned to him. He was gagging and wheezing. The Felino that choked him was obviously out to hurt him permanently.
“I can walk,” the smaller brother said to the other. Then he noticed the two Felinos lying in a lump on the floor. “What in the world happened to them?”
“Pudding happened to them!” exclaimed the brown female proudly.
“Huh?” Feliz asked, confused. “What do you mean?”
Juan laughed and put his paw over his still-weak brother’s shoulder for support. “Leez, do you remember the old blackjack maneuver we used to pull on the Umbertos back when we lived in Sullins?”
“You mean back when we were stupid kids? How could I ever forget? You were always getting us into trouble.” He was laughing. “Man, I remember when that big cat Mo from down the street kicked the stuffing out of you and tore your face up.”
Feliz continued laughing until it was clear that Juan preferred not to take this stroll down memory lane any further than he had to. His laughter ceased as he cleared his throat. “Yes well, that was was then . . .”
Juan refocused the conversation. “Well, tonight we turned the damage level up a few extra notches.” He pointed to the pillow with the rocks inside, which Pudding had used to lay out the two Felinos. “Man, you should have seen her. She was fearless.”
“I would hardly say I was fearless, Juan,” replied Pudding. “I was scared to death. But after you went down, Feliz, I just went berserk. There were two of them against Juan. I just wanted to help even the odds.”
She looked at Muse. The white cat was at last starting to calm down. Her breathing was returning to normal, and other signs of shock were dissipating. “I hope that Caterwaul got away,” she said, concerned.
The Felino who had been leading the second trio of mobsters turned back to the window and leaned out. It looked like he was about to call to one of his family members outside the
windmill to tell him that Caterwaul was on the loose below. As the thug cat leaned forward a little more to try and spot one of his “fellas,” Caterwaul attacked. Propelling himself forward with all of his weight, he caught the Felino in the back with his front right shoulder, knocking him through the window.
Though he was still slightly winded, the Felino righted himself in mid-fall, twisting around to avoid the windmill panels, and hit the ground on all fours. Unfortunately for him, the window was six floors up, more than enough to injure even the most acrobatic of cats—and this big Felino was no acrobat. He managed to land on his feet, but the force with which he hit the ground undoubtedly broke at least one of his legs. He staggered forward a few steps and fell over on his side, calling out in pain.
“Man . . . that had to hurt,” said Caterwaul squeezing his eyes together and making his face really small. He suddenly realized how high up he actually was.
Turning back inside, he started moving toward the stairway leading down to the fifth level. After all, he knew the other two cats were heading downstairs to tell Lucius Jr. the bad news about Caterwaul’s supposed escape. Only when he got close to the steps did Caterwaul realize only one of the two cats had followed orders. The other one was just sitting on his haunches with a dopey expression, enjoying what was left of a partially mummified mouse. The dry and cracking tail of the mouse protruded from his mouth as he stared up at Caterwaul with surprise and alarm in his eyes.
“Oops,” said Caterwaul as he jumped backward.
The Felino spit the remains of his impromptu dinner on the floor and scrambled to his feet. Like most of Lucius’s soldiers, he was a large, muscular tom. He was colored with light-orange stripes. Caterwaul thought the cat looked like he might be Bugsy’s stripy brother. He had that same stupid look on his face.
The Adventures of Caterwaul the Cat Page 14
