The Wild Cats of Piran

by Scott Alexander Young

  “That sounds like Leopold. He always was a romantic.”

  “That, I wouldn’t know,” said Dragan, sounding a little embarrassed. “Well, come on then.”

  Felicia knew better than to argue with Dragan when he was right about something important, as he was now. The two of them gamboled along until they came to the very tip of the peninsula that jutted out into the sea, the aforementioned Cape Madonna. And, sure enough, there was Leopold. Neat, compact, and spotless in appearance as always, he seemed unsurprised by their arrival. It was as if he had been waiting for them all along.

  There was, however, something else waiting for the wild cats, something terrible, just below sea level. An entire swarm of rats was down there, all of them holding their breath, waiting for the signal to attack. That’s something you might not know about rats. Your so-called Rattus norvegicus (aka Norway rat, brown rat) can swim for hundreds of meters at a time, dive a long way down, and hold its breath for as long as fifteen minutes.

  But these particular submariner rats wouldn’t even have to wait that long for action.

  MEANWHILE, UP ON THE HILLS OF PIRAN, IN DOGBOY VILLA, Beyza the white puffball cat was watching television and thinking what a waste of time it all was—television, that is.

  It was hard on her eyes, and it didn’t feed or cuddle or play with her. It didn’t teach you anything much, either. TV was, perhaps surprisingly, something Beyza really could have done without. Worse, just like her brother, Fisko, this girl Ivana was often awake in the wee hours of the morning: the time when most humans have the decency to be asleep! Cats like their privacy, especially at that hour.

  Mind you, Ivana wasn’t a bad human girl in her way, but she did listen to a lot of very loud and monotonous music, and she talked or sent messages on something called a smartphone practically every hour of the day or night. She also had at least two annoying friends who came over and talked nonstop for hours. When they weren’t talking too much, they always tried to tickle Beyza’s belly—something Beyza didn’t particularly care for. A very fickle and sometimes contrary cat was she.

  Moreover, Beyza had started missing the gang and Magyar—probably in that order, truth be told. She missed being with her own kind, and who could blame the rather simple but high-maintenance little creature? The villa would do for another day or two, she thought, but she also had to find an escape route. Since she was a lazy cat, it would be best, or so she thought, if she could find an ally within the villa to help plan her escape and ensure that it would go smoothly.

  An accomplice of this nature she would indeed find, but in the most unlikely of quarters.

  BACK AT CAPE MADONNA, FELICIA HAD A LONG, hard look at her old friend. She really was very glad to see him. Well, for one thing, Leopold was “easy on the eyes.” A particularly well-assembled Japanese Bobtail cat, he could leap several feet in the air effortlessly and took great pride in his cleanliness and appearance. Even after three years in the wild, Leopold retained many of the habits and mannerisms of a domesticated cat from an orderly household in Vienna. But still waters run deep, as they say. In his own way, Leopold was passionate—about the sea, about music, and, though he wouldn’t admit it, about Felicia.

  “Guten morgen (Good morning),” he said in Human German. “What a pleasure to see you both.” So far, so good. But then: “Come to apologize?” This, you will agree, did not bode so well.

  “Dragan,” said Felicia, “let’s leave this loner to his own devices. That’s clearly how he likes it.”

  “I’m sorry, Felicia,” replied Leopold. “It’s been a long time.” That was more like it.

  “Come on, then, you two, kiss and make up,” said Dragan in his gruff way. “You know you want to.” So the two old friends rubbed faces for an unusually long period of time. Poor old Dragan didn’t know where to look.

  “I’ve missed you,” Leopold said softly. “I’ve even missed you, Dragan. Can you believe that?”

  “Not without difficulty.”

  “We have all missed each other,” said Felicia, quite reasonably. “And we’d like your help with something, Leopold,” she admitted, which by her standards was a real climb down. She and Dragan then explained about the rats gathering on May 1 Piazza. “They were chanting something,” said Dragan. “It went ‘Ukwbyg!!! Jqhsdp!!!’”

  “‘Ukwbyg!!! Jqhsdp!!!,’ eh?” said the Viennese cat, suddenly all business. Because although Leopold felt roughly the same way about Rat as many Frenchmen feel about the English language, he could actually understand some Rat words and phrases.

  “‘Ukwbyg!!! Jqhsdp!!!’ My, but it’s an ugly language. The gist of it, I think, would be ‘tomorrow, death.’ And implied in that: death-to-the-cats-who-for-far-too-long-have-been-top-dog. It sounds to me like these dirty rats are up to no good, and will have to be stopped,” Leopold concluded.

  “One stinking rodent at a time,” as Dragan put it, smiling his eerie grimace and looking forward to battle. “In the good old days we used to bite the heads off rats. Have you forgotten that?” He laughed as he said it, and so did Felicia and Leopold. “All you do is grab the rat in the area where its neck should be, and disgusting as it may seem to you, you bite that loathsome little mite’s head off. Yum, yum, yum, yummity yum yum. Bite its head off and chew, chew, chew,” Dragan said between imaginary mouthfuls, then: “Garumph, garumph, garumph! Gulp, digest, and ‘buuuuwwwwaaaaaaaaaarpp!’” Then, finally, “Oh my, that tasted good!” Felicia’s and Leopold’s sides were now aching, they were laughing so much.

  “So now, you leave them rats to me,” added Dragan. “The rest of you might be too proud and dainty to bite off a rat’s head—and eat the rest of him with jam—but old Dragan ain’t,” he snorted.

  All at once another voice joined in the conversation. It was a chilling, mechanical-sounding grind of a voice.

  “Your translation isn’t quite correct. The phrase is, ‘tomorrow, victory,’ not ‘tomorrow, death.’ But you grasped the meaning of it.”

  Three pairs of cats’ eyes swerved toward the ugly great rodent that had snuck up on them, seemingly from nowhere. It was General Rat, of course, standing there on the rocks, eye patch in place, whiskers twitching contemptuously. (The General’s whiskers could do that.)

  Even as the General was talking, other rats, all of them soaking wet, began scurrying up from underneath the waterline. As you will recall, they had been hiding there and holding their breath for several minutes. Soon, dozens of the unpleasant little blighters had massed around the three wild cats. Though they did a good job of not showing it, Felicia, Dragan, and Leopold were all rather startled. And quite justifiably so. The rats began moving toward them in formation, or in what Egyptian cats would have called a Phalanx. In the rat tongue this would have been known as a “Jbrdqa.” Most things in Rat are known as a “Jbrdqa” of one kind or another, but let’s not get off on too much of a tangent about that, now shall we?

  Not when our beloved Piranese cats face extinction at the tooth and claw of such an unpleasant grouping! The mind recoils in horror! But instead of rushing them all at once, the whole tensely convulsing bunch came to a halt fifteen or twenty centimeters away. General Rat puffed himself up to his full height and again he spoke, in very rough but not incomprehensible Cat. (Remember, by rat standards, the General was not only an officer but also a gentleman and a scholar.)

  “Look ye, we come not to attack you. Well, not much. Instead, we are here to warn you. To let you know that the rules are changing; and that from now on, you wild cats are no longer the top of the food chain. We wild rats are!”

  “What’s this?!” growled Dragan, who was at that moment even more indignant than he was afraid.

  “You will have to live with us. Not the other way around. Not anymore.”

  “Ho-ho-ho.” Again, this was Dragan. “You’re funny, did you know that?” He laughed and then glared at General Rat.

  That Chartreux smile of Dragan’s really was rather alarming. Leopold, on the other paw, tried to e
mploy reason. He was raised in Vienna, after all, that city of international diplomacy.

  “Surely an armed confrontation isn’t necessary? I always find a good healthy debate to be helpful. Why don’t we organize one now?” He was of course playing for time, for all the good that would do him. Ignoring Leopold completely, the General continued.

  “There are some things we rats are not going to put up with anymore. Number one, being eaten. Two, being killed. Three, er, no, actually I think that’s about it. No killing rats, no eating them. Of course, we’ll have to kill one of you now and leave the others alive to tell the tale, just to send a clear message.”

  “Come on, rat-leader-type. Let’s at least be accurate,” said Felicia, herself playing for time. “It’s not so often that we eat rats these days. In fact I’d say you’re off the menu for most of the cats I know.” Yet even as Felicia tried to stall, Dragan was fairly sure he was the one wild cat these rats would choose to make an example of. Dragan’s reaction was predictable. He was absolutely livid.

  “Do you mind if I go first?” he said, smiling of course and stepping forward. As far as he was concerned, it was as good a time as any for a pitched battle.

  7

  The Battle of Cape Madonna

  Battle ensues, and cat-rat rivalry for supremacy is expressed in no uncertain terms. There is an unpredictable intervention from a species not usually thought of as involved in these affairs.

  It was just before dawn on the Istrian coastline of Slovenia, in the charming little town of Piran. Yet for three wild cats of Piran, there was no time to waste admiring the scenery or the sunrise. Felicia, Dragan, and Leopold faced their implacable enemy with courage: the terrible wild rats of Piran and their leader, General Rat. Ever the warrior, Dragan was the first to act. In one swift, animal movement he grabbed one of the larger rats in the front row, picked him up, and threw him over his shoulders, sending him tumbling and squeaking about fifteen meters out to sea. He did as much without thinking. If Dragan had thought it over, he would have remembered that the sea holds few terrors for a rat.

  “Dragan! That’s no good; that’s where they came from!” Felicia reminded him.

  “Very well, I’ll try another approach.” Dragan’s paw shot out and he grabbed another rat, and was about to wring its neck. Well, General Rat wasn’t going to stand for this, and both Felicia and Leopold knew it.

  The twitching body of rats braced themselves for a battle. “Nctohw! (Charge!)” the General bellowed as loud as he could. They were rats. They took orders. They charged.

  Dragan, it could be said, was equal to the moment, for here was an encounter that was red in tooth and claw. It was rather grotesque and gruesome, as nature in the raw can be. Inspired, Felicia reached forward, grabbing another rat in her agile little paw. “D’you know, amico (friend) Dragan, I think you might have the right idea.”

  Confronted by vastly superior numbers of a species they considered vastly inferior, Felicia, Dragan, and Leopold were still determined to hold their ground. But they were so outnumbered that the rats’ victory seemed assured. It was only a matter of time.

  IT IS INTERESTING TO NOTE THAT ALTHOUGH DRAGAN was fond of telling old Slovene folk stories about a legendary figure named Martin Kirpan, he was at best only vaguely aware that his own great-grandfather had inspired one of the oldest Slovene folktales of them all.

  The story involving Dragan’s great-grandfather “Zvonimir” was all about a cat that had singlehandedly solved an entire village’s pest or rodent problem. Zvonimir had done so by devouring every single rat, mouse, and gopher in the village and surrounding countryside. The townspeople, who were simple folk, were at first delighted. But by the time the wild and woolly cat had got rid of the very last vermin, the villagers became frightened that the greedy little beast would now start eating them. And so they offered old Zvonimir a fish that had been caught in Piran, quite unsure whether he would touch it or not.

  When the cat happily ate the whole fish, including its tail, the people heaved a huge sigh of relief, and believe you me, they kept the fish coming for year-after-year to come to the cat sitting at the table. It was an alarming-looking beast, with wild whiskers and a rather disturbing smile.

  Eventually, after expiring a few times from an over-stimulated palate, or from choking on fish bones, Zvonimir simply disappeared one night, and was thought dead. Yet in the middle of all this gluttony the old fellow had somehow managed to sire a litter of kittens, the oldest of which turned out to be Dragan’s grandfather.

  Dragan carried those genes in his blood: he could be vicious when roused, and his appetites knew no bounds. In light of the threats the cats faced from rats in modern-day Piran, these attributes could be considered very handy indeed.

  AN ANECDOTE CONCERNING DRAGAN’S ANCESTRY seemed a more pleasant way for you, dear reader, to pass the time, than for us to focus on the rather grisly cat-rat battle going on at the tip of Cape Madonna that morning.

  And so, rather than giving the reader’s delicate sensibilities any more jolts with graphically violent descriptions of the battle, let us just say this: Dragan and the others had fought bravely. But as was inevitable, the rodents were now beginning to overpower them. Leopold was the first to go down, which meant rats were now swarming over his body, and he could depend upon being torn to pieces and eaten in seconds flat. “What a desperately ugly way to go,” he thought to himself.

  Then, finally, Felicia remembered her errand of earlier that morning. She reached for some leaves of mint she’d been concealing under her belly and crushed them between her teeth, hissing as she did so. The rats backed away at once, repelled by what to humans may be a clean, refreshing odor but to rats is a revolting smell. She quickly passed a bundle of mint leaves to Dragan. “Just bite down hard on the leaves and hiss in your normal fashion!” Dragan did so, watching with amusement as the sheer smell of the stuff worked on the rat nervous system.

  “Just like garlic and vampires,” he reflected. Leopold managed to get back on his feet, and then he too bit down hard on the mint, releasing more of the odor into the crisp morning air. The rats were falling back, coughing and spluttering like soldiers under attack from mustard gas.

  “Aaaaaaqqqqqkkkkkkvvvvvv!!!” they called out in horror and disgust. Many instinctively retreated, and a couple of them actually fainted because of the smell. But not General Rat—who instead berated his troops:

  “Nctohw! (Charge!)” I said, “Nctohw!” The rats looked at each other for a moment, their beady eyes wiggling and their whiskers twitching faster than usual. They didn’t appear hugely enthusiastic. “Nctohw!” General Rat roared again in his unpleasant tongue.

  This was it. This was the window of opportunity for the wild cats. They pushed aside a couple of rats and began running toward the embankment, toward the crypt, toward safety.

  OF COURSE, FELICIA WAS DELIGHTED WITH THIS OUTCOME, and even wondered for a moment why she had felt the need to consult Leopold. But then she turned and saw him running alongside her, immaculate in his tuxedo-patterned coat. She was, after all, glad to have him around again. While it cannot be said that this was a conclusive victory over the rats, it was a lucky escape.

  And then something happened to make the rats’ trouncing complete. You won’t have forgotten Zach and Niki, surely? They were the young couple who objected to the maître d’ and the way he mistreated the wild cats at the Martin Kirpan Tavern. Well, Zach and Niki had woken up and got out of bed especially early that morning, even before sunrise. They were taking a stroll when they spied the conflagration between rat and cat down on the tip of the peninsula. As soon as they saw what was going on, they began barreling toward Cape Madonna. They were both reasonably fit. They were also extremely large from a rat perspective and moving at a fair clip. And Zach had the presence of mind to stop long enough to pick up a rock and throw it at the rats.

  Niki was quick to catch on, and soon she too had picked up a rock and thrown it. The rats didn’t like the look of th
is at all. They liked it less when Niki and Zach ran still closer and doubled their efforts, bringing a hail of rocks down upon them. Zach, as it turned out, had a pretty decent aim, the result of his days on the cricket pitch, and he knocked several rats squealing into the sea.

  General Rat turned to one of his colonels, and they both squeaked at the other rats, “Kwfnpl!” which in Rat meant, roughly, “Hold your ground, gentlemen. We need fear neither feline nor human, now that I am at your side.”

  After considering this advice for a few seconds, every single common garden rat began disappearing quickly, scrambling across the rocks to safety, diving into the sea, or otherwise making for cover. By the time the human couple had got to the end of the cape, even General Rat had done the same thing; he had jumped into the water and swum for it.

  Like rats leaving a sinking ship, you might say.

  ZACH AND NIKI EXCHANGED A LOOK that seemed to suggest they had made their minds up—that the best place to be was gone from there. They began walking briskly away from Cape Madonna and in the general direction of their hotel. Just before they reached the promenade, lined with all those waterfront restaurants including the Martin Kirpan Tavern, they came to Vegova Lane and made a sharp right turn, into the agreeable maze of streets comprising the body of the old town. At the corner of Vegova and Boniface they alighted upon the trio of wild cats, taking a moment to catch their breaths in the cool, early morning shade of Signora Fortuna’s porch.

  Cats and humans regarded each other for a moment. Their eyes met. There was a glimmer of understanding. Perhaps some intimate vibration, some transmission of gratitude was exchanged. But you started making friends and being grateful to humans—and look where that led! Domesticity, for one thing, and that was unacceptable to a feral cat of Piran. Shaking her head almost violently, Felicia began running very, very fast. She whipped between Zach’s feet, quite startling him and almost throwing him off-balance. Dragan was as quick to run past Niki, his tail brushing her leg as he sped by. Leopold followed, running as fast as he could.