by Fin J. Ross
'Yes, what a shame,' Maharani replies.
Miss Steph backs out the gate. 'Okay, dustpan, new litter tray and dinner,' she says as she heads off down the room. 'What's this then? Huh, that's odd.'
I hear Humbug and the Colonel and some of the others tittering. She returns before long, by which time I'm sitting on the top of the ramp.
'Here girl, how about some tuna - real tuna, human tuna, not that crappy stuff from a cat food tin.'
I lick my lips to show her I understand and she places the plate on the bottom shelf. I dop her head which seems to surprise her. All is forgiven if this tuna is as good as she says. She dops me back and tickles me under the chin. I turn on a momentary quirrel and drop down onto the shelf.
Wow, it sure smells good. I lick some juice and then tentatively sample some of the pink flaky stuff. Yuuum! I hoe in, quirrelling at a deafening volume at the same time. There! Gone! More please. I look up at her with my best pussano expression and quirrel a little louder.
'What a garbage guts,' she laughs. 'I s'pose you want a second helping.'
Yes please, pussy please. I know she can read my mind. I just get the feeling that this deuxjamb is pretty intuitive.
'I'm sorry girl, but your mother and I discussed a special diet for you, which unfortunately means no second helpings. So you're going to have to learn to savour your food. Eat it slowly and make it last.'
'Oh foop!'
'I could have been a cattender'
I start to wonder what's taking Miss Steph so long. After all she's already fed us all, so why doesn't she buzz off so we can get on with our game? I can hear her down the other end of the room and there seems to be lots of quirrelling going on - I can feel the fuzpah from here.
'Hey, what's going on?' I call out to anyone who might be listening.
'Oh, we're just getting our goodnights,' Humbug calls back.
'What's that?'
'Well, after she's fed us all - and before she goes - she gives everyone a cuddle and tucks us in.'
'Oh. Sounds good to me.' After what seems like an eternity, Miss Steph finally gets back to my quarters.
'Now, Miss Fudgepuddle, time for a quick cuddle before I go.' She's still speaking as she picks me up and holds me close to her chest and squeezes me in a very satisfying way. I can't help but quirrel - she really knows how to push my fuzpah button. She rubs her forehead on mine and blows hot breath in my ears. I turn to mush.
She leaves me there and progresses all the way down, giving everyone else a cuddle along the way until she finally gets to the door. As she turns the lights out she says: 'Goodnight, you prints in the main, you kinky new winglets'.
'Huh?' I ask, 'what did she say?'
'Not really sure,' Zsa Zsa says, 'but she says it every night'.
I'm sitting in my kackapod trying to get the inspiration for another creation when something hits me on the head and bounces off onto the floor. It's a kitzbitz. A slobbered-on kitzbitz.
'What the-'
'Are you going to join in, Juno? Maharani asks. 'We're having a game of dizza. I hope you remembered not to eat all your kitzbitz.'
'Sure, so long as you tell me the rules and it doesn't involve me getting pelted with your soggy breakfast.'
'Okay. You put a kitzbitz in your mouth, but don't chew it, right; then you spit it as far as you can. Now, you can aim into Lara's, mine or Beethoven's pen. If you get it through the wire into one of our pens it's worth five points, if you get it into one of our kackapods it's worth ten. But, of course, we can try to stop it coming in. If we block it or it doesn't get this far you get no points. Get it? We start when the bell rings.'
'What bell?'
'This one.' Maharani points to her collar.
'Sounds simple enough. But what's actually the point - I mean what does the winner get? It seems to me that the loser would be better off; they could just eat all the kitzbitz they can collect.'
'Oh yuck. Trust you to be such a glutton. Would you really eat something someone else has slobbered all over?'
'Huh? Yeah, if I were hungry enough.'
'We just play for championship points. Big Dan is the current champion. Coz he's so big, he can spit a way long way; and he'll sometimes spit two or three at once,' Maharani says. I begin to feel relieved I'm not opposite Big Dan's pen.
Whoa! I have to duck quickly to avoid one of Beethoven's kitzbitz flying at me.
'Hey, Beethoven, we haven't even started yet,' I call out.
'Yeah but he doesn't know that,' Maharani says. 'Okay are you ready everyone?'
'Yes, okay, I'm ready, go for it,' come the responses.
Suddenly it's like all-out war. Before I can even load up a kitbitz I'm being pelted centre, right and left. How come all three of them are picking on me?
I quickly load my mouth with three or four kitzbitz and spurt. Three hit the wire and flick back at me and the fourth rolls into the middle of no-feeli-land.
I've got to get the knack, and quick. Maybe just one at a time is the idea. I try that, aiming directly across at Maharani. I spit and… Bugger, it hits her gate and bounces back. I load again and spit. Yeah, yeah, it's looking promising…
No. She sees it coming and blocks it with her shoulder and it flips back out. It's not as easy as it sounds, this game.
I try again, but the next one lands in the potplant between Maharani and Lara's pens. I should mention that all the while I'm getting clobbered. I feel like one of those poor queekees in a shooting gallery. There's just no way to get out of the way. Surely they must be nearly out of ammunition.
I look in my bowl and there's only two kitzbitz left. I pick up one and spit it directly at Maharani. My timing's perfect, coz while she's ducking to avoid one from Zsa Zsa, mine sails through her wire, over her head and into her kackapod. Yeah, skilling shot!
I pick up the last one from my bowl and aim it at Beethoven. It's a more acute angle, so it's going to be a bit awkward. I spit and it goes clear through his wire and hits him on the rump as he's turning.
Yes!! I wave my paw in an arc of self-congratulatory praise. But it's not my last, of course, because my pen's full of everybody else's kitzbitz and they've all got none left.
So here's my dilemma. Do I keep the game going or do I keep my kitzbitz for a midnight snack?
I'm still contemplating this when I hear a rattle nearby and I see Maharani's head turn quicker than a courtside fan at Wimbledon. She lets out an astonished yarl.
Whaaat?
Then my eyes nearly fall out of my head, as a tiny face suddenly appears at my gate.
'Hi Fudgie. It's me - Riley.'
'Riley? Raffles! H'how did you get out?' My jaw is somewhere down around my elbows.
'Easy peasy. I told you they call me Houdini.' He starts to climb my gate and, as he gets halfway up, he flicks the catch across and the door starts to swing open - with him still attached.
'Weeeee,' he squeals, like he's on a fairground ride.
I'm just so moosh-thwacked I sit there as though my moosh has been thwacked. Raffles jumps down and darts across to Maharani's pen. Within about three seconds her gate is swinging open too and, as it swings out on its arc, Raffles reaches out and unlocks Beethoven's pen with his free paw.
'Who wants to party then?' he squeals.
We're all still sitting inside our pens, rigid with disbelief.
'Well I never,' Zsa Zsa says matter-of-factly.
Maharani delicately stretches her paw across the threshold as though she's testing the bath water. She takes one cautious step, her rump and tail low to the ground. She peers around and nods.
'It looks okay. The coast's clear,' she says, stating the obvious.
So I follow suit, stretching my front legs and sticking my ooti in the air and yawning as though this sort of prison break happens every day. I start to stroll down the aisle, getting a good look for the first time at Zsa Zsa, Rocky and the Colonel. The Colonel looks like he's just seen a Gorgon. Raffles is ahead of me, darting back and for
th opening all the gates.
'Raffles, young fellow,' says the Colonel in an authoritative voice, 'I must advise that you have flown in the face of the correct protocol here. Any escape plan is to be submitted to the escape committee, of which, I should remind you, I am the officer in charge. It must be voted upon and planned in every detail. Imagine the confusion if everybody just takes it upon themselves to break out when they please.'
'Yeah grandfuddy, whatever,' Raffles says, brushing aside the Colonel's imperious superiority with a cheeky flick of his tail.
Suddenly I'm confronted with a towering presence; a gorgeous hunk of a feeli with dreamy eyes, a mane like a lion and ears like a lynx.
Oooh… I start to wobble like a bowl of blancmange and I'm sure my eyes are rolling in my head. So not what I was planning for a good first impression. I wanted to look svelte and sexy. Instead I look like a beached wobblygong on speed.
'And you must be Fudgepuddle, er, sorry, Juno,' he says looking at me with intelligent eyes.
'Mmm,' is all I'm capable of responding. He's definitely as handsome as he sounds and I'm a veritable bowl of mush, a puddle of fudge… Oh cripes, a fudgepuddle even.
'Brrrr,' my comment reverberates as I vibrate my lips.
'Is something the matter?' he asks with sincere concern, his right eye closing like a slow, seductive wink.
'No, no not a problem,' I blubber. 'I'm, I'm just stunned at being out I think,' I lie. I rub my chin up the side of Big Dan's gate for his later appreciation.
'Yes, it's remarkable isn't it? Fancy it being so easy to get out of our pens. Obviously it takes a smart, tricky youngster like Raffles to achieve the impossible. Isn't that right, Colonel?' Big Dan smirks a little as he says it, not really expecting a reply from the old boy.
'By jove, I think I must be ready for retirement. To be outsmarted by such a young snipper-waffer,' the Colonel concedes. He's the only one who hasn't emerged from his pen yet. I take a couple of steps backward and see him still sitting up on his shelf, a supercilious expression on his boofy grey face.
'So are you coming out, Colonel?' I invite.
'No, I'm not in any hurry to be going anywhere. At least not according to anybody else's agenda,' he says with a superior air as though he has a mouth full of woozel. He puts his paws out in front of him and adopts a sphinx pose; his face a cross between uppity superiority and feigned ennui.
'So what do we do now?' Humbug asks as everyone mills around and sniffs each other's ootis.
You really have to hope you've cleaned there properly when a complete stranger wants to check you out. But it's a great way of finding out what neighbourhood someone's come from, whether they're an ecsotique or a wuzzer and, of course, what they had for breakfast.
There's a couple of feelis I haven't even met yet, so I introduce myself. There's Lionel, a cranky-looking old teezee. Then there's a very haughty-looking, boring as batgrunty, black bloke called Professor Faraday who just ignores me. He seems bent on ignoring everybody else too. So I decide to make it my business to ignore him.
I notice Red and Mars sticking together like glue and wonder how they'd cope if they were ever separated. They walk as though they're joined at the hip and I get the impression one always knows what the other one's thinking.
Suddenly happy hour is interrupted by loud mezzing and the crowd parts to reveal Rocky and Humbug facing each other off. Their backs are arched, tails fuzzed, ears flattened and their teeth bared.
I wonder what prompted this Mexican stand-off which is starting to become most unpleasant. Rocky has probably taken exception to some slight sleight from Humbug.
Rocky punches the air taunting Humbug and egging him to fight.
I am the greatest,
I float like a flupperty and sting like an acker
You're just a woozel
Whose cheese slid off his cracker
You're gonna zilly yourself, you'll be so scared
'cos I am a tiger with my shiny teeth bared
'You talking to meow?' Humbug asks, in his deepest voice with his eyebrows raised.
Geez, even Bobcat de Niro would be shaking in his shoes.
'Hey guys, snap out of it will ya,' Maharani screeches. But the boys seem oblivious to her command.
Now the mezzing is really guttural and it looks like there's about to be catastrophic feeli-cuffs.
The boys start to crab sideways, neither giving ground. Their hackles are sticking up like they've stuck their tails in a power point. It looks like it's going to be on for old and young. Rocky starts some fancy footwork, like he's tripping the light fandango, and dodges from side to side trying to confuse his opponent.
We all crowd around them in a circle - which a boxing ring should be, by the way - then Raffles pushes his way into the ring.
'Okay, who wants to place a bet?' he says. 'Will it be Rocky the Boofhead or Humbug the Sweet?'
'But we haven't got anything to bet with,' Zsa Zsa observes. 'Oh, unless we bet tomorrow's breakfast or dinner perhaps.'
I like the sound of that, coz there's no doubting for a second that Rocky's gonna flatten Humbug; and two helpings of rations tomorrow would be neat.
'Just a moment now.' A brindle tortie with curly-tipped ears appears ringside. Choux-Fleur is her name, if I recall correctly. 'They need a referee, they can't have a hoogy without a referee,' she says.
Roger appears behind her and volunteers, stepping into the ring and gesturing to us all to take a step back. Raffles darts over to pen one, scales the wire and grabs the number card off the gate and hands it to Finny.
'Wait a minute,' Finny pipes up, 'they've got to be introduced properly.'
'Jeez, at this rate they'll have forgotten what they're fighting about,' Maharani says.
I nod at her in agreement. I'm suddenly aware of someone behind me. I turn and find myself face to face with the Colonel. He licks his paw and runs it through his whiskers then pushes past me into the ring.
'Allow me,' he says. He clears his throat and puffs out his chest. 'In the red collar, weighing in at six point five kilos, with several titles under his belt and the scars to prove it, all the way from pen nine is Rockeeee the Boofhead.'
Still looking mean as hell, Rocky nods, traces a 180 degree arc around the ring and manages to never take his eyes of Humbug.
'And in the blue collar, in his first heavyweight bout and ever-so-slightly the underquiffo, weighing in at five kilos, but don't be fooled by his name coz he's one mean feeli; from pen eight it's Huumbuuug the Sweet.'
Humbug raises one paw to acknowledge the crowd.
'Hang on,' Raffles calls out, 'place your bets, place your bets. Rocky's the odds-on favourite and Humbug's coming in at five to one. Hurry, hurry. No more bets after the bell's rung.'
Everyone mills around Raffles as he takes the bets. Finny stands on her hind legs, holding the number one in her front paws and tries to walk a circuit of the ring.
I see now what Maharani means about her balance: gorgeous face but about as much co-ordination as a three-legged feeli high on catnip. After a few flops and flounces she departs the ring.
Roger nods to Maharani and she shakes her head, whereon her bell signals the start of round one.
Rocky and Humbug eye each other a moment longer and then fly at each other. In an instant they're tangled in a Gordion knot and it's hard to differentiate one from the other. Tufts of fur float above them, and the mezzing is so loud I start to wonder whether Miss Steph can hear it from her house.
They sound like a hundred squeaky doors being opened at once as they roll around the floor like a huge, crazy furball. Occasionally, an identifiable limb sticks out, but from my vantage point it's impossible to tell who has the upper paw.
It's so loud that Lara and Zsa Zsa have their paws in their ears and strained expressions on their faces. Finny has her paw over her eyes. I'm guessing that, having led sheltered lives, they've never been ringside before. The whole episode reminds me of my fuddy.
'My fu
ddy was murdered to death in a hoogy,' I call out to anyone who can hear.
'When was that?' the Colonel asks.
'Oh, about three years ago.'
'Hang on, how old are you then?'
'Me? I'm two and a bit.'
'How big a bit?'
'Why? What's it matter?'
'Well, if you're only two and a little bit of a bit, then he couldn't have been your fuddy.'
I don't get what he means 'Why?'
'Coz, Juno, you said he was killed.'
'Oh, no, he survived it; got some good scars though.'
'But-'
We can barely hear the bell ringing and Maharani finds herself in the middle of the ring shaking her head wildly trying to make the combatants hear it. They're oblivious to her.
'I think,' says Big Dan stepping calmly into the ring, 'that there's got to be a peaceful way to sort out your differences.' He intrepidly puts his head into the scrum, grabs Rocky by the neck with one paw and Humbug with the other and pulls them apart.
'Hey, enough already you two. Didn't you hear the bell? Now, pray tell, just what was this disagreement all about anyway?'
'He said I smelt like I'd eaten my breakfast twice,' Rocky says.
'Is that it?' Big Dan shakes his head in bewilderment. 'And you honestly couldn't think up a good comeback for that?'
'She's coming, Miss Steph's coming!' Beethoven shouts. 'Back to your pens, quick.'
We all start skidding and sliding and running around like mad things trying to find our own pens. I fly into mine, turn and pull the gate until I hear the click of the latch. I hear the clicks of several other gates shutting and the odd mehs and eewows as some of my fellow inmates squabble over whose quarters are whose. Within a few seconds we're all in bed, smiling and quirrelling and congratulating ourselves for our perspicaticy.
'That fight reminds me of my Uncle Clawed,' I say for no particular reason.
In the midnight hours
'Who's a big boofhead then?' Miss Steph asks.
I can hear some very loud quirrelling and can only presume that Rocky's really turning on the pussano treatment.
