by Fin J. Ross
'So what does Inda's fuddy look like?'
'Um, well he was black, I think, or maybe grey, or teezee even. Actually I'm not all together sure. It was dark, you see and, there was probably more than one anyway.'
'Oh,' Raffles shrugs as though he understands.
'Typical of a wuzzer,' Zsa Zsa butts in. 'Pedigrees always know who their father is. That's the one good thing about deuxjambs, they go to a lot of trouble to introduce us queens to only the crème de la crème of males of our breed. No way would we ever associate with just any neighbourhood tom. I mean, goodness me, just imagine if my perfect genes got interfered with! The shame would be unbearable,' she says haughtily.
Inda ignores her interruption. 'You mean you don't you know who my fuddy is?' he asks.
I feel my face flush a bit. How do I tell my dos that I don't know who his fuddy is? I have to think quick. 'Your fuddy is a very handsome feeli who lives around my neighbourhood.' Hopefully that will suffice. After all, very few feelis get to meet their own fuddy.
'I'd love to meet him and so would Arelli. We often wonder about him.'
'Arelli? You mean you know where Arelli is?'
'Oh yeah, I see her all the time. She lives just down the road from me. She's got really lovely deuxjambs. They even let her sleep on their bed, they warm her yellum for her, and she's got this big waterhole in the ground with little orange wimbies for her to catch.
'I've tried to catch them but they're too quick for me, but she let me try one of hers once; it was really sweet and crunchy.
'I always know when she's coming to visit because she's got a little jingly thing on her chokeystrap which makes it difficult for her to sneak up on anything. The queekees always hear her coming and fly away before she gets anywhere near them.'
I'm smiling. Beaming, in fact. I'm so happy to hear that another of my kisskies is doing fine.
'So what about you, what are your deuxjambs like, Inda? I didn't get a very good feeling about the one who brought you in.'
'Oh, they were fine at first. They cuddled me lots and played games with strings and balls and let me sleep on the bed. Honey was really fat and she'd let me go to sleep on her belly, but then she went away for a few days and came back thin, with a squawking mini-deuxjamb.
'Since then they don't seem to care about me. They shut me out most of the time. Except if it's raining they let me in the room with the big white boxes that swallow their empty clothes and grumble a lot.
'So I just entertain myself most of the time. I'd love to go and live with Arelli, but she already has to share her house with another feeli and a big blonde quiffo who's always slobbering over her. She really loves them though and she's very happy,' Inda says.
'What do they call her?'
Inda snorts. 'Pixie. Can you believe it? She much prefers Arelli. But then Pixie's not as bad as Coalpit - that's what I'm called at home. Why do deuxjambs give us such silly names and expect us to come to them when they call? I don't get it, Umbi.'
'Problem is darling, we can understand them, but they can't understand us. It's a constant struggle for us to try to educate them as mostly they're pretty slow on the uptake; they just don't get us.
'Admittedly, some of them try hard and every now and then there'll be a moment, like they've had some sort of epiphany, when you really think they understand. But then they go and do something really stupid like changing the furniture around or turning on the plug-in sucker dragon or waking you up in the middle of a really good mindmove to Weeras. And you realise that they just haven't learned anything.
'But then they try to make up for our pfutts or our schpitzos by giving us extra kitzbitz or yellum, so eventually we forgive them.'
'Well that explains a lot. Here I've been thinking they're all just stooooopid.'
'Some are most definitely stoopid, Inda. But others can be trained to know what we want; it just takes time and patience. You're still young; you have to persevere, Inda-mine.'
'Oh,' Inda nods with a know-it-all-now air.
'I'm just so pleased to know where two of my kisskies are.' I quirrel loudly and Inda smiles back. 'I'd love to know where the others are.'
'Huh, that's easy Umbi, you just put their names into Feelibook on the Intercat, and you'll probably find them.'
Inda might as well be talking in Egyptian Mau to me for all the sense he's making, and he looks at my nonplussed face with amusement.
'Ohrr Umbi, haven't you ever checked out Feelibook? You can find out anything on Feelibook, and if not Feelibook then Doodle or Yapuss.'
I shake my head at him. 'I'm sorry Inda, I'm just not up with all this latest technology.'
'Geez Umbi, it's not like you're that old. Don't your deuxjambs have a puterbox? I mean I get on ours every night after everyone else has gone to sleep. It's amazing the stuff you can find out.'
'Like what? What could I possibly want to know that I could learn off a puterbox?'
'Where would I start? It'd be much easier if I could show you, but of course there doesn't just happen to be a puterbox lying around here does there?'
'No, but there's one in the office,' Raffles pipes in. 'I'll go turn it on,' he offers cheekily, relishing the prospect of demonstrating his ingenuity once again. He trots out the door with his tail jiggling in the air.
A few of us look at each other and shrug.
'Might as well, c'mon,' Inda says.
We all take up positions in the office, ensuring we're not blocking the view of anyone behind us. I score the comfy chair, sharing it with Inda, who's busy tapping away on the little square things with letters on them. The screen flickers and flashes; there's so much to take in I don't know where to look first. Inda plays with a funny round thing with a tail beside the computer, tapping it and pushing it around. He's not even watching what he's doing with it. It just looks like a plastic woozel to me.
'What's that?' I giggle. 'It looks like a woozel.'
I think I'm being really clever until I'm met with a loud chorus of: 'It is a woozel stupid.'
'Oh.' I decide to keep my mouth shut, but I'm finding it hard to resist trying to catch the little arrow flying around the screen.
'So Umbi, what do you want to know?' Inda asks.
'That's like the 64,000 tuna question. Well, I'd like to know where Ori, Arni, Erna and Sizi are. I'd like to know how to find Hamish the Handsome. I'd like to know why Garfield is so popular and whose poor tail is always being trodden on when Mariah Catty sings. I'd like to know why Hayoo and Darling don't give me yellum every night. I'd like to know why queekees have so many bones. Um, I'd like to know why those deuxjambs in dresses try to make sounds like us with those little bags with pipes-'
'Hey, just one thing at a time, Umbi,' Inda says.
'Okay, okay, so how do we find my other kisskies? Do we just put in their name and it tells us where they are?'
'It's not quite that simple; it's going to depend whether they're into Feelibook or whether they have their own weblike or not. And if their deuxjambs don't have a puterbox then it's going to be a bit tricky. But we'll give it a try. So we'll start with Ori. We need to know when and where he was born - that'll narrow it down from anyone else called Ori.'
'Oh, well, that's easy. He was born in the morning at home,' I advise smugly.
Everyone cracks up laughing.
'What?'
'I think you need to be just a bit more specific than that,' Big Dan says smoothly from right behind me. 'And, by the way, who's Hamish the Handsome?'
'Oh, he's just someone I used to know. Why? You're not jealous are you?'
'Don't be silly. Jealousy is a characteristic that a pure-bred Maine Coon like me simply does not countenance. It would be beneath my dignity to be so, er, undignified. Now, getting back to the issue at hand.'
'Now c'mon Umbi, do you remember the date and you must know where you live; where we were born.'
'Yes, yes I do remember the date. It was just after the house was filled with all those deuxjambs sitting arou
nd the table with silly hats on, handing each other shiny things from under the tree they'd brought into the napping room. Never can figure out why they bring a tree inside, but they do seem to do it every so often.
'Anyway, it was between about then and that awful night when it sounded like the sky was exploding and Hayoo and Darling let all their deuxjambs friends into our house, and they were all stumbling around trying to spill sticky stuff on me out of their glasses, and holding me while they pretended to dance. It was embarrassing and not fun at all.'
'Oh, so between Christmas and New Years then - last week of December,' Zsa Zsa says authoritatively.
'Huh?' I can't figure out how she worked that out so quick - she wasn't even there.
'Can you recall what day of the week it was?' she asks.
'Yes actually, it must have been a Friday, coz I got tuna for dinner, I always get tuna on Fridays. Just like here - funny that.'
'It's a cattolic thing,' the Colonel comments.
Zsa Zsa and Raffles both pull funny faces like they're working out something in their head.
'So it must have been December the 27th,' they blurt out in unison.
Inda taps on the black keys and plays with the woozel again. 'So what's the address where I was born umbi?'
'Hmm. Yes…' I pause and then nod at everyone in the circle around me. 'It's um, well it's a sort of creamy, yellum-coloured house.'
'Geez Umbi, even I know that and I only saw the outside once, through the holes in the box the day I got taken away. But what's the address?'
'Oh, I don't know. I guess I just don't pay much attention to that sort of thing,' I confess. If I could have my life over, I realise there'd be lots of things I would make a point of finding out so I wouldn't look so dumb in front of one of my own kisskies.
'Well, we're not going to get very far if we don't know the address,' Inda says dejectedly.
'Ah, too easy,' Raffles says as he pushes his way past Maharani and Zsa Zsa across the desk. Zsa Zsa overbalances and falls to the floor, catching a claw in the carpet.
'Oh darn, I've broken another nail.'
'The address will be in Miss Steph's file,' Raffles says, pawing open the lid of the box on the corner of the desk.
The rest of us tut and nod our heads in that gesture that recognises our collective stupidity.
'Hey, Fudgepuddle, what's your surname?' Raffles asks.
Inda's head swings around so quick his eyes wobble in their sockets, as he gives me a squizzical. 'What did he call you, Umbi? Fudge - ha-ha - puddle. Ha ha.'
Now I just want to curl up and die.
'It's a term of endearment, love. Miss Steph thinks I'm pretty special and she only gives her own names to special feelis,' I explain, hoping to sound convincing.
'It's still pretty funny, but.'
I give him a wink and a nod. 'Now, my surname is…' I roll my eyes up towards the ceiling as though that's going to help me think. 'Um, I know it, I do, I think it starts with W.'
'Oh goodness, don't tell me you don't know that either,' Zsa Zsa says with a shaking of her head.
'Doesn't matter,' Raffles pipes up. 'Miss Steph's got pictures of all of us in this file, it's like an antiquated Feelibook. Oh look, here's Zsa Zsa- Oh, ha ha, she mustn't have had any make-up on when this was taken. Not very flattering…'
Before Raffles can continue, Zsa Zsa has leap-hibbied over Maharani and snatched the picture in her teeth. She sets to chewing it, working her jaws vigorously until there's nothing left of the card. 'I was only young then and I was having a bad fruff day,' she says as she tries to spit out a bit of paper stuck to her tongue.
'Oh and look, here's me,' Raffles announces as he holds his photo card up for everyone to see. 'Did you ever see such a good-looking guy? She's already done my card. That was quick.'
'Not too bad for a bug-eyed marsupial,' Humbug replies.
'Well at least I know what colour I am,' Raffles spits back, 'I'm sure you couldn't say for sure whether you're a white feeli with black blotches or a black feeli with white blotches. Probably you had a white mother and a black father-'
'And what's wrong with that?'
'Nuffin, I guess. It's surprisingly actually that you didn't come out grey when you think about it,' Raffles jokes.
'Oh funny ha ha,' Humbug snorts.
Raffles continues to rummage through the file box, working his way from the back to the front. 'Ah, ha, here we are. Megsy Campbell. Yeah, I can see how you could have thought it started with W.'
'Campbell, that's it, I knew I'd know it when you said it. Okay Inda, so try Ori Campbell,' I say tapping my dos on the shoulder.
'And your address is: 23 Fletcher Street, Parrot Point,' Raffles announces.
Inda clicks away on the woozel and as I stare at the screen I'm completely gobsmacked as an image of my Ori, admittedly a little older and wiser looking - but unmistakably my Ori - appears in a little box.
'What does it say, what does it say?' I'm so excited there's a risk of me zillying on the spot. 'Where is he?'
'Wow, he still lives in Parrot Point, so maybe he's not too far away. But his name's now Brian Buttrock. Look there's a clipping here from the Parrot Point Press with a picture of him. Look, it says: BRIAN THE CUTEST CAT.'
Everybody falls about laughing and I nearly fall of the chair.
Inda reads the caption aloud. 'Pictured with his blue ribbon, nine-month-old Brian, owned by Grace and Graham Buttrock of Graham Street and shown by their son Graham, was named cutest cat at the Parrot Point Primary Pet Parade. Well we shouldn't have too much trouble finding him when we get out of here.'
'Oh look,' Inda says, clicking onto Ori's bio, 'it says here that his interests are chasing flupperties, flower arranging and - hehehe - macramé. Mmm, um, think I need to have a word with my big dorry, you know, before everyone starts talking.'
I shake my head in surprise. And to think I thought I'd taught them all so well. I'm so pleased he seems happy and of course I love him just the same, but I decide to change the subject. 'So what about Erna, Arni and Sizi?'
Inda types in Erna Campbell, with the birthdate and address. We all wait for a few moments before a face everybody recognises unrolls onto the screen.
'Corrrr,' everyone breathes in unison. My jaw just drops and my tongue curls like a roller coaster. We're all looking at none other than the new talk of Catzeltown, the latest kisskie star of Hollypudd, Dacata Fanny.
'This, this can't be! But it is - it's my Erna. How could I have not realised? Oh I always knew she was going to be famous.' I grin so wide my jaws start to ache. 'So much talent, I didn't know we had it in the family.
'Hmpph,' I pull a smug face at Zsa Zsa, 'makes your acting efforts look a bit pale doesn't it? She's my jes… Dacata Fanny. AKA Erna Campbell. I can't believe it. And to think I might never have known, if it weren't for Feelibook. What a wonderful, wonderful thing.'
'Hey look everyone, she's got her own weblike, www.dacatafanny.cat.' Inda clicks the woozel and suddenly the screen changes. There's tons of pictures of Erna-now-Dacata. In one, she's pictured with Tomcat Cruise, her fur all tatty and her mouth wide open like she's screaming; and in another with Denzel Washingup, in which her fur's all tatty and her mouth is wide open like she's screaming. Then there's a photo of her with fellow kisskie star, Haley-Paw Catmint. The words that go with that one has Dacata denying that there's any budding relationship between the two and she quotes, 'We did nothing more than sniff each other's ootis. There was nothing romantic about it.'
Another little box on the screen lists her filmy-ography to date. So far there's been seven (but then she's still very young I tell myself) and I can't believe I've never seen any of them. Okay, so I don't get out all that much.
First was I am Sam the Cat, then Tomcats, then Cat in the Hat and the most recent, Nine Lives. But now she's up for two Acatemy Awards as best co-star in Catfight of the Worlds with Cruise, and in Cat on Fire with Washingup. Wow, I'm blown away.
'Hey, looks like you
've got a famous jes,' Big Dan says nudging me. 'I expect you'll be wanting to go to Hollypudd to see her and bask in her fame.'
I'm too moosh-thwacked to think about that, but, 'Hmmm,' I ponder aloud, 'how on earth would I get there?'
'I know, I know,' blurts Raffles. 'I've got a mate who works for FeeliFreight and he's always talking about this other guy called umm, Jack the Cheek or is it John the Lip?' Raffles looks squizzical at the ceiling.
'Jock the Nose,' the Colonel pipes in. 'I think you mean Jock the Nose, that crazy Scottish gofer.'
'Jock the Nose, what a silly name,' I giggle.
'They call him that because he knows everything,' Raffles says. 'Oh, and so they don't draw attention to his ears.'
'Och aye,' the Colonel says in a poor attempt at a Scottish accent, 'he's very self conscious about his ears. I don't know why. Every other Scottish Fold I've seen has daft ears as well, but he hates anyone mentioning them.
'But he always wants to know the ins and oots of your ooti that one. He's got his paw on the pulse of every feeli databank there is. Always got his nose in everything and there's not much he doesn't know. If you need a fake ID he knows where to go; if you want to find a missing feeli he can help; if you want to travel to New York Kitty he'll tell you the cheapest way to get there, and if you've got pedigree blood anywhere in your background, he'll know.'
'He sounds like a very handy fellow to know,' I remark, stating the obvious. I start thinking about the logistics of travelling over the seas to Hollypudd. I mean I can't just take off without a second thought for Hayoo and Darling. I have to accept that it's not really a practical idea, but that's not going to stop me thinking about it.
'I spose it figures that I'd have another famous actor in the family. If I could go to Hollypudd to see her, I might also be able to look up my uncle, Clawed Eastwood. I've never met him, but I hear he's a big bloke, big as a lion. That's why he got the lead role in Thunderfoot and Lightbulb. He's been in lots of movies like Where Queekees Dare, A Pawful of Dollars, The Good, the Bad and the Cuddly, and, of course, Escape from AlCATraz. Oh, and I nearly forgot, Absolute Powerpoint in which he plays a catburglar.'
'You mean, you're related to Clawed Eastwood?' everyone asks at once. Their jaws all level with their elbows.
