by Ged Gillmore
‘You got passes?’
‘Glasses?’ said one of them. ‘What would I be wanting with glasses? Down here, where it’s so dark I can hardly see at the best of times, and even if I did have a pair, someone would be after stealing them?’
‘I said passes!’ said the guard.
‘Classes? said the other out-of-sight rat. ‘Nigh, ye don’t have to be going to classes, like, to deliver food to a prisoner. It’s a non-skilled occupation.’
Clearly, Binjuice Jones couldn’t be bothered with this pass-class-glass-larceny farce.
‘Oh, don’t bother,’ he said. ‘You want to see the prisoner, be my guest. Let’s see how you react then.’
Ginger, who had by now recognised the voices, not to mention the idiotic banter, of the two delivery rats, stayed at the very back of her cell as—you guessed it—little brown Bumfluff McGuff, with a plastic bag of water, and fluffy black Fleabomb McGee, with a small cloth sack of num-nums, crept in.
‘Cheeses, it’s dark in here,’ said Bumfluff. ‘Yer could poke me in the eyes with a sharp stick blinding me entirely, and I wouldn’t know nothing about it until I got back outside. How are yer, yer big ginger cat, yer?’
‘What are you two doing here?’ Ginger hissed at them. ‘You’ll ruin everything.’
‘Nigh, hi’d you like that?’ said Fleabomb. ‘I told ye she wouldn’t be happy. Let’s go, it’s too dangerous here.’
‘Settle, petal,’ said Bumfluff. Then to Ginger he winked and said, ‘Will yer not calm down? Here we come to tell yer that all is fine, and we’re hatching plans, and we’ve not forgotten yer, so, and all yer can do is ask what we’re doing here. We’re communicating with yer, that’s what.’
‘OK,’ whispered Ginger. ‘So what’s the plan? How are you going to get me out of here?’
‘Patience, patience,’ said Bumfluff. ‘Yer’ve only been in here a few hours, ginger cat. Dem plans I mentioned, dem’s being hatched. They’re not quite hatched as yet. We—’
But before he could say another word the guard yelled in to them.
‘What are you doing in there? Prisoner, show yourself. If you’ve eaten those two you’re in big trouble.’
‘Yikes!’ squeaked Fleabomb. ‘Let’s go!’
‘We’ll be back,’ said Bumfluff.
And, leaving the food and water with Ginger, the two rats disappeared out into the tunnel.
‘We was just looking at the tiger, so,’ Ginger heard Bumfluff saying to the guard. ‘Seeing as we’ve not got one in the zoo back home.’
‘Nor in the local park, like,’ said Fleabomb. ‘Nor even in the local pet shop as far as me memory serves me. Isn’t it funny how everything is always so disappointing in the flesh? I was expecting something grander.’
‘Get lost,’ said the guard.
Well, scuttling scaredy-rats, he didn’t have to ask twice. Not that the first way he said it was much of a question, really, was it? (That, I hasten to add, was a question.)
Scaryway, the two rats scampered off to finish hatching their plans, or at least Ginger hoped that’s what they were doing. For the next thing she heard was a distant shout of ‘Make way for the King!’
WHAT A FADE OUT!
Tuck too was in a dark prison. Not Tuck 2: The Sequel. For Tuck 2: The Sequel to be in a dark prison, we’d need Tuck 1: The Movie to be conceived/ written/ produced/ released to huge critical and commercial success (one can only hope). And, not only that, we’d need to end up with Tuck, in Tuck 1: The Movie, being caught and thrown in a dark prison. Which, coincidentally, is exactly what has happened to poor Tuck since we saw him last. Or, not that coincidentally really, seeing as that was the plan, even if Tuck hadn’t listened to it. Of course, if Tuck had listened to the plan, I suspect he might have screamed a little less loudly when Mr Pong, spotting him staring at the rubbish heap, suddenly emerged from what had once been the smokehouse with a large black-cat-catching net in his hands.
‘Aggggh,’ Tuck yelled with the most miaow-power he could muster at that hour. ‘Bunk, it’s the Pong man. Run!’
And, perhaps if Tuck had been listening to the plan, he wouldn’t have panicked quite as much as he did, and run completely the wrong way right into the cat-catching net. Or maybe he would, if you think about it (do try.) As for Bunk, of course he didn’t run at all. He simply succumbed with full compliance, as agreed beforehand, and allowed himself to be recaptured.
‘You’re acting is superb,’ he whispered to Tuck as Mr Pong carried them both in the net towards the barn and, there, in the dark shadows at its far end, threw them into a cage. ‘He’ll never believe we actually meant to be recaptured. Oh look, this is where all the other cats are.’
Sennyhoo, as I was saying, Tuck too sat rotting in prison. That’s a funny expression isn’t it, ‘rotting in prison’? I mean, just because you’re in prison, there’s no excuse for rotting. You’re not a tomato which has been left at the back of the fridge for too long. You might want to remember that next time you’re in prison: ‘I am not a tomato.’ Actually, you might want to remember that the whole time. Maybe go out and get a T-shirt with ‘I am not a tomato’ printed on it. Or stick a Post-it note on your bathroom mirror or your phone. You are, after all, not a tomato. (Apologies to any tomatoes who may be reading this book).
Where were we? Oh yes, Tuck was sitting in his cage, not rotting, but definitely snotting.
‘Ooh, noo,’ he sniffed. ‘We got caught!’
The cages at the dark and shadowy end of the newly upright barn were arranged in much the same fashion as they had been in the lorry. Bunk and Tuck were in adjoining cages. Opposite them were the Principessa Passagiata Pawprints from the posh part of Palermo, Matt, the fat cat, and Butch. And, just as they had been in the lorry, all the other black cats, who were far too many to name with any attempt at character development, were housed further down the rows of cages.
‘Where have you been?’ asked Butch when he saw first Tuck and then Bunk locked up in their cages. ‘Darling, please don’t tell me you fell for all his nonsense about being a secret agent? Let me guess, he tried all his “I’ll get you out of here” rubbish on you and you fell for it. Oh dear!’
‘Bunk is a secret agent!’ said Tuck. ‘Leave me alone. Boohoohoo.’
Principessa Pawprints smirked and then set about cleaning her ears in a most condescending manner.
‘Pah!’ she said between licks. ‘Secret agent indeed-a!’
‘He is,’ said Tuck. ‘It’s confidential. He’s in the CAI, which is more important than the FIB, and we had adventures and we went to the super-secret HQ in a location which must never be revealed in Bodgkin’s Car Yard next to the Great Dark Forest, and we’ve come back to take photos and rescue you all. Tell them, Bunk!’
But Bunk said nothing. He was sitting very quietly in a corner of his cage, struggling to keep his eyes open.
‘You’ve both made ever such a fool of yourselves,’ said Butch in his light and lilting voice, as he played with his gold medallion. ‘Plus, you’ve missed out on some lovely num-nums.’
‘Yeah,’ said Matt, the fat cat. ‘And it seems even your friend isn’t looking so clever now. He looks like someone who’s a bit embarrassed to be discovered as a fraud.’
‘He is not a fraud!’ Tuck spat at fat cat Matt. Not that the latter gave a rat’s gnat for his chat.
‘Really?’ he said. ‘So why is he looking so sheepish then?’
Tuck turned and looked at Bunk.
‘Tell them,’ he said, but still Bunk said nothing. His eyes were almost fully closed and he seemed barely able to move. ‘Bunk, what is it? Bunk, are you feeling OK?’
Tuck pushed his nose up against the wire between their cages.
‘Sunlight,’ whispered Bunk. ‘Need sunlight. New software very draining on batteries. Need a solar recharge. Need sunlight.’
‘What?’ said Tuck. ‘Bunk, are you OK?’
‘Turning off now to conserve power. Speak tomorrow. Click, zzzz.’
; And with that, Bunk closed his eyes and lay as still as a corpse.
WHAT A CHEEK!
Miaownwhile, way back in the centre of the city, Minnie was preparing herself for her own big moment. She had been in the queue for hours now and the effort of maintaining her fabulosity was beginning to make her tired. Behind her, a fluffy little Persian Blue was practising his scales. ‘Miaow, miaow, miaow, miaow, miaow, miaow, miaow,’ he sang in such a perfect run-through of the scale of A minor that Minnie began to feel a little nervous. For the very first time, it occurred to her that global stardom might be more than one audition away. She tried practising her own routine: a rather saucy version of ‘Scritchy Scritchy Scratchy’ with a few tremolos thrown in. Defying Mr Soffalot’s legal hold over the song made her feel better immediately and she practised some of the trickier lines a little louder.
‘What key is that?’ said the Persian Blue with a smirk. ‘B-careful?’
‘D-saster, more like’ said the cat in the queue behind him, a long-legged ginger wearing a tiara.
‘Lick my tail!’ said Minnie, before giving them each a withering glare and turning her back on them. Now she was more nervous than ever.
The queue of cats ran along three long corridors of the FBC studios before reaching the room where the auditions themselves took place. This was a humungous great sound studio with a stage at one end. Here, the queue snaked back and forth, so that whoever was on stage could be seen not only by the judges, but also by the first hundred or so cats in the queue. Well, if Minnie had thought she was nervous before, she was doubly so when she reached this room. As she entered, the cat on stage—a strongly built tom who reminded her of Tuck—burst into tears, before running from the stage. The cat ahead of Minnie, a small white cat with an obvious eating disorder, told her the tom’s version of ‘Just Kitten Around’ had drawn such scorn from two of the judges that they’d started spitting at him.
‘Lorky lummocks, that’s bit much, innit!’ said Minnie, who never in her life before had ever thought anything was a bit much.
‘That’s nothing,’ said the white cat. ‘The tabby who was on before him got booed off by the cats in the queue.’
Minnie felt her stomach contract. Looking back, she saw the Persian and the ginger in the queue behind her had also grown quiet at this news.
‘Well, that’s just disgraceful’ she said. ‘We should all stick together—’
But no one knows how cunning and manipulative she was going to be next because the white cat interrupted her.
‘Oh, this is number three thousand and forty-two coming up now. She’s one of the favourites to get through.’
And, as one, they all turned and waited for the next cat to walk onto the stage. There was a murmur of anticipation amongst the queue, and then Minnie thought she was going to be sick as no one other than Dora walked out from the wings.
‘How did that—’
But again, she was interrupted, and we will have to guess what very rude word she was going to use, because the entire queue made a collective ‘Aw!’ noise. The words ‘cute’ and ‘adorable’ and ‘lovely’ were heard amongst the general kerfuffle. Then all the cats in the queue grew quiet again. Even Minnie, who was—for the second time in her life—utterly lost for words.
‘What’s your name, sweetheart?’ said the lead judge in a thick Manx accent. As he leant forward into the light of the lamp on his desk, Minnie saw it was none other than Mickey Manx.
‘D … D … Dora,’ said Dora.
‘And what are you going to sing?’ said Mickey Manx. ‘Come on now, don’t be shy. Have you got a song?’
Dora nodded silently, clearly shocked by the sight of a hundred cats staring at her. Then she remembered the judge had asked her a question.
‘It’s … it’s … my song, it’s … called ‘Scritchy, Scritchy, Scratchy’.’
Minnie emitted a tiny scream. ‘That little … That conniving …. That thieving …’ she said, struggling to finish her sentences because she was so fuuuuuuuurious. The cats ahead of her hissed at her to be silent, but this made her all the more angry and she started pushing past them, determined to get to the stage. Before she’d progressed more than a metre, cats screeching and spitting as she pushed past, the music to ‘Scritchy Scritchy Scratchy’ came over the loudspeakers. Everyone watched in anticipation as Dora stood there, opened her mouth and stayed silent.
‘Can’t hear you!’ shouted a tall brown cat in hoop earrings, before screaming as Minnie shoved her out of the way.
‘Scritchy?’ Dora sang in a very weak voice, before falling silent again. ‘Scratch?’
It was another minute before someone in the crowd booed. But as soon as they had done, it started a chorus of caterwauling.
‘Get her off!’ shouted a mean-looking grey-stripe cat before saying ‘Oof!’ as Minnie trampled him out of the way.
Next, the music fell silent again and Mickey Manx stood up and turned to the queue.
‘Seeing as she’s so cute, we’ll give her one more chance,’ he shouted to the cats waiting to perform themselves. ‘What do you reckon, folks?’
But before any of them could answer, there was an altercation at the steps which led up to the stage. Two of the tortoiseshell security cats had been pushed out of the way by a rather large and extremely angry cat of many colours who now appeared on the stage beside Dora. The entire crowd gasped to see two cats of such very different sizes looking so alike. Wondering what all the fuss was about, and why, for once, he wasn’t the centre of attention, Mickey Manx turned back to the stage.
‘Wow!’ he said, his beady little eyes already alight with commercial possibilities. ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Dora’s Mother, we didn’t realise it was a double act. We should never have started without you. Let’s take it again from the top.’
‘Mrs Dora’s … how dare you!’ said Minnie. ‘A double act!? A double act!!! Oh … a double act, that could work.’
And then, as if there had never been any bad blood between them, Dora pushed her nose up against Minnie’s chest and said loudly, ‘Oh, Mummy, I thought you’d left me all alone.’
Well, just then Minnie would have happily bitten off Dora’s pretty little head, if it weren’t for the fact that every cat in the room said ‘AWWWwwww. So cuuuuuute. Aren’t they adorable!’
Well, misplaced maternal mutterings, Minnie had been called many things in her life by other cats, but ‘adorable’ was not one of them. She put on her best smile and wrapped her tail around Dora’s little body.
‘I’m going to kill you if this doesn’t work out,’ she said through gritted teeth, so quietly that only Dora could hear it.
‘Ah si,’ Dora whispered back. ‘But we go fifty-fifty on sales and global merchandise if it does?’
Then, before Minnie could negotiate a better rate, the music for ‘Scritchy Scritchy Scratchy’ started up again.
WHAT A NEGOTIATION!
‘Make way for the King!’ came the cry, at first from far away, then closer and closer, until Ginger could recognise it was Corporal Punishment’s voice shouting.
‘Make way for the King!’
Even deep in the dark, dirty and dank tunnels of the rat kingdom, not to mention deep in doo-doo, Ginger was still cynical enough a cat to roll her eyes. Make way for the king, what rubbish! There wasn’t anyone in the way, just a long and empty tunnel and the vicious rat guarding her cell.
‘Make way for the King!’ came the cry even more loudly now, accompanied by the scratchy tread of several heavy rats. That made Ginger stop rolling her eyes and start gulping. This was her big moment and, whereas Minnie would be disappointed if her big moment didn’t work out well, Ginger would be dead if hers didn’t.
‘Make way for the King!’
This time Corporal Rat’s husky voice boomed right outside Ginger’s cell.
‘You only have to say excuse me, Corporal P,’ Ginger heard Binjuice Jones say. ‘I’m happy enough to move … ow!’
Well, painful punches, we w
ill never know what made him say ‘Ow!’ because Ginger couldn’t see, but suffice to say he went scampering out of the way. Ginger took a breath and waited. And waited. And waited a bit more.
‘Someone still in the way of the King?’ she called out in the end.
Corporal Punishment’s head appeared around the corner. ‘He’s just coming,’ she said, clearly a little embarrassed. ‘You must excuse him, he does get very busy … Oh, here he comes now. Make way for the King!’
Ginger heard the noise of the heavy rats who had accompanied the Corporal down the tunnel shuffling quickly to one side (like, they hadn’t heard their boss telling everyone to make way since the beginning of the blooming chapter!), took another deep breath and prepared herself for coming face-to-face with the famous King Rat.
‘Oh hello,’ said the very small and friendly-faced white rat who entered her cell.
‘Morning,’ said Ginger. ‘King on the way is he?’
The white rat laughed a rather soft and gentle little white laugh. ‘Oh, I am the King. So sorry to disappoint you. But, you know, good things do come in small packages, ha, ha, ha. Now, you wanted to see me?’
‘You’re the King?’
‘Ha, ha. Yes, indeed. Now how can I help you?’
Ginger couldn’t help but feel relieved. She had expected to come face to face with the biggest, meanest, most terrifying rat in the history of the universe. This little fellow seemed quite charming.
‘Well, I don’t mean to be rude,’ she said, truthfully for once, ‘but it seems you’ve been taking from us when you’re supposed to be sending to us.’
King Rat looked at her and said nothing. This, you should note, is one of the key tricks of good negotiation. Just because the other person stops talking doesn’t mean you have to start. It works particularly well on the phone. If you want to shake someone off their balance, stay silent and see what happens. Unless, of course, you’re talking to Tuck. Fortunately for Ginger, she was well aware of the trick, being an arch-negotiator herself. She had once negotiated for a hated waiter whom a feted curator had slated and berated for plating his skate too late. She might be deflated and incarcerated, but now she waited and said nothing.
