by Ged Gillmore
‘Is she after having a catniption?’ said Fleabomb staring at her with his head on one side. ‘Has she succumbed to the strain of staring death in the face?’
‘She’s certainly succumbed to something,’ said Bumfluff. ‘I think she’s having a wee whitey.’
‘Got it!’ said Ginger so suddenly both rats remembered she was a carnivore after all. They looked at each other nervously and took several steps backwards.
‘And what would it be, now?’ squeaked Fleabomb, with a little tremor in his voice. ‘Would it be a good thing, like cheese, or a bad thing, like, a disease that makes you hungry all of a sudden?’
‘I mean, I’ve worked out how I’m going to get out of here,’ said Ginger. ‘Are you ready to hear all about it?’
‘No,’ said Bumfluff. ‘I’ve got to go and do my hair.’
‘And I think I may have left something under the grill, like,’ said Fleabomb.
Ginger stared at them until she remembered she wasn’t the only animal in the world who could be sarcastic. After all, if sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, there’s bound to be more of it underground.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Now listen carefully. You need to do exactly as I say. First of all, I’ll need a pair of sunglasses and a bus timetable.’
WHAT A SONG AND A DANCE!
Tuck gasped and didn’t know what to do. Bunk, who he’d been banking on, had gone from bonkers to blank in the blink of an eye.
‘Oh, Bunkette,’ he yowled. ‘Talk to me. Say something. Do something!’
But Bunk lay where he had fallen, nothing more than a thick fur coat around some rather clever wiring. Then Tuck yowled again, realising he was about to watch all the other cats around him meet their ends too. None of them had noticed what had happened to Bunk. They were all too busy concentrating on the yummy food Mr Pong had put in their cages. As Tuck watched in horror, Principessa Passagiata Pawprints started to lick at the meat.
‘No!’ shouted Tuck. ‘Don’t! It’s poison!’
‘Please don’t-a take that-a tone with me,’ said the Principessa sniffily. ‘It doesn’t smell-a like poison.’
Fat-cat Matt was sniffing his food too.
‘I know the man’s always given us bad food in the past,’ he said. ‘But maybe they’ve switched it around? Maybe it’s the woman’s turn to give us the bad food now. Which means if we don’t eat this, then we’ll go hungry tonight.’
‘Oh, I do so hate to be-a hungry,’ said the Principessa in a very princessy way.
‘And since when were you such an expert on poison anyway, Tuck?’ said Butch, picking up a piece of the meat on his paw. ‘Why should we listen to you?’
‘Bunk told me!’ said Tuck, and for the first time the attention of all the other cats turned to Bunk.
‘Ooh, lore!’ said Butch. ‘What’s happened to her then?’
‘He looks-a strange,’ said the Principessa, squinting across the space between the cages. ‘Is he sleeping with his eyes-a open?’
‘Oh my Cod!’ shouted fat-cat Matt. ‘He’s dead.’
‘She’s corked it!’ said Butch.
‘He’s expired!’ said the Principessa.
And all the other cats down the row of cages said other variations on the same theme, which wasn’t surprising really, given it was a slow news day.
‘What happened?’ they all asked each other.
And then they asked Tuck.
‘What happened?’
But Tuck was too sad to tell them. All he could think of was that his new friend Bunk, the only cat in the world who’d ever thought he was clever, was no more. ‘You’re as clever as you think you are,’ Bunk had said. But Tuck didn’t think he was clever at all, which meant he wasn’t.
‘Did he eat the food?’ said Matt, the fat cat. ‘Is that what happened?’
‘Oh!’ said Tuck quietly, under his breath. ‘Oh, er … Yes! Yes, he ate the food.’ Then he said it louder. ‘He ate the food!’ And then he shouted it. ‘He ate the food! He ate the food! He said it smelled good, but as soon as he’d eaten it he realised the truth, and then he died.’
Well, that set a cat amongst the pigeons. Oh no, that doesn’t work. It set a pigeon amongst the cats? Well, you get the picture. It set them all talking at once and had them backing away from their food quicker than you can say ‘ghastly agonising death if you eat it’. Butch started wiping the meat off his paw onto the floor of his cage and Principessa Passagiata held her nose even higher than normal, as if she could suddenly smell the poison after all. Tuck even saw fat-cat Matt putting his paw down his throat to sick-up a bit of food he’d obviously eaten.
‘But why do they want to poison us-a?’ cried out the Principessa. ‘What have-a we ever done-a to them-a? And how will we ever getta out of here-a?’
‘We’ll get out tonight,’ said Tuck. ‘I know how; Bunk showed me. I just need the pin from his collar. Until then we have to be calm.’
‘Calm, darling?’ said Butch, looking at all the panicked cats around him. ‘Are you nuts? What are we supposed to do, play dead?’
‘Play dead?’ said Tuck. ‘Oh, er … Yes! Yes, play dead. Hide your food and play dead! Then maybe they’ll leave us alone.’
Well, the cats took some convincing of this. But Tuck didn’t have to convince them all by himself. Butch thought it was a fabulous idea, probably because it had been his idea in the first place, and Matt, the fat cat, and a few of the others agreed too.
‘But I always wanted a state-a funeral,’ whimpered the Principessa. ‘With a horse-drawn-a carriage and-a white-a lilies.’
Butch pointed out that lilies are also poisonous to cats, which so weakened the Principessa’s argument that it even shut her up for a bit. Still, the debate amongst the other cats went on and on, until suddenly they heard footsteps outside and the familiar voice of Mrs Pong approaching.
‘Dong-ding, ding-dong, the dinner gong sounds so wrong!’
‘Quick’ said Tuck. ‘Play dead now!’
And with that he fell in a heap, closing one eye, but keeping the other one open so he could check all the others had lain down too. And they had! Even Principessa Passagiata Pawprints dropped gently to the ground in a graceful swoon. Tuck closed his other eye and heard Mrs Pong’s footsteps approaching his cage. Then he heard her shrill voice.
‘Willeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!! Willy-woo my darling, you’ve done it! Come here now, come and see! Oh, at long, long last you’ve done it, you clever, clever man!’
Tuck lay still, not knowing what to do. He still didn’t feel very clever and he was worried that maybe he and the other cats would be thrown into the rubbish or—horrors!—onto a bonfire or buried or something. But before he could think of anything else awful which might happen, he heard footsteps rushing towards the barn and then the nasty nasal voice of Mr Pong.
‘I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it! Success at last! Oh, oh, success at last! You know what this means, don’t you, Frances? We can mix it into all our cat food and then start distributing it. We’ll give it away for free!! I’m going to be known forever as the man who rid the world of cats. Oh joy, oh wonder!’
Tuck felt a horrible prod as Mr Pong poked one of his long thin fingers through his cage.
‘Still warm,’ he heard Mr Pong say. ‘Oh, Frances, my dearest, do you not mind too much that you can’t fatten them up any more to get the maximum amount of fur?’
‘Oh, not at all Willy-woo,’ Mrs Pong replied. ‘They’re plenty fat enough. And with winter being so cold already, it’s the perfect time to skin them for my beautiful fur coat. Oh, it’s a momentous occasion, my darling; you must be so proud.’
Then Tuck felt the ground under the cages vibrating and heard the sound of heavy footsteps. He opened one eye the tiniest amount possible and saw the Pongs dancing in the aisle between the cages, Mrs Pong’s red hair flying out behind her as her tall and skinny husband spun her round and round.
‘A world free of cats!’ laughed Mrs Pong, revealing every one of her yellow teeth.
‘My darling Willy, I’m so happy for you.’
‘And a beautiful coat of fresh cat fur,’ said Mr Pong. ‘My beautiful wife deserves no less.’
And with that, the two Pongs waltzed down the corridor to the darkest end of the barn, and then back up again, continuing all the way out of the doorway and into the freezing night.
WHAT A LAUNCH!
The next morning the city woke to find itself, once again, covered in snow. Down on the streets, this was crushed in a rush to mushy slush by human feet and cars, but higher up it remained as pristine and pure as … well, as the driven snow, I suppose. Mickey Manx lived on the top floor of a very swanky building even closer to the city centre than the studios of the Feline Broadcatting Company. In fact, he lived on the roof, and that morning he invited Dora and Minnie up there to look at the view and talk business.
‘Oh-ee,’ said Dora when she arrived. ‘The city, it so beeg.’
‘Big!’ hissed Minnie in her ear. ‘Not “beeg”. If you’re going to pretend to be my daughter, you’re gonna ’ave to learn to talk proper, innit?’
‘Gonna after learn ta talk proper, eeneet,’ said Dora, trying to get her little mouth around the sounds. ‘Gonna after …’
‘Now, ladies,’ said Mickey Manx, smiling his brilliant smile. ‘Let’s get down to business. Manx Records has agreed with Manx Television Productions that, rather than go on What’s New, Pussycat?, you can appear on Mickey Manx’s Back To Your Roots to launch your careers. The only trouble is, there are no slots available for the next two months.’
‘Two months?!’ said Minnie. ‘I want to be famous now!’
‘Two month?’ said Dora. ‘I will not be so cute in two month. I need exposure now!’
Mickey Manx licked a paw and wiped it over his ears distractedly as he looked out over the city. He was obviously deep in thought.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘one of the new faces from tomorrow’s episode has come down with cat flu. But I’m not sure you’re ready. We need to …’
‘We’re ready!’ said Minnie and Dora at the same time.
‘Well said,’ said Dora, determined to get the last word in.
‘I know,’ said Minnie, achieving the same.
Mickey Manx wasn’t convinced.
‘I don’t know. I mean, we’d have to find a location.’
‘But you always go back to where cats come from,’ said Dora. ‘Is easy, we go to Andorra. I’m from a leetle town in the mountains, very beautiful, lots of skiing.’
‘Andorra!’ said Mickey Manx. ‘Even if we could get there in time, it would blow the budget. What about you Minnie, where are you from?’
Well! Minnie, as we all know, was born under a house in a very unpleasant part of a rather horrible town. Visiting Andorra might blow the budget on plane tickets, but visiting her birthplace would blow the budget on replacing everything that got stolen during the shoot. Mickey Manx might not have much of a tail, but that wouldn’t stop someone in Minnie’s home town from stealing it.
‘Well,’ she said …
‘Please tell me it’s somewhere picturesque?’ said the Manx in a frustrated tone. ‘Somewhere with trees and fields. Everybody wants a bit of escapism, and as the majority of cats live in cities, somewhere in the countryside would be perfect. Somewhere rural and—’
‘The farm!’ squealed Minnie.
Mickey Manx looked at her. He didn’t like being interrupted.
‘I come from a farm, Mr Manx,’ she said with the closest thing she could achieve to humility, which wasn’t really close at all. ‘It’s very beautiful. It’s called Dingleberry Bottom, and there are no humans on it, just my family. I’m a simple girl: I just like to make up songs when I’m in the fields picking flowers.’
Dora put her head on one side. ‘You said …’
Minnie put a paw over Dora’s mouth. ‘Oh, it’s the birdsong I miss the most. When I’m not eating birds, I do love to listen to them sing. I love to walk through the fields with the grass tickling my belly. Or through virgin snow on a day like this. I like to sit high in a tree. I’m thinking a panning angle from a helicopter with a soaring orchestra in the background. Yes?’
Mickey Manx’s eyes were wide open and, if you’d been there, you’d have seen little dollar signs in them. ‘And?’
‘Oh, and maybe some rabbits in the field talking about how well we all get on. And maybe Dora and I are walking across the farmyard/ dance floor—’
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ cried Mickey Manx. ‘Like mother, like daughter, you are both such geniuses! Tiddles! Tiddles, are you here? Get me a camera crew and a helicopter. We’re going to …?’
‘Dingleberry Bottom,’ said Minnie.
‘Tiddles!’ Mickey Manx shouted again. ‘Where is that tom?’ And he disappeared down the stairway to his office.
Minnie walked to the edge of the roof, looked over the city, and shook her hair in the cold breeze. She couldn’t wait to see the look on Ginger’s face.
WHAT AN EXIT!
If Minnie had bionic eyes, or binoculars, or maybe even a particularly good pair of bifocals, she would have seen an interesting pattern of movement far below her on the snowy city streets. All the people were rushing around in their normal way, carrying bags and looking important. All the cars and lorries and buses were moving in all directions too, honking and beeping and braking and belching out gas. The pigeons were flying in random directions, and most of the dogs were lifting their legs on corners or being dragged along behind their owners. So far, so normal. But what, I hear you ask (yes, I do), about the cats? Were all the cats in the city idling around or strolling in different directions? They were not. For almost all the cats in that huge city—at least those allowed out of the house—were travelling in more or less the same direction. And that direction was north: towards the wasteland beside the river.
Ginger’s disappearance had been big news on the Catnet. For the first time in the history of the Fur Girl/ Sourpuss stand-off, it seemed possible that a contender might not turn up. At first, the Gertrude Street Fur Girls denied Ginger had disappeared at all and blamed the Citrus Street Sourpusses for making the whole thing up. But when the Fur Girls were unable to present Ginger for the pre-fight press conference, and the media storm grew stronger, at last they had to admit the truth. Not only had Ginger disappeared, she had disappeared into thin air which, as we all know, is significantly more difficult than disappearing into air of a standard thickness.
Of course, there were claims of conspiracy on both sides of the wasteland, but the truth of the matter was clear for all to see. Nobody knew what had happened. And so, as is the way of the modern world, when there is no clear answer to a news story, that story grows and grows. Or, as it was in this case: growls and growls.
It seemed there wasn’t a cat commentator in the world who hadn’t a strong opinion of what had happened. Ginger, or rather the lack of her, made the front cover of The Times, The New York Times, Time Magazine and even Thyme Weekly, the herbalist magazine. And then, just as the story was ready to be replaced by a celebrity baby or a political scandal, things took a new twist.
It was heard first amongst the city birds, all tweeting gossip of the fight being on after all. Ginger, it was rumoured, had reappeared and was planning to represent the Fur Girls, but no further details were known. Next, an official communication came from Gertrude Street. The Fur Girls had heard from an unusual but verifiable source that ‘the big ginger cat there would be wanting to do the scrap on Tuesday night, so.’ Soon after that, posters started appearing all over town. Written in a strange ratty scrawl, they invited everyone to the wasteland to watch the fight of the century:
Witness the return of Ginger Jenkins at twelve minutes to num-nums
on Tuesday night and find out where she has been these last few days!
A once in a lifetime opportunity, like!
Well, malicious marketing manoeuvres, you can suspect the cynicism with which this news was met. It varied from comments that Ginger’s whole
disappearance had been a publicity stunt in the first place, to suggestions that the Fur Girls had deliberately delayed the fight so Ginger could gain some extra weight:
Fur Girls Cringe!
Win In Dingy Fringes Hinges On Ginger Ninja’s Binge.
Some even suggested that it was Ginger’s reappearance that was the hoax. But the latter couldn’t be true because, next, the Sourpusses issued a statement. The Fur Girls had confirmed the bout was on and that Ginger would be there. Until then, no prowling rights would be relinquished.
Can you conceive of the amount of fuss this caused on the Catnet; how many Licks it got on Furbook? Online felines blogged about nothing else and, soon enough, all the cats in the city were off to the wasteland to see what there was to see. Even the super-cool cats, who pretended not to like anything popular and preferred to talk about things no one else had seen and places no one else had been, even they could be spotted slinking along the side of buildings in a northerly direction.
Minnie and Dora and Mickey Manx, on the other paw, high on the rooftop making plans for stardom and fortune, were perhaps the only felines in the metro area not to have heard the news. Mickey Manx’s secretary, Tiddles, was to blame. One of his chief responsibilities was to keep his boss current with all trending news, but Tiddles had been in such a rush to make his own plans to see the fight himself, he’d forgotten to tell Mr Manx anything about it. Which just goes to show how you should never rely on your staff.
Thirty feet below the wasteland, Ginger lay in the dark breathing deeply. She had not heard from King Rat, but Corporal Punishment had been strict in ensuring she was closely guarded at all times. The rats who guarded her now were the Corporal’s most trusted henchmen, the rats Ginger had first seen in the forest: Private Dubious Staines and Sergeant Vicious Lee Scard. She could hear their wheezy breathing. Other than that, she could only hear her own heartbeat.
