Cats on the Run

by Ged Gillmore

  ‘How long you been in ’ere then, darl?’ said Minnie, after she’d stopped laughing at her own jokes.

  ‘Less than a week,’ said Major.

  ‘Aw, not long then, eh?’

  ‘No. But longer than you.’

  Minnie looked him up and down with a curl on her whiskers that could best be described as, well you decide:

  ‘Aw, what, you going to be the big boss cat then?’ she said. ‘What you going to do, sit on me? Major Headache that would be. Major Headache! Major Pain in the Furball! Major Do It Despite Yasself! Ah ah ah ah ah ah.’

  ‘Look, lady,’ said Major. ‘Just keep out of my way, alright?’

  And he strolled back to the sofa to watch Janice and Rodney wrestling on the floor.

  Well. If there was one thing Minnie did for the rest of the night, it was not keep out of Major’s way.

  ‘Wanna fight?’ she said, soon after a very bruised Rodney had let her out of her cage.

  ‘No, man,’ said Major. ‘I’m happy chilling just now.’

  ‘Gawn,’ she said. ‘Gawn! Let’s fight. Puddum up, puddum up!’

  ‘Thanks but—ow!’ said Major as Minnie gave him a surprisingly powerful blow to the ear. Then ‘Ow’, he said again as Minnie sat up on her hind legs and started jabbing him like he was a boxing ball. After six jabs he’d had enough. He turned and kicked her hard with his back legs, then quickly turned again and pinned her to the ground. ‘I said, leave me—’

  ‘Aaaaagh,’ screamed Janice in a high-pitched wail, not unlike Lady Gaga in a blender. ‘You nasty, awful brute of a cat. Leave my miniature fur-baby alone.’

  Before Major could protect himself, Janice had him by the scruff of the neck and had thrown him onto the sofa in a most humiliating manner. Major licked his foot to show Janice what he thought of her, but she wasn’t watching. She had her face buried deep in Minnie, whom she had gathered up and was holding like a baby.

  ‘Was that big, nasty brute terrorising my baby, baby ball of fluffkins?’ she said to Minnie’s stomach. ‘Do you need some protection from the ugly, fat, ginger nastyboy?’

  Minnie somehow managed to ignore the fact that Janice was burying her face in her stomach. She just turned her head slowly in Major’s direction and gave him a clear and cheeky wink.

  Major’s evening didn’t get much better after that. There is a golden rule amongst cats that you never—never!—disturb another cat in the litter tray. But it was a golden rule Minnie didn’t seem to know. Major was minding his own business in the bathroom and feeling pretty down in the dumps when DOOF! a golf ball hit him on the back of the head.

  ‘Fore!’ shouted Minnie, and came running over. ‘You nearly finished or what?’

  ‘Hey!’ said Major. ‘Can’t you see when a tom’s busy? Give me a minute.’

  But even a mini-minute was many a minute too many for Minnie. Poor Major had to suffer the golf ball being thrown at him twice more before he’d finished his business. He even gave up on burying it. Oh, the indignity.

  But the worst was yet to come. ‘Din-dins!’ shouted Janice in a high tinkling voice that she thought appealed to cats. ‘Dinny-din din-dins.’

  ‘Gorgonzola,’ thought Major. ‘I can’t believe Ginger would ever have come here on her own accord. I wonder if …’ But then he smelled cat food and thought nothing but ‘Yummy yummy yummy.’

  He watched patiently as Janice walked into the living-room and put down a saucer for Minnie. Then he watched patiently as she walked back into the kitchen and put down a saucer for him. Like I said, he was a dude. He wasn’t one of those whiny cats that makes an absolute fool of itself every time it thinks it’s going to get fed. No cheap miaowing for Major—he saved his words for when they were needed. Man. Well, dinner tonight was ‘chicken with whole lobster pieces’, his absolute favourite. But no sooner had he begun to eat than guess who was by his side?

  ‘Hiya!’ said Minnie. ‘What’d you get?’

  Major ignored her and carried on eating.

  ‘Can I have yours? Go on, let me have yours, give us a bit, go on give us a bit, that bit there. Do you want that bit there, can I have it? Give me that bit. Why you growling?’

  ‘Go away,’ said Major. ‘Eat your own dinner.’

  ‘Didn’t like it. Want yours. That bit, you want that bit, that’s lobster, innit, I want it.’

  Major sat back and looked at her. ‘If I eat your food and give you my food, will you just shut the furball up and leave me alone?’ he said.

  ‘Cross my heart,’ said Minnie. ‘Yes, promise!’ And without another word she sat down to eat his meal. Major sighed a big gingery sigh and walked into the living room. And what did he find there? Dandy, da dah: an empty plate! Minnie had already eaten her dinner!

  ‘You little minx!’ he growled, but by the time he was back in the kitchen his dinner was already gone too.

  ‘Ah ah ah ah ah,’ said Minnie. ‘Fooled you. Boss cat!’

  Well, boy, did this make Major grumpy. He launched himself at Minnie, who jumped out of his way and ran screaming into the living room, then up the stairs and straight into the spare room, where Janice was ironing some leftover skin she was thinking of making into a pinafore.

  ‘Wah!’ screamed Minnie in a deep-southern accent. ‘Hayulp, hayulp, who will hayulp me?’

  Major ran after her, determined once and forever to teach her a lesson, but of course as soon as Janice saw them, she swept Minnie up into her arms and gave Major a very nasty kick.

  ‘Rodney!’ she screamed. ‘Rodders, these two cats are driving me to distraction. The evil one is almost too evil, and he’s going to kill my bubby babykins if we don’t act soon. Let’s do that commingling spell soon!’

  A confused Minnie looked at Janice. ‘Commingling spell?’

  ‘Oops,’ said Janice. ‘Did I say “commingling spell”? Silly me. I meant “my kindling smell”, my mistake. Here you go, kitty, run along. Rodney darling, we need to do my kindling smell very soon. In fact, we need to talk in private right now!’

  And with that she put Minnie down, walked into the secret-upstairs-locked room, where Rodney was getting ready for a big night out, and slammed the door behind her. Then she locked it.

  ‘What commingling what?’ said Minnie to Major.

  ‘You’ll see,’ said Major. ‘You won’t like it but you will see.’

  And he walked off with his tail in the air so that from behind he looked to Minnie like a big exclamation mark on legs.

  Well, all night long Minnie asked Major about the commingling spell. ‘What is it? Why is it a secret? Am I involved? What are they commingling? Is it like recycling? Does it hurt? What are they doing it for?’ On and on and on in that vaguely annoying accent from the wrong side of the tracks. Ooh, she was a right pain. For hours and hours and hours she miaowed at him.

  But Major could be a rock when he wanted to be. He sat silently, pretending he was on a mountaintop in the Himalayas, meditating on the sound of one paw clapping. But he didn’t get a wink of sleep all night, and so, come the next morning, just as Ginger and Tuck were awaiting the arrival of the first birds by the lake in the forest, he sat bleary-eyed and hungry, waiting for Rodney and Janice to come home. Poor Major didn’t know it was Hallowe’en, the witches’ favourite night of the year, when children are the easiest to abduct and often come with free sweets. On and on and on he waited but the day had fully dawned before he heard the elevator down the corridor opening at last and the key turning in the lock. Then he turned to Minnie, who was still miaowing by his side and said:

  ‘Do you want to know about the commingling spell?’

  ‘Durrh!’ said Minnie. ‘You only just worked that out, did you?’

  ‘So this is how it’s going to work,’ said Major. You’re going to give me your breakfast. Then you’re going to watch me eat it. Then you’re going to watch me eat my breakfast. And then you’re going to shut up and listen. Got it?’

  Minnie said nothing for the first time in eight hours. Her bi
g sticky-out hair appeared to droop very slightly at the ends.

  ‘Oh, snot stains’ she said. ‘OK. But only ’cos I like you, fatboy, ah-ah ah-ah ah-ah.’

  So both Major and his long-lost love ate well that morning. While he was tucking into his first of two full breakfasts, Ginger was sitting many miles away in the Great Dark Forest, rubbing her bellies in delight.

  ‘Ooh, I do like a cockatoo in the morning,’ she said, blowing white feathers from her mouth into the pretty woodland around her. ‘Tuck, I will never say you are stupid again. That was the most marvellous display of hunting I’ve ever seen.’

  Tuck didn’t answer so she looked over at him. He was staring at her, his tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth as if he was thinking extra hard. ‘Two’ he said. ‘Three... f— f—’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Ginger asked him.

  ‘I’m trying to count. What’s after three?’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘One, two, three, four...’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Ginger! You’ve got only four bellies!’

  Ginger looked down at where she’d just been rubbing, then checked herself all over like a man who’s lost his wallet. ‘Oh, sweet Tabatha,’ she said. ‘Look at that! It must have been all the exercise and lack of food. Oh, wow.’

  Tuck was confused. He’d thought Ginger loved her bellies, but now as he watched, she started strolling around with her feet right in front of each other in a very slinky way, her head stretched round so she could look at how few bellies she had.

  ‘Why do you want to look slimmer?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t,’ said Ginger, sitting down suddenly. ‘No reason at all. Come on, stup— stup— stupendous thingy-thing,’ she said. ‘It’s time we got back on the trail.’

  And so on they walked, deeper and deeper into the cold forest. Now, I don’t know if you’ve been counting, but Tuck and Ginger had been walking deeper and deeper into the forest for several days (‘several’ is always a good number to use if you’ve actually lost count). There were no roads anymore, no sign of human life at all. Instead, nature was wild and unbridled, untamed and unashamed, each animal a predator and a prey. In the city there are many dangers which face a cat, but they generally come loud and announced. The forest on the other hand is full of professional hunters, bred through the generations to sneak up on and devour whatever source of protein they can find. So the cats proceeded more carefully than in preceding passages.

  Every half an hour or so Ginger would stop and sniff the air behind them to see if anything was following. Or Tuck would put his head on one side and listen extra hard for the sound of breaking twigs or leaves disturbed by more than the breeze. Both would twitch their tails to extra high frequencies in the hope of picking up warning signs from the thick woodland around them. And then they would push on, into a new part of the forest with new sights, sounds and smells, where they had to learn all over again to distinguish the placid from the poisonous. No wonder they grew so tired. No wonder they were losing weight.

  The deeper they walked into the forest, the more dangerous it was, until by the end of each day their nerves were more frayed than a pair of early-nineties denims. They had no way of knowing how far they had travelled, nor how far they had yet to go. Cats have an amazing sense of direction. They can find their way home from a thousand miles away, but you ask them where they are and they’ll look at you blankly. Try it next time you see a cat. Walk up and ask it where it is, just see the response you get.

  All Tuck and Ginger knew was that they had to press on, deeper and deeper into the forest, not even knowing when they’d passed the midpoint. They survived on whatever birds and small rodents they could find, resorting on some days to dragonflies and even the odd cockroach. They lapped at tiny forest pools or at water gathered in the broad leaves of the strange plants they found.

  They rose at dawn and travelled all day, noticing how the sun got up later and lazier as autumn, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, replaced summer in the forest. Each morning low and pale sunrays cut through the trees and cast their shadows long and eerie onto the forest floor before the sun rose above the canopy. Evening came earlier and each time cooler, and yet the cats were no less weary for the shortness of the days. They slept right through the night, curled up in a hollow tree log or under a thick bush. They thought they had less to fear that way, still and quiet in the night whilst all the hunters were about. Hidden and safe. How wrong they were.

  These same days passed no less stressfully for Major. Thankfully, Rodney and Janice proved as slack about commingling Major and Minnie as about everything else. But it took Major all of this borrowed time (and all of his vast reserves of patience) to convince Minnie of what the Burringos had in mind for them. It was only when he persuaded Minnie to do her own research that she finally understood the truth. And not a moment too soon.

  ‘No!’ said Minnie, staring at the Burringos’ search history on the computer screen.

  ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,’ said Major. ‘That’s what they’ve got planned. And look at this.”

  He jumped down to the sofa and nuzzled his nose behind one of the cushions until it fell to the floor. There lay a copy of Witch! magazine open to the article on how to mix two cats into one.

  ‘That’s horrible,’ said Minnie. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. Except, well, it’s horrible for me. It’s great for you. I bet you’re feeling really smug right now, aren’t you? No wonder you don’t worry about your weight.’

  ‘What?’ said Major. ‘Why is it good for me?’

  ‘Well, you get to have a beautiful new look, this stunning body of mine, all my glorious multiracial hair. Fat gingeriness will be a thing of the past. All I get is to die.’

  ‘I am not fat.’

  ‘You’re not exactly Robert Catterson are you?’

  ‘Listen to me, sister. You’re not exactly Katie Purry yourself.’

  They looked at each other until Minnie walked away and sat in the corner.

  ‘I don’t want to die,’ she said quietly after a while. ‘I’m not ready. Do you know how much planning it took me to get out of that dog home? I bribed the volunteers to get me a cage next to the office so I knew when people were coming in. I fed laxatives to every black cat in the building so they were all on the litter tray the day Janice came to visit. I did my best little cutesy act so I knew she’d pick me. And it all worked, it all worked, and now … now I’m going to die.’

  Major could see Minnie was struggling to keep things together. Her entire being drooped. Then tiny tremors started at the ends of her unfeasibly long, but now very droopy ear hair, and worked their way to the very end of her big, fluffy drooping tail. There were no tears, but her hair quivered in a way that showed the full range of emotions from A to X and then to Z. There was no reason to ask why.

  ‘Lady dude,’ said Major. ‘Don’t stress, it’ll be alright. Maybe we’ll escape.’

  ‘Really?’ said Minnie in a quiet voice.

  ‘Er, yeah, sure we will.’

  ‘Oh great!’ said Minnie, her tremors disappearing and all her hairs springing up again like an electrocuted pom-pom. ‘What’s the plan?’

  ‘Er, still working on that,’ said Major. ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘Ideas?’ said Minnie. ‘Ideas, darl! Ideas is my middle name. Don’t you worry, fatboy. I’m going to get us out of here.’

  ‘I thought you were distraught and upset and looking to me for support,’ said Major. ‘Where’s the character consistency in you being upbeat all of a sudden?’

  ‘I admit it,’ said Minnie. ‘I’m fickle. And maybe a little manic. I think it’s because of my mixed heritage.’

  ‘I imagine,’ said Major, ‘you’re about to tell me all about it.’

  ‘You see, I’m actually quite multiracial. On my mother’s side I’m a quarter tabby, one-eighth Siamese, one-eighth blue Persian, one-sixteenth ginger, one-sixteenth white, one-eighth black, one-eighth tor
toiseshell, and one-eighth Mexican.’

  ‘And on your father’s side?’

  Minnie looked embarrassed. ‘We’re not too sure about that,’ she said hurriedly. ‘But the point is I’m as cosmopolitan as a cocktail.’

  ‘That’s one word for it,’ thought Major, but he didn’t say anything. He had the strangest feeling he was better off with Minnie as a friend than as an enemy.

  That night when the witches got up, Major and Minnie tried to act normally. They glowered at each other from across the room and ate their respective dinners in silence. Then they pretended, one after the other, to go upstairs. In reality, they sat on the bottom stair and listened to the conversation in the living room. Now, as I’m sure you know, secretly listening in on adult conversation is frequently a disappointment. Your parents rarely spend time talking about you and what you’re getting for Christmas or how much they love you more than your siblings. Instead they just talk about boring things like bills and the neighbours and hygiene. Well, the same was true that night with the witches.

  At least it was at first. Janice complained that she couldn’t find her ball of wool, and Rodney spent so long lighting the fire that Janice threw a knitting needle at him. It stuck in his bottom, and when he stood up in shock, he banged the back of his head on the mantelpiece. He was already in a foul mood from not being able to find the firelighters, and a horrible row ensued. Unfortunately, it was over quickly, and far too soon the two witches were making up on the sofa.

  ‘Janice darling,’ said Rodney between kisses. ‘Are you sure you want an evil Fluffball and not a black Purrari? I’m keen to get you whatever you want, but it does seem like a big change of heart.’

  ‘Oh, Roddy Boddy Bumkins,’ the cats heard Janice say. ‘Purraris are so tacky. And my fluffy miniature furball baby is so cute that all the other witches will be so jealous. Big brands are dead, individual is in now. Yes, yes, yes, that’s what I want, give it to me, you bad boy!’

  ‘Then tomorrow night, Janice Burringo, tomorrow night that is what you’ll get. We’ll give those two furbags extra dinner with sedatives, and as soon as they’re sleeping we’ll commingle them. But for tonight, let’s go out witching. Let’s catch some kids, cut them into cubes, and crisp them.’