Cats on the Run

by Ged Gillmore

  ‘Stop!’ barked Cyd, managing to bite Claire on the bum and ripping a hole in the back of her designer jeans.

  ‘Stop!’ croaked Juan Carlos, jumping onto Claire’s cloak (toads and frogs—unlike princes and newts—being utterly unafraid of witches).

  But Claire didn’t care. She simply gave Cyd a ladylike kick and brushed Juan Carlos off with a laugh. Then she jumped back onto her broomstick, the packed catsack-backpack back on her back, and flew straight up into the air before pointing her broomstick towards the city and racing off in a dainty green trail of gas. She left behind a pool of brown shampoo and a very upset dog and toad.

  ‘What is all thees soapy suds?’ said Juan Carlos when he realised there was nothing more they could do.

  ‘Sod ze suds,’ said Cyd sadly. ‘I have a hunch zat bunch are to be munched for a crunchy lunch. Oh, ze poor pussies.’

  And with that she shed a little tear, for beneath her cool, hard, French exterior she was a sensitive soul. Juan Carlos cried too, for without the help of the cats he would never have made it over the road to his new life. Then the two of them—but that’s a whole other story, and it’ll have to wait for a whole other time. Otherwise you’ll never get to see our four heroes slaughtered in the most gruesome manner imaginable, and I know how much you’re looking forward to that.

  Arriving at the Burringos’ was one of the happiest moments of Claire Blair’s long and actually quite interesting life. She had radioed her news ahead, and by the time she arrived everyone was gathered in the Burringos’ living room. Even her sister Cher, who hated Claire more than anyone there, was waiting in a chair. For it was coven rules: all had to attend to ensure the dishonour of a fellow witch was undone.

  ‘Our heroine returns,’ said Rodney as he opened the door to Claire.

  ‘Where are the cats?’ said Janice.

  ‘You’ve got a hole in your jeans,’ said Cher.

  Claire smiled and said nothing. She just walked into the middle of the living room and pulled the frozen cats out of the catsack-backpack. Well, you can imagine the cackles and applause that greeted each stiff pussy. The witches all started farting horrible green gases until Janice was forced to open a window. Then the coven presented Claire with the Green Claw, a very high honour indeed.

  ‘Well done,’ said Rodney. ‘And thank you.’

  ‘Er, yes, s’pose,’ said Janice, who didn’t like the way Rodney looked at Claire.

  ‘It’s not fair, she should share,’ said Cher, looking at Claire’s bare derriere through the tear that needed repair.

  Claire didn’t care, Cher was always a mare, and it didn’t matter how much she stared and glared. All Claire could hear was the applause, and all she could see were the smiles of the other witches around her. Poor Claire. She didn’t realise that even this pretence of admiration from the horrible coven of cackling crones would be short-lived and that the next day all the witches would hate her even more than they had before.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Janice once the hubbub had died down. ‘You must all be awfully tired. You should probably all head home.’

  ‘No!’ shouted all the witches. ‘Let’s party!’

  ‘Na-ah,’ said Janice. ‘Get lost. We’ve done all the congratulations, award-presenting, backslapping, coven-dishonour-removal rubbish, and I’m tired. Rodney and I have got a long night of witchery ahead of us tomorrow, and it’s almost dawn. Go on, sling your hooked noses.’

  I cannot bring myself to describe to you the long, hot, and airless hours the four cats spent in the apartment the next day as they waited for Rodney and Janice to wake up. Well, I can: they were long, hot and airless—what did you expect? Let’s skip to later that night, when a yellowy-browny-orangey fog filled the living room, blurring the outlines of the furniture and leaving a fine, rusty dust on all the surfaces. It settled on the copy of Witch! magazine that lay open on the dining room table. It settled on the kitchen counter, on the food mixer, shopping bags, and open cans that sat there. And it settled onto the backs of the four thawed-out cats, who sat in two cages in the corner of the room. Major, Minnie, and Ginger in one cage, Tuck in the other.

  ‘Miaowww,’ yowled Tuck sadly. ‘Miaoowww.’

  ‘Chill, dude,’ Major mewed across to him. ‘If we’re going to go, let’s go in peace. Meditate with me, man.’

  Tuck looked over at Major and at the pretty fluffy cat next to him, whose name he couldn’t remember. Then he looked at Ginger, who was nestled in the crook of Major’s arm and was licking Major’s forehead. She winked at Tuck encouragingly, and this made Tuck sadder still. If Ginger was being nice to him, then things must be in a very sorry state.

  ‘Miaowww,’ he said.

  Suddenly a crooked figure loomed through the yellow fog between the two cages. It was Janice, looking even more rank and wrinkly than ever.

  ‘What’s wrong, my pretty pretty?’ she said to Tuck. ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about. In a few minutes you’ll be a Purrari!’

  For Janice had changed her mind again, sickly fickle cranky-rank and wrinkly witch that she was. Now that she had all the cats together, she’d decided she wanted the very best bits of all four of them in one sublime and streamlined feline. She wanted a black Purrari with soft fluffy fur, fiercely intelligent but with an easy-going personality. The idea had occurred to her the previous night as she’d seen the cats pulled out of the bag one by one. That was why she’d been so impatient to see all the witches leave. She knew it would be a long and complicated spell that would make it possible.

  ‘It says here you need a fire pit,’ said Rodney from the dining table. He was bending over the magazine, trying to read the Furmerger Spell through the yellow fog, throwing up red dust as he flicked back and forth between two pages.

  ‘Or a large cooking pot,’ snarled Janice, who’d had the rare foresight to read the spell all the way through to the end.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Rodney, coughing slightly and trying to make out the next instruction.

  The spell was of course written in runes, and Rodney’s runes were really rusty. Not only that, he’d been cooking since twilight and was already exhausted. The first half of the spell called for five pairs of pants to be soiled, broiled, and boiled, which of course was toil. It took ages and was causing this strange fog to fill the house. Then Rodney had had to find a teenager with severe acne so he could get together enough fresh pus to squeeze slowly into the boiling pants. After that he’d had to search to the very back of the fridge to find some toe jam and the last of a jar of chocolate bumbits. But find them he had, and now he was ready for the second and far more delicate part of the operation. It was time to prepare the cats.

  ‘“Put pet in pit or pot and pat”,’ he read, trailing his fingers slowly across the runes as he translated.

  ‘Which one?’ said Janice.

  ‘The cooking pot.’

  ‘No, which cat, you moron,’ said Janice tetchily. Oh, how she wanted this to work.

  Rodney consulted the magazine again and then looked up, wafting the yellow pant-stain fog out of his way. Very slowly he lifted one long index finger. ‘That one,’ he said, pointing at Tuck.

  Poor Tuck. Never the bravest of pussies, he was now at his most terrified. He yowled and cowered and showered Janice with spit as she approached. Well, Janice wasn’t about to risk being bitten or scratched, so she went to fetch the one thing she knew could threaten Tuck into submission. She got the vacuum cleaner.

  ‘Nooo!’ yowled Tuck.

  ‘It can’t ’urt you,’ said Minnie from the other cage. ‘It’s just noisy, innit.’

  ‘Dude, it’s fine,’ said Major

  ‘Tuck, toughen up!’ said Ginger.

  But poor Tuck was so terrified he simply sat and trembled in the corner of his cage.

  ‘Any more trouble from you,’ said Janice, pointing the vacuum cleaner at him, ‘and I’ll turn this thing on and suck you up into the guts of it. Waa ha ha ha.’

  I don’t know why she cackled at the end of th
at sentence, but she did. It was probably the thought of doing something horrible.

  ‘You ready for it?’ she said to Rodney. ‘Shall I get it out of the cage?’

  ‘It?’ said Ginger.

  ‘It?’ said Minnie.

  ‘It?’ said Major.

  ‘Uh-uh-uh,’ said Tuck.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Rodney, for the next bit of sorcery was tricky and could quickly get quirky. ‘Before you do anything else, let’s put a bubble of silence around those other meddling moggies.’

  Well, if all the fear in the room had come from Tuck before, the situation soon changed as both Rodney and Janice made their way to the other cage, joined hands and started chanting:

  ‘Beast and bird, insect, crustacean,

  All bad things of every nation,

  Be as silent as a good relation

  And heard no more after this incantation.’

  Then, before Ginger could even open her mouth to say it was a terrible spell, the two witches clapped their free hands against each other and drew a large circle around the cage, leaving behind a wobbling semitransparent bubble of glass. From his cage Tuck could see through the bubble to where the other three cats were still talking to one another, but he couldn’t hear a word they were saying. In less than a minute they’d gone from mewing to mute, sassy to silent, noisy to, er, not noisy.

  ‘Miaowww,’ Tuck miaowed again sadly. ‘Oh miaow!’

  Then he too fell dumb as Janice approached his cage, reached inside, and hauled him out by the scruff of his neck.

  ‘Are you ready?’ she asked Rodney again.

  ‘Nearly,’ said Rodney. ‘Just remember: as soon as we have him in the pot, anything that is said will become true. We have to be very careful, so listen: this is what’s going to happen. We put him in the pot and pat him. Then we pour the boiling pant mixture over him. Then we get each of the other kitties one by one and dice them into the mixture. Then I read out the full spell. Then, when the steam clears, you will have your Purrari, my dear. So remember, once he’s in the pot, whatever we say will happen by magic—so say nothing but the spell. Got it?’

  ‘Got it!’ said Janice, beaming, her black-and-yellow teeth glistening in harmony with the orangey fog around her. She put a clawed and crooked finger to her lips and nodded silently. Then, still carrying Tuck by the scruff of his neck, she followed Rodney into the kitchen. The fog was at its thickest here, and both witches coughed and wafted their arms in front of them so they could see where they were going. Soon they’d cleared the fog enough so that a huge, empty cooking pot became visible on the kitchen counter. Beside it, on the stove, boiled the oil of Rodney’s loyal toil.

  If Tuck had been able to turn and look into the living room at that point, he’d have seen Minnie and Major, Major and Ginger, Ginger and Minnie throwing themselves against the side of their cage, trying to topple it and smash the silence bubble that surrounded them. He’d have seen the cage wibble and wobble and nearly topple as the weight of three grown cats was hurled against its one side. But he could not turn and see this, and of course he could not hear them either. For Tuck was in the rare state of absolute calm which cats achieve when meditating in the sunlight or when held by the scruff of their necks. All noise and confusion is gone, and suddenly all becomes utterly clear. Scruff-held cats can hear and see and taste and smell perfectly well—it’s just that they cannot react. And it is in this state of non-reaction that they have the clearest thoughts.

  ‘I do not want boiling pant juice tipped over me,’ thought Tuck in a slightly deeper voice than he normally thought in. ‘I do not want to see Ginger and Major and that pretty fluffy one sliced and diced.’

  And then he didn’t think much else as he found himself popped into the pot and very firmly patted on the head by Rodney. He didn’t think, but he did act. As Rodney’s hand came in once more for a ‘just in case’ third pat, Tuck turned and sank his teeth deeply into the soft flesh between Rodney’s thumb and the rest of his hand.

  ‘Aaaagh!’ screamed Rodney. ‘Blooming, flipping, bleeding shells, that hurts!’

  Tuck jumped out of the pot as fast as he could and was amazed to find on the kitchen counter a hundred small shells, each of them with little flowers blossoming on their sides. They were turning little somersaults over and over until their shells bled.

  ‘You stupid pig!’ shouted Janice at Rodney, and can you guess what happened then?

  That’s right. Rodney Burringo turned into a pig. He stood there, snorting and snuffling on the kitchen floor, looking up at Janice angrily.

  ‘Oh rats!’ said Janice, and then she screamed as she found herself surrounded by rats running every which way across the kitchen floor.

  Tuck stayed on the kitchen counter, suddenly hungry but not knowing what he should do. ‘Er,’ he said, desperately trying to think of something clever. ‘Er … um … er.’

  ‘I’m turning on that vacuum cleaner!’ screeched Janice, and as she and Tuck stared at each other, they heard the vacuum start up in the living room.

  Janice stepped gingerly over the rats, who were running every which way across the floor, and a second later reappeared holding the dreaded vacuum cleaner. But before she could threaten Tuck with it, he thought to himself really loudly at the front of his brain where he couldn’t help but listen.

  ‘Being brave doesn’t mean not being scared,’ he thought.

  And without a second thought he jumped down, ran towards Janice and the dreaded dust sucker, and sank his teeth into its inflated bag.

  Well, have you ever seen what happens to a balloon when you blow it up and let it go before tying it up? That’s what happened to the vacuum cleaner now. It went flying back into the living room and started zooming around in random directions. And as Janice was still holding onto the handle, she went flying around the room with it, banging against walls, smashing into the ceiling, zooming through the yellow fog. And of course everything that Janice shouted out whilst this was happening suddenly appeared in the apartment: a boatload of blistering barnacles, a small dam, piles and piles of dog poo. All of it piled up in the living room as Janice went hurtling around in the air, Rodney the pig chasing her and snorting at the top of his piggy voice.

  Then, just as suddenly as it had started flying around, the vacuum cleaner got caught up in the curtains and crashed down, smashing the silence bubble around the other cats’ cage and adding its million glistening smithereens to the mess on the living room floor. Ironically, given the silence bubble was now burst, a strange silence fell upon the living room. Small wafts of yellow fog still hung in the air, and they were joined by tiny clouds of dust and canine faecal matter. No one said a word; even Rodney the pig stopped snorting as he looked at where the vacuum cleaner had fallen. For it had fallen heavily, landing right on top of Janice’s head, and now she lay still underneath it, her skinny limbs stretched out and her torn cloak revealing a little more leg than anyone was comfortable with. All was still and silent.

  Then Janice moved. First of all, a green claw was raised in the air. It was followed by a green finger, then a hand, and then a whole arm. Then all of Janice rose out of the smelly hellish pile of mess. She rose up like a cloud of fury, three metres tall and bending to fit in under the ceiling. The angriest, foulest, most disgustingly angry witch you have never seen in your life. The claw she had first moved had grown a full fifty centimetres long with anger, and she now pointed it across the breakfast bar and into the kitchen at Tuck. Then she opened her mouth to reveal that her teeth had sharpened into fangs oozing with pus. A pungent black gas seeped out between her teeth, filling the room with its stench, and as she opened her mouth her lips drew back to reveal her gums, which had turned into a writhing mess of maggots.

  But before Janice could speak, Ginger shouted from the cage, “Witches and pigs turn into rugby balls with feelings! Cages and all doors open! All magic in this room finishes!”

  It was a complicated command, and all could feel the magic in the room thinking about
it. But the spell from the magazine was powerful, and so the spell rushed towards Janice and Rodney-the-pig in a thick ball of golden light.

  But what is more powerful than even a powerful spell? An angry witch is what. And there had never been a witch angrier than Janice Burringo was just at that moment. She flicked off the ball of magic with the back of her hand so that it rolled into a corner that hadn’t been dusted since Arthur left.

  Then Janice raised her long, evil claw and pointed it at Ginger. ‘Die!’ she screeched. ‘Die slowly and horribly and awfully!’ And a hideous neon pink stream of evil trailed out from her claw towards Ginger. The pink neon was a ray of cruel and callous killing. It sparked and crackled and hissed as it travelled through the air, shooting off tiny pink sparks, which might sound pretty but any one of which would kill you in an instant. On and on through the last wisps of yellow fog the cable extended, but when it was halfway across the room Major threw himself on top of Ginger.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ he shouted. ‘You’ve suffered enough, my love!’

  And then possibly the most unexpected thing in this entire story happened. Tuck raced across the living room and threw himself on top of Major. ‘Me,’ he said. ‘I’ll take it. You two have wanted to be together for so long.’ Tuck closed his eyes tight and tried reminding himself he was brave now.

  Still the pink cable of cruelty came towards them, spitting death and looking quite tacky in that way pink neon always does. It had almost reached the pile of Ginger under Major under Tuck when Minnie, probably because she’d been unmentioned for too long in this scene, threw herself on top of Tuck and whispered, ‘Don’t worry, gorgeous. This one’s mine.’

  All four cats lay there wide-eyed with fear (apart from Ginger, who was wide-eyed with the weight of three pussies on top of her) and wondered what the dickens would happen next. But none of them could have imagined it. For none of them knew there is a force in the world more powerful than even the angriest witch. More powerful even than a witch with the most powerful resources at her disposal.