by Ged Gillmore
That power is love, and sacrificing yourself for someone else is the greatest expression of that power. You might want to remember that next time it’s not your turn to load the dishwasher but you could do it anyway.
Anyhoo, the pink death ray continued to approach, and then, at last, it reached the pile of pussies with a crinkly crackle and hiss. Minnie cringed and Ginger whinged as it singed Minnie’s fringe a dingy tinge of orange, and then they all watched as it hinged back upon itself and started heading back towards Janice.
‘No!’ screamed Janice, flailing her massive arms, trying to shake the start of the cable off her claw and banging her head on the ceiling.
‘Oink!’ said Rodney, stepping slightly further away from Janice.
The two of them started feeling their way slowly backwards. Neither dared to take their yellow-slash-piggy eyes off the spitting pink death spell, and so neither of them noticed until the very last minute that the corner of the room behind them was bathed in a strange and shifting golden light.
‘Noo!’ screeched Janice again.
‘Oink!’ oinked Rodney.
Only then did the two of them look away from the approaching pink cable of death to Ginger’s original command, which sat glowing behind them in the corner of the room. As the cats watched, the stupid pig and the gigantic witch glanced back and forth, forth and back, trapped between an agonising death and life as a rugby ball with feelings. And then—as if they had reached an unspoken agreement—Janice raised her clawed hand and Rodney raised a trotter, and trotter-in-claw they turned and threw themselves onto the golden ball of light.
THE LAST BIT MAYBE
Well, I know what you’re expecting. You’re expecting something like ‘They all lived happily ever after’ or ‘Ginger and Major got married, and so did Tuck and Minnie’ or ‘Let’s set this up for a sequel just in case it’s popular’. And for once (at last!) you are right.
Ginger and Major will get married, but they haven’t yet. Major says he won’t marry Ginger until she gets her six bellies back because that was what he was missing for all those years, and he doesn’t want some toned-up, slimmed-down version of his long-lost love stopping his dreams from coming true. As you can imagine, he won’t have to wait too long. These days Ginger simply sits around the stables all day, bossing people about and asking for more food. Major’s so content to have her home he’s more than happy to run around after her, at least he is for some of the day. When he gets bored of it, he simply finds a spot in the sun which no one else knows about, applies his selective hearing, and meditates with his eyes tightly shut.
As for Minnie and Tuck, well, it’s been a match made in heaven. Minnie is no less annoying than ever, but Tuck doesn’t seem to care. Tuck just loses himself in his memories of mushroom sauce. Meanwhile, Minnie miaows on about how fat Ginger is getting, how dull Major is these days, and how pretty she is. Especially about how pretty she is, to tell the truth. And when she gets bored of that, she jumps on Tuck, and they wrestle and fight and chase each other around the farmyard until they are both out of breath.
But the cats didn’t get to the stables until a couple of weeks after they’d survived the Burringos’ death spell. First of all, they had to find a cleaning company (Arthur’s Global Cleaning Corp., Inc.) prepared to clear the Burringos’ apartment of dog poo, rats, barnacles, and broken glass (not to mention a huge pile of toenails they found under the sofa). But the most difficult part was getting rid of the rugby balls which Ginger had turned the Burringos into. Initially, Major took them to a local rugby club, but after a while he got a phone call saying he had to pick them up again.
‘They keep saying, “OUCH!” every time we kick them,’ said the club captain. ‘It’s most off-putting.’
Then Ginger tried donating them to a local school, but again they were handed back.
‘They complain when we land on them in the mud,’ said one of the teachers. ‘And they do it in the foulest language. I really cannot have our pupils exposed to such crassness.’
Finally, Minnie had a bright idea which the other three cats agreed couldn’t be beat. They donated the balls to the Try, Try and Try Again Rugby School for the Deaf. There at last the balls were happily accepted, and as far as anyone knows, there they are still kicked and thrown and jumped on in the mud on a daily basis. And just as long as no one ever rubs them three times anticlockwise in a rainstorm while saying, ‘Catch these balls, then kick your bum, this magic shall be undone’, there they will stay forever.
So let’s hope that doesn’t happen, eh?
THE END
Or is it?
If you enjoyed Cats On The Run please take a moment to write a short, honest review here. Thanks so much!
the cats are back in 2017!
If you liked Cats On The Run you're gonna love...
Cats Undercover!
Prepare yourself for an incredible world of undercover catbots, fist-fighting felines, puddles of poodle piddle and even an audition on Kitten’s Got Talent.
Available now in paperback and for Kindle here!
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Scratch ya laterz! Tuck & Ginger xx
Copyright © Ged Gillmore 2015
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
www.gedgillmore.com
www.degrevilo.com
Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia www.trove.nla.gov.au
ISBN 978-0-9941786-0-2
ISBN ePub 978-0-9941786-1-9
ISBN Mobi 978-0-9941786-2-6
Cover illustration / design: Felipe Van Rompaey
Editing: Anne Greenberg, Helen Masterton.
Copy Editing: Verushka Byrow.
Proofing: Verushka Byrow.
Set in Times New Roman.
10987654321
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, witches, cats or poodles, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
I would like to express my humble thanks to my teachers and fellow students at the Bronte Writers’ Studio, for sharing their own personal witchcraft.
I wrote down this story for
Hellie
to make her laugh.
Her guidance and support made it possible to turn the story into a book and for that I will be forever grateful.
But I must dedicate Cats On The Run to
Oliver
for he makes everything else possible.
Table of Contents
WARNING!
THE FIRST BIT
THE FIRST AND A HALF BIT
OH LOOK, ANOTHER BIT!
THE SECOND BIT
GOSH, ANOTHER BIT ALREADY
A BIT OF A DOG 1
A SMELLY LITTLE BIT
A BIT OF THIS, A BIT OF THAT
THIS BIT
A BIT WITH A BAZOOKA
THAT BIT
WHAT ABOUT ANOTHER BIT?
A BIT OF A SURPRISE
YET ANOTHER BIT
BLOOMING HECK, IT’S ANOTHER BIT
A CHEEKY BIT
A REALLY, REALLY DANGEROUS BIT
A BIT OF BLOOD AND GUTS
A BIT OF PEACE AND QUIET, BUT NOT FOR LONG
A BIT OF A MESS ON THE MOTORWAY
A BIT OF A DOG 2
A BIT OF BLOODTHIRSTY REVENGE
THE BIT AFTER THAT BIT ON THE MOTORWAY
THE LAST BIT MAYBE
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