Great Escape

by Bill Wallace

  To Keith and Lynn Heck

  CHAPTER 1

  Spring has got to be the best!

  Winter is cold and nasty. It’s fun to play in the snow. Fun to feel the ice crunch beneath my feet or listen to the quiet of a snowfall. But mostly it’s just cold and miserable.

  Fall is not so bad. It rains a lot in the fall and it’s a little sad when the leaves start to change colors and drop from the trees. That’s ’cause it means winter is coming.

  Then there’s summer. Summer would be my second favorite. There’s lots of stuff to do then. Summer brings sunshine and warm—only sometimes too warm.

  But I love spring!

  I glanced up. Above me I could see the green where leaves were budding out. Beneath my feet, the grass was starting to grow. It smelled fresh and clean and new. Birds chirped and fluttered in the trees, just now returning from their nesting places in the south. My eyes caught every tiny movement as they leaped and darted about.

  Spring was great!

  I waited until the car roared past, then looked both ways and jogged across the street. Once safely on the other side, I turned right, trotted to the end of the block, and turned left. A little less than halfway to the alley was a concrete driveway. A big, double, wooden gate stood there. Between the gates was a crack—right down near the bottom.

  I stuck my head through. Twisting, I wiggled my shoulders and chest past the boards. Sucked my tummy in and slipped inside the yard.

  As usual, my friend was sleeping in. Quiet as could be, I sneaked across the yard. At the doorway I paused. A deep rumbling sound shook the morning air. I peeked in his room. He snored again. The noise was so loud it made the boards vibrate. His eyes were closed tight. Without a sound, I stepped over his legs and took a seat near the far wall.

  The corners of my mouth tugged up when I watched him. Then with a sigh I felt them droop to a frown.

  Ugly!

  I shook my head, trying to chase the thought away. Nope, there was no other word. Just flat ugly.

  And smell . . .

  I blinked. The odor made my nose crinkle and my eyes flutter again. Outside, the spring morning was fresh and clean. In here . . . well, the stink was almost enough to make my eyes water.

  “They’re loud and rude and pushy, too. They’d just as soon fight with each other as with us and . . .”

  I closed my eyes, trying to chase the words from my mind. I couldn’t make them go away, even with my eyes squeezed so tight they made my head hurt.

  • • •

  All my life I’d been taught . . . every friend I had told me the same thing. . . .

  “Their noses are too big. They smell, even when they aren’t doing anything. They’re noisy, especially if you get a group of them together. (And all it takes to make a group is more than one.) They’re loud. They’re lazy. They spend the whole day laying around and waiting for someone else to take care of them.”

  Everybody couldn’t be wrong—could they?

  “They’re just not like us.” That’s what they’d always told me. “We’re smart. They aren’t. Sneaky and thieving, yes—but not smart. We like someone else to care for us, but we’re bright enough and industrious enough to fend for ourselves. They’re useless. We work about the house and yard, instead of just lying around, expecting someone else to do it for us. We have nice ears. We’re better looking. We don’t smell!”

  Even the Mama and Daddy had warned me about them. Each morning as I had left the house, they would caution me not to let them get me, or say something like, ‘Look out for them.”

  After all that—after all the years of training and listening and warning—how had I ever thought that I could be friends with one of “them”? Why had I even wanted to?

  • • •

  I blinked and looked across the room. A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth and chased the frown away.

  Okay . . . he was ugly. So? And maybe his room smelled like a pit, and his breath was enough to eat the hair clear off my head. . . . So what?

  He was my friend!

  I watched him a moment, then crouched. My muscles tensed. He was on his back and his soft tummy would make the perfect target. I’d fly through the air and land, smack-dab in his middle. In my mind’s eye I could almost see him. He’d totally flip out. He’d be so startled . . . rolling, struggling to get to his feet. I squeezed my mouth and nose shut to keep from snickering at the vision.

  I crouched lower. I wiggled my rear end. Like steel springs, my legs began to uncoil, launching me at my target. Then . . .

  “RRRROOooff!”

  The roar came from his enormous mouth. It was so loud it flattened my ears and knocked my whiskers against my cheeks. The mouth gaped open like a bottomless cavern. The air, pushed from his massive lungs, almost blew me backward.

  The sudden roar scared me. When my legs sprang, I didn’t hit his tummy. I went straight up!

  My head clunked against the roof.

  My eyes crossed.

  Even before I hit the ground, my legs were running. It took just two strides to reach the open doorway. Trouble was, I forgot about those huge, clunky feet that were in my way. I tripped.

  I went flying through the door and landed smack on my chin. I slid about five feet before my legs got under me again. Out of control, they raced me halfway to the big pecan tree at the side of the yard before I could make them stop. I stood there trembling, panting and gasping for air.

  Behind me I could hear the commotion. Eyes tight, I turned.

  He was on his back. Legs churning, he flopped from side to side. He laughed so hard . . . well . . . he almost laughed his tail clear off. (And he didn’t have that much tail to spare.)

  My eyes scrunched down tighter. He rolled back and forth. He laughed and laughed and laughed.

  “It’s not funny!” I hissed.

  That only made him laugh harder. Flat on his back with his head hanging out of the open doorway, he pointed at me.

  “You ought to see yourself,” he cackled. “Your tail’s as big around as your head. You’re so puffed up, it’s a wonder you didn’t explode. I can just see it . . .” He had to stop talking. He was laughing so hard he couldn’t catch his breath. “Cat blows up . . . hair flying all over the place. Fur balls fill the air . . .”

  “It’s not funny!”

  Suddenly his face got real serious. Slowly he rolled over to lie on his tummy. His crossed paws dangled from the open door. He frowned. He studied me for a moment, then nodded.

  “Yep. You look just as hilarious, right side up, as you did upside down.” Then his roaring laugh almost shook the ground beneath my feet.

  “That’s enough, Rotten Willy. Knock it off.”

  “Oh, don’t get so fuzzed up, Chuck.” A sly smile wriggled across his face. “Yeah,” he repeated. “Don’t get so fuzzed . . . Upchuck.”

  Then he broke out roaring with laughter.

  A puff of red exploded before my eyes. My teeth made a grinding sound inside my head as I gnashed them together. I charged.

  I leaped through the open doorway, landed smack on top of his huge, square head, and bit down on his ear as hard as I could.

  Bad move!

  A tiny squeak came from his huge mouth as he leaped to his feet. Trouble was . . . his room was really small. He was really big. I was on top of his head—between him and the roof.

  My head banged against the boards. Only this time instead of crossing my eyes, I saw these sparkly, little twinkling stars. They were kind of pretty. Then everything went black.

  CHAPTER 2

  My eyes fluttered. I felt cold and wet. I was on my side—-but where? Where was I?

  Struggling to my feet, I coughed and sputtered. The sound of running water came to my ears. I looked around. So much w
ater streamed from the fur on my left side, it looked like a waterfall. The water streamed down, splashing into a small pond. Made of white plastic, the pond wasn’t very deep. It only came about two inches over my paws.

  It was Rotten Willy’s water bowl.

  My wet whiskers sprang up on one side. Disgusted, I looked in the other direction.

  Willy stood there. He frowned, making his big, ugly, black face look worried. His soft brown eyes opened wide when he saw me glaring in his direction.

  “Are you alive? Are you okay?”

  “Sure I’m alive,” I sneered at him. “But I’m not okay. I’m wet! I wish you’d quit dropping me in your water dish.”

  He ducked, kind of scrunching both his head and neck down between his massive shoulder blades. A sheepish smile curled his ugly, floppy lips.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how else to wake you up . . . Chuck.”

  “Don’t start with me again, Willy,” I hissed. “You know how much I hate that nickname.”

  “I was just teasing, okay? Just playing with you, all right?”

  When I didn’t answer, he nudged the water bowl with his nose. “Your special person is Katie, right? And she had a boyfriend who didn’t like you because Katie named you Chuck, after another boyfriend she had, right?”

  I still didn’t answer.

  “So, you threw up in his convertible and he started calling you Upchuck. I think it’s cute. It’s nothing for you to get all fuzzed up—” Suddenly he stopped. Snickering to himself, he turned away.

  One pounce carried me from the bowl. Water slopped and sprayed in all directions. I stood there, dripping, then shook as hard as I could. It helped some, but all my fur was still plastered against my side.

  “I hate it,” I hissed. “And I hate being wet, too!” I licked my side to squeeze some of the water out. “Cat’s can’t stand being wet. I’ve told you that.”

  Willy shrugged his ears.

  “Well, it worked. I mean, it saved your life, didn’t it?”

  I ignored him and kept licking.

  “Well, didn’t it?”

  I stopped to glare at him.

  “All right,” I said with a sigh. “Last time—when Rocky knocked me off the fence—I guess it saved me. But that was only ’cause Rocky and the two poodles who moved in where Tom used to live kept me stuck in the trees for three days. I was dying of thirst. This time . . .” I started licking again. “This time I wasn’t thirsty. I was just a little dazed. All it did was get me wet!”

  “Well, it was your own fault.” He plopped down on his stub tail.

  “My fault?”

  “Yeah.” He cocked his head to the side. “If you hadn’t bit me on the ear—”

  “The only reason I bit you,” I interrupted, “was because you were laughing your tail off at me, and you called me Upchuck. It made me mad.”

  “Well, the only reason I was laughing my tail off was ’cause . . .” Suddenly he stopped. I could see a little twinkle in his eye. He turned his enormous, square head away so I couldn’t see him laughing.

  “Ah, shut up!” I hissed.

  That even made him worse. After a moment or two, he quit, took a deep breath, and turned back. “The only reason I barked at you is because you were going to jump on my tummy. If you hadn’t planned to scare me first, I never would have scared you. And if I hadn’t barked . . .”

  Again, his lips clamped shut. The laugh came out of his nose as a loud snort. He turned away, but I could see his sides jiggling in and out.

  “Ah, shut up!” I hissed again.

  It took him even longer to stop laughing. Finally he trotted over to where I was.

  “I’m sorry.” It didn’t sound all that sincere, ’cause he was still chuckling. “Here, let me help dry you off.”

  He leaned over. His broad tongue lapped out of his mouth. A little drool dropped from the end when it came toward me.

  I spun on him and held up a paw. Claws sprang out.

  “Forget it! I’m fine. I can do it myself!”

  Rotten Willy went back to his doghouse and curled up. When I finished drying, I felt better. Dry cats have a lot better attitude. The spring sunshine felt warm. I curled into a ball and watched him. My eyes were still tight and a little angry.

  Willy and I had been friends for almost four months now. This was our first fight. Maybe dogs and cats really can’t be friends.

  I used to have normal friends. Louie had been my friend. Louie was an alley cat, only he got smushed by a car. Tom had been my friend, too. Tom was the cat who lived right across the street. Only Tom and his people moved away. My Katie was my friend. She was mine because she was the one who loved me and petted me and let me sleep on her pillow at night. Only My Katie got old. She grew up and went away to a place called college. They had all been good friends. They were normal—cats and people—but Willy . . .

  Willy was . . . a dog!

  As I watched him, I couldn’t help remembering how I didn’t even know he was a dog—not at first. The animal was so gigantic, I just knew he was a bear or some other kind of strange animal. When my friend Tom had asked what he was—he’d said he was a Rott and he was Willy. Somehow, Tom and I didn’t hear it too well, or we got it all confused. Anyway, we thought he said he was a Rott and Willy. When we said it fast, it ended up Rotten Willy. It took us a few weeks to figure out he wasn’t really some strange animal called a Rotten Willy, but a Rottweiler dog, and his name was Willy.

  We had finally figured it out—right before Tom and his people moved away. When new people had moved into Tom’s house, they brought animals. I just knew there were cats in the two cages they put in the garage, so I had waited for them in the pecan tree in their backyard.

  But when the people opened the garage door, these two, ugly, nasty, fufu poodles came tearing out. I’d never been so scared in my life. I was stuck in the tree. One limb of that pecan arched out over the neighbor’s yard. That was where Rocky lived. Rocky was the meanest Doberman in the world. I had to be really careful when I walked out on that branch to jump to the limb of the other big pecan tree in the Rotten Willy’s yard. If I missed the jump, Rocky would eat me for sure. Even if I made it, there was still no place to go. Between the fufu poodles under one tree, the Rotten Willy under the other, and Rocky in the yard between—I was stuck! All I could do was pace back and forth in the trees and wait until I starved to death or died of thirst.

  I had been struck there for so long that I was half dead before I tried to make a break for it. Desperate, I tried to walk the board fence between Rocky’s yard and Rotten Willy. Only Rocky jumped against the fence and shook me off. I landed in Willy’s yard. I knew he was going to eat me. He didn’t. Instead, gentle as my mama used to, he picked me up in his enormous mouth and plopped me in his water dish. Then he dried me and kept me from freezing to death during the cold winter night.

  • • •

  I looked at him and my tight eyes relaxed. Finally I sighed and walked over to his house. A brown eye peeked at me. He raised his huge head.

  “I’m sorry I laughed at you.”

  I smiled and gave a little shrug. “I’m sorry I bit you on the ear. Does it still hurt?”

  He shook his head. “Not bad.”

  I stepped over his paws. “Here, let me take a look.”

  He put his head back on the floor. I stretched, but still wasn’t tall enough to see. So I climbed up. With my hind feet on his leg, one front paw on his nose, and the other on his neck, I leaned over and licked where I’d hurt my friend.

  CHAPTER 3

  It’s a good thing that dogs don’t taste as bad as they smell. I licked and cleaned and cleaned and licked until I was sure his wound was okay. Then I curled up on his back and we took our catnap. I mean dognap. I mean . . . well . . . okay, we took a nap.

  Long naps are nice during the winter when it’s wet and cold outside. In spring, when the days are warm and pretty, it’s a totally different matter. We hadn’t napped very long at all when
my eyes fluttered open. I was rested and refreshed and ready to go. Willy wiggled and gave a little grunt when I stood to streeettttch.

  I dug my claws in—not enough to hurt him—just right. I started kneading his back.

  Cats love to knead. Left, right, left, right, squeeze, relax, left, right—knead, knead, knead.

  “Mmmmmm,” Willy moaned. “That feels good.”

  “My claws aren’t out too far, are they?” I purred.

  “Nope. Just right. Mmmmmm.”

  A sudden movement caught my eye. I ducked down so I could see through the open doorway. A bird fluttered to the edge of Willy’s food bowl. Nervous and twittery, he looked around.

  “Don’t stop.” Willy complained. “I was really starting to enjoy—”

  “Shhhhh,” I interrupted. “Don’t make a sound. Don’t move.”

  I crouched. My tail flipped. My rear end wiggled. If I pounced low and straight instead of up . . . if I hit the ground, only one time, then leaped . . .

  The bird grabbed a chunk of food and flew away.

  “Darn! Missed him.”

  “Who?”

  “The bird.”

  Willy raised his head. He kind of leaned to the side. “What bird?”

  “Never mind.” I sighed. “He just flew away.”

  Without getting to his feet, Willy gave a hard shake. It was like standing atop an earthquake. The ground moved beneath my feet and I slipped off his side. With a grunt, he got up.

  “Want to go chase him?”

  “Who?”

  “The bird.”

  “What bird?” I asked, peeking outside the doghouse.

  “The bird that flew away.”

  “No.” I curled my tail and sat. “You can’t catch ’em after they fly away. Got to sneak up on ’em. Once they get to the trees . . .”

  Suddenly I saw one corner of his big, floppy lip tighten to a smile. “Let’s play tag.” The instant he said it, he clunked me on the head with his enormous paw. “You’re it!”

  I heard his toenails clack against the floor of his house, then WHAM!

  Something hit me. It was his rear end, when he charged through the doorway. Willy just brushed me. I doubt that he hardly felt it. But to me, his wide rump struck with such force that it sent me tumbling. I ended up in the comer with my head on the floor and my feet and tail in the air. It was kind of an awkward position. Cats are cool. It’s a fact. We’re just about the coolest things in the whole animal kingdom—even cooler than people animals. Although they can read and talk with mouth noises instead of smells and twitches, we still got them beat—most of the time. Being stuck on my head in a comer with my butt in the air . . . well . . . it simply was NOT cool!