The Second Cat Megapack: Frisky Feline Tales, Old and New

by Pamela Sargent

  Madame Caille did not yield her rights of sovereignty without a struggle. On the occasion of Zut’s third visit, she descended upon the Salon Malakoff, robed in wrath, and found the adored one contentedly feeding on fish in the very bosom of the family Sergeot. An appalling scene ensued.

  “If,” she stormed, crimson of countenance, and threatening Espérance with her fist, “if you must entice my cat from her home, at least I will thank you not to give her food. I provide all that is necessary; and, for the rest, how do I know what is in that saucer?”

  And she surveyed the duck-clad assistants and the astounded customers with tremendous scorn.

  “You others,” she added, “I ask you, is it just? These people take my cat, and feed her—feed her—with I know not what! It is overwhelming, unheard of—and, above all, now!”

  But here the peaceful Hippolyte played trumps.

  “It is the privilege of the vulgar,” he cried, advancing, razor in hand, “when they are at home, to insult their neighbors, but here—no! My wife has told me of you and of your sayings. Beware! or I shall arrange your hair for you! Go! You and your cat!”

  And, by way of emphasis, he fairly kicked Zut into her astonished owner’s arms. He was magnificent, was Hippolyte!

  This anecdote, duly elaborated, was poured into the ears of Abel Flique an hour later, and that evening he paid his first visit in many months to Madame Caille. She greeted him effusively, being willing to pardon all the past for the sake of regaining this powerful friend. But the glitter in the agent’s eye would have cowed a fiercer spirit than hers.

  “You amuse yourself,” he said sternly, looking straight at her over the handful of raisins which she tendered him, “by wearying my friends. I counsel you to take care. One does not sell inferior eggs in Paris without hearing of it sooner or later. I know more than I have told, but not more than I can tell, if I choose.”

  “Our ancient friendship”—faltered Alexandrine, touched in a vulnerable spot.

  “—preserves you thus far,” added Flique, no less unmoved. “Beware how you abuse it!”

  And so the calls of Zut were no longer disturbed.

  But the rover spirit is progressive, and thus short visits became long visits, and finally the angora spent whole nights in the Salon Malakoff, where a box and a bit of carpet were provided for her. And one fateful morning the meaning of Madame Caille’s significant words “and above all, now!” was made clear.

  The prosperity of Hippolyte’s establishment had grown apace, so that, on the morning in question, the three chairs were occupied, and yet other customers awaited their turn. The air was laden with violet and lilac. A stout chauffeur, in a leather suit, thickly coated with dust, was undergoing a shampoo at the hands of one of the duck-clad, and, under the skillfully plied razor of the other, the virgin down slid from the lips and chin of a slim and somewhat startled youth, while from a vaporizer Hippolyte played a fine spray of perfumed water upon the ruddy countenance of Abel Flique. It was an eloquent moment, eminently fitted for some dramatic incident, and that dramatic incident Zut supplied. She advanced slowly and with an air of conscious dignity from the corner where was her carpeted box, and in her mouth was a limp something, which, when deposited in the immediate center of the Salon Malakoff, resolved itself into an angora kitten, as white as snow!

  “Epatant!” said Flique, mopping his perfumed chin. And so it was.

  There was an immediate investigation of Zut’s quarters, which revealed four other kittens, but each of these was marked with black or tan. It was the flower of the flock with which the proud mother had won her public.

  “And they are all yours!” cried Flique, when the question of ownership arose. “Mon Dieu, yes! There was such a case not a month ago, in the eighth arrondissement—a concierge of the avenue Hoche who made a contrary claim. But the courts decided against her. They are all yours, Madame Sergeot. My felicitations!”

  Now, as we have said, Madame Sergeot was of a placid temperament which sought not strife. But the unprovoked insults of Madame Caille had struck deep, and, after all, she was but human.

  So it was that, seated at her little desk, she composed the following masterpiece of satire:

  CHÈRE MADAME,—

  We send you back your cat, and the others—all but one. One kitten was of a pure white, more beautiful even than its mother. As we have long desired a white angora, we keep this one as a souvenir of you. We regret that we do not see the means of accepting the kind offer you were so amiable as to make us. We fear that we shall not find time to shampoo your cat, as we shall be so busy taking care of our own. Monsieur Flique will explain the rest.

  We pray you to accept, madame, the assurance of our distinguished consideration,

  HIPPOLYTE AND ESPÉRANCE SERGEOT

  It was Abel Flique who conveyed the above epistle, and Zut, and four of Zut’s kittens, to Alexandrine Caille, and, when that wrathful person would have rent him with tooth and nail, it was Abel Flique who laid his finger on his lip, and said,—

  “Concern yourself with the superior kitten, madame, and I concern myself with the inferior eggs!”

  To which Alexandrine made no reply. After Flique had taken his departure, she remained speechless for five consecutive minutes for the first time in the whole of her waking existence, gazing at the spot at her feet where sprawled the white angora, surrounded by her mottled offspring. Even when the first shock of her defeat had passed, she simply heaved a deep sigh, and uttered two words—

  “Oh, Zut!”

  The which, in Parisian argot, at once means everything and nothing.

  THE MOUNTAIN CAGE, by Pamela Sargent

  Mewleen had found a broken mirror along the road. The shards glittered as she swiped at one with her paw, gazing intently at the glass. She meowed and hunched forward.

  Hrurr licked one pale paw, wondering if Mewleen would manage to shatter the barrier, though he doubted that she could crawl through even if she did; the mirror fragments were too small. He shook himself, then padded over to her side.

  Another cat, thick-furred, stared out at him from a jagged piece of glass. Hrurr tilted his head; the other cat did the same. He meowed; the other cat opened his mouth, but the barrier blocked the sound. A second cat, black and white, appeared near the pale stranger as Mewleen moved closer to Hrurr.

  “She looks like you,” Hrurr said to his companion. “She even has a white patch on her head.”

  “Of course. She is the Mewleen of that world.”

  Hrurr narrowed his eyes. He had seen such cats before, always behind barriers, always out of reach. They remained in their own world, while he was in this one; he wondered if theirs was better.

  Mewleen sat on her haunches. “Do you know what I think, Hrurr? There are moments when we are all between worlds, when the sights before us vanish and we stand in the formless void of possibility: take one path, and a fat mouse might be yours. Take another, and a two-legs gives you milk and a dark place to sleep. Take a third, and you spend a cold and hungry night. At the moment before choosing, all these possibilities have the same reality, but when you take one path—”

  “When you take one path, that’s that.” Hrurr stepped to one side, then pounced on his piece of glass, thinking that he might catch his other self unaware, but the cat behind the barrier leaped up at him at the same instant. “It means that you weren’t going to take the other paths at all, so they weren’t really possibilities.”

  “But they were for that moment.” Mewleen’s tail curled. “I see a branching. I see other worlds in which all possibilities exist. I’ll go back home today, but that cat there may make another choice.”

  Hrurr put a paw on the shard holding his twin. That cat might still have a home.

  “Come with me,” Mewleen said as she rolled in the road, showing her white belly. “My two-legged ones will feed you, and when they see that I want you with me, they’ll honor you and let you stay. They must serve me, after all.”

  His tail tw
itched. He had grown restless even before losing his own two-legged creatures, before that night when others of their kind had come for them, dragging them from his house and throwing them inside the gaping mouth of a large, square metal beast. He had stayed away after that, lingering on the outskirts of town, pondering what might happen in a world where two-legged ones turned on one another and forgot their obligations to cats. He had gone back to his house only once; a banner with a black swastika in its center had been hung from one of the upper windows. He had seen such symbols often, on the upper limbs of two-legged ones or fluttering over the streets; the wind had twisted the banner on his house, turning the swastika first into a soaring bird, then a malformed claw. A strange two-legs had chased him away.

  “I want to roam,” he replied as he gazed up the road, wondering if it might lead him to the top of the mountain. “I want to see far places. It’s no use fighting it when I’m compelled to wander.”

  Mewleen bounded toward him. “Don’t you know what this means?” She gestured at the broken mirror with her nose. “When a window to the other world is shattered, it’s a sign. This place is a nexus of possibilities, a place where you might move from one world to the next and never realize that you are lost to your own world.”

  “Perhaps I’m meant to perform some task. That might be why I was drawn here.”

  “Come with me. I offer you a refuge.”

  “I can’t accept, Mewleen.” His ears twitched as he heard a distant purr, which rapidly grew into a roar.

  Leaping from the road, Hrurr plunged into the grass; Mewleen bounded to the other side as a line of metal beasts passed them, creating a wind as they rolled by. Tiny flags bearing swastikas fluttered over the eyes of a few beasts; pale faces peered out from the shields covering the creatures’ entrails.

  As the herd moved on up the road, he saw that Mewleen had disappeared among the trees.

  * * * *

  Hrurr followed the road, slinking up the slope until he caught sight of the metal beasts again. They had stopped in the middle of the road; a gate blocked their progress.

  Several two-legged ones in gray skins stood by the gate; two of them walked over to the first metal beast and peered inside its openings, then stepped back, raising their right arms as others opened the gate and let the first beast pass. The two moved on to the next beast, looking in at the ones inside, then raised their arms again. The flapping arms reminded Hrurr of birds; he imagined the men lifting from the ground, arms flapping as they drifted up in lopsided flight.

  He scurried away from the road. The gray pine needles, dappled by light, cushioned his feet; ahead of him, winding among the trees, he saw a barbed-wire fence. His whiskers twitched in amusement; such a barrier could hardly restrain him. He squeezed under the lowest wire, carefully avoiding the barbs.

  The light shifted; patches of white appeared among the black and gray shadows. The trees overhead sighed as the wind sang. “Cat! Cat!” The birds above were calling out their warnings as Hrurr sidled along below. “Watch your nests! Guard your young! Cat! Cat!”

  “Oh, be quiet,” he muttered.

  A blackbird alighted on a limb, out of reach. Hrurr clawed at the tree trunk, longing to taste blood. “Foolish cat,” the bird cawed, “I’ve seen your kind in the cities, crawling through rubble, scratching for crumbs and cowering as the storms rage and buildings crumble. The two-legged ones gather, and the world grows darker as the shining eagles shriek and the metal turtles crawl over the land. You think you’ll escape, but you won’t. The soil is ready to receive the dead.”

  Hrurr clung to the trunk as the bird fluttered up to a higher limb. He had heard such chatter from other birds, but had paid it no mind. “That doesn’t concern me,” he snarled. “There’s nothing like that here.” But he was thinking of the shattered mirror, and of what Mewleen had said.

  “Foolish cat. Do you know where you are? The two-legged ones have scarred the mountain to build themselves a cage, and you are now inside it.”

  “No cage can hold me,” Hrurr cried as the bird flew away. He jumped to the ground, clawing at the earth. I live, he thought, I live. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with piney air.

  The light was beginning to fade; it would soon be night. He hunkered down in the shadows; he would have to prowl for some food. Below ground, burrowing creatures mumbled sluggishly to one another as they prepared for sleep.

  * * * *

  In the morning, a quick, darting movement caught Hrurr’s attention. A small, grayish bird carelessly landed in front of him and began to peck at the ground.

  He readied himself, then lunged, trapping the bird under his paws. She stared back at him, eyes wide with terror. He bared his teeth.

  “Cruel creature,” the bird said.

  “Not cruel. I have to eat, you know.” He had injured her; she fluttered helplessly. He swatted her gently with a paw.

  “At least be quick about it. My poor heart will burst with despair. Why must you toy with me?”

  “I’m giving you a chance to prepare yourself for death.”

  “Alas,” the bird sang mournfully. “My mate will see me no more, and the winds will not sing to me again or lift me to the clouds.”

  “You will dwell in the realm of spirits,” Hrurr replied, “where there are no predators or prey. Prepare yourself.” He bit down; as the bird died, he thought he heard the flutter of ghostly wings. “I’m sorry” he whispered. “I have no choice in these matters. As I prey upon you, another will prey upon me. The world maintains its balance.” He could not hear her soul’s reply.

  When he had eaten, he continued up the slope until he came to a clearing. Above him, a path wound up the mountainside, leading from a round, stone tower with a pointed roof to a distant chalet. The chalet sprawled; he imagined that the two-legs inside it was either a large creature or one who needed a lot of space. Creeping up to the nearer stone structure, he turned and looked down the slope.

  In the valley the homes of the two-legged ones were now no bigger than his paw; the river running down the mountainside was a ribbon. This, he thought, was how birds saw the world. To them, a two-legs was only a tiny creature rooted to the ground; a town was an anthill, and even the gray, misty mountains before him were only mounds. He suddenly felt as if he were gazing into an abyss, about to be separated from the world that surrounded him.

  He crouched, resting his head on his paws. Two-legged ones had built the edifices on this mountain; such creatures were already apart from the world, unable even to hear what animals said to one another, incapable of a last, regretful communion with their prey, eating only what was stone dead. He had always believed that the two-legged ones were simply soulless beings whose instincts drove them into strange, incomprehensible behavior; they built, tore down, and built again, moving through the world as if in a dream. But now, as he gazed at the valley below, he began to wonder if the two-legged ones had deliberately separated themselves from the world by an act of will. Those so apart from others might come to think that they ruled the world, and their constructions, instead of being instinctive, might be a deliberate attempt to mold what was around them. They might view all the world as he viewed the tiny town below.

  This thought was so disturbing that he bounded up, racing along the path and glorying in his speed until he drew closer to the chalet. His tail twitched nervously as he stared at the wide, glassy expanse on this side of the house. Above the wide window was a veranda; from there, he would look no bigger than a mouse—if he could be seen at all. Farther up the slope, still other buildings were nestled among the trees.

  His fur prickled; he longed for Mewleen. Her sharp hearing often provoked her to fancies, causing her to read omens in the simplest and most commonplace of sounds, but it also made her aware of approaching danger. He wanted her counsel; she might have been able to perceive something here to which he was deaf and blind.

  Something moved in the grass. Hrurr stiffened. A small, gray cat was watching him. For an in
stant, he thought that his musings about Mewleen had caused the creature to appear. In the next instant, he leaped at the cat, snarling as he raised his hair.

  “Ha!” the smaller cat cried, nipping his ear. Hrurr swatted him, narrowly missing his eyes. They rolled on the ground, claws digging into each other’s fur. Hrurr meowed, longing for a fight.

  The other cat suddenly released him, rolling out of reach, then hissing as he nursed his scratches. Hrurr licked his paw, hissing back. “You’re no match for me, Kitten,” He waited for a gesture of submission.

  “You think not? I may be smaller, but you’re older.”

  “True enough. You’re only a kitten.”

  “Don’t call me a kitten. My name is Ylawl. Kindly address me properly.”

  “You’re a kitten.”

  The other cat raised his head haughtily. “What are you doing here?”

  “I might ask the same question of you.”

  “I go where I please.”

  “So do I.”

  The younger cat sidled toward him, but kept his distance. “Did a two-legs bring you here?” he asked at last.

  “No,” Hrurr replied. “I came alone.”

  Ylawl tilted his head; Hrurr thought he saw a gleam of respect in his eyes. “Then you are one like me.”