Cats Aloft

by Lisa Martin

  “Fat cat, huh?” said Cecil, and he lunged. Amid a flurry of shrieking the birds flapped away, spiraling unsteadily and hurling further insults as they went.

  Anton’s anxious face appeared over the edge of the box above, peering down at Cecil. Anton gasped, then shook his head and sighed with relief. “You’re impossible, you know that?” he called down.

  As the great Wheel carried them gracefully down and around and up into the sky, Cecil lay flat on his back, a pained grin on his face, a fluttery clutch of yellow and blue feathers in his claws.

  Chapter 7

  Balloon Race

  Dogs crying in the sky,” mused Ruby. “Fascinating.”

  In the twilight of the day, the three friends had settled themselves in the alley next to Mr. Morgan’s house. Cecil was banged and bruised after his two close scrapes at the Fair, and they all needed some rest and a good meal.

  “Maybe,” said Anton, lapping up the last of the canned fish and cream concoction that Mr. Morgan had brought out for Cecil and him. “Or, the birds could be mistaken about where the sound is coming from.”

  “Or they might be just, you know, wacky birds making stuff up,” added Cecil, licking the scratches on his paws and belly.

  “It’s such a striking idea, though,” said Ruby, gazing at the deepening blue above. “Crying in the sky. My goodness, what could that be about? Could it refer to the habit dogs sometimes have of crying up to the sky, baying at the moon, as it were? Because who among us hasn’t done that, I might ask? Present company excluded, of course.”

  Anton frowned. “If the dogs are really in the sky, though, they’d have to be flying . . .”

  “Which we know they can’t do,” Cecil put in.

  “. . . or up on something that’s high itself,” concluded Anton. “That puts us right back to a rooftop or a tall tree.”

  “Or the Furs Wheel,” said Ruby. “No dogs to be found up there, I take it?”

  Anton thought of the enormous contraptions he’d spotted from the top of the Furs Wheel. “What about the balloons?” he said, half-joking.

  “They don’t let any more dogs on the balloon ride than they do on the Furs Wheel, I’m sure of that much,” said Ruby.

  “What if they sneak on, like we did?” said Anton. Just the thought of the swaying box at those great heights made him feel woozy again.

  Ruby nodded, her ears swinging. “Anything is possible, as I’ve learned. And you did say that the man with the green hat was walking down the Midway, away from you, isn’t that right? The balloon ride is down that way as well, so that’s where we’ll begin first thing in the morning,” Ruby declared, standing and stretching her long legs.

  “Can we go see the fishing boy first?” asked Cecil.

  “Easily arranged,” said Ruby. She strolled to the back door of the house and scratched softly at it. A moment later the door opened and a wedge of light spilled out, and Ruby disappeared inside.

  “Well, brother,” said Cecil, curling into a corner of the crate and resting his chin on his paws. “You ready for another high-flying mission tomorrow?”

  Anton shook his head and sighed. “Not me. It was you who wanted to fly, you know.”

  “I know, and I know what you’ll say, too.” Cecil closed his eyes. “Careful what I wish for.”

  The rising sun warmed the air quickly and felt especially stifling to the furred creatures traversing the Fairgrounds. After a delightful breakfast thanks to the fishing boy and a stop at the Furs Wheel to get their bearings, Ruby, Anton, and Cecil began the slow work of navigating a path through the tide of humans, many of whom were streaming in the entrance at the far end of the Midway and clogging the main thoroughfare.

  At a huge building with brightly painted walls and a soaring, rounded roofline, Anton pulled the others aside.

  “This is about where the man in the green hat was, isn’t that right, Cecil?” said Anton. He turned and gazed up to the top of the Furs Wheel, marveling at its staggering height.

  “Somewhere along here, yeah,” Cecil replied. “And there was a boy throwing things in the air and catching them, over and over.”

  Ruby nodded. “They call those people ‘juglars.’ ”

  “You know a surprising number of human names for things,” observed Cecil.

  “I suppose,” said Ruby, scanning the hats in the crowd. “Mr. Morgan talks to me quite a lot, pointing at things and naming them as we meander about, and I have a good memory. If he identifies a thing or a person more than once, I usually can remember it.”

  “Is that useful?” asked Anton.

  “Oh, very useful indeed,” said Ruby. “Once, in a tight spot, he asked me to run to the butcher shop and get a leg of mutton—using human words, of course. And I did exactly that, and he was able to solve the case there and then.”

  “Wow,” remarked Anton, turning forward again.

  “Thank you, Anton. My thoughts exactly.”

  “No, I mean, wow, look at that!”

  Through a break in the mass of people on the Midway, the group suddenly had a clear view of a grassy field next to the main road. There in the field, in front of a set of wooden stair-like planks filled with chattering humans, sat two enormous balloons, one dark green and one yellow. Their bottoms rested gently on the grass while the swollen spheres above listed in the breeze. From far away atop the Furs Wheel, the balloons hadn’t seemed this immense. Standing below them now, Anton thought they were taller than the mainmast of a clipper ship.

  “Look,” said Cecil, gaping upward. “There’s a Great Cat on each one.”

  Anton recognized a massive roaring lion painted on the fabric of the yellow balloon, and a strange, round-eared, striped cat, standing on its back legs and swiping the air, depicted on the green one. Each base was like a flat carriage, large enough to hold five or six humans, with low walls and a swinging door cut into one side to allow passengers to step in and out. A noisy machine chugged on the ground next to one of the carriages while a worker moved around it, adjusting the ropes attached to the balloon and arranging tanks and small crates.

  “So, what happens here?” asked Cecil, eyeing the animated people seated on the planks. “Do humans ride in the carriages?”

  Ruby sat down and nodded at the twin balloons. “They do. They call that bottom carriage a ‘gondola.’ Sometimes a balloon floats up and just hangs there, roped to the ground, and other times both balloons take off at once and sail away out of sight. I don’t pretend to understand the rhyme or reason of it.”

  The three creatures circled around to the far side of the second balloon, away from the crowd on the planks. A small, dilapidated shed stood on the edge of the field, its door standing ajar. Ruby’s nose began to wriggle.

  “Oh, my goodness,” she said, sniffing rapidly. “I’m picking up lots of puppy scents around here.” She moved carefully, nose to the ground, first toward the nearest balloon, then reversing course and heading for the shed. “More this way, I think. Let’s spread out and search.”

  Anton and Cecil followed, their heads swiveling as they watched for signs of trouble. Ruby plunged into the shed while the cats circled around the outside. Against the back wall they came upon two small fishing baskets with rounded bottoms and flat lids. Anton cried out.

  “The baskets!” he said. “These are just like the one that the man in the Menagerie had.” He could hear Ruby inside the shed, knocking into things. He wanted to show these to her right away.

  Cecil stepped closer and sniffed. “They do smell doggy, even to me.” One basket was closed, its lid fastened with a loop of cord around a nail, but the top of the other was slightly ajar. Cecil wedged his nose under the edge of the lid and lifted it. “This one’s not so bad,” he said, his voice muffled. “Smells like there could be food in here.”

  “Food?” Anton repeated.

  Cecil shoved the rest of his head inside. “Ah, here’s a bone, a big one.” He stuck his forelegs into the opening and, with a little spring off his back leg
s, he pivoted over the edge and disappeared into the basket. The lid snapped shut, the cord latch falling down over the nail.

  Anton stared at the latch. That’s not good, he thought. “Cecil, come on. This is no time for exploring.”

  The basket wobbled as Cecil moved around in the small space. “No meat left on this bone,” he reported, sounding disappointed. “There’s some damp cloth in here. It has an odd scent, makes my nose itch.” Then he yawned loudly. “Goodness, I’m so sleepy all of a sudden.”

  “Come out, Cecil,” said Anton. “I’m serious. Get out of there. It might be latched now—push on the top with your head or something.” But Cecil had fallen silent. Anton stepped to the basket, nudging it with his shoulder. “Cecil?” No response. He stared at it, sighing with irritation. He turned and called through the wall of the shed. “Ruby? I could use some help.”

  Ruby’s huge head appeared almost immediately around the corner. “What’s happened?”

  “Cecil’s stuck in a basket.” Anton gestured with a paw. “I think he’s asleep. We’ve got to get him out.”

  “Remarkable,” said Ruby, hustling over. “How does one even accomplish such things in so little time?”

  “You don’t know my brother,” said Anton. “What do we do?”

  “Well, we dump him out, is what we do,” said Ruby. She lowered her head and bumped the basket forcefully. It tipped over on its side, but the latch held. She tried again, sending the basket tumbling, but the lid stayed shut.

  Anton felt a little panic begin to rise in his belly. Someone was bound to notice them any minute. “Maybe I can bite through the cord,” he suggested.

  “Worth a try,” Ruby agreed.

  At that moment they heard voices near the balloons. Anton slipped behind the shed while Ruby continued butting the basket with her snout. The voices sounded like two men arguing.

  “I still don’t see why we don’t just take them out by horse-cart, boss,” said one of the men, his voice sounding young and agitated to Anton’s ears. “It’d be a lot easier than flying them away like we’ve—”

  The other man’s voice, older and ill-tempered, cut him off. “Zip it, Roscoe! I’ve already explained this. The security at the main gates is monstrous. Those guards check every bag and box for contraband—we’d be caught in a red-hot minute! On top of that there’s a detective on this case, snooping around with a bloodhound, no less. That’s the last thing we need! This way, we go in the air, nobody sees a thing.”

  Anton peeked carefully around the corner and stifled a gasp. One of the men was wearing a green cap! The pair of them stood a short distance away from the yellow balloon, but they hadn’t yet noticed the dog in the shadow of the shed. Ruby lifted the basket by the strap with her teeth and dropped it in the grass, but the latch still held. Anton was glad Ruby was still trying to get it open, though he wondered why all the jostling hadn’t woken Cecil up by now.

  “Psst,” he whispered to Ruby. “We have to get Cecil out of here. That man has a green cap, and they might come over this way.”

  Ruby eyed the men and nodded. “I’ll just retrieve one piece of evidence that I found inside, and then we’ll hightail it. We can drag the basket home to Mr. Morgan. He can get it open for us, I’m sure.” She trotted around the corner and slipped into the shed. Anton watched the two men, wishing they would leave. He knew they had something to do with the missing dogs, but he was more worried about Cecil at the moment.

  “Now quit asking questions and do your job, all right?” said the green cap man.

  “Yes sir, absolutely sir,” said the younger man, pulling a bright yellow scarf out of his pocket and tying it around his neck. “How many are making the trip today?”

  Anton jumped at the sight of the scarf. These two must be the thieves, for sure!

  “Only the one you got yesterday,” said the green cap man irritably. “Should have been two, but the other one bit me and got away this morning. Ungrateful mutt.”

  The young man whistled. “No circus for him.”

  “And no payday for us,” growled the older man. “The basket’s behind the shed. Get it and load it, will you? I’ll give my regards to the crowd.” He took a few steps away and then turned back, wagging a finger. “And do it right this time. No mistakes!”

  “You can count on me, sir,” said the younger man as his boss disappeared around the towering balloon. He turned and hurried toward the shed, pausing briefly by the door.

  Anton pressed himself into the shadows next to the shed. Maybe the balloons are lifting off. Maybe the men will get in them and leave, and we can take a good look around this place. He heard a slam and saw the man jogging around to the back wall. The crowd of people on the wood planks began to cheer wildly at whatever the green cap man was saying to them. Under the screams and cheers, he thought he could hear a dog barking, an angry, anxious baying. But his attention was diverted by what happened next.

  The yellow scarf man stepped to the basket where it lay on its side in the grass, scooped it up by its strap, and shouldered it with a groan. Anton’s mouth fell open. The man was taking the basket, with Cecil inside!

  “Cecil!” Anton screeched and leaped from his hiding place. “Ruby!” But Ruby didn’t appear and the man was moving swiftly away, headed for the balloons. Anton raced after him. Where was he going with Cecil? And where was Ruby? Anton glanced over his shoulder and spotted the closed shed door at the same instant he recognized that the barking was coming from inside. Oh, my whiskers! Ruby was trapped!

  There was no time to go back. Anton sprinted toward the yellow scarf man, catching up just as he reached the green balloon. He swung open the door of the gondola, dropped the basket into one corner, and was just stepping out again when Anton ran headfirst into the man’s boots.

  “Hey, watch it!” cried the man, shoving Anton aside. “Get outta here, cat.” He clicked the gondola door shut and strode off toward the yellow balloon, past the stands where the green hat man squawked loudly to the crowd through a wide tube held up to his mouth. Two other men began adjusting the ropes that ran from the balloons to several stakes in the ground. They unlooped the ropes from two of the stakes, and the balloons bobbed a few feet up and settled back down, like ships drifting away from the docks toward the open sea.

  The balloon was leaving, with Cecil aboard! Anton dashed from side to side searching for another way in, then circled the whole gondola, avoiding the ropes and stakes, calling to his brother.

  “Cecil! Can you hear me? You’ve got to get out of there!” But Anton heard nothing from the basket. He backed up and looked at the gondola. The sides sloped outward as they rose and would be awkward to climb, but Anton had no better option. He ran hard at one side and leaped up, hooking onto the rough wooden slats with his claws. He hung for a second, adjusting his balance on his back legs. The crowd roared again and he leaned out to see the green cap man give a big wave and turn purposefully toward the green balloon—the very one Anton was clinging to. Anton pushed off his legs and surged up a foot or more, reattaching his claws. It was working, but he was running out of time. He scooted up a few more inches.

  The green cap man arrived at the gondola and stepped inside, standing at the railing right next to where Cecil’s basket lay on the floor.

  “Ready, Roscoe?” he yelled across to the yellow scarf man in the yellow balloon, who returned a jaunty salute. “Ready, boys?” he called to the workers poised by the stakes in the ground that held each balloon. “On three! . . . One . . . two . . .”

  “Just a second, boss,” called one worker close behind Anton. He stepped over and swatted Anton off the side of the gondola and into the grass, where he landed on his feet. “Almost had a stowaway there. All clear!”

  Anton scrambled to make another run at the gondola, but at that moment he heard the green cap man shout, “Three!” The workers yanked the stakes from the ground and the two balloons launched simultaneously into the air amid raucous cheering and hollering from the crowd. Anton ran
underneath and jumped as high as he could, but there was nothing left to grab on to—the balloons rose above the ground with a great whooshing sound, the ropes trailing and twirling. The men in the balloons each leaned over the edge of their gondola and waved to the crowd.

  Anton’s throat tightened and he looked wildly around. What can I do? he thought desperately. He raced back to the shed and called through the space around the door.

  “Ruby! They put Cecil in the balloon and flew away with him!” Anton had a few seconds to think about how bad that situation sounded before he heard Ruby’s reply.

  “I’ll be right with you, Anton!” she cried from inside, near the back wall.

  Anton skittered around the corner in time to hear a crunching thud: Ruby was storming her way out. A wide, splintering board protruded a few inches from the shed wall, and with another shove the nails creaked, the wood plank cracked, and the big dog barreled out into the field. She and Anton galloped to where the balloons had been a minute before and gazed up.

  “Oh, no,” cried Ruby. “This can’t be.”

  The humans in the stands peered into the sky, shading their eyes from the sun and shouting. “Go, Lion, win it!” “Onward, Tiger, you can beat him!” Some spilled onto the field and jumped up and down, waving their arms at the balloonists. Ruby and Anton watched the balloons go, the two shapes stark against the clouds, gradually diminishing as they rose.

  Anton’s heart beat crazily and he found it hard to breathe. “Ruby,” he said in a strangled gasp. “How will I . . .”

  Ruby leaned and touched her wet black nose to the top of Anton’s head. “Find Cecil. Yes, I know, my dear. We’ll figure something out, don’t you worry. I’m quite good at this sort of thing.”

  But Anton knew what Ruby wasn’t saying. “You can’t track him now, can you?”

  “Not this way, I’m afraid. Not through the air.” She shook her head briskly and huffed. “But they’ll be back. Those scoundrels run these balloons every day, and when they come back, we’ll see what we can see. Or, rather, smell.”