by Gwyneth Rees
‘That’s my tail you’re stomping on, clumsy-paws!’
‘That hurt, you fat fleabag!’
‘Watch my toes, you big ginger lump!’
As he pushed his way through, cats on either side of him were spitting and hissing and accusing each other of shoving, and he moved as quickly as he could to stop a fight breaking out.
Tagg was extremely relieved when he finally arrived at the front of the crowd, just as Dr Specs appeared from the darkness behind the pavilion and leaped on to the stage.
Specs smiled confidently as Tiffany introduced him, then he stepped into the spotlight and began. ‘Thank you and welcome to tonight’s event, my dear felines. The title of my talk is “Super cats and their secret powers”!’
Specs delivered his speech with passion and conviction, easily appealing to the natural fears of all the ordinary cats in the audience. ‘If we don’t do something now, then someday soon these super cats will be the end of us all! We must act now! We must fight for our right to live in a normal world. All you parent cats out there, don’t you want your kittens to be free to play in their own gardens without being terrified by a flying, invisible or super-speeding cat? And what about the truly evil super cats out there – like Maximus Fang, who caused catastrophe across the whole country? It was my weapon … MY WEAPON … that neutralised his power and saved us all from certain destruction!’
A few scrawny, angry-looking cats near Tagg began to chant, ‘DOWN WITH SUPER CATS!’
Dr Specs continued in a creepy voice, ‘Remember, I don’t want to hurt these super cats – just normalise them. My weapon will restore these abnormal creatures to a normal feline state. And in doing so, I will restore order and peace to felines everywhere! It’s only fair. It’s only making us equals.’
A cheer went up, ‘Hurrah for Dr Specs!’ The cheer was soon echoed around the crowd – even the ones waving the One Purr banners.
Tagg felt a shudder of fear and was glad he was safely camouflaged. Couldn’t the other cats see that Dr Specs was dangerous?
Tagg checked out the area around the pavilion while Specs waved and joked with the crowd. Tiffany was standing in the shadows at one side, and on the grass behind the pavilion he could see the members of One Purr waiting for their cue to take to the stage. As soon as Specs was out of the spotlight, Tagg would signal for the other cat agents to move in and grab him.
As Tagg watched, Tiffany Fluffiface came forward to link front paws with Dr Specs as she announced, ‘THEY’RE HERE, EVERYONE! THE CAT BAND YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR! ONE PURR!’
As they all cheered, the cat musicians jumped on to the stage and Tagg immediately recognised Thumper, the long-haired ginger drummer. Thumper was a super cat, famous for his ability to shoot firebolts from his tail during his performances. His drums were made from shiny white animal skulls and his drumsticks were dog thigh bones. Tagg had seen the band play before, and he was struck by how uncomfortable their usually supercool drummer looked.
He guessed Thumper had been listening behind the scenes when Dr Specs had made his speech about super cats. He probably didn’t want to be here at all now.
Dr Specs didn’t leave the stage as Tagg thought he would, and was clearly visible standing at the side while One Purr played. Soon he was bopping away with Tiffany and the audience to the catchy opening number. That made him easy to keep an eye on.
‘ONE PURR! ONE PURR! WE LOVE YOU, ONE PURR!’ came the chant after the first song ended.
As the band launched into a much-loved ballad, which started off slow and then quickened in pace to the frenzied beat of Thumper’s drums, the whole crowd joined in at the tops of their lungs. Everyone loved One Purr, and right now nobody seemed to care if their drummer was a super cat.
And that’s when it happened!
It was One Purr’s spectacular finale – where Thumper pointed his tail and shot out his firebolts. Tonight, Tagg was close enough to the band to see how Thumper deliberately angled his tail to aim the bolts through the back exit of the pavilion so they would shoot safely up into the night sky.
Suddenly the stage lights went out. Only Tagg, from his position just across from Dr Specs, saw him rush forward and shove Thumper from behind. Thumper lost his footing, falling head first with his tail pointed straight up just as the first set of firebolts shot out. As the pavilion roof caught fire everyone screamed and poor Thumper toppled off the stage into the crowd, his tail firing automatically with fright, causing every cat in the audience to claw frantically at each other as they scrambled to escape.
Then Dr Specs’s voice sounded clear and loud above all the din, ‘THUMPER DID THIS! HE’S SET THE PLACE ON FIRE WITH HIS SUPERPOWER!’
Tiffany’s cameras continued to film as pieces of the flaming roof fell down into the audience. Luckily all the waiting secret agents had sprung into action as soon as they saw what was happening. Using their super strength, super speed and other powers, they rescued injured cats and fetched bucketloads of water to hurl repeatedly at the flames.
Tagg was rushing to help when Sugarfoot called out to him. ‘We have to catch Dr Specs! He’s getting away! Look!’
Tagg turned to where she was pointing and saw that she was right. Dr Specs had left the pavilion and was slinking away in the dark across the grass. The only reason they could make out the mostly black cat at all was because Tiffany had turned up the spotlights to allow the rescuers to see what they were doing.
‘He’s heading for the south boundary,’ Sugarfoot mewed. ‘Come on! We have to follow him! There’s no way he’s going to escape from us this time!’
DR SPECS’S EVIL LAIR
As Tagg was camouflaged and Sugarfoot was black apart from her single white paw, it was easy for them to follow Dr Specs without being spotted.
Dr Specs led them through various dark alleys until he stopped at a dilapidated building with boarded windows and a backyard full of discarded human objects – a broken fridge, old chairs, a battered sofa. Specs glanced behind him before dodging past the sofa to the back door. The door had a hole at the bottom where the wood was cracked, and he swiftly disappeared inside.
As Tagg slunk past the fridge, he felt the ground move under his paws. Correction – his paws were sinking into the ground!
The earth seemed to be sucking him down. He was soon stuck fast!
‘Stay back!’ he yowled urgently to Sugarfoot. ‘Don’t come near me! I think it’s quicksand! Specs must have set a trap in case he was followed.’
Just then the bulky fridge started to tilt towards him, until it was dangerously close to toppling over right on top of him.
‘I’ll deal with this!’ Sugarfoot shouted, turning to face the fridge. She had a super yowl capable of hurling backwards anyone or anything in her path. Turned up a notch, her yowl could shatter any solid structure and send villains flying off into space.
With a mighty YOWL that shook the whole garden, she sent the broken chairs flying and the fridge falling backwards away from Tagg.
By the end of it, Tagg’s entire coat was standing on end as if a giant hairdryer had just been aimed at it, and his paws had come unstuck with a loud squelch, sending gooey sand splattering everywhere.
Inspecting his muddy paws, Tagg forced himself not to stop and lick them but to lead the way into the house through the hole in the door. With Sugarfoot close behind him, they padded as softy as possible along a dark hallway.
‘Be careful,’ Sugarfoot whispered. ‘He might’ve set more traps.’
They found themselves on a set of horribly creaky stairs as they climbed towards the light that was coming from the top landing. As Tagg trod on a stair near the top he got a very bad feeling and stopped abruptly, dropping his camouflage.
‘What’s wrong?’ Sugarfoot hissed.
‘It’s this stair. It didn’t creak.’
‘That’s because it’s not a stair!’ boomed a familiar Speccy voice, as the stair in question suddenly made a strange scraping noise. Tagg leaped bac
kwards just in time as lots of sharp rotating nails pushed up through the wood to pierce the paws of any cat who’d been standing there.
A movement on the landing made the two cats look up. Then there was a loud grating sound above them and a strange contraption swung down from the ceiling to hover overhead. It appeared to be some kind of chandelier that was dangling what looked like glinting daggers directly above them.
There was nothing for it but to run. As the chandelier swung across their escape route, showering its deadly daggers over the lower part of the staircase, Tagg leaped bravely upwards, right over the stair above them, and yelled for Sugarfoot to follow. The chandelier was starting to swing back towards them as Sugarfoot made the jump and scrambled up the remaining steps and on to the landing. They flattened themselves against the back wall as more razor-sharp daggers hit the upper staircase and landing, one of them narrowly missing Tagg. The blade was so sharp it would have lopped off his tail if he hadn’t swished it out of the way just in time.
Finally it was over and the house was silent again. They strained their ears to listen for further movement, but there was nothing, apart from their own quickened breathing.
No sound came from any of the rooms off the landing, though Dr Specs surely had to be inside one of them. The room that was closest had a dim light coming from it and the door had been left slightly open.
‘He must be in there. I’ll sneak in and look,’ Tagg murmured, activating his camouflage.
‘Be careful!’
Tagg crept into the room, just managing not to skid on a slippy patch on the floor. Looking down he saw that he was standing in some spilt cat food, while on the other side of the room Specs was gnawing at a ripped-open slippery sachet that kept escaping from under his nose. There was a dirty mattress with a pile of ragged blankets on top of it, a broken-looking stepladder, a few old pots of paint and some battered cardboard boxes. The light was coming from a strange sort of home-made flashlight perched in the middle of the floor, and Tagg wondered if Specs had invented it since it didn’t look like any human contraption he had ever seen.
Tagg signalled to Sugarfoot that it was safe to enter – he couldn’t see any more traps, at any rate – before he crept very slowly towards Dr Specs.
As soon as Dr Specs saw Sugarfoot come in through the door, he let out a little growl of annoyance. ‘You’re still alive?’
Sugarfoot blinked at him coldly.
‘Still, at least I got rid of one of you! Tell me … was it my home-made quicksand or my rotating nails that got him? Or did he make it as far as my Chandelier of Doom?’ He chuckled.
Realising that Specs thought Tagg had been eliminated, Sugarfoot kept up the pretence while Tagg moved closer. ‘Topaz sent me here to arrest you! I’m taking you back to prison. Face it, you’re no match for super cats.’
‘Really?’ The chuckle was gone in an instant as Specs snarled and showed his nasty yellow teeth. ‘No match? If I robbed Topaz of her superpower, then don’t you think I can easily do the same to you?!’
‘Wait, you took Topaz’s superpower?’ Sugarfoot blurted, unable to hide her shock at this revelation. Tagg also froze where he was.
‘Of course I did! That’s why she put me in prison! She couldn’t bear that I was more powerful than her!’ He let out a crazily gleeful miaow. ‘You should have seen her face when I turned my weapon on her! She’d ordered me to destroy it! Can you imagine? Destroy my ingenious invention? I wanted to kill her, but I didn’t! I just took away her power, with no serious side effects whatsoever! I should have been hailed a hero! I should have been crowned the best inventor the world has ever seen! But no – she flung me in prison to rot!’
Sugarfoot, who was struggling to control her emotions, murmured, ‘What you did was wrong! Her superpower—’
‘Shapeshifting into any animal she chose!’ he exclaimed. ‘It was a spectacular superpower!’ He started to shake with mirth. ‘But now she’s nothing. And none of you can defeat me!’
Still camouflaged, Tagg was listening to all this, completely stunned. He remembered how, a long time ago, he’d asked his mother why the leader of the super cats wasn’t actually a super cat herself, and his mother had started washing her paws and mumbled something about Topaz having been a super cat once and that he mustn’t ask any more questions.
Dr Specs let out one last victorious laugh before suddenly jumping on to the mattress and diving under the pile of blankets.
‘You can’t hide in there,’ Sugarfoot miaowed, still keen to bring this criminal to justice. ‘You’ve nowhere else to go, Specs.’
‘That’s Doctor Specs to you!’ came the growly reply, as the villain poked first his head and then the rest of his body out from the covers, revealing a familiar object clutched between his front paws.
‘That’s a neutralising weapon!’ shouted Tagg, causing Dr Specs to jump with fright since he hadn’t realised there was a second super cat in the room.
Specs quickly recovered and fired the weapon in the direction of Tagg’s voice, but luckily Tagg had already darted away.
‘GET BEHIND ME, TAGG!’ Sugarfoot yelled, as she prepared to unleash her own superpower on Specs. But as the yowl emerged from her throat and the room began to tremble, Specs pointed his weapon and fired directly at her head.
‘NO!’ Tagg yelled, diving towards his friend and pushing her out of the way.
But it was too late. Sugarfoot fell to the floor, unconscious, and the room instantly stopped shaking.
‘Phew! That little madam had me worried for a moment!’ Dr Specs said with a chuckle. ‘Now, what about her invisible friend? Though you’re not quite invisible, are you?’
Tagg froze as Specs waved his weapon around the room, watching and listening intently for any indication of Tagg brushing against something or causing a floorboard to creak.
‘Oh, well!’ Dr Specs’s teasing voice sang out, as he kept his weapon ready to shoot. ‘While I wait for you to reveal yourself, I’ll show you the best part of my plan. You can see how busy I’ve been while you’ve been chasing your own tails trying to capture me!’ He sidled over to a large object covered in a dust sheet. He gripped a corner of the sheet with his teeth and whipped it off. ‘Ta-da!’
Tagg only just managed to hold back a gasp as he took in the huge pile of weapons identical to the one Specs was holding. How could he have made so many so quickly? And how would anyone be able to stop him now? Tagg looked over at Sugarfoot, still unconscious. Had her power really gone?
‘I intend to create my own army of cats,’ Specs confided. ‘So it shouldn’t be too difficult to eradicate all super cats, don’t you agree?’
Tagg felt trembly inside and it was hard to think clearly. His heart was beating furiously and he was scared Dr Specs would hear it. He had to stay calm if he was going to get himself and Sugarfoot out of here safely. He scanned the room for what seemed like forever, trying to think up a plan.
The one that came to him was risky, but it might work if he could manage to dim the strange flashlight. The dust sheet was lying on the floor by the window. Still camouflaged, Tagg carefully tiptoed towards it, before yanking it roughly with his teeth and throwing it over the flashlight. He leaped away as Specs fired at the sheet.
The room was dim and shadowy now as Tagg hurled an old paintbrush across to the other side of the room, where it clattered against the wall. As Specs turned to fire his weapon in the direction of the crash, Tagg rushed to Sugarfoot and began to pull her by the scruff of her neck towards the door. By the time Specs stopped firing, Tagg had dragged Sugarfoot out of the room and was already halfway down the stairs.
A SCARILY SILENT SUGARFOOT
Thankfully, soon after Tagg had got Sugarfoot out of Dr Specs’s building, she recovered enough to stagger along beside him.
‘Dr Specs is the most dangerous villain we’ve ever come across!’ Tagg murmured in despair. ‘And he isn’t even a super cat!’
Sugarfoot tried to reply, but her throat hurt so much t
hat she couldn’t utter a single mew.
When they finally arrived back at Super Cat HQ, Topaz, Rowdy and Marshmallow were already there. Thankfully they had managed to control the fire in the park before any serious damage was done – though the humans weren’t going to be happy when they saw the burned remains of their pavilion the next morning.
‘Was anyone hurt?’ Tagg asked.
‘A few cats had minor burns but nothing too serious. We took them to the vet’s house and left them with her. But what happened to you two?’
While Sugarfoot was helped to a comfy cat basket in the corner of the room, Tagg described their encounter with Dr Specs. ‘He knows we’ll go after him again, so he’s bound to change his hideout. We’ll have to go back straight away if we want to catch him!’
‘I agree,’ Topaz mewed. ‘We need to get a team together quickly.’
But as they were about to make their plan, Topaz was distracted by one of the scientists who suddenly rushed into the room with a list of lab results. As she read it, her tail bushed up.
‘What is it, Ma’am?’ Rowdy asked urgently.
Topaz looked excited. ‘I have to go back to our lab straight away. As you know, they’ve been working on Dr Specs’s original weapon and they’ve just found something important. Rowdy, please take over here.’
‘But, Ma’am, don’t you think that capturing Specs is more important?’ Rowdy began anxiously. ‘He’s made a huge pile of weapons already, and look what he just did to Sugarfoot.’
‘My scientists are the only ones who can restore Sugarfoot’s superpower,’ Topaz mewed back. ‘And mine,’ she muttered to herself as she hurried away, her assistant scurrying behind her.
