Katt vs. Dogg

by James Patterson

  “I can smell you!” barked the dogg.

  “Oh, really?” said Molly, darting sideways into the underbrush. “I could smell you from two miles away. You smell like a wet, dirty dogg!”

  Molly was swift and had more moves than the dogg. But, she had to admit, the dogg was fast. He was right on her tail and gaining!

  Molly wasn’t really sure why she had ventured toward the dogg’s hiding place. Maybe because she hadn’t seen another civilized creature for a while. Not since she snuck off into the woods to work on her emoting skills and ended up getting lost.

  Horribly, terribly, miserably lost.

  Molly wanted to be an actress. Actresses had to show a wide range of emotions, something that was difficult for most katts. They usually went from cuddly to snarky and vicious without much in between.

  Her father and mother didn’t approve of Molly’s dreams of being on the stage or, better yet, in the movies. Some katts made excellent actresses and performers, like Kattalie Portman and Kitty Purry. In fact, Molly’s favorite films all featured katts: The Fast and the Fur-ious, Whiskers in the Dark, Kitty Kitty Bang Bang. But Molly was a good girl. She always did what her mother and father told her to do. At least when they were watching.

  “Waste of time,” her father had purred when she told him her dreams of being an actress. “Trained doggs appear in shows for other people’s entertainment. Sensible katts appear only when they want to.”

  “Concentrate on your napping, dear,” suggested her mother. “It’s the only skill you’ll ever need.”

  “Plus bathing,” her father would always add. “Mustn’t forget bathing. Feline hygiene is very important.” And then he’d sit down and lick himself.

  But Molly wanted more.

  Of course, at that very instant, all she really wanted was to get away from the stupid boy dogg charging after her!

  Fine, she thought. This dogg and katt chase will end as dogg and katt chases have ended since time immemorial.

  She spotted a tree with two trunks split like a V and leapt nimbly between them.

  The dogg?

  He was once again easily distracted. He saw a fluttering moth and stopped watching where he was going.

  That’s when he banged his muzzle right into one of the tree trunks!

  Chapter 14

  Holding his sore nose, which made it hard to sniff for directions, Oscar eventually found his way back to his meager campsite.

  “Stupid katt. Made me chase her,” he muttered. “Stupid moth. Made me chase him, too.”

  All the late-night running had really worked up Oscar’s appetite.

  “Guess I’ll go ahead and eat another can of dogg food,” he said aloud, because the night noises in the forest were so creepy. It was comforting to hear a sound he recognized: his own voice.

  He went to his knapsack.

  “What the…?”

  Its canvas had been ripped to shreds, as if someone had torn into it with their claws.

  It was also empty. Oscar turned the backpack upside down and shook it.

  Nothing fell out.

  “I had two cans of dogg food and a rawhide stick!” he howled at the moon.

  Then Oscar realized the horrible truth: He was too easily distracted. And while he was distracted chasing after that sneaky white katt, she had, somehow, snuck back to the campsite and stolen his food!

  “Aw, barf me a biscuit!” he moaned. “I hate katts! Especially the ones with blue eyeballs and white fur who steal your dogg food! I’d like to bury that katt in a dirty litter box!”

  “Ha!” someone laughed out in the woods. “My litter box is never dirty. I scoop it on a regular basis. A katt is nothing if it is not clean. That’s what my father says.”

  Drat! thought Oscar. It was the katt! The one he’d chased. He could see her blue eyeballs glowing in the dark.

  “Plus,” taunted the katt, “before you could do anything to me you’d have to catch me. And, given your proclivity for stupidly running into trees, the chances of that ever happening are—oh, I don’t know—zip or maybe zilch.”

  “Go away, katt,” Oscar whined. “You stole my food!”

  “Did not.”

  “Did, too!”

  “Not!”

  “Did!”

  The katt laughed. “Why would I steal your dogg food, dogg?”

  “Because you were hungry.”

  “Ha! There’s never been a katt alive who was so hungry they’d eat that slop.”

  “It wasn’t Slopp brand dogg food. It was Chunkee Stuff! And it’s delish. Now go away.”

  “Sorry. We katts are nocturnal. Means we stay up all night. And since there’s nothing good on TV this late—not to mention no TV out here in the trees—I decided I’d just hang out up here and watch you being miserable. It’s highly entertaining.”

  “Go away!”

  “Oh, look,” cried the katt. “The clouds just parted. The moon is full! Meowww!”

  “Knock it off!”

  “Sorry. No can do. It’s instinctual. We see a moon, we howl at it. Meeeooowww!”

  Oscar covered his ears.

  “Meoooow!”

  He hated that horrible noise katts could make. So, to drown it out, he started barking.

  It was useless. Probably pointless, too.

  But, somehow, barking made Oscar feel a little better.

  Anything he could do to annoy that annoying katt made Oscar happy!

  Chapter 15

  At sunrise the next morning, down at the Western Frontier Park, the head park ranger was perched on her moosehorse, meeting with the distraught katt and dogg families.

  “Our night flights found no sign of either child,” she reported.

  “Did you use your night vision?” asked Molly’s father, Boomer.

  “Always,” said the hawkowl. “Comes with being part owl.”

  “How about campfires?” asked Duke. “Our Oscar’s a Dogg Scout. He knows how to build a fire.”

  “Oh, joy,” said Boomer. “Just what our sweet little Molly needs while she’s lost in the forest primeval. A pyromaniac mutt running around the woods playing with matches!”

  “Oscar’s a good boy!” said his mother. “He doesn’t play with matches.”

  “Are you sure he wouldn’t have trouble reading the instructions on the matchbook?” sniffed Fluffy, Molly’s mother. “That whole ‘close cover, strike match’ thing a little too complicated for him?”

  “Silence,” commanded the hawkowl. “We saw no signs of campfires, either. However, at this time of year, the forest canopy is at its thickest. We can’t spy everything on the ground.”

  “I thought you were like a hawk,” said Oscar’s sister, Fifi, snidely.

  “Yeah,” said Molly’s brother, Blade. “Aren’t you supposed to be, like, hawk-eyed?”

  “I am!” said the hawkowl, her feathers ruffling slightly. “But, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the Western Frontier Park is huge. Seven hundred and fifty thousand acres.”

  Duke whistled. “Impressive.”

  “Indeed,” added Boomer. “Quite a spread.”

  “Wouldn’t want to mow it,” said Blade.

  “Or mark it,” said Fifi.

  The hawkowl ignored them all.

  “It would be impossible,” she said, “to cover every square inch in a single night. Let’s just pray that your son and your daughter use their common sense and stay put. It’s much easier to find a missing person if they don’t make our job more difficult by moving around.”

  “We’re ready to head out, chief,” said the lead grizzly wolfbear, pointing to his team.

  “One moment, please,” said Boomer, holding up a paw and shooting out a single claw. “Aren’t you related to the dogg family?”

  “I beg your pardon?” said the wolfbear.

  “You’re part wolf,” said Boomer. “Wolves are related to doggs.”

  “And your point is?”

  “Simple. You’ll show favoritism. You’ll find th
eir dogg son before you even start looking for our katt daughter.”

  “No, sir. That’s not how it works. We search. We rescue. And we do it without fear or favoritism!”

  “Hoo-ah!” cried an army of searchers as they marched forward out of the forest.

  Some were grizzly wolfbears. Others were lionodiles, paddling in the stream that wound its way past the park headquarters. Others were volunteers—families of pigs, hamsters, rabbits (those were very large families), cows, sheep, plus every other animal in the land—all of them willing to sacrifice their own family vacations in the park to help the katts and doggs find their missing children.

  “You see how everyone else is pitching in?” asked the hawkowl, as she observed the army of volunteers. “How they’re willing to give up their own vacations to help us find Molly and Oscar?”

  “Indeed,” said Boomer.

  “I guess,” said Duke.

  “Well, then,” said the hawkowl, “surely you two could, temporarily, set aside your historical differences and work together for the common good?”

  The katts and doggs stared at the hawkowl.

  For maybe a minute.

  And then they exploded.

  “What? Are you kidding? Help a katt?”

  “Lend a paw to a dogg? No, way, feather brain.”

  All the hawkowl could do was roll her eyes.

  And hope the rescue parties found the two missing children before their parents killed each other.

  Chapter 16

  Oscar didn’t sleep well at all.

  A katt yowling at the moon all night long will do that to a dogg.

  And, since the blue-eyed katt had stolen his last two cans of Chunkee Stuff dogg food, he was still starving. His stomach was growling so loudly he was afraid the mountain lion might hear it.

  Uh-oh. He’d almost forgotten. It was morning, which meant it was breakfast time. And Oscar might be the main course on the lion’s menu!

  He quickly stirred the ashes in his charred fire pit with a wet stick to make sure there weren’t any glowing embers that might spark a forest fire. A good Dogg Scout always checked for glowing embers before abandoning a campsite.

  He looked inside the pockets of his torn backpack, searching for his compass.

  Gone.

  So was his waterproof match holder.

  “That kleptomaniac katt stole everything!” he muttered. But he didn’t have time to stand around a cold fire pit muttering. He had to keep moving. He had to find his way out of this forest.

  Of course, he had absolutely no clue about how to do that.

  So, he just took off. Randomly running through the thick brambles and brush.

  Actually, he was trotting. And then jogging. Finally, he was strolling because the underbrush was so thick there was no way for him to move through it without swatting green leafy branches out of his face every two seconds. He couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of his snout. And all he could smell was green stuff. Leaves. More leaves. Different leaves. Spunk water in stumps.

  But he kept moving forward.

  Until he heard something behind him.

  Twig snaps. Padded paws crushing soft dirt. A contented purr.

  The mountain lion!

  Slowly, very slowly, Oscar turned around.

  “Hiya, dogg. Sleep well?”

  It was the white katt with the sparkling blue eyes.

  “Truce?” she said, extending a paw in what almost looked like friendship.

  Oscar hesitated, for just a second, then remembered who he was. A dogg!

  “Absolutely not, food thief,” he told her.

  “For the last time, dogg, I didn’t steal your canned meat slop.”

  “Yeah, right. Everybody knows you katts are nothing but cunning little crooks and liars.”

  “No, we’re not.”

  “See? There you go again. You’re lying about being a liar!”

  “Fine. Have it your way, kibble brains. Go ahead and die out here all alone. See if I care.”

  She turned to walk away.

  Oscar saw her nipped-off tail again and the one ear where the point had been tipped.

  “Have fun being the breakfast buffet, soup bone,” hissed the katt as she walked away. “I’m sure the mountain lion’s going to love sinking its fangs into you!”

  That made Oscar’s eyes go wide. “Wait a second!” he barked.

  The katt spun back around. “What?”

  “How’d you know about the mountain lion?”

  The katt frowned and pointed a paw at her tail.

  “What do you think happened back here, dogg breath?”

  Chapter 17

  Molly realized she’d been lost in the woods for way too long.

  It was making her brain fuzzy. Her mind mushy.

  How else could she explain her attempt to do the impossible: have an intelligent conversation with a dogg? She was soooo glad her father wasn’t there to see her behaving so ridiculously.

  “The tip of my tail was nipped by a mountain lion,” she said. “I told the big katt that it was an extremely rude thing for him to do, especially since, according to my zoology teacher, we’re somehow related.”

  The dogg tilted his head sideways and had a confused look in his eyes.

  “We’re both katts,” Molly tried to explain. “Me and the mountain lion. It’d be like if a wolf tried to eat you.”

  “There’s a wild wolf out here, too?” yelped the dogg. “They’re our cousins! They’re kind of wild. It’s why we never invite them to the family reunions.”

  “Same with us and the mountain lions.”

  “So if the mountain lion nipped your tail, then what happened to your ear?” the dogg asked.

  “Fox,” Molly answered with a shudder.

  “My ancient ancestors used to hunt foxes,” said the dogg, a little too eagerly. “They’d chase them all through the forest. I bet it was fun.”

  “Not if you’re the one being chased by the fox,” said Molly.

  “Yeah. I guess not. Never had that happen to me. Guess I’m just a lucky dogg.”

  Molly nodded. She could use a little luck. She could also use a traveling companion. She couldn’t face another day alone in the forest with no one to talk to except the rocks and trees.

  “I’ve been out here for ages,” she said with a sigh. “Last night, I was so hungry…”

  “You stole my food!”

  Molly rolled her eyes. “No. Judging from the size of the claw marks on your backpack, I’d say the mountain lion ripped it to shreds.”

  She showed him her claws.

  “Mine are much smaller. Daintier.”

  “Oh,” said the dogg. “Sorry.”

  “I’m Molly,” she said, turning around and flipping up her tail. “Want to sniff my butt?”

  “No! I do not want to sniff your butt, katt!”

  “Fine,” said Molly. “Because I’m not going to rub up against your legs, which is how we katts introduce ourselves.”

  “Good,” said the dogg. “You’d probably give me a rash. All doggs are allergic to katts.”

  “Look,” said Molly, feeling exasperated. “We’re both lost, correct?”

  “Yeah. I guess. I mean I can’t say for certain that I’m lost because I don’t know where I am. So, I guess that means I am lost.”

  “Exactly! I think the two of us have a better chance of surviving out here in the wilderness if we, temporarily, for a limited time only, work together. Deal?”

  “Why would I want to hang around with a katt? I’m supposed to hate you!”

  Molly closed her bright-blue eyes for a moment. “Because we both want to get home to our families. And with mountain lions, foxes, no food, and no idea where we’re going, we need to help each other.”

  Oscar looked around the dark, silent forest. “I guess,” he said reluctantly.

  “So, what’s your name?”

  “Oscar.”

  “I’m Molly.”

  “I know. Y
ou already told me.”

  “I thought you might’ve forgotten. It was two minutes ago.”

  “I’m not dumb, katt. In fact, doggs are some of the most intelligent creatures on the planet. You put peanut butter deep inside a hollow bone, we’ll find a way to lick it out.”

  “Can you, uh, find some of that peanut butter now?”

  “I’ll put it on my list of things to sniff for.”

  “Thanks.”

  The two of them set off, neither one really knowing which way to go. They only knew they wouldn’t be going there alone.

  Chapter 18

  Down at the Western Frontier Park, the news media was swarming all over the story of the two missing children.

  The head park ranger appeared for a hastily arranged press conference.

  “If anyone has any information as to the whereabouts of Oscar and Molly, please contact your local authorities. If you see something, screech something.”

  A ferret in a fedora pushed her way forward and jabbed her microphone into the hawkowl’s beak.

  “Have you found any evidence that these two children are still alive?” demanded the ferret.

  “Yes,” said the wise hawkowl. “In fact, this morning, a team of wolfbears came upon an abandoned campsite in the forest. We think that is where Oscar spent the night. There were dogg tracks leading down to the creek. We also found what we think are katt paw prints in the same general vicinity.”

  “If that dogg harms one whisker on my little girl’s head, he’ll answer to me!” hissed Molly’s father, swatting the air with his extended claws.

  “And you, sir, are?” asked the reporter, whipping her microphone over to the katt.

  “Boomer Hissleton the Third, Esquire.”

  “Ah, go chase a ball of yarn, mackerel mouth!” snapped Oscar’s dad.

  “Take care, sir,” said the katt, as he coolly assumed a karate stance. “You do not wish to anger me. I am quite proficient in the martial arts!”

  “Ha! You think you scare me? You couldn’t slice up a couch if it were made out of butter.”

  The ferret swung her microphone back and forth between the growling animals. “What is your relation to the missing katt and dogg, sirs?”