The Adventures of Catvinkle

by Elliot Perlman

  ‘Don’t pay any attention to them, my fellow felines,’ cried Twinkiepaws. ‘They’re just a pack of dogs, mostly. And I don’t even know what that one is!’

  ‘Does she mean me?’ asked Grayston, ready to be upset.

  ‘I think she means me,’ said Roy Llama.

  ‘Oh, thank goodness,’ said Grayston.

  ‘I’m a llama, if you don’t mind,’ said Roy Llama to Twinkiepaws.

  ‘Whatever,’ said Twinkiepaws. ‘Talk to my tail ’cause my ears aren’t listening.’

  ‘What did she say?’ Roy Llama asked Lobbus, but Twinkiepaws continued talking anyway.

  ‘No self-respecting cat would hang out with a dog,’ cried Twinkiepaws, trying to get the other cats all worked up. ‘Would you, kittens?!’

  From the back of the crowd came a voice that nobody expected yet all the cats seemed to recognise.

  ‘I respect myself and I hang out with dogs … a lot.’

  Everyone turned to see who was speaking. It was a very cool cat in dark sunglasses.

  ‘Oh my goodness!’ said Catvinkle. ‘Are you …?’

  ‘Yes, I am … Ketzington D. Kitten, at your service. These here are some of the Snufflecats.’ Ketzington flicked an ear to indicate the cats standing beside her.

  ‘You’re the coolest cat in the world,’ said Catvinkle.

  ‘You’re very kind to say that,’ said Ketzington. ‘But who’s to say, really, who is the coolest? I once met a tubby old tabby cat who lay on the linoleum floor of a convenience store on a very hot summer’s night listening to some of his favourite blues music on an old radio. A cheeky young mouse scurried across the floor, teasing him, saying the tubby old tabby cat would never catch him. That old tubby tabby cat refused to move anything but his tail until his favourite song, “Dust My Tail”, was over. Then he leaned over, caught the mouse with one paw, put it in his mouth, walked over to the front door and spat the mouse out right onto the street. Now that’s one cool cat!’

  ‘Ketzington, we think you’re the greatest, coolest cat ever!’ gushed Twinkiepaws.

  Ketzington frowned. ‘Aren’t you the cat who doesn’t want kittens to hang out with dogs? I heard what you were saying. One of my best friends back in New York is a rapping dog, name of Snout. You ever heard of him?’

  ‘No, sorry, I don’t listen to that kind of music,’ said Twinkiepaws.

  ‘What kind of music is that kind of music?’ asked Ketzington.

  ‘Dog … music,’ said Twinkiepaws nervously.

  ‘You need to open your ears and your heart. Twinkiepaws, is it?’ said Ketzington.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’re all mammals, aren’t we, Twinkiepaws?’ asked Ketzington.

  ‘Well … yes.’

  Twinkiepaws felt something was changing. It wasn’t the wind but it felt a bit like it, as though she was all of a sudden a bit colder than she had been a moment earlier.

  Ketzington had let everyone know that back in New York she had friends who were dogs. In fact, she was quite open to friendship with dogs anywhere. Twinkiepaws could see the other cats thinking about this, thinking about dogs in a new way for the very first time. ‘Yes,’ they were thinking, ‘we have to admit, from time to time one did hear about a cat here or there, getting along well with a dog, even if the story was told in whispers through whiskers that fanned the scandalous words away from the kitten who said them as soon as the words were in the air. How long can we pretend not to have heard those stories, at least once or twice? Maybe it happens more often than we care to say?’

  Twinkiepaws could see such thoughts on the faces of these cats. Their eyes were slightly narrowed, the fur on their foreheads was slightly scrunched up and crinkly, and their heads were moving slowly from side to side, a sure sign of kitten-thinking.

  They were thinking further, ‘Well then, if it does happen from time to time and if Ketzington likes dogs, maybe I could like some of them. Maybe I should try to see dogs differently too?’

  This new thinking of a few of the other cats was working in favour of Catvinkle. Twinkiepaws could sense the change – maybe not in every cat, but in quite a few.

  Now it felt as though not only was the wind changing direction, but it was blowing directly on Twinkiepaw’s tail, and she felt unexpectedly colder in the area of her rump.

  Just then Schrodinger spoke up to invite Ketzington to judge the National Kitten Baby-Shoe Dancing Competition. All the other cats thought it was a good idea.

  Ketzington agreed immediately, since she was already very familiar with baby-shoe dancing. Cats and kittens in New York had been doing it in their clubs downtown and on Ketzington Avenue for years.

  ‘My parents actually met at a baby-shoe dancing competition,’ said Ketzington. ‘It was at a club called Studio Fifty Paws, a place where the coolest cats in town used to go to dance and purr, sip a little cream and wait for the sun to come up,’ she explained. ‘So I grew up with baby-shoe dancing, always had a soft spot for it. I’ve always thought kitten paws look very elegant in baby shoes.’

  ‘They certainly do, they certainly do,’ said Twinkiepaws, who was in a very big hurry to make Ketzington like her after she had said the wrong thing about dog music.

  So everyone, including Ula, Lobbus, Grayston and his puppies, along with Roy Llama, made their way to the Vondelpark bandstand down on the lake. None of the kittens wanted to miss it. Cats were huddled together all the way along the bridge that led to the bandstand. Some of them stood on top of other cats and kittens and some of them stood on top of still other cats and kittens, forming a small mountain of cats.

  Those who couldn’t get a spot on the bridge sat on the grass on the bank of the lake as close as they could get to the bandstand where the competition was going to take place.

  Ketzington was surprised to learn that this year there were only two contestants. All the cats pretended they too were surprised by this.

  Catvinkle explained the reason for the lack of contestants to Ula. ‘After Twinkiepaws won the competition last year,’ Catvinkle whispered, ‘the other cats were too frightened to compete against her. You’ve seen how mean she can be.’

  ‘But you’re not too scared, are you, Catvinkle? You’re brave. You’re standing up to her,’ Ula whispered back.

  ‘Thanks, Ulee, but now I have to win – and with everyone looking on and with Ketzington as the judge, the pressure is on me like never before.’

  Twinkiepaws was jumping up and down, stretching from side to side and furling and unfurling her tail as though it was a flag. She looked very confident as she took the stage.

  ‘Okay, well, I guess you only need two contestants, even in a national competition?’ said Ketzington.

  Twinkiepaws put on her baby shoes. They were pink with big yellow bows. She looked over at Catvinkle and Ula with a very mean face, stuck out her tongue very quickly, and then turned back to Ketzington with the smile of an angel who had just come down from the sky in the form of a cat.

  Twinkiepaws was indeed a very good baby-shoe dancer and she had carefully worked out a complicated dance that was ready to go. She had spent a lot of time practising.

  But because she was so desperate to win – more than ever given that Ketzington was the judge and that her only opponent was that dog-loving Catvinkle – she decided not to do the dance she had been rehearsing for weeks.

  Instead she decided to take a very big chance with something new. In an attempt to make Ketzington choose her as the winner, she sang one of Ketzington’s songs as she danced. She moved her tail slowly to the left and then to the right, picking up speed as she went.

  But because she had never practised her dance routine to this song, because she didn’t know all the words and because she kept looking at Ketzington every few seconds, she wasn’t very good at all. She realised things were not going well and just thinking this made them go even worse.

  Instead of concentrating on her dance moves and her singing, she imagined how Ketzington must be seeing her �
� as the mean cat who was ruining one of Ketzington’s own songs. Twinkiepaws was forgetting the words and then making them up. It really was not going at all well for Twinkiepaws. Her dance moves were all out of time with the beat of the song.

  She thought she needed urgently to do something that would really stand out, something quite spectacular. So she tried a backflip. Her bottom paws went over her head with her tail following, but the problem was that her right bottom paw got stuck in her ear. She quickly pulled it out and tried not to let anyone see how much it hurt. But because this backflip hadn’t gone very well she thought she’d better try to do another one. This one was even worse. On her second backflip she fell completely off the stage. In fact, she fell right off the bandstand and into the lake. She dog paddled her way sheepishly back to the island with the bandstand and clambered back up to the stage. She was soaking wet and the drips made a puddle where she stood.

  ‘Gasp!’ went everyone.

  Except Roy Llama, who whispered to Lobbus, ‘I thought we were going to play backgammon.’

  ‘I meant that second backflip, you know, the one that might have seemed as though I were falling and then tumbling into the lake,’ Twinkiepaws said. But no one seemed to believe her and anyway, whether she meant it or not, it looked horrible.

  Twinkiepaws could tell that no one was very impressed with her dance or her song, and she scurried down the ramp from the bandstand to the grassy bank with her tail between her legs. This had been one of the worst days she could remember, and she had a good memory.

  Then it was Catvinkle’s turn. On her way to the stage she went to Ula and, in front of all the other cats, she sniffed the back of Ula’s coat for its musky goodness.

  ‘Thanks, Ulee,’ she whispered to her best friend.

  On the stage, Catvinkle stood on her hind legs with her tail in the air, her front paws raised and bent at the elbow. She put one bottom paw in the right baby shoe and one bottom paw in the left.

  With her eyes closed, Catvinkle counted softly to herself, ‘One, two, three,’ and began to dance.

  She swung her rump to the left and then to the right and back again with her tail going in the opposite direction. Then she called out in a strange voice that Ula had heard before.

  Ketzington loved both Catvinkle’s song and her special baby-shoe dance. No one was at all surprised when Ketzington announced that Catvinkle was the winner.

  The very next day all the animals went to celebrate the first day of herring season at Friend’s Herring Shop on King’s Square Street. The humans were so excited by the herring that they didn’t notice the procession of animals. At the front of the animal procession was Catvinkle, standing on top of Ula’s back.

  Catvinkle took her first bite of her first herring of the season and was so happy, she purred.

  ‘You’d better eat it all, Catvinkle. You didn’t eat much yesterday,’ said Ula.

  ‘Oh, Ulee, it is such a lovely piece of herring! It’s as if my birthday – which is soon – has come to visit my mouth!’

  ‘Is your birthday coming up soon?’ asked Ula.

  ‘Very soon. How did you know?’ said Catvinkle. ‘Do all dogs celebrate my birthday or will it just be you?’

  Just then Anja and Ferdi arrived with their aunt to try some herring. When they saw Catvinkle and Ula they rushed to hug them.

  Grace, Graham and Gram jumped up and down on the spot near the children, hoping to be patted. In the busy crowd the children didn’t see the puppies until Ula introduced all three of them. Now the puppies would have Anja and Ferdi to play with. Grayston stood back watching proudly.

  ‘Do you want to play backgammon after the herring?’ Lobbus asked Roy Llama.

  ‘No, not really,’ said Roy Llama. ‘I’m sick of backgammon.’

  Then, on a stage not too far away, at a pitch only cats, kittens and dogs could hear, Ketzington and the Snufflecats started to play a concert.

  Catvinkle was so excited by so many things that her paws became all tingly. She had won the National Kitten Baby-Shoe Dancing Competition the day before and her birthday was coming up. She was thinking that maybe, for a birthday treat, Ula could ask Lobbus to introduce them to the new koala that was coming to the zoo. Lobbus had friends in all different parts of the animal world so he would probably know someone who knew the koala.

  She was also excited to be eating her first herring of the season, which tasted especially good only one day after she’d won the National Kitten Baby-Shoe Dancing Competition.

  In the distance she could hear the music of Ketzington and the Snufflecats, and it was great. The day before, Ketzington had invited Catvinkle to visit her in New York, and to hang out with her and the Snufflecats.

  It was all so exciting that her tail started spinning and, with her big red bow acting like the propeller on a helicopter, she started to fly.

  Ula looked up at her friend hovering in the air. ‘Catvinkle, you’re flying again!’

  ‘Oops,’ said Catvinkle. She flopped down onto Ula’s back and sniffed Ula’s musk. ‘Don’t tell anyone.’

  ‘I won’t,’ said Ula. ‘Do you think it’s our secret?’

  ‘I do, Ulee, I do!’

  Mr Sabatini saw the whole thing and was very glad his two friends got on so well. But he wasn’t going to tell anyone about the flying. He knew how to keep a secret too.

  The very next morning, Mr Sabatini came into Catvinkle’s room, so that he could bring Catvinkle, in her basket, into the bathroom so he could talk to her while he shaved. He smiled when he saw her sleeping with Ula beside her.

  Ula opened one eye. It seemed to Mr Sabatini that Ula winked at him.

  Mr Sabatini whispered to them both, ‘I’m going to have a shave before I go out to breakfast. Anyone want to come with me?’

  First Ula flicked her tail against the ground once, and then Catvinkle flicked her tail against the padding of her soft basket.

  Mr Sabatini took this to mean ‘yes’ so he picked up Catvinkle’s basket and Ula followed them to the bathroom. As they made their way down the hall, Mr Sabatini saw that a pair of baby shoes was lying on the floor. They were crocheted light blue with a dark blue zig-zag pattern, and on each shoe there was one brown button the colour of a tortoise’s shell.

  ‘Hey, did you see those baby shoes on the floor in the hallway?’ Mr Sabatini asked them both. ‘I wonder who owns them. I’ll have to try to remember which baby came in when someone wanted a haircut so that I can return the baby shoes to their rightful owner. We should probably give them back, don’t you think?’

  At this, Ula’s ears pricked up, and just as suddenly Catvinkle sat up in her basket. Ula trotted out of Mr Sabatini’s bathroom towards the hallway and then Catvinkle jumped out of her basket and followed her as fast as her padding paws could take her.

  Mr Sabatini followed. He wasn’t as fast as his two furry friends but he got to the hallway just in time to see Ula pick up one of the baby shoes in her mouth and Catvinkle, close behind, pick up the other one. He followed them back to their room, the one that Catvinkle used to have all to herself.

  Mr Sabatini looked around the room but there was no sign of the baby shoes anywhere. All he could see was Ula pretending to be asleep in front of the fire, with Catvinkle on top of her also pretending to be asleep. Mr Sabatini realised that the baby shoes must be hidden underneath them both.

  ‘Oh well,’ said Mr Sabatini, ‘I guess that if you love something enough, you’d better keep it close by.’

  There was a little flick of Ula’s tail on the soft red carpet. Then came a little flick of Catvinkle’s tail on Ula as she buried her nose in Ula’s fur. It seemed everyone was in perfect agreement.

  The author wishes to thank Liv Perlman Handfield, who first heard a version of this story when she was four and who would thereafter periodically remind the author to write it down over the ensuing thirteen years.

  ELLIOT PERLMAN is the bestselling author of a number of novels and a story collection for adults, which have
been translated into many languages, won literary awards and adapted for film and television. When his niece was young, he began to invent stories for her. Now that Elliot has two children of his own, he decided it was time to write down those stories. The result is his first book for children, The Adventures of Catvinkle.

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  First published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd in 2018

  Text copyright © Elliot Perlman 2018

  Illustrations copyright © Laura Stitzel 2018

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Cover and internal illustrations by Laura Stitzel

  Cover and text design by Bruno Herfst © Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Author photograph by David Cook

  ISBN: 9780143786375

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