Revenge of the Kitten Queen

by Johnny Marciano

  “You can take the kitten out of Earth, but you can’t take Earth out of the kitten,” I said gleefully.

  “I told you these mice were good, Klawde,” Barx said.

  “Oh yes,” I said. “They are positively delicious!”

  CHAPTER 49

  When the calico’s ship finally ran out of power, the peacekeeper mice grabbed the spacecraft in a web of bright blue tractor beams and started hauling it away. Since the StarLion was badly damaged, they had to do the same to us, too.

  We got to the eighty-seventh moon first, where Muffee was waiting for us. She came right up to me and stuck her nose in my—

  “You smell just as good as I thought you would, Raj!” she said.

  “How did you ever find us, Comrade Muffee?” Barx panted happily.

  “It was all because of your safe spaceways initiative, Prime Minister,” Muffee said.

  Apparently, an intergalactic police radar camera had picked up the crazy speed of the StarLion and alerted Barx’s fellow space ranger dogs to our location in the Zenderfic hippos’ junkyard.

  “If you hadn’t been breaking the speed limit by millions of miles per hour, we never would have found you,” the Leader of the Pack said to Klawde. “Here’s your speeding ticket, by the way.”

  Klawde hissed.

  Then Zok came lumbering up to us.

  “Hey, everybody, how it go?” she asked. “Zok been so lonely!”

  Klawde looked around. “Where are the prisoners?” he demanded.

  “Oh, you mean Ffangg and little gray kitty-cats?” she asked. “Zok got hungry, so Zok ate them.”

  I gasped and Barx’s eyes went wide.

  Even Klawde was horrified, which is really saying something.

  “You . . . ate . . . my nemesis? And the kittens?” Klawde asked.

  Zok burped, looking embarrassed. Then she broke into a big—and I do mean BIG—smile. “Zok just kidding! Zok lock bad kitties in dungeon. But where is naughty spotty kitty?”

  Right then, the calico’s ship appeared in the sky, along with the thousand tiny mouse ships hauling it in. As the calico’s ship touched the ground, Klawde flattened his ears and swished his tail. I did not have a good feeling about this.

  CHAPTER 50

  The mice guided the calico’s ship to land amidst the ruins of the Titanium Fortress. I must admit, Barx had been correct about their bravery. I would be sure to decorate each of their delectable little bodies with a medal.

  Immediately after landfall, the hatch for the kitten’s ship popped open, revealing her to be as mewling and defiant as ever.

  “Meow! Meow meow!”

  “Let your emperor handle this,” I said, stalking through the crowd of mice with my tail mightily puffed.

  “Don’t touch that kitten, Klawde,” Barx said, blocking the entry to the calico’s ship. “She’s my prisoner now, and she’s got rights.”

  I spat. “Her only right is to be torn limb from limb!”

  “Sorry, buddy,” Barx said, “but the very first thing the GAG government did was outlaw the death penalty.”

  “That’s absurd!” I thundered. “What do you think we should do with the wretched beast? Send her to Ham-Sturr with Ffangg to run around in circles? The little barbarian would probably enjoy that.”

  “Oh no, I’d never authorize that,” Barx said. “She’s too young. Juveniles aren’t allowed on the prison planet.”

  Was there no end to his stupid rules?

  I offered several fitting and imaginative punishments, but for every torture I suggested, Barx had some other absurd reason why it was illegal.

  “Well, we can at least agree to rip out her whiskers one by one, can’t we?” I said.

  “Sorry,” Barx said, “that’s against the Animal Rights Amendment to the Universal Code of Good Conduct.”

  We were at a stalemate. I considered leaping over the mutt and mauling the calico myself. Would the mouse horde turn on me? Could I eat ten of them? A hundred? If only I had some milk to wash them down with.

  Before I could act, however, someone came up with the perfect punishment—one that both the prime muttster and I could approve of. Shockingly, that someone was the boy-ogre. His idea? That the kitten and her two brothers should be sent back to Earth.

  “That’s where they really belong,” he said. “I mean, if they hadn’t hitched a ride to Lyttyrboks with Ffangg, none of this would’ve happened. And unless they can figure out how to hire a Valumpian slime assassin, there’s no way the calico and her brothers can leave again to cause more trouble.”

  “Would they go to a good home?” Barx asked.

  “Oh definitely,” the boy-ogre said. “Ajji can find them a really nice family.”

  “Who is this Ajji?” Muffee asked.

  “Oh, she is the wisest and greatest of all Humans,” Barx said.

  For once, the yellow cur and I agreed on something.

  The principal reason I agreed to the kittens’ sentence, of course, was that I knew firsthand that no punishment was crueler or more unusual than being exiled to Earth and placed in a house of ogres.

  Except—of course—for the house of the Banerjees. This was not cruel. Actually, it was rather nice.

  Not that I would ever speak such words aloud.

  CHAPTER 51

  As soon as I started talking about Ajji, I realized that my parents must’ve picked her up at the airport hours ago. Considering how freaked out Dad got when Klawde disappeared, I couldn’t even imagine how upset he’d be to get home and realize that I had disappeared.

  I found Flooffee and told him that I really needed to teleport back to Earth.

  “Oh, you ogres are too large for that,” Flooffee said. “You’d almost surely explode in the teleporter, and your atoms would get blown across a billion lightyears of space.”

  “Really? But . . . didn’t Klawde want to send me to Lyttyrboks in a teleporter, back when he was trying to reconquer it?” I said.

  “Yeah, well, His Greatness has always been a risk-taker,” Flooffee said. “Lucky for you, though, I’ve been working on an experimental new wormhole travel device. I call it the Human Launcher. Catchy, right?”

  “Uh, how experimental is it?”

  “Oh, there’s almost no possibility you’ll die in it,” Flooffee said. “Like a ten percent chance. Twenty-five percent, max.”

  Those didn’t sound like good odds. But since I was six trillion light years from Earth, not even the StarLion would get me home before the sun went extinct. So it wasn’t like I had much of a choice.

  I hurried to make my goodbyes.

  “Zok miss funny little Human!” she said. “You so much more handsome than furry animals.”

  Saying goodbye to Barx was always sad, but it seemed like we were never apart for long. He also had something for me to take to Earth.

  “This is a top-of-the-line, ultra-high-tech G11 prisoner-transportation container,” Barx said.

  It didn’t look too different from a regular cat carrier, except for it shaking from all the growling, hissing, and fighting that was going on inside.

  Flooffee rubbed up against me and was about to say goodbye when Klawde cut him off.

  “Enough of this wretched sentimentality! The imperial stomach is growling, and there is surely paneer on Earth awaiting me. We must go—NOW.”

  Flooffee set up the Human Launcher and got ready to point its ray at me.

  “Okay,” I said. “So you’re sure this isn’t going to—”

  GREEN FLASH!

  Couldn’t he have given me a warning?

  It was like being on the scariest, most stomach-turning roller coaster in the world. I was dizzy. And I couldn’t breathe! And then . . .

  I was home. In the basement. Inside the litter box. Which really didn’t fit me so well. Then there was another
green flash. Klawde!

  “Get out of here, you big oaf!” he said. “You’ve cracked the top of my command center!”

  As I stepped out of the litter box and took the lid off of my head, there was one more green flash. It was the kittens.

  “See, there it is again,” I heard my mom say upstairs.

  Then I heard Ajji. “Krish, you are the man of the house, can you not take care of this problem?”

  “Can I at least wait until after breakfast?” Dad said. “Hey, wait, what’s that meowing? It doesn’t sound like Klawde.”

  As I tried to shush the kittens, the door to the upstairs opened and everyone started coming into the basement.

  “Raj? What’s going on down here?” Dad said.

  “Mommaga!” Ajji said, noticing the cat carrier. ”What have we here? Some new four-legged friends?”

  I had to think on my feet. I told them that around midnight I heard a lot of noise in the gardening shed, and I’d gone out and found these three stray kittens inside. “They scratched and bit me pretty good,” I said, “but I really wanted to catch them, because I knew you could help find them a good home, Ajji.”

  “Of course I can help, Raj,” Ajji said, peering into the box. “My, they are feisty little ones, aren’t they?”

  ““I think they’re pretty cute, don’t you, Klawde?” Dad asked.

  Klawde scratched him so hard Dad’s glasses fell off.

  “Raj, why does Klawde’s litter box look like an electronics recycling bin?” Mom asked.

  That was a very good question.

  “Umm . . . Hey, Dad! Have you let Ajji try any of your sauerkraut?” I said, changing the subject. “And you have to try the kombucha, Ajji. It’s the best!”

  CHAPTER 52

  Everything had worked out splendidly.

  The kittens were gone, and the boy-ogre assured me they had been taken in by the worst ogre imaginable.

  Ffangg was back on Ham-Sturr, doomed to run inside the massive metal wheel that circled the planet for the rest of his days. To keep him company, Akorn had been placed there as well.

  Zok did not join them. She had proven to be a most useful ally, and so I appointed her to be my personal representative on the Cosmic Council. What GAG minister would dare disagree with my opinions when they were spoken by the most lethal animal in all the hundred billion galaxies?

  The most delicious turn of all, however, came with my minion.

  During Flooffee’s absence from Lyttyrboks, Ttimmee had staged a coup and established himself as ruler. Now Flooffee had to serve him and his ridiculous tongue, thus proving once and for all that minions are always more trouble than they are worth.

  All this, and three containers of Ajji’s paneer in the food-cooling apparatus.

  Purr.

  Unfortunately, just as I was about to settle into a victory nap, the communicator rang. And it was the one creature in the universe who could still make me miserable.

  “What do you want, you insufferable mutt?”

  “Hey there, Em-purr-or. Get it? Because you purr?” Barx said, slobbering all over himself.

  ”I am not purring now.”

  “Well, anyway, I just wanted to say how happy I am that my faith in you has been rewarded. I knew that by working together we’d be able to start turning all the evil in this universe of ours into a rainbow of never-ending goodness!”

  Hack! Hack!

  “You’ve already told me this. Many times,” I said. “Now what do you want?”

  “Well, I hate to spoil the surprise, but you remember those poor hedgehogs who lost their suns? Well, we’ve found the perfect solar system for them, and we have a ribbon-cutting ceremony for their new planet!” The fool wagged. “Isn’t that swell? Better start writing your speech!”

  Hiss!

  EPILOGUE

  If there was anything stranger than having the Emperor of the Universe as my cat or being saved from certain death by thousands of mice in tiny spaceships, it was the fact that Scorpion was now nice to me.

  Well, maybe not nice. I mean, he still called me Rat, and he only high-fived me that one time, but he barely insulted me anymore when he saw me in the hallways. Maybe it had something to do with the scratches all over his body.

  “Do you think you need to go to the hospital?” I said. “Your hand looks really swollen.”

  “My dad took me to urgent care yesterday,” Scorpion said. “I have freaking cat scratch fever! The doc put me on antibiotics.”

  It had been Ajji’s idea to give him the kittens. “That skinny boy who likes my food so much,” she’d said, “he looks like he could use more love.”

  Mr. Scorpion agreed with her and was willing to take all three.

  “Rat, those kittens are so mean,” Scorpion said, rubbing at a bite mark on his chin. “Especially the one with the spots. Even T-Rex is afraid of her, and he’s a two-hundred-pound Great Dane.”

  I kind of felt sorry for him. And T-Rex. “You know, Scorpion, I’m sure we could find another home for them if you—”

  “What? No way!” He cut me off. “I love them! That calico is the coolest pet ever!”

  The next time I saw Scorpion, he was handing out issues of the Bookworm Bugle.

  “An Un-Principaled Approach to Bathrooms” was the lead story, and it actually accomplished something. The PTA got together and decided that the money they were going to spend on a fancy new lobby should be spent making the bathrooms work instead. Principal Brownepoint had to pay for all the renovations that had been made to his bathroom out of his own pocket. And, even better, everyone in the whole school was now allowed to use it.

  Our article wasn’t the biggest hit in the Bugle, though. And it wasn’t Scorpion’s list of the eleven worst school meals, either, or Isla and Imogen’s horoscopes. It was Steve’s comic. He had finally come up with an idea for a strip that no one else had ever done.

  “I got the idea from when we were in camp and you told us that Klawde was an alien,” Steve said proudly. “Do you guys remember?”

  “How could I forget?” Cedar said. “That was when I started to doubt if I could actually be friends with this guy.” She nudged me in the ribs.

  And the person who best liked the comic? Well, he wasn’t a person at all.

  He was a cat.

  “Finally! Something of quality on this cultural wasteland of a planet,” Klawde said after having read it for the hundredth time. “Tell me, this Steve—he must be the wisest and greatest of all Humans, mustn’t he?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Klawde hissed. “What would you know, vile ogre?”

  “I know that you are a good friend, Klawde,” I said.

  “That’s a slanderous insult!” he said. “I am now leaving in disgust.”

  But I could hear him purring as he stalked away down the hall.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Although a worthless Human, Johnny Marciano has redeemed himself somewhat by chronicling the glorious adventures of Klawde, Evil Alien Warlord Cat. His lesser work concerns the pointless doings of other worthless Humans, in books such as The Witches of Benevento, The No-Good Nine, and Madeline at the White House. He currently resides on the planet New Jersey.

  Emily Chenoweth is a despicable Human living in Portland, Oregon, where the foul liquid known as rain falls approximately 140 days a year. Under the top secret alias Emily Raymond, she has collaborated with James Patterson on numerous best-selling books. There are three other useless Humans in her family, and two extremely ignorant Earth cats.

  What’s next on

  your reading list?

  Discover your next

  great read!

  Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

  Sign up now.

  Revenge of the Kitten Queen