I knew the little pest would show up. He always did. But you know what?
Well, you’ll find out. It was pretty shocking.
Chapter Twelve: Our Final Triumph Over the Cat
The minutes dragged by. The sun went down and the cold winter night settled around us. Bright stars twinkled in the . . . no, they didn’t. No stars twinkled because the sky was cloudy.
We waited. And waited. An hour dragged by. I was dying of boredom and getting madder by the second. You know me: I hate to wait. And I especially hate waiting on a sniveling little cat.
Around seven o’clock, the back door opened and Sally May came out with the supper scraps. Drover and I were sitting beside the gate in our Perfect Dogs Position. Once again, Sally May was deeply impressed. She heaped praise upon us and gave us all the scraps: some outstanding trimmings of roast beef, two plops of mashed potatoes and gravy, and three pieces of homemade buttermilk biscuit.
No question about it, this was a fist feat for a king. And it was all ours. There was no Pete around to mooch, whine, argue, or fight.
Sally May wished us goodnight and went into the house. Drover sniffed the scraps. I sniffed the scraps. Our eyes met.
Drover’s voice trembled. “Something’s wrong. I’m not even hungry.”
“I know, me neither.”
“This is crazy. Those are the best scraps we’ve had in weeks.”
“I know, and all we can do is stare at them.” I paced a few steps away. “You know who’s the cause of this, don’t you? It’s Pete. He has not only disrupted our Gloating Ceremony, but now he has ruined our supper.”
“Gosh, maybe the coyotes ate him.”
“The coyotes didn’t eat him, Drover. Don’t you get it? He’s hiding from us. He’s somewhere on this ranch, chickling and snuckering at all the damage he’s caused.”
“You mean . . .”
“Yes. This is another of his sneaky tricks. Well, he’ll never get by with it. Come on, son, we’re going to turn headquarters upside down until we find the little creep. And if we have to, we’ll drag him back down here. Let’s move out.”
I knew where he was—in the machine shed. That’s exactly the place where a cat would hide. We marched up the hill and burst into the machine shed.
“Okay, Pete, game’s over. Come out with your tail up. It’s time for you to get back to the yard.” Nothing, not a sound. “Okay, buddy, you want us to tear the place apart? We’ll tear the place apart.”
He thought he could hide from us? Ha. Little did he know. We tore the place apart, looked in every corner, under every box and paint bucket and . . . well, you might say he wasn’t there. And suddenly I realized just how serious this crisis had become.
Drover’s lower lip began to tremble. “Oh my gosh, I just know the coyotes ate him.”
“Trust me, Drover, the coyotes didn’t eat him. I’m telling you, he’s planned the whole thing to disrupt our lives. It’s exactly the kind of nasty trick a cat would think of. No dog would ever stoop so low.”
Drover glanced around with worried eyes. “What’ll we do?”
“We’ll find him, Drover. We have no choice. Don’t you see what he’s done? He has robbed our lives of all meaning and purpose! Without Pete, gloating is pointless. Without Pete, scraps are merely scraps. Do you want to go on living like that?”
He sniffled. “I don’t think I could stand it.”
“All right, then let’s find him and put our lives back together.”
We continued our search. We checked the tool shed, scrap pile, and the chicken house. The chicken house was fun. We woke up twenty-seven head of brainless chickens and left ’em in squawking disarray, but . . . no Pete.
Again, I tried calling. “Pete, this is the Security Division again. We’ve got units all over the place. Ranch headquarters is surrounded. There’s no way out. Give yourself up before this deal gets out of hand.”
Drover was getting more worried by the second and I was getting madder. If at first you don’t succeed, raise your voice, right? I did that. I screamed and yelled, threatened and even foamed at the mouth.
Nothing. Not a sound.
Drover was almost in tears by this time. “This is awful. Maybe you ought to try calling in a nicer tone of voice.”
I stared at the runt. “What? A nicer tone of . . . Drover, that is the dumbest thing you’ve ever said. He’s a sneak, he’s a cheat, he’s a crooked little cat. I will never . . .” I gave it some thought. “Okay, it might work. Anything to get our lives back. I’ll try nice, Drover, but if you ever breathe a word of this to anyone . . .”
“My lips are sealed.”
“They’d better be. I’m putting my whole career on the line for this.”
Do I dare reveal this next part? It’s going to be pretty shocking but . . . well, maybe you’ve already figured it out. Okay, here it comes.
I spent the next hour walking through ranch headquarters and calling the stupid cat . . . calling Pete, that is, in a . . . choke, gork, arg . . . in a friendly tone of voice.
There it is. I’m ashamed to admit it but it’s the truth. And, coincidentally, it worked.
We had called our way down to the corrals and had wasted hours of precious time on this ridiculous mission. Finally, as we stood in front of the saddle shed, we heard a familiar whiney voice coming from inside the feed barn.
Moments later, the villain appeared. He slipped through the crack at the bottom of the feed barn door and came sliding toward us. Yes, it was Pete, all right. I recognized all the signs. He was creeping along with his tail stuck straight up in the air, purring, rubbing his way down the corral fence, and wearing that same smirk that drives me nuts.
“Well, my goodness, it’s Hankie. What brings you out on a night like this?”
My leaps lipped into a snarl. “You know exactly what we’re doing here, you little fraud. We’ve come to take you back to the yard, where you belong.”
“But I don’t want to go back to the yard, Hankie. Sally May scolded me and pitched me into the snow, and I’m never going back. Cats hold grudges, you know.”
I swaggered over to him and stuck my nose in his face. “Look, pal, you’re going back to the yard, whether you like it or . . .”
“Ah, ah, ah.” He raised a paw in the air. “Don’t push your luck, Hankie. If you take me back, I’ll just leave again. Do you want to guard me twenty-four hours a day?”
“Are you kidding? I would die of boredom. One minute with you is like a week with a toothache.”
“In that case,” he began rubbing on my front legs, “we’d better talk deal.”
I backed away from the little python. “Deal? Me, make a deal with a cat? Ha! Are you crazy?”
He batted his eyes and started walking away. “Very well. You give me no choice.”
My mind was tumbling and churning. “Pete, I’m ordering you . . .” He kept walking. I, uh, followed him—but slowly, at my own pace. “Hold up. Okay, Pete, let’s talk deal. What’s on your mind?”
He stopped and looked up at me with his weird yellow eyes. “I don’t like this Nice Doggie business. It’s unnatural. It’s unwholesome. And it causes problems.”
I turned a sneer toward Drover. “Did you hear that? He doesn’t like our Nice Doggie business. Ha ha!” Drover didn’t laugh, so I whirled back to the cat. “Is this a joke? Look, Kitty, for the first time in history, I’m on good terms with Sally May.”
“I know, Hankie, and I don’t like that.”
I turned to Drover. “This cat’s insane. He’s twisted. If he thinks we’re going to . . .”
Drover said, “I think we’d better do it.”
I was so shocked, I couldn’t breathe. I motioned for Drover to join me in a High Level conference off to the side, where Kitty Eavesdrop couldn’t hear us. “Drover, his terms are totally unreasonable.”
&n
bsp; “Yeah, but he’s got us over a barrel. It’s the only way we’ll get our lives back.”
“So . . . you think . . .”
Drover nodded.
I heaved a deep sigh. This was one of the most difficult decisions of my whole career. I paced back and forth for several minutes, while Pete licked his front paw and Drover fretted. At last, I reached a decision. I marched back to the cat.
“Okay, Pete, you seem to be holding the big cards.”
He grinned and batted his eyes. “I thought you’d think so. No more Nice Doggie?”
“No more Nice Doggie. And you’ll come back to the yard? Tonight?” Pete nodded. “Okay, you’ve got yourself a deal. Now, let’s put this whole ugly episode behind us and get down to the yard gate. We’ve got some scraps we need to fight over.”
The three of us started walking back to the house, with Pete between us. He glanced up at me and said, “You know, Hankie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
“Yeah? You make me sick. You make me ill.”
“But you love it, don’t you?”
“Shut up, cat.”
Five minutes later, we were fighting over supper. The scraps were great and we dogs got more than our share, tee hee. Drover and I chased the cat up a tree and spent the next two hours gloating, taunting, and barking our hearts out . . . oops . . . until an inflamed Sally May came to the door, screeched at us to be quiet, and threatened to send Loper out with the shotgun.
Hey, it was the Good Old Days again. We’d gotten our lives back and . . .
Do you find this confusing? I do, and I think it’s gone far enough.
Case Closed.
Something’s wrong with that cat. He’s twisted, and I mean REALLY TWISTED.
Further Reading
Have you read all of Hank’s adventures?
1 The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog
2 The Further Adventures of Hank the Cowdog
3 It’s a Dog’s Life
4 Murder in the Middle Pasture
5 Faded Love
6 Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
7 The Curse of the Incredible Priceless Corncob
8 The Case of the One-Eyed Killer Stud Horse
9 The Case of the Halloween Ghost
10 Every Dog Has His Day
11 Lost in the Dark Unchanted Forest
12 The Case of the Fiddle-Playing Fox
13 The Wounded Buzzard on Christmas Eve
14 Hank the Cowdog and Monkey Business
15 The Case of the Missing Cat
16 Lost in the Blinded Blizzard
17 The Case of the Car-Barkaholic Dog
18 The Case of the Hooking Bull
19 The Case of the Midnight Rustler
20 The Phantom in the Mirror
21 The Case of the Vampire Cat
22 The Case of the Double Bumblebee Sting
23 Moonlight Madness
24 The Case of the Black-Hooded Hangmans
25 The Case of the Swirling Killer Tornado
26 The Case of the Kidnapped Collie
27 The Case of the Night-Stalking Bone Monster
28 The Mopwater Files
29 The Case of the Vampire Vacuum Sweeper
30 The Case of the Haystack Kitties
31 The Case of the Vanishing Fishhook
32 The Garbage Monster from Outer Space
33 The Case of the Measled Cowboy
34 Slim’s Good-bye
35 The Case of the Saddle House Robbery
36 The Case of the Raging Rottweiler
37 The Case of the Deadly Ha-Ha Game
38 The Fling
39 The Secret Laundry Monster Files
40 The Case of the Missing Bird Dog
41 The Case of the Shipwrecked Tree
42 The Case of the Burrowing Robot
43 The Case of the Twisted Kitty
44 The Dungeon of Doom
45 The Case of the Falling Sky
46 The Case of the Tricky Trap
47 The Case of the Tender Cheeping Chickies
48 The Case of the Monkey Burglar
49 The Case of the Booby-Trapped Pickup
50 The Case of the Most Ancient Bone
51 The Case of the Blazing Sky
52 The Quest for the Great White Quail
53 Drover’s Secret Life
54 The Case of the Dinosaur Birds
55 The Case of the Secret Weapon
56 The Case of the Coyote Invasion
57 The Disappearance of Drover
58 The Case of the Mysterious Voice
59 The Case of the Perfect Dog
60 The Big Question
About the Author and Illustrator
John R. Erickson, a former cowboy, has written numerous books for both children and adults and is best known for his acclaimed Hank the Cowdog series. He lives and works on his ranch in Perryton, Texas, with his family.
Gerald L. Holmes has illustrated numerous cartoons and textbooks in addition to the Hank the Cowdog series. He lives in Perryton, Texas.
The Case of Twisted Kitty Page 8