The Adventures of Caterwaul the Cat

by Damon Plumides

  Soon no amount of white lead and vinegar makeup could hide the wrinkles. Every plant and root was crushed and applied to her face, yet nothing seemed to help. If anything, her skin grew worse from all the applications, becoming chalky and pale. Her hair was dyed with a mixture of saffron and cumin to give it color, but it only made her smell like the inside of her chef’s spice cabinet.

  Nothing worked at all. There was no earthly element, animal, vegetable, or mineral that could give her what she wanted. Even the most expensive periwigs and fine hairpieces adorned with diamonds could not make her happy.

  Despite her compulsive behavior, she was still a powerful woman. Though thin, she had the strong neck of a ballerina, and she held her head up proudly through her queenly ruff. Her eyes were those of fierce determination.

  If she had only just accepted the inevitability of time, she would have matured gracefully. And if she opened her eyes and looked around, she’d have realized that the world around her was aging too. But she couldn’t see it, and would not accept it. The constant denial turned her sour.

  As a young princess, she was beloved. Everyone in the kingdom talked about her and what a fine ruler she might one day become. She had men and women falling over themselves for the chance to be in the same room with her. Every eligible man in the kingdom desired her hand, but no one was good enough. She’d play childish games matching one suitor against another, all the while having no real interest in either. She’d found it so amusing to watch people jump at her every beck and call.

  The Grand Balls she staged upon becoming queen were among the finest ever conceived. Everyone who was anyone begged to be invited. The castle resonated with music and laughter late into the night. The palace walls were adorned with the most intricate tapestries. Works by the country’s most respected painters hung in nearly every room. Intellectuals and men of high creative bent became regular fixtures. Yet if there was one single thing that stuck out among all the fine accoutrements featured at her gala affairs, it was the ornately carved ice sculptures imported from the frozen land of Nordlingen. Anyone fortunate enough to see the ice sculptures came away from the experience amazed. The attention to detail by their creators was astonishing. Scenes from the mythological past came alive in the works of virtuosos. Even the placement of the sculptures was executed with purpose. They were set methodically to take advantage of the lighting of their surroundings, and shone like diamonds from most every viewing angle.

  Druciah laughed as she turned her suitors away one by one, prince by prince. The worthy ones who might really have loved her were the first she cast aside. She thought their honesty pathetic and considered them weaklings for their genuine efforts to win her heart.

  As the years progressed, the Grand Balls, banquets, and other revels continued, as did the queen’s indifference. The stone walls echoed each night with the sharp words of ridicule with which she stabbed at good men who had given her such meager amusement. Eventually her soul began to blacken. With the good men driven off, all that remained were the ones who were motivated by their own personal quest for power, not by love or honest attraction.

  She grew bitter and enraged. Whenever she’d look down from her hill and saw people who were happy, she became furious. How dare they be so happy when she was in misery? So she stopped having the Grand Balls and Great Feasts altogether. Their purpose gone, the brilliantly detailed ice swans of Nordlingen simply melted away.

  Every morning she’d wake in a foul humor. It was when she was in moods like this that she turned to the most trusted member of her staff, the commander of her secret police, Chief Constable Warwick Vane Bezel III. It was in Warwick that she found the closest thing to a kindred spirit.

  The queen became rotten over time, but Warwick was born that way. In fact he came from a long line of scoundrels. When he was a very small child, he’d often fashioned clumps of ice into makeshift magnifying glasses and use the sun’s rays to burn insects and start fires. He thought it hilarious to dangle food in front of hungry puppies, only to pull it away and eat it himself.

  If one were to look up the definition of the word “degenerate” in Dorian Hamster’s Old World Dictionary, there would be one of Warwick Vane Bezel III’s baby pictures alongside the word to serve as illustration.

  One time, for a laugh, he’d replaced a sleeping old man’s wooden leg with a French baguette so that he could watch him fall flat on his face. Oh, how he laughed at that one. He was still laughing when he got out of the Reginald R. Grelnitz youth dungeon a month later.

  But his most sinister prank as a child by far had to be the time he led a blind friend to a hornet’s nest, handed the boy a stick, and told him that if he hit it hard enough then candy would fall out. When asked later how he could do such a despicable thing, and to a “friend” no less, Warwick Vane Bezel III simply said he wanted to make sure the kid would “always remember his twelfth birthday.”

  Everyone knew the kid was bad, some said irredeemable, and as he grew into his teens, his childish pranks took on a whole new level of meanness.

  You could never say, though, that Warwick Vane Bezel III wasn’t motivated. In fact, he was probably the most determined man in the kingdom to be bad for badness sake. If there was a list of the world’s most horrible people, Warwick was going straight to the top, and he would crush whoever stood in his way.

  He enrolled in the Harsizzle Hall of Higher Learning where he received an associate’s degree in criminal injustice with a minor in general disorder. His favorite class was in police brutality where the core curriculum consisted of learning how to use someone’s compassion and kindness against them on a daily basis. That, and of course, cracking people’s kneecaps with a billy club.

  He finished at either the top or the bottom of his class, depending on one’s perspective. Warwick Vane Bezel III proved to be a fine student of inhuman nature. These were the qualities that later brought him to the queen’s attention. He was just the man she needed to be her enforcer. He was a good-looking brute, standing nearly six foot four. He had gray eyes that indicated more than a modest intelligence. His long, black hair draped over the back of his armor, and you could tell he had the makings of a fine soldier, if he wasn’t so bloody cruel. Druciah made him the head of her secret police, and through the years, he never disappointed her.

  Soon he became a deterrent to anyone who might disobey the queen’s orders. Often she would send him on raids among the villages. Girls and women who were younger or prettier than the queen were systematically rounded up and deported from Druciah’s lands forever.

  Around the holidays, Warwick Vane Bezel III would devise devious schemes to get rid of the homeless and other political undesirables. Once he rounded up seventeen of those he considered human flotsam by setting a trap for people who had been avoiding his vagrancy warrants. He sent out invitations, telling them that there would be a cooked goose, free bread pudding, and fresh cider at Ye Old Mission.

  Once they arrived with their empty stomachs, he threw them all in the dungeon at Cathoon, every last one. Even the children were captured. After all, thought the constable, children without parents were a terrible nuisance. Might as well grab them now and prevent them from becoming beggars later on.

  The queen’s taxes were the most obscene. There was a tax on just about everything, from flour to fowl. Of course, Warwick Vane Bezel III profited from this as well. Tax farming, he’d called it. For every collection he made, he skimmed a little off the top for himself. It was all approved by the queen, and thus all perfectly legal.

  If those high taxes kept the townsfolk close to poverty, the nefarious police commander couldn’t care less. He would sometimes burst down the doors of people he suspected of “holding out” on him. He and his goons could enter wherever they wanted with impunity and take whatever he said was owed. For that reason alone, he was the man most of the queen’s subjects hated above all others, as the wellspring of their misery.

  The queen delighted in the way her constable
responded to her every command. He brought in the money she needed, and kept the people in an almost constant state of terror. What more could a queen want in a brute? It was as though she held a noose around the village’s neck with Warwick Vane Bezel III to tighten it whenever she gave the word. She had complete control over everything and everyone, and no one could do a thing about it.

  As much joy as the constable brought the queen, her aging problem remained. She decided to take up magic to try to find a solution in the world of the arcane. She spent a small fortune in amassing the largest collection of magic books and items she could find.

  Once she learned of the existence of a book of magic spells that was rumored to have been compiled by the greatest wizard who’d ever lived. She sent out dozens of her guards to procure it. Finally, it had been discovered in the backroom of one of the booksellers doing business in the village of Mauth. The merchant did not want to part with it for obvious reasons, but Druciah’s guards were quite insistent.

  The book turned out to be of minor use. There wasn’t a single incantation that could slow her aging or restore her beauty. Most of the spells were little more than what Druciah considered parlor tricks, but there were a few she could make use of fairly regularly.

  She took particular delight in one of them—a spell that could summon up a swarm of insects. Depending on the variation of a few simple words, Druciah could use it to send a horde of grasshoppers, beetles, or mosquitoes after one of her enemies. Unfortunately, like most spells, using it took up much of her energy, so she only used it on special occasions.

  But even using the spell book once in a while had the desired effect of making her people fear her more. After all, it was bad enough to be ruled by an evil queen. It was much worse if that queen had magic at her disposal too.

  2

  The Cat Arrives

  Considering her demeanor, you would think Queen Druciah was incapable of feeling anything toward any living creature, so it wasn’t especially surprising to see her reaction when one night a rather dirty and disheveled black cat was found resting on one of the chairs on her terrace.

  “You have no right to be here, you furry vagabond! Remove yourself immediately! Shoo!” the queen said.

  The cat barely raised its head and, opening its eyes slowly, said, “And I say you have no right to disturb me as I sleep. Go away. We will talk about this in the morning.”

  Druciah was stunned, for she was used to having her every command obeyed. “How dare you—no one speaks to me that way! Leave now or I will have my guards remove you!” screamed the queen.

  But the cat simply turned away. “Your guards?” he harrumphed. “Like your guards could ever catch me? Why, half asleep as I am, I could avoid your guards, even if they cared about your orders, which you know they don’t.” He shifted positions again, stretching fully and turning his head from side to side. “Empty threats are all they are . . . There is nothing you can do to me that can top what I’ve been through already.”

  The queen was speechless. She wanted to scream for her guards, but her tongue felt too large to make the words.

  “Anyway, who do you think you are?” asked the cat. “You have no idea who I am, and yet already you judge me. You assume automatically that you don’t like me.”

  He tilted his head to one side and laughed. “Your first instinct is to call your guards and drive me away. I’d have thought that you’d have had enough of that already, considering the only living things still around you are on the payroll.”

  He looked up at her as if to introduce himself. “I am furry, but I am not vagabond.” He ran his tongue his tongue over his paw. “All I need is a bit of grooming, that’s all. You know, I’d love to see what you’d look like after twenty days on the run through the dense jungle.

  “And without a rest too,” he continued. “A good brushing and a few squares under my skin, and I could pass for feline royalty, a companion fit for the Egyptian Pharaohs of old.”

  This apparently was a bit much for Druciah, who had gotten her wind back. She began to laugh. “You . . . royalty? Don’t make me laugh. A companion for the Pharaohs? More likely a companion for plague fleas.” Having found her voice, she called to her guards. “We have an unwanted visitor.”

  Three uniformed guards emerged into the room, one carting a bag made of woven grass. The next ten minutes were an exercise in futility with all three guards stumbling awkwardly about the room unable to capture the animal.

  “I thought since this castle was called Cathoon, I would be welcome here. I guess I was wrong,” the feline said. “Why are you so determined not to like me?” He made a series of three hops, which accented the incompetence of her guards.

  “What if I told you I was an enchanted cat?” he inquired as he artfully dodged the approaching arms of one of the queen’s clumsy retainers.

  “Enchanted? Really? What powers do you possess?” she asked him. “I have spells like recipes in a cookbook. What can your enchantments give me that I don’t already have?”

  The black cat laughed. “Are you serious?” he asked as he leaped from a table to the top of a chest of drawers. “It seems to me that people must not like your recipes at all! How else can you explain the lack of hospitality here? From what I see, most people avoid this place like the plague!” He leaped onto a shelf behind her.

  “Oh and for the record . . . plague fleas travel on black rats, not black cats.” He jumped again, narrowly avoiding the stumbling guard who almost knocked the queen down. “If you want to avoid catching the plague, a furry friend like me could come in pretty handy.”

  Druciah countered, “I have no need for a cat. There haven’t been any rats around here in ages. No rats nor moles, mice nor voles. My castle is clear of vermin of any kind, unless of course you include present company.”

  The feline glanced at the stumbling guards, assuming it was they, and not he, she referred to. “No rats!” he exclaimed as he ran across the shoulders of one of the guards. “I am glad to hear that. I am much too valuable an animal to waste my time chasing vermin. Plus they taste terrible, unless, of course, they are prepared by a really gifted chef. As far as I’m concerned, I could go the rest of my life without seeing another rat.”

  Druciah seemed as though she wanted to say something, but the cat continued his rant.

  “You ever try to have a conversation with a rat? They have absolutely nothing to talk about. And most of them are just awful people . . . and dirty. You don’t want to know about it.” He landed delicately on the windowsill. “No grooming habits whatsoever.” He took the time to clean his front paws again with a few quick licks.

  “And I swear, if I have to hear one more time about which sewers have the best . . . ” he jumped again, “ . . . selection of wriggly things to eat, I think I will just lose my lunch. You know, a rat will eat some really disgusting things.” His eyes flashed widely. “I mean really disgusting!”

  The queen was by now starting to show signs of amusement. Whether this was from the things the cat was saying or from the sheer ineptitude of her guards would be hard to say. Nevertheless a smile began to form in the corners of her mouth, and if one listened carefully enough, he might have detected some soft chuckling.

  The cat railed on.

  “Why I knew this one rat that would never shut up.” The cat continued to avoid capture as he spoke. “He just kept yammering on about this, or jabbering on about that . . . and this went on all the time, believe me, all the time. It got so bad that I had to sneak around the cavern on tiptoes just so he wouldn’t notice me. It was important that I not be seen because, if the rat caught even a sight of this bushy tail, it was over. The next three hours of my life would be booked up instantly—and that, my queen, was time I’d never be able to get back.

  “Sometimes he’d wake me up in the morning just to tell me that he couldn’t sleep. Can you believe it? And he never felt bad about it either. It was like somehow he had the right to wake me up to keep him company. From the
way he tells it, he was some kind of bigwig at one time. Rats,” he sighed. “No thank you, I don’t need ‘em.”

  By now the queen’s brief flirtation with amusement had faded, and she became extremely aggravated. “What is wrong with you guards? It’s just a cat . . . and an overly talkative one at that. Just grab him quickly and get him out of my castle. I can’t believe that I have such inept guards. You can’t even capture a little cat!”

  Despite his impressive display of catrobatics, the queen’s quarry calmly said, “I don’t understand you, queen. You live here all alone in this enormous cold castle of stone. I would think you would go insane. It’s so cold and empty, and it has no soul. You have no one to talk to.”

  The queen looked at her guards as if to say I have them, but the cat shook his head. “They don’t count. You don’t talk to them; you give them orders. The only people you allow around you are your guards and servants, and from what I see, they seem to stay here more out of fear than loyalty.” He jumped again. “It must be terribly lonely for you, being here in this huge and empty place. I’d think that by now you would be tired of being lonely and that you would welcome a furry little diversion like me.”

  Druciah stiffened, more upset by the cat’s insight than anything else. “You, Sir Cat, know nothing about me, though you seem to consider yourself an expert.” Still, she turned away. What he’d said obviously struck a nerve.

  The guards kept grabbing at him, catching only thin air. It was quite comical they way they thrust and stumbled in pursuit of the wise and unwelcome animal. But then the cat saw the queen was visibly shaken and decided to end the game.

  He propelled himself forward and came to rest gently on a table directly in front of her. “My name is Caterwaul,” he said. “I will share my wisdom with you if you let me stay with you here in the castle.” Tired of the chase, he bowed his head to show respect.