Tooth and Claw

by Stephen Moore

  “I’ll, I’ll go and have a look,” Bryna said, pretending to be brave. She opened her eyes slowly and carefully – just in case she saw something she did not want to see – and cautiously poked her head out from behind the leaf cover. It was getting light. The bitter cold and the stark blackness of the night was relenting, and a cloudy sky was being stroked by a cheerless early-morning sun. The hairs on her nose twitched. The air around her was almost still, almost motionless. No one, nothing, was about.

  At last, she stepped out into the open and, as her bravery grew with the light of day, she began her prowl home.

  “Bryna, are you still there? Can I come out now?” Treacle cried, still too scared to move. But for Bryna, the kit was already long forgotten.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Howling

  Brynasat down upon Mrs Ida Tupp’s back doorstep, her ears twitching as she listened for the sounds of familiar morning movements. That unexplainable nonsense beloved of all men. The ritual coughs, the sneezes, the chinking and the clanking, the banging about. The wooden sounds of creaking floorboards as clumsy human feet stomped sleepily from room to room. Clicking things, twisting things. Picking things up, putting things down again.

  But not this morning. No, not this morning. The house stood silent. There were no sounds, no movements. And it never once occurred to Bryna, after all the strange adventures of the night, that there would not be.

  “I’m hungry! Let me in, I’m hungry —!” She mewed, certain still that Mrs Ida Tupps would answer her cries. Soon the door would be opened up with soft words, with delicious, back-tingling strokes, and a fuss. All Bryna had to do was wait. Just wait.

  But it was a very long wait, with no more story to it than the passage of time.

  Mrs Ida Tupps did not come and open up the door.

  Later, the sun lifted its pale head above the roof line only to disappear behind a curtain of soft grey cloud. Rain spat upon the ground in tiny feathered droplets, thought better of it and dried up again.

  Mrs Ida Tupps did not come and open up the door.

  At length, it was a sudden plaintive mewing that finally distracted Bryna. She stood up, turned open-eyed and spat her irritation at the approaching intruder; only to find Treacle coming towards her down the garden path.

  “Oh Bryna, Bryna, where have all the people gone?” the kit mewed pitifully. “Nobody will answer my calls. There isn’t a man anywhere! Not anywhere! And I think I’m starving to death.” He was shaking uncontrollably, and his paws left damp patches on the pavement behind him.

  Bryna flicked her tail, thoughtfully, felt the pain of hunger tighten in her belly. She looked from the house to the kit, and back again, unsure of what to make of it. The windows and doors were shut, the curtains were still closed. That was wrong. She paced around to the front of the house, with Treacle following anxiously, unwilling to let her out of his sight. Out on the pavement the street lamps were still burning in the broad daylight. Surely that was wrong too? And there was something else. Or rather, there wasn’t something else when there should have been.

  “Listen, Treacle. Listen,” she said. Where was the constant roaring? The never-ending shriek of car engines? The screams of gears and brakes as they chased each other about the streets in their usual mindless hurry? It was deathly quiet. Even the roads were wrong. Bryna licked her shoulder, confused, annoyed. How had she not noticed until now?

  “I’m scared,” Treacle whimpered, huddling himself up into a tiny ball. “Something horrible has happened, I just know it.”

  “Let’s see.” Bryna drew her ears flat against her head, opened her throat and gave a long-practised, sorrowful caterwaul. That cry always opened a window somewhere. Treacle was so impressed he stopped shaking for a moment, and stood up expectantly.

  But the houses did not reply. The Lonnen stayed stubbornly silent.

  And then, without any warning, it started . . . the howling.

  It was far away at first. Beyond The Lonnen and the allotments, behind the swanky new houses. Past the waterside factories, way out across the river.

  Bryna’s ears pricked at the sound. Across her back her fur rucked nervously.

  “What’s that? What is it?” Treacle cried.

  “It sounds like a dog . . . a dog calling.” Bryna’s head began to ache. This was no ordinary noise. What dog could possibly make a sound like that? Not a whine, or a yowl, it was more sorrowful, more pitiful than both. The call of an animal lost, hopelessly lost. Suddenly, from somewhere down upon the riverside, a second dog joined in. And closer still a third; and then another, and another . . . The town began to fill up with hopeless screams. Dogs, dogs everywhere, were howling. And surely not only dogs, but cats too; cats screaming their heads off.

  Treacle’s eyes blinked saucer-wide with fear, he stanced low, and with fur bristling backed against the larger she-cat.

  Bryna could not move. Mesmerised by the unreal cries, she had to listen, desperate for them to explain themselves.

  And then the spell broke. A dog was barking in The Lonnen. His voice heavy and morose, but real. Definitely real. “That’s Kim,” spat Treacle. “The Mister’s old black mongrel, at number forty-seven. He must still be locked up in the sitting-room. And the best place for him!”

  “Of course. Of course!” Bryna said. Her ears pricked. The howling did tell her something. “The crying dogs, the screaming cats, they’re all like Kim! All trapped, locked up, shut inside their houses. And there’s nobody to let them out.”

  “You mean, just like there’s nobody to let us in?” Treacle whimpered.

  “Yes,” Bryna said, and she licked frantically at her paws, as the full weight of the awful truth began to settle on her shoulders . . . The whole of mankind had gone from the town. And yet, how could that be? How could that possibly be? Men were like the sun, the wind and the rain. Like the day and the night. Like the stones of the ground and the birds of the air. Like the endless hate between dog and cat. Part of life. Always, always there. And if they were not there, then – then what?

  Black clouds thickened across the grey sky. Rain came again, and properly this time. Hard, cold rain, that cut the fur from the body. The dogs still howled. When the rain came a third time Mrs Ida Tupps’ front doorstep was in darkness. The dogs had fallen silent. The cats were gone.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Grundle’s Ghost

  Sodden to the skin, Bryna moved silently down the garden path and out into the street. Behind her, the young kit followed.

  Where were they going, these foolish house-cats? Force of habit kept Bryna to the familiar trail of her prowl, but in truth they did not know where they were going. Their world had changed forever that day, and they were moving away from the house, stirred by some ancient instinct they could not name. That, and the cruel gnawing of their empty bellies.

  They stopped more than once at overturned rubbish bins and picked at scraps. But it always seemed that some other cat had been there before them and the sting of hunger was only worsened by the lingering smells. For them food had always appeared on demand, been rattled from cardboard boxes, spilled from glass bottles, or scraped from tin cans with soft kittish words. They had been forever pampered and fed like helpless blind kits. Indeed, everything in their lives, everything they were, had come from man. Even their names were only sentimental parodies of men’s own – or else some clever trick played with human words for their own amusement – they did not truly belong to them.

  And what of wild nature? What of the chase, the hunt, and the sweetness of the kill? Just silly games of play, and ‘catch-me-if-you-can.’ And if a little later they found themselves trying to stalk a sparrow? It was nothing planned.

  They’d come to a place where a deep thicket of bushes nestled up against a high garden wall. A foolish bird fluttered across the wall and dropped to the ground just out of their paws’ reach. Instinctively Bryna stiffened, stanced very low as if she was trying to hide herself beneath the cover of dead leaves that lay t
here.

  “Food at last!” Treacle hissed, clumsily copying her actions.

  “Shhhh! Quiet . . . You’ll scare it away.”

  But the odd little bird didn’t seem to notice them there, intent as it was upon feeding itself.

  For a long moment Bryna didn’t move. Inside her dull house-cat’s head there were vague, woolly thoughts. She remembered the lick of a warm sun upon her back as it streamed through an upstairs window. Remembered stretching deliciously, idly looking down upon a large grey tom cat, as he crouched among the bushes in the garden below. Dexter, was that his name? Yes, Dexter. Somewhere nearby was his mate – a heavy white queen called Fat Blossom – but she was even more vague and did not concern Bryna. What mattered, what she remembered most was the tom hunting. Hunting for birds.

  Bryna sniffed the air. There were no recent cat scents, no Dexters or Fat Blossoms. The sparrow was still feeding happily. There was a chance yet.

  Unfortunately, Bryna did not understand the first thing about catching birds. Oh yes, she’d often watched the grey tom but she’d never really given it much thought. Until now, hunting had seemed such a silly, undignified and messy way of going about finding food. For one thing, birds never stood still long enough to catch. For another, they were as fragile as the wind that carries them across the sky. And when you did finally get your claws into one of them, what was the reward? A mouthful of fluff and broken feather! It had been so much simpler to play begging-kitten with Mrs Ida Tupps. Easy meat, every time.

  “Aren’t we supposed to do it now?” whispered Treacle, a purr of excitement thrumming in his throat. “Bryna—?” The sparrow had hopped a step closer, was almost asking to be caught.

  Bryna tried desperately to remember how Dexter had gone about his hunt. She was already crouched flat, that felt right. She began to strum the ground with her back legs, tensing and flexing her muscles in readiness. “Jump, Treacle,” she cried. “Jump!”

  They jumped together.

  Bryna’s claws extended, her body stretched, curled up like a spring, and burst open again, sending her flying through the air. Her whiskers felt the feathered air whisked up by the beat of the sparrow’s frantic wings. The bird was within her grasp.

  “Where’s it gone?” hissed Treacle, baffled. “I had it, had it right there in my claws—!”

  “So did I!” cried Bryna.

  The rat-tat-tat of agitated bird calls filled the empty space where the sparrow should have been. Treacle’s eyes blazed with frustration, he leapt through the bushes and ran off across the garden, desperate to catch it up.

  “Don’t be daft, Treacle, it’s too late,” mewed Bryna, half-turning to see where he was going. “You’ll never ca—” And there she stopped, frozen to the spot, and forgot all about Treacle.

  In front of her stood the biggest, the ugliest, and the dirtiest tom cat she had ever seen. He was a smudgy, charcoal-ginger in colour, with a head as big and broad and heavy as the whole of Bryna put together. And the way he stanced gave Bryna the strange idea that somehow he wasn’t quite real. His body looked stuffed, like a human kit’s battered old cuddly toy. His eyes were like odd shirt buttons with colours that didn’t match, and his stuffing was leaking out through his mouth.

  “This what you’re after pussy-cat – a nice fat sparrow?” he hissed through clenched teeth, and dropped the carcass of the bird he’d been carrying. Bryna hissed back, and tried desperately to blow herself up to his size. The tom just laughed, pushed his nose into her face, and said, very, very softly, “Boo.”

  Bryna fell over her own paws, went scuttling backwards, until she felt the weight of the garden wall behind her. She had not meant to run. It was just that, well . . . she did not know what it was. She picked herself up, used the wall to steady herself. “Who – who are you?” she squeaked at him. She had meant her cry to sound angry, but it came out thin and weak. “And it’s been raining all night so why aren’t you wet?” Her cry stopped coming out altogether after that. It was such a stupid thing to say, even if it was true. She was drenched and the rain was still falling hard enough to sting her eyes. So, why was this cat dry? Bone dry? Why had she not heard his approach, or caught his scent on the air? And worse, why couldn’t she smell him even now?

  It was easily explained . . . Bryna had just met her first ghost. Yes, ghost. Not such a strange thing among those of her kind. (And in time there will be other ghosts to put greater twists into the flick of her tail.)

  Almost without knowing it, in a kind of involuntary slow motion, her legs began to pull her backwards, away from him, following the length of the wall.

  “I think the pussy-cat’s leaving us, Grundle,” the ghost said, as if he was talking to another cat over his shoulder. There was no other cat. He was talking to himself. “Kitty-witty frit of a tired old stray, eh, Grundle?” Another look over his shoulder. His voice was mocking her, the way that all wild cats – even dead ones – mocked all house-cats. At least that was something normal about him.

  Bryna was still walking backwards in slow motion. She never once took her eyes off his. At last she could see why they looked so odd: one eye was a deep sea-green in colour and sparkled with mischief; but the other, the other was a dull pinky-grey and thick with scars. Grundle was completely blind in that eye. Or at least he should have been. The way that eye stared at her it seemed to see a lot more than his good eye ever could.

  Bryna tried to say something, but her voice was still lost somewhere in her throat; and more strangely still, inside her head a shadow began to fall; as if the weight of the ghost grew heavy upon her.

  Suddenly Grundle was very close. So close, if he’d been breathing she would have felt the tickle of his breath on her nose. “Not hungry any more then, kitty?” he said. “Pretty little collar too tight for you to swallow?” He laughed at his own joke, his throat throbbing with a raw, self-satisfied purr. He lifted a paw and pushed the remains of his dead bird towards her. “Go on, take it. Take it! It won’t bite you.”

  Bryna did not – could not – move.

  Suddenly, the dead bird squawked and leapt into the air, cack-cackering at the petrified cat. Then, still screaming, it turned and landed neatly on Grundle’s shoulder.

  At last Bryna found her voice; even if she did not recognise the noise she made. She found her legs too, sprang straight upwards, and in one gigantic leap landed on top of the garden wall. Grundle only laughed louder, and the bird on his shoulder laughed with him. “Did we scare the poor little pussy-wussy then?”

  Bryna jumped down behind the wall, found herself running hard down a cinder path that led her between two houses. The whole world had gone mad and her aching head was full up with pictures of Grundle’s huge, one-eyed, laughing face.

  Bryna ran on blindly; out of the claws of one problem . . . into the jaws of another . . .

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A Hurt as Deep as Life

  The dog, Kim, had at last decided that his dream had not been a dream after all. No, he was just going mad, like some old dogs do. He had been stuck on his own, in that living-room, all night and all day. And now it was the middle of the night again, and he was still there. He hadn’t heard a single noise from The Mister or The Missus. Not one. Of course, the awful silence was probably just part of his madness.

  “I’m still here,” he whined. “I’m still here. And a dog can’t hold his bladder forever. Not at my age.”

  Not a peep. Not from the house, not from the streets outside. Earlier he had heard a cat calling, and dogs had started to howl. He had even joined in, done his share. But it was just crying. No animal was making any sense. So he had stopped, and eventually the others had stopped too. Now there was just the sound of the rain, and when you get used to that it’s just as good as dead quiet.

  He thought about his stomach, and the burning thirst in his mouth. He was getting too old for this kind of silly lark.

  And then Kim found himself pacing around the room (again), jumping up into his armchair (again), lo
oking out of the window on to the empty street (again). He’d been doing an awful lot of that and he wasn’t expecting this time to be any different to the last. Out of the window it would be dark, except where the ever-burning lamplight caught against the falling rain and the wet outline of the tree that stood in the garden. There would be nothing of interest outside.

  But there was.

  There was a cat! A cat as large as life and bold as brass, charging across his front garden. Cheeky ruddy animal! That was when he found out he really was going mad. Or why else did he suddenly launch himself from his armchair, straight at the window, like a daft, over-excited puppy? There was an odd echoing fwump as his dead weight bounced back off the glass.

  The cat should have scooted then, instinctively panicked. But it didn’t. Instead, it did the opposite: it stood still, as if it understood something about the glass barrier that kept them safely apart. When Kim climbed back into the armchair to take another look, there it was, standing in the middle of the garden, staring right back at him in a funny, uncomfortable way. What was the matter with the stupid thing? Was it mad too?

  “Don’t you know a ruddy dog when you see one?” he roared at it, and deliberately hurled himself at the window again. There was another sickening fwump as he hit the glass. Panting, winded, he steadied himself before slowly clawing his way back into his chair. The stupid cat was still there! “Rowf! Rowf—!”