CHAPTER TEN
The Stakeout
And then one morning, the dogs became bolder still.
“Bryna, come and look at this,” said Treacle.
“Oh, what is it? Can’t you let me sleep?” Bryna was dozing happily on the bed. “There are blessed few other pleasures left to me!” She turned over and stretched sullenly, not wanting to be bothered.
Treacle had an irritating habit of calling cats to the window to see the silliest of kittish things. Yesterday it had been a windblown plastic carrier bag that had come floating across the street, snagging itself on a branch in their tree. And then there were his dog games; he was always seeing dogs in the shadows of garden hedges, dogs creeping along the street, or slinking into doorways. Dogs who were never there.
“Bryna, quickly – Please. You must come to the window,” Treacle insisted, his pleas getting more urgent with every word. “The dogs. Look at the dogs.”
“Dogs?” Bryna sniffed at the air sceptically. But her ears stiffened automatically. “Oh, all right, seeing as I won’t get a moment’s peace until I do.”
Reluctantly, she sat up, and jumped onto the windowsill at Treacle’s side. Her sudden movement was met by a deep threatening growl from under their tree. There was Khan himself; pack leader, and a giant of a German Shepherd. He was sitting happily in their garden, his head cocked mockingly to one side, and his tongue lolling carelessly from his mouth. He could have been begging for a game of chase and fetch. Next to him stood a much smaller dog, the iron-jawed terrier, Yip-yap. Bryna remembered them both very well. It was Yip-yap who was growling.
“Coming out to play, kitty-kitty?” he barked.
The skin on Bryna’s back tingled as her hair rose, her ears dropped flat and with her eyes exploding with fury she hissed and spat.
Then Treacle joined in, copying Bryna’s movements like a shadow. “I’ll show the cocky so-and-so’s.” He would have leapt straight out of the window if Bryna had not clawed him back by the scruff of his neck.
“Not quite so fast,” Bryna hissed. “That’s just what they want us to do.”
“Just let me get one of them on their own. That’s all, just let me—”
The window suddenly rattled in its frame and the kit tumbled off the windowsill and scuttled beneath the bed. His voice had been drowned out by a new noise, dreadful and foreboding in its intensity, filling the room. Bryna tried to close her ears to it, tried not to run scared, dug her claws into the wood of the windowsill, and held herself there.
Khan was barking.
Of the ten cats who made up the lodge, five were out on prowl: Dexter, Fat Blossom, the pair of black toms, and the solitary queen, Brindle. That left Bryna, Treacle, Crumpet with her tiny kit, and the injured Maxwell. Not much of a stand to put up against Khan! At least the dogs were down in the street, and they were up in the bedroom, so they were safe enough. Or at least, they should have been; with the German Shepherd so close, it was somehow impossible to feel completely safe.
Bryna kept up her defiant stance at the window. Somehow she felt responsible for the lodge now. When the dogs barked their taunts at her she taunted them back with loud caterwauls of her own. “You’re not scaring me, little doggies. Got no rubber bones to play with?” And even as Khan and Yip-yap laughed at her, it made her feel stronger.
At midday the sun stood high above the tree, reflecting a blinding white light off the melting snow. The dogs were still there. And worse, now there were four of them, and no sign of any returning cat. A little later Khan and Yip-yap marched off down the street with as much showing off, pomp and ceremony as they could muster. Almost at once their vacant spot under the tree was taken by a new pair of dogs. From then on, there was a regular changing of the guard. And as each pair of dogs came and went they would always make a noisy show of it. Dancing and yapping in mock battle, or barking and growling up at the window. The dogs were there to stay, and they wanted the cats to know it . . .
“Sssssst! Sssssst! . . . ’ryna.”
Bryna was still sitting at the window – she hadn’t moved since the dogs had appeared – and at first heard nothing but the wind fiddling with the branches of the tree. Beneath her she could clearly see four guard dogs, tails and paws stretched out, nestling up against one another. Asleep in the snow.
“Ssssst . . . sssst . . .”
Bryna’s ears pricked.
‘Ssssst . . . sssst . . . are oo deaf dow’ air?” said the strange voice.
“Dexter? Is that you, Dexter?” Puzzled, Bryna stood up and looked about her. There was nothing to see. Below her the dogs were still sleeping peacefully. But there was a strange sense of some cat or some thing watching over her—
“Uf ear. Ook uf ear!” the voice insisted.
Cautiously, Bryna pushed her head through the open window. She twisted it almost to the point of snapping it off, until she was looking up and not down. Suddenly, she came face to face with a big, boggle-eyed, floppy-mouthed fish.
“Qui’ly ‘ryna! Tay i’, qui’ly, pleath!” it said.
And then, at last, Bryna began to understand. Dexter was hanging by his back paws from the metal guttering that ran beneath the roof of the house. The fish was dangling out of his mouth. “Qui’ly! ‘Efore I dro’ i’. ‘Efore I ‘all. Uh ‘ish. Tay ‘old o’ uh ‘ish.” Bryna grabbed the fish and tugged, and together – fish and cat – fell backwards into the room. Outside there was a raking and snapping of branches and twigs, and Dexter scrambled in through the window after her. From below came the sleepy yowling of dogs and a frustrated thwump thwump thwump as, one after another, they began throwing themselves at the trunk of the tree.
“There’s nothing like fresh fish. That’s what I always say,” Dexter laughed.
“But where did you find it?” Bryna didn’t quite believe her eyes, or the taste on her tongue. Dexter didn’t answer, just pawed the fish playfully towards her. Treacle appeared sheepishly from beneath the bed, and then all around them cats who a minute before had decided their end was upon them, suddenly changed their minds and decided it was meal-time instead. Each cat took their share. Every cat but Dexter, that is. Bryna tried to be like him. Tried to say no when she looked at the way the meagre shares were gulped down greedily, disappearing without a trace into the bellies of the starving cats: only enough food to remind them of their deep hunger. She tried to say no, but she could not.
Dexter sat down and watched them eat, and as he did he began to purr. It was a gentle, strangely sad purr, like a tom’s last goodbye to his favourite queen.
Only when the meal was finished did any cat remember the cats who were missing. “Where are the others?” Maxwell asked innocently, from his place on the sickbed.
“They are waiting,” said Dexter, simply. “They are waiting for us.”
“Waiting for us?” repeated Treacle, as if the words didn’t make any sense.
Dexter nodded. “It’s time for us to leave. It’s no longer safe to stay here. You must see that?” As if on cue, out on the street, the dogs began to bark again. And their noise, their smell, their heavy lumbering thoughts seemed to creep upwards, filling the room, turning the sweet taste of fish in their throats to a sour bile.
Bryna’s eyes grew wide and she began to pace about the room, staring up at the walls as if they would suddenly open up and give her a new way out.
Crumpet staggered weakly to her feet, holding her last newborn protectively to herself. “Just listen to them out there. Just listen to them! Crying for the blood of my kit . . .”
Dexter hung his head sadly, lifted a paw and cuffed a ball of dust that had gathered on the bedroom carpet. For a brief moment, he was just a silly kitten again, just a silly kitten playing. If only, oh, if only . . .
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A Desperate Escape
Already it was the middle of the night. Dexter was sitting up on the window ledge, listening . . . Below him, at the foot of the tree, the guard dogs were silent. By the near stillness of the night
air and the shallow rhythmic sounds of breathing, he was sure there were only three dogs now, and that they had at last fallen asleep. He had been waiting patiently for this moment. There wouldn’t be a better chance for the cats to make their escape.
“It’s time. Don’t make a sound, and please, try to keep up with me,” he said. And that was all he said. Then he moved, stood up and jumped from the window to the branches of the tree in one action.
Bryna looked hopelessly at the poor rag-tag of cats who stood up in their turn, each desperate to find the courage to follow Dexter out into the night. But none did. Maxwell’s back leg was so badly hurt he could hardly stand. Crumpet – the young mother – nervously held her tiny kit close to her, watching helplessly as it cried silently for the comfort of her teat. And Treacle was no more than a big kit himself, grown gaunt and gangly for the lack of proper food. How could these cats possibly make a run for it through a pack of dogs?
“If I’ve got to climb up on to the roof I won’t make it,” Maxwell said quietly, matter-of-factly. “I won’t, I’m not strong enough. Might as well leave me behind. And you can’t expect that tiny kit to go chasing through the night.”
“Listen,” Bryna said, “we must trust Dexter. He’s brought us this far, hasn’t he? Kept us alive? Well, now he’s asking us to follow him again, so we must follow him. And if he says run, then we must run. Run until our hearts burst.” Treacle mewed in agreement.
“I’ve run far enough,” said Crumpet, sitting down heavily.
“We’ll see,” said Bryna. She scooped up the crying kit from its mother’s side, took it firmly in her mouth, and started after Dexter.
With a squeal of pure anguish Crumpet chased after her; instinctively refusing to let her last surviving kit out of her sight. Treacle followed Bryna’s lead, and shouldered Maxwell forward, bullied him towards the window.
Outside, Dexter had climbed quickly to the top of the tree, and was looking intently along the darkened street. Bryna felt the branch beneath her paws bend as it took first her weight, and then the weight of the others behind her. Crumpet was still protesting furiously, and worse, was disturbing the snow, sending it fluttering to the ground. There was no room to turn around, but somehow Bryna managed to lift the tiny kit over her shoulder, and she pushed it into the eager, open mouth of its mother.
“There! Now please, shut up,” she hissed. It was already too late. Beneath them, a dog growled softly in his sleep, stirred and scratched himself, cocked an ear to the night.
Dexter was not about to lose any more cats, but before his could move, before he could climb down through the branches of the tree and push them all back through the open window, there came the loud, defiant crying of a cat some way off up the street. The crying of a cat ready to do battle, that broke the silence of the night for good. It was Fat Blossom, calling the dogs to her with curses and dirt. Daring them to chase her, daring them to fight. Almost in the same instant, Brindle’s voice joined in from a second direction. And then came the deep sombre caterwauls of the black toms from a third and a fourth.
If the guard dogs had been asleep they weren’t now. They were all standing at the bottom of the tree, tails erect, ears held high. Heavy rolling growls playing in their throats. But they held back, refusing to be coaxed away from their guard.
“Listen to that lot, the cheeky beggars. We ought to give them what for.”
“We must stay here. Khan’s instructions. And anyway, they’ll have to come this way sooner or later. If they ever want to climb back into their lodge.”
“Aye, aye, that’s all well and good, but just listen to them.”
Fat Blossom cried out again. “Not scared of a few we pussy-cats, are you?” The dogs’ growls grew louder, rattling with spittle through their teeth. But still they would not be tempted away from the tree. Bryna sensed Fat Blossom’s movement before she saw her; her white fur glowing like a full moon under the cloudless evening sky. She was standing in the middle of the road, hardly a shadow’s length away from the tree, and now within easy striking distance. If the dogs decided to attack she could easily be caught.
“Bow wow little doggies!” she cried, and then she laughed, laughed as hard as she could.
“Right, right, that does it. I’m not listening to any more of this, you little—” The dogs charged at her heedless, pounced together at the spot where she had been standing. Pounced, only to find her gone, only to find her suddenly replaced by four cats, where before she had been alone. The dogs lashed out in all directions, their teeth snapping shut, tearing off lumps of thin air, or at best their own tongues.
“Grrrr, growf! Growf! What the blazes—?”
Cats there. Cats gone. Cats there, cats gone again. Just like phantoms, just like ghosts. Exactly like ghosts. And if the dogs did not understand, Bryna did. Just for a moment, right there in the thick of the fight, she recognised a brown tabby cat; the very cat who had shared her bed in the lodge, until he’d been carried out dead.
And then Fat Blossom was on her own again, bounding off up the street, to where the black toms and Brindle lay waiting, ready to make their attack as the dogs gave chase.
Dexter did not stand still while the dogs fought Fat Blossom’s ghosts. He brought the cats down out of the tree and headed them in the opposite direction. Led them a good prowl’s length without stopping. He kept to side streets, back lanes and lonnens, short cuts beneath hedgerows, and across snow-patched waste grounds. His route curled and twisted, and more than once retraced the tracks they had already taken, in an effort to confuse would-be pursuers. Bryna was soon lost, but Dexter strode on confidently. There were at least two other cat lodges in the town and he knew where to find them. (All his gathering of Intelligence had told him that.)
At the next street corner, to Bryna’s surprise, Brindle was waiting for them on her own. Dexter did not stop, or even look her way, and silently she tagged along behind the last cat in line. Before long one of the pair of black toms was there too; Bryna had never known them to be separated.
“Not far now,” Dexter called gently, coaxing them onward, giving no sign that he was worried over Fat Blossom’s absence. When the wind began to turn against them, he called again. “Not far, my kittens. Keep up . . .” But the night air was suddenly too fresh. Where the wind blew it was too empty of signs. There were no proper smells or tastes, no clear sounds.
It began to snow heavily, and the wind whipped it up and hurled it at them in blinding flurries, so that it stung their eyes and cut into their fur, freezing there.
“Not far now . . .” Dexter called out a third time. Bryna kept moving, concentrated on following the tail in front of her. Trusted her life to that tail. Although their way seemed suddenly less sure now, less certain, paws were faltering . . .
And then, walking with her, stride for stride, there was another cat. A cat who left no mark in the snow behind him. A huge charcoal-ginger tom with a strange little bird sitting on his back.
Grundle. Her own dead Grundle.
Bryna’s head ached again, and a dull grey heaviness filled her up inside. “What is it?” she asked, but already the ghost was gone. He’d said nothing, had given no words of warning, but Bryna suddenly knew—
“Dexter, the dogs—” she wailed, and saw, through the falling snow, Khan leaping from a wall. “Dexter!” She heard the dog’s great front paws thud upon the ground, heard his roar, and felt the surge of air as he pounced to the attack, as the dog pack followed his lead. And she saw, saw from that other part of herself she could not name, that she would never see Dexter alive again. Not Dexter, not Fat Blossom, not Maxwell nor Brindle . . .
There was confusion then, and panic. In the thickening snowfall they had let themselves be caught upon a narrow path between two high walls. It wasn’t a planned ambush. The dog pack had simply stumbled across them in their blind search. Bryna bounded forwards, leapt for the top of the stone wall only to fall back again. Then she turned and ran. Just ran. What or who she ran from, what or
who came running after her, she did not know.
“Wait, Bryna. Please wait. It’s me – it’s Treacle. We can’t keep up—” For an instant Bryna looked back across her shoulder, but without letting up. There at her tail ran Treacle and Crumpet (with her kit still held firmly in her mouth). Behind them a storm of snow blurred the night air, made shadows of the death fight.
“Can’t stop,” Bryna yelled. “Can’t. Can’t.”
More walls jumped over, street corners skittered around, dustbins turned over as they catapulted themselves from obstacle to obstacle, forcing themselves on. And then, the smell of fear, the crying of cats, the heavy panting of dogs in pursuit, was gone.
“M-must stop—” Treacle gasped, stumbled, and fell so heavily against Bryna and the young mother he nearly brought them all to the ground. “Bryna, please?”
“For a moment, then,” Bryna said. “But only for a moment, or they’ll be on to us again.” She lifted her head and looked about her anxiously, trying to make out where it was they had stopped. They were in the middle of a large open space. It was not a garden; there was something hard – concrete or tarmac – under the snow, and a long way off there were walls closing them in. Behind them, a pair of large wooden gates with a man’s name hand-painted on one side flapped open and shut, as they were rattled by the wind. The cats had run through the gates, run themselves to safety.
Bryna began to relax, to take long breaths, trying to rid her head of the insanity of the chase. Treacle was still gasping, but he was not really hurt. It was Crumpet who was the worry: her eyes fretted, her breath kicked fitfully and would not settle, and her whole body shook with fear. In her mouth her kit hung limply. It was dead. It would be fruitless to carry the poor thing any further, and yet, and yet . . .
Suddenly, there came the noise of running again; the muffled scrat-pat scrat-pat of paws working hard against snow and pavement. Some dog had caught on to their scent and was turning in through the gates as they swung open. The cats tried to move, but their legs would not go, as shock and renewed fear held them where they stood. The dog’s snarl bubbled up through its throat, its sickly breath filled the night air as it barked its hatred, its contempt. And then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, it stopped its charge, and fell silent.
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