The Catnap Caper

by Sarah Todd Taylor

  “There’s another!” he said, dashing over to the stone and rolling it in his paw. His tail tingled again and a spark of hope rose in his heart. He leapt over the wall and stared down the street. At first he could not see what he was looking for and he began to wonder whether he had been mistaken, but then there was a sparkle from under a hedge at the end of the street.

  “It’s a trail!” he cried, beckoning to Oscar to follow him. “Eloise is telling us to follow her!”

  Together they dashed down the road, eyes hungrily searching out the sapphires. Some of them were easy to spot, glinting under lamplights as the skies above darkened, but to his frustration Maximilian found that they often had to stop and look around before their eyes managed to seek out one of the inky-blue stones against the grey of the street.

  It was as they turned a corner on to a wide avenue lined with trees that they saw a figure in black hurrying away, a large box swinging from her hand. Something small and glistening fell from the box, light flashing out as it bounced on to the pavement.

  “It’s her!” Maximilian miaowed, and the two cats pressed on, their paws flying along the road as they hurried to catch up with Zelie and Eloise. In a few moments they were gaining on her and could see clearly that the box she held was a cat basket. Eloise’s face appeared at the grille in the side and she waved a paw and miaowed “not too close, she’ll see you.”

  “Shush,” snapped Zelie. “Awkward creature. Why didn’t you eat the beefsteak? You greedy beasts usually gobble it up.”

  Maximilian and Oscar hung back a little and Zelie turned into a wide square under Paris’s great cathedral of Notre-Dame. It towered above them, the lamplight picking out the stern faces of the figures that lined the arches and loomed over the doorways. Zelie crossed the square and slipped round the side of the cathedral, heading for a small arched door on one side. She drew a key from her pocket and, looking around to check that she was not being observed, slipped through the door.

  Maximilian and Oscar dashed forward to catch it with their paws before it closed on them, but they were too late and the door swung back into the wall. Maximilian hissed in annoyance. The church had hundreds of windows, but none of them looked like the opening sort. He was about to say as much to Oscar when a glint of light in the doorway caught his eye. He peered closer. It was a perfect round sapphire bead. Eloise had dropped another, but why? Maximilian leaned closer and realised that the bead had fallen between the door and the frame, wedging it open just enough to stop the catch from clicking into place. Eloise had saved the day again.

  He let out his “what a brave and resourceful cat” miaow and pulled at the door with his paw, but it would not budge. It was solid oak and far too heavy for a small cat. Even with Oscar’s help it was some few minutes before they managed, with huffs and groans, to pull the door open far enough to squeeze through. They found themselves in a narrow passageway with a winding staircase. Far above them they heard the soft echoes of footsteps as Zelie made her way up through the tower. Maximilian put a paw on the bottom step and began to climb.

  The cathedral’s tower seemed to go on forever and the staircase wound so tightly that after a few minutes Maximilian began to feel quite dizzy. After a while they came out on to a narrow balcony high above the city. Dark figures loomed above them and, looking up, Maximilian had to stifle a miaow of alarm. Above him, hunched over a narrow stone ledge, a skeletal creature with horns and sunken eyes hunkered down, watching the city below. Along from this nightmarish shape, the long beak of an enormous bird pierced the stone. Maximilian pressed himself against the wall of the cathedral, hoping that the creatures would not spot him.

  “They are just gargoyles, my friend,” hissed Oscar behind him. “The famous gargoyles of Notre-Dame de Paris. Stone figures, but very alarming for the unwary.”

  Maximilian did not have the time to feel foolish. With a quick nod of thanks to Oscar, he pressed on after Zelie along the balcony and through a passageway into the tower.

  Above them, suspended between a network of rafters and ropes, hung a cluster of bells. Something mouse-like scuttled in the gloom, making Maximilian’s whiskers tingle. Dust motes floated through the stale air and, from above, Maximilian heard the creak of wooden floors and the faint cries of a cat. No, not one cat, and not the soft lilt of Eloise’s voice. This was several cats – some old and croaky, some young and mewling, and all of them crying the same things: “hungry”, “thirsty” and “home”.

  Maximilian and Oscar crept up the wooden stairs that ran round the inside of the bell tower. A cat’s cradle of wooden beams criss-crossed over one another around them. The ropes of the bells hung between them, tiny mice running up and down, leaping from bell to bell.

  Maximilian paused at the top of the stairs. Peering between the rafters, he could see Zelie’s feet, clad in smart evening slippers. She leaned down and placed the cat basket in which Eloise was trapped on the dusty floor. From the basket next to hers came a plaintive mew and a tortoiseshell paw clawed its way out of the lid.

  “Shut up, you little rats,” Zelie snapped. “You’re far too far up for anyone to hear so you may as well save your breath.”

  She clicked open the catch of Eloise’s basket and dragged her out by the scruff of her neck. Maximilian let out a low growl.

  “Where’s that beautiful collar of yours, you wretch?” she muttered. She leaned down to shake the basket and a satin ribbon fluttered down to the floor, followed by a sparkling “E”. Zelie snatched at them.

  “The sapphires!” she snapped. “Where have they gone? They must have been worth a fortune.”

  She stuffed Eloise roughly back into her basket, ignoring her mew of pain as the wicker caught at one of her paws. Then she carefully threaded the diamond “E” back on to its ribbon and slipped it into her purse.

  “You’ll have to wait to be fed tonight,” she said. “It’s the last night of that silly singing competition and I promised that ridiculous Pierre that I would be there to photograph Julienne once he has made sure she wins. Oh, and I have these to deliver to your owners!” She brandished a pile of envelopes in the air. “A thousand francs each and I might think about giving you back to them. If they don’t pay up, of course … well, if you’re very well behaved I won’t just leave you up here to starve.”

  Maximilian’s blood went cold. The woman was a monster.

  Zelie glanced at her watch, gasped, and turned on her heel towards the stairs.

  Maximilian and Oscar had just enough time to leap down them, three steps at a time, and crush themselves into a dark corner before she appeared. Maximilian pulled his tummy in extra tight and sat on his tail to keep it out of sight. This was no time to worry about the dust it would be accumulating. Zelie sped past, muttering about lateness and changing, kicking up a flurry of dust that tickled the back of Maximilian’s nose. He clamped a paw over his mouth and desperately tried to stifle the sneeze that he could feel building up.

  Somewhere far below them, a door banged shut.

  “Achoooo!” sneezed Maximilian, sending a nearby mouse scuttling up a rope. There was a flurry of excited miaows from the cats above.

  “Who is that?”

  “Can you help?”

  “That dreadful woman has kidnapped us.”

  Then, above them all, Eloise’s soft voice.

  “Is that the English cats?” she asked. “Did our plan work?”

  Maximilian bounded up the stairs.

  In the octagonal space above the bells were a dozen wicker baskets. Cats stared balefully out of each, some mewing sadly, others curled up, their heads resting listlessly on their paws.

  Maximilian and Oscar got to work. First they freed Eloise. With a quick miaow of thanks, she dashed to the door of a basket holding an elderly cream cat with nutmeg paws and unclasped the latch.

  “Madame Margarethe,” she cried. “I had no idea you had been kidnapped. Take my paw, Madame, if you need help to get down the stairs.”

  As the three cats w
orked to free the others, fresh stories of the horrors they had endured were shared.

  “She didn’t bring a proper basket!” a tortoiseshell cat cried, stretching his legs painfully after being released from the cramped basket he had been stuffed into. “I’ve been in that lunch basket for a week. I could hardly turn round in there.”

  “My poor kittens will be missing me so much,” sobbed a fluffy cinnamon-coloured cat. “I haven’t seen them in two weeks.”

  The cat called Margarethe patted her paw and murmured soothingly to her while Maximilian wrestled with the stiff clasp on an intricate basket in which a grey cat sat.

  “You’re Winter Star, aren’t you?” he asked. “It was your owner who first put us on to this mystery.” Maximilian was wise enough not to mention where he had heard of Winter Star’s kidnapping. No cat would wish to hear that their owner had been out at the theatre while they were missing.

  “I miss her so terribly,” the cat said. “The food here has been simply awful, and all these other cats are far too noisy. Some of them never stop crying.”

  “Do you blame us?” asked a tiny ginger and cream cat, barely more than a kitten. “Poor Zizi has been shut up here for almost five weeks.” He motioned to a jet-black cat who was helping Eloise to unclip a peach-painted basket in which a Siamese cat was impatiently clawing at the lid. It was Madame Elise’s cat, Summer Rose.

  “We’ll get you all out of here,” said Maximilian. “You can all go home now.”

  “Home?” asked Eloise.” I’m not going home. I’m going to the concert hall.”

  Maximilian stared at her.

  “If we work together, we can bring that woman to justice,” Eloise said. “We owe it to Zizi and the other cats.”

  “She stole us from our homes,” said Winter Star.

  “And she took our collars,” added the ginger and cream cat. “And goodness knows what she was planning do with us.”

  Maximilian looked around the bell tower. “There are fourteen of us,” he began, a plan forming in his mind, but Eloise cut him off.

  “Fourteen?” she said. “I think we can do better than that.”

  They fled the tower, the younger cats helping the older ones as they ran down the rickety stairs, across the balcony and down towards the wooden door that would let them out into the Paris night. At the door, Summer Rose jumped up to the catch on the handle and clicked it open. The rest of the cats hurled themselves at the door, forcing it open wide enough for each to slip through.

  Oscar tripped down the stairs last, a red ribbon clasped in his teeth. An oval bronze medallion hung from it.

  “A cat collar?” Maximilian asked, but Oscar shook his head.

  “I think it was left by one of the bell-ringers,” he said, dropping it to the dusty floor. “It has a picture of the cathedral etched on to it.”

  “But why?”

  “We may need something that points to where all these excellent creatures have been, my friend,” Oscar said. “What use is freeing them if we cannot bring their kidnappers to justice? I went looking for a clue and this was the best I could find.”

  Maximilian looked at him admiringly. Oscar thought of everything. The black cat slipped the medallion over his neck and together they crossed the courtyard, tiny shadows flitting through the moonlight, and set off across the city for the concert hall.

  As they passed into the parts of the city where the houses were set back behind elegant curved railings, Eloise and the other cats began to dash up to windows and miaow through doors. Dark shapes slipped out into the night and joined them. Zizi scrambled up a tree to a balcony and miaowed with gusto till she was joined by four cats, who leapt from bough to bough and ran out on to the street.

  As they moved by the river they were joined by rough-looking cats that Eloise and her friends did not know, but who were keen to help. They passed Peppi’s house and Maximilian hurried to the window to call for him. As they leapt the low wall of his garden they heard crashes within his house and the front door flew open, revealing Madame Belfourte, holding a cup of tea and calling for Peppi to come back.

  The cats ran on through the city – twenty, thirty, forty of them. They leapt over the tables of the street cafés where couples were chatting over coffee and wove between the feet of those out for an evening walk. The ever-growing tide of fur and fury flew over the bridge leading to the concert hall and flooded into the grand lobby, up the thick green carpet and through the doors to the hall itself.

  Down on the stage, Henri was halfway through a solo. His face froze in shock and the notes died away in his throat as the doors were flung open and dozens of cats burst into the room, their miaows echoing and multiplying as they cascaded down the stairs. Ladies cried out in surprise as the cats jumped across the backs of their seats or ran between their feet. One of the cats leapt across the pianist’s keyboard, setting off a cacophony of clashing notes that filled the concert space. Maximilian led the charge to the stage, followed by Oscar and Eloise. Behind them, huffing and puffing, came Madame Belfourte, still brandishing her teacup and calling out for Peppi.

  “What on earth is going on?” demanded Henri, aiming a sharp kick at Oscar, who jumped out of the way and glared at him.

  Maximilian scanned the audience. Zelie must be here somewhere. He spotted her creeping out of the second row, gathering up her belongings and heading for an exit.

  “There she is! Stop her!” he cried, hurling himself off the stage on to the judges’ table. Madame Emerald gasped as he landed on her performance notes, scattering them. His paws skidded on the papers and he knocked a jug of water into the lap of Pierre but there was no time to apologise. Gaining his balance again he sped across the table and down on to the floor. Rounding the end of the first row of seats, he leapt towards Zelie, sinking his claws into her arm. With a cry she dropped her evening bag, which burst open. The diamond “E” of Eloise’s collar twinkled in the lamplight.

  “Get off, you mangy brute!” Zelie snarled.

  She took hold of Maximilian by the scruff of the neck and threw him to the ground. She made a grab for her evening bag, but Eloise was too quick for her, springing on top of it and hissing. Three cats danced nimbly across the back of the chairs in the front row and wound themselves round Zelie’s feet. The rest crowded round her, snarling, hissing and giving out low, threatening yowls.

  “What on earth is going on here?” demanded Madame Emerald, striding across from the judges’ table. Behind her, Pierre was looking from Madame Emerald to Zelie. A stern-looking woman in ruby velvet stood beside him. Pierre had clearly found his replacement judge.

  Not for the first time, Maximilian wished that the humans could understand Cat. He tried his most understandable “Zelie is behind all the kidnappings and is extremely dangerous and duplicitous” miaow, but as usual Madame just stared at him uncomprehendingly.

  “Where on earth did all these cats come from?” she cried.

  “The river, probably,” snapped Pierre. “Look at them. Probably riddled with fleas. Ugh, it makes me itch just to think of it.” He looked round at the front rows of the concert hall and the ladies in their fine dresses drew their feet up from the floor.

  “Nonsense,” said a voice from the box above them. “That is my darling Eloise!”

  It was the lace-draped lady from Eloise’s house, staring down at them with surprise. Eloise miaowed a greeting to her.

  “That is Winter Star,” cried a man at the back of the stalls. “Where on earth has she been all these weeks?”

  “That’s my Zizi,” shouted a woman in pink satin, dashing down the aisle as fast as she could in her rather voluminous evening gown. “She has been gone for over a month!”

  Zizi hurled herself into the woman’s arms and she smothered the black cat with kisses, tears running down her face.

  The concert hall exploded into noise as owners dashed down to find their cats. Winter Star’s owner dragged two little girls covered in layers of organza behind him and they scooped Winter
Star up and took turns to fuss over her. The tabby, Mathilde, leapt into the arms of a chic young woman in the third row. An elderly lady in a bath chair was wheeled down the aisle to claim the cinnamon-coloured cat.

  “The stolen cats,” Madame murmured. “But where did they come from?” She looked at Max and raised an eyebrow. “Max, did you rescue them? Oh, you are a wonder.” There were mutters from the audience members closest and a smattering of applause, but Maximilian did not hear it. His mind was racing. How could he make Madame realise that it was Zelie who was behind the kidnappings? Never had he felt so helpless at not being able to communicate with the humans. He could not hope that they would notice the connection between Zelie’s photographs and the missing cats. No one was looking at Zelie, except Pierre, who was still watching her nervously.

  Maximilian’s brain buzzed and then he felt his whiskers tingle. He looked across at Eloise. She nudged Zelie’s bag towards him and one of the envelopes she had stuffed into it slipped out. In a moment he knew how he could make the humans realise.

  With a great miaow of “look at this!” Maximilian pounced on Zelie’s evening bag and dragged it across to Madame’s feet. He pawed at her ankle and miaowed even louder. In the corner of his eye he saw Zelie tense. She edged closer to the exit. The cats hissed warningly.

  “What is this?” Madame said, leaning down to pick up the bag. As she did so, one of the envelopes fell out and the letter in it fluttered to the floor. Madame picked it up.

  “Winter Star is safe, but her safety depends on you,” she read. “She will be returned to you if you follow these instructions…” Madame gasped. “This is a ransom note! Whose bag is this?”

  She reached into the bag and drew out a handkerchief, a notebook and a smart business card. It was edged in black and on one side, embossed in gold letters, was the address of Zelie’s studio.