Cats on the Run

by Ged Gillmore

  ‘I’m Carrie,’ said the white cat into the megaphone.

  ‘Hi, Carrie!’ said Tuck, running back that way.

  ‘I’m Ari,’ said the tortoiseshell with the weird eye.

  ‘Hi, Ari,’ said Tuck, turning to run again.

  ‘Hi,’ said the Siamese.

  ‘I’m Sally. What’s your name?’

  ‘Hi, Sally!’ said Tuck. ‘I’m … agggghhh!’

  The six cats from the barn thought this was a very strange name, but Ginger knew something was wrong. She’d been sniffing Harry’s nose to see what dried food smelled like, but now she whipped round in time to see Tuck teetering on the rim of the ledge, nothing between him and the ground twenty metres below. He’d been running back and forth so excitedly he’d not noticed himself getting closer and closer to the edge. Ginger strolled over and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him back towards the other cats.

  ‘This is Tuck,’ she said. And then she took a step back so Tuck couldn’t see her as she mouthed ‘raised in a cage’ to the others. They all smiled at Tuck sympathetically. All apart from Sally, who walked up and started licking his face.

  ‘Ooh,’ said Tuck. ‘Tickles.’

  Well, as you can imagine, the cats in the barn had a hundred questions for the cats on the run, and the cats on the run had a hundred questions for the cats in the barn. Each. Why they chose to live in a commune, how big were the rats, who won the Eurovision. On and on they went, talking through the morning. Tuck asked ninety-nine of his questions about mushroom sauce; Ginger mostly asked for directions. Harry, the black-and-white cat, took her up into the rafters and along to a high window in the pointiest pointy end of the barn’s front wall. He pointed out some distant hills and a line of motorway that appeared now and again in the forest before them.

  ‘That way’s north-east,’ Harry said. ‘But if you go that way on paw, you’ll have to cross the Great Dark Forest. Maybe you should go back to town and get a ride?’

  ‘Not an option,’ said Ginger, squinting through the window to the hills in the distance. ‘Thanks though.’

  Harry shrugged and sensing Ginger needed some time alone, he said he’d see her back down on the ledge. Knowing when to leave someone alone is one of the greatest skills in life. Like knowing when to stop talking or when to run away and say a big boy did it, it is an indispensable life skill, which I recommend you start learning right now. Bendyway, Harry picked his way back down to the ledge and listened to Sally try to explain to Tuck what mushroom sauce was made of.

  ‘Sauce,’ she said, ‘and mushrooms.’

  Meanwhile, Ginger stayed in the high window and surveyed the land below. The hills Harry had pointed out seemed a long, long way away, and the Great Dark Forest this side of them looked great and dark. But she looked carefully on until her eyes grew heavy, and she found she was wobbling slightly on the narrow window ledge. She remembered she hadn’t slept at all the night before. In the excitement of finding the barn she’d forgotten her tiredness, but now it had caught up with her. So she picked her way down through the rafters and found the other cats on the ledge, all lying silently, apart from Tuck, who was sprawled out in the middle of them, mumbling slightly in his sleep. Ginger made out the words ‘rush’ and ‘moom’ before she too fell into a deep and dreamless slumber.

  It was an hour and a half and a bit after dark when Rodney and Janice began to stir. They’d been through an emotional roller coaster over the previous days, and it had exhausted them more than a real one would have done. The pain of losing their cats, the joy at thinking they’d found them again, the excitement at realising … Oh well, look, you’ve been reading the blooming book, you’ve got the idea. They’d been up and down like a manic madman on a pogo stick on a trampoline during an earthquake after drinking too much coffee. It was no wonder they had a bit of a lie-in. But eventually they were dozing rather than really sleeping, and the memories of what had happened that morning started creeping in.

  ‘Location spell,’ said Rodney, suddenly sitting up. ‘We’ve got a location spell—we can find those fleeing felines. Janice, boogly-doops, wake up, my sweet munchelbag.’

  ‘Oh, Wodney,’ said Janice in her baby voice without opening her eyes. ‘Janice is berry, berry tired and wants to sleep a teensy-weensy bit more. Can I have just ten more minutes?’

  Well, as you will have noticed if you’re a get-up-and-go kind of person, when a lazy person says ‘just another ten minutes’, it never means just another ten minutes. It means ‘when I feel like it’. So Rodney got up and showered, shaved, and moisturised, and left Janice asleep. At first he was a bit annoyed, thinking how he’d gone and boiled his innards and yet his slovenly covenly witch of a wife couldn’t even drag her sorry bones out of bed. But then—as he dabbed his Men’s Hexpert Wrinkle Remover onto his cheeks—he realised that without Janice slowing him down he could get to the cats even quicker. He had a map, he had his boy-racer broomstick with go-faster stripes, and he could zoom through the sky like the young witch he used to be. Anyone seeing him would think of him as young, free, and evil. Rodney chose a particularly tight-fitting cloak and dressed in a speedy silence so he could claim to Janice later on that she’d simply not woken up in time.

  Out in the night sky Rodney felt like a new witch. Of course, most of his throat was new, but Rodney felt like he’d had his whole body replaced. He felt younger and fitter than he had in years. ‘It’s the challenge,’ he said to himself. ‘It’s the idea of possibility.’ He flew a loop-the-loop and gave a whoop to test his newfound ballyhoop. ‘Oh yes, folks!’ he cried. ‘Rodney Burringo is back.’

  Then he consulted his map and gave an extra strong fart so that he shot across the sky far faster than the speed limit. And who could blame him? It was a beautiful night for flying, the first real night of winter with great white clouds sailing across the inky sky, blowing from horizon to horizon and suggesting travel to distant places full of romance and without the inconvenience of modern airports. It was windy high in the sky, but for Rodney the wind was behind him (in more ways than one), and he sped along towards his destination like a... like a... well, like a farty witch chasing after a cat, I suppose.

  The place marked on the map was a long way out of town, but Rodney had been in the Boy Sprouts, and he knew how to read the lay of the land. He followed ridgelines and valleys, ley lines and gulleys, power cables and fire tracks and fences and trolleys. OK, not trolleys but, hey, poetic licence, never heard of it? What?! You’ve never heard of poetic licence? Oh, it’s great! You’ll love it! It’s basically lying, but you’re allowed to do it.

  Anyhoo, within no more than two hours, Rodney was hovering in a circle exactly above the place the half-a-hair had pointed to on the map. ‘Mwah ha,’ thought Rodney, feeling very young and very evil. ‘Mwah ha ha ha.’ Then he caught himself celebrating too early like bad baddies always do and stopped. ‘Focus,’ he told himself. ‘Act like a professional.’

  Rodney approached the farm buildings in slow circles before landing on the roof of the largest of them with the soft tread of a seasoned spooker. Then, after confirming there was no one in sight, he flew down to the ground. Around him several old farm buildings formed three sides of an empty farmyard. The largest was an empty milking shed, half collapsed, one side open to the elements. Opposite it were some stables in a long, low building with a doorway at each end. And at the end of the courtyard were the remains of a house in an even worse state of disrepair than the shed.

  Rodney pricked up his ears to see what he could hear, but there was nothing. All was still. If you or I had been there, we’d have thought, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here and find somewhere more fun instead’ because we’d have thought it was completely abandoned. But Rodney didn’t think this at all. Oh pepperoni no. Rodney could smell cat. He tipped his head back, flared his nostrils, and took in a big deep breath of air through his warty, yellow nose. ‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘Ginger cat—I’d recognise that pong anywhere.’ He couldn’t sme
ll a black cat, but that didn’t bother him. One cat would lead him to the other. And worse come to worst, he could always find another black cat. It was the smart ginger one that was the key to the experiment.

  Rodney leaned his broomstick against the side of the milking shed and started walking towards the stables. Suddenly he was blinded by a horribly bright light. It was directed straight at him from the roof of the stables. Now, if you’ve been paying attention you may have noticed witches are not fond of light. In fact, they hate it. There are some witches who are actually afraid of the light in the same way that you and I are afraid of the dark. Yes, you are. Well, Rodney wasn’t normally one of these, but, ouch, that light hurt. He could feel it undoing all the benefits of his very hexpensive moisturiser. He put up one clawed hand to shield his eyes and used the other to cast a particularly nasty spell in the direction of the floodlight. The spell made it no more than a metre before bursting like a particularly pus-filled zit and splattering all over the ground. That’s why witches hate light, you see; it weakens their evil powers.

  ‘Dude, can I help you there?’ said a voice up behind the giant bulb.

  ‘Er...’ said Rodney. ‘Er... you could turn off the light.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name’s Rodney and I’m... er... I’m lost. Who are you?’

  ‘My name, dude, is Mind Your Own Business,’ said the voice behind the light. ‘You’re a witch. What are you doing here?’

  Now, Rodney was blinded by the light and feeling weak and awful, but he still had a good brain in his head. He knew that a little bit of truth always improves a lie, so he said, ‘I’ve lost my cat.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said the voice. ‘What was the name of this cat?’

  ‘Er … Ginger.’

  There was silence for a while. Then the light swung slightly away from Rodney, allowing him to stand and stop shielding his eyes.

  ‘How long have you had this cat?’ said the voice.

  ‘Four years,’ said Rodney.

  ‘And how did you get it?’ said the voice.

  Now, I don’t know about you, but I hate it when people keep asking questions. Any more than three questions in a row is a bit rude, if you ask me. You might want to watch out for that next time you’re interrogating your parents. Bennyway, Rodney was pretty ticked off by now. What was this, interview cabaret?

  Well, if there’s one thing that reinvigorates a witch’s powers, it’s a temper. Rodney lifted his clawed finger again, took a deep and angry breath, and threw another spell at the floodlight, which was now casting its light on the remains of the farmhouse. KEPOW! It exploded darkness into the night, tiny fragments of glass shooting in all directions and bouncing off Rodney’s leathery face. He heard what sounded like a miaow of surprise and looked up at the roof of the stables, where the light had been operated from, in time to see the end of a ginger tail jumping down behind the roof. He grabbed his broomstick and raced up there to find not Ginger, but a paler ginger cat running along the guttering behind the roof.

  Rodney raised his claw again and—full of strength now—let go a lightning bolt at this cat. KAZOOM! It missed—hey, you try shooting a lightning bolt at a running redhead and see how well you go—and instead blew a huge hole in the roof of the stables. When the smoke from this had cleared, the cat was nowhere to be seen. Rodney thought carefully for a second and then flew his broomstick in through the hole he’d just blown in the roof.

  He found himself in a long, dark, empty space, so long unused it didn’t even smell of horses anymore. He cruised slowly above the stalls, dipping his head to stop it hitting on the beams that crossed the roof space. ‘Here, kitty, kitty,’ he called. ‘Come to daddykins.’

  But the cat was obviously too smart to listen to an invitation from a witch. Have you worked out who that cat was yet? Oh, come on, what do you want, a diagram? It was Major, of course, Ginger’s long-lost lover boy. The best percussionist since Oliver the Octopus, the one-man octet. The hair which Rodney had picked up in the taxi was Major’s, not Ginger’s. Ginger was still miles away, trying to get back to these stables, trying to get away from the witches to the exact spot where Rodney Burringo was. Do I have to point out the irony of that? Do I? Really? Oh, OK. It was really ironic. Like crazy ironic. If you’d been there, you’d have said, ‘OMG, isn’t this like soooo ironic!’ And you’d have been right.

  Now then, at this point in the story there is something I need to tell you about Major ‘Mango’ Awesome. You see, being an older male meant that Major could be a little bit moody. Not all the time, I need to stress, in fact not much of the time. Most of the time he was cool, man, he was a dude, he was a seriously laid-back puddycat. Do you know what ‘supine’ means? It means lying down. So, if you think about it, being really laid-back, Major was a supine feline. Get it? Yeah? No? Oh suit yourself.

  Anyhoo, the reason Major and Ginger got on so well was that whereas she was quite sarcastic and impatient, Major was very easy-going. His favourite thing to do all day was nothing. His favourite food was whatever you gave him. His favourite topic of conversation was silence. He was chilled. But of course this was only most of the time. He was, after all, only feline, and like anyone else Major could be a complete and utter grump. Ginger used to call him a Grumpy Lugger or a Lumpy Grugger, or when she was really annoyed, a Bumpy Grugger. And most of the time he didn’t mind because he was too dudey to care. But sometimes he did, and that was when he had a major grump on.

  When Major got a big grump on, you really knew about it. Like now, for example, when a witch had turned up outside his stables after midnight on a Thursday and had blown a hole in his roof. Oh boy, that seriously grumped him out. Fortunately though, Major was prepared for such annoyances. Hence the spotlight. And hence too (the sequel) the rocket launcher he kept stored under his bed. Rodney was right that Major had run into the barn, but he was wrongedy wrongedy ding dang dongedy if he thought Major was going to come out unarmed. As Rodney hovered over the last stall in the stable, he heard a voice behind him.

  ‘Hey, wart-face,’ it said. ‘Call this back to daddykins.’

  Rodney turned to see Major standing on his hind legs, propping up the front of the rocket launcher. He yelled, ‘Noooo!’ in a deep slow-motion voice just as Major pressed the big red Shoot Rocket button on the side of the weapon. BOWAKA! There was a huge boom as the rocket shot out of the launcher and towards Rodney, who barely had time to duck before it shot over his head.

  Now Major, being ginger, was a smart cat, but unfortunately, he had slightly miscalculated the aerodynamic, thermodynamic, vectordynamic dynamics, and as the rocket passed over Rodney’s head, it zoomed straight through the wall of the stables and landed in the ruins of the farmhouse. There it made a huge explosion, all red and yellow and flaming like in a really good action movie, where people walk away in slow motion without looking back.

  KABOOM! (Then rackety rackety rackety as all the bricks and bits of wood fell smouldering to the ground.)

  Now, as stated, Rodney had ducked so he was safe. But, oopsa-daisy, what did he find when he sat up again? He found he had a huge rocket-size hole in his witch’s hat. Oh dear. Now, you know full well that witches get stronger when they get angry. But did you know you should never ever mess with a witch’s hat? You didn’t? How have you survived this long? Listen to me: you should never, ever mess with a witch’s hat. Not even those yellow plastic ones they use for marking out road works. Oh bells no. There’s many a young man or woman who has thought it funny to steal one of those on the way home from the pub. But where are those young men and women now, eh? Where indeed. Old and wrinkly and horrible, that’s where. That’s what happens to you when you mess with a witch’s hat. So now Rodney was ef-you-are-eye-oh-you-es FURIOUS!

  ‘Wah!’ he roared, his face turning fully green and his nose hooking so far over it tickled his chin. ‘Wah-ah-agggh!’ with all the g’s pronounced.

  Rodney flew down the stables, the wind flapping at the hole in his hat, in the d
irection he’d last seen Major. There he found another hole in the wall, a hole the shape and size of a cat holding a rocket launcher. He laughed as he realised what had happened. Major had completely forgotten to take the recoil from the rocket into account. Just as it had forced the rocket out towards Rodney, so it had shot Major and itself back through the rotten old wall of the stables. Rodney dismounted and picked his way through smoking broken scraps of wood. In the middle of them he found the rocket launcher, and under the rocket launcher he found Major lying very still. Rodney bent down and pressed his fingers against Major’s neck. There was still a pulse.

  ‘Mwah ha ha,’ cackled Rodney. ‘Mwah ha’ etc.

  He picked Major up by the scruff of his neck (the cat version of the Vulcan stun grip) and carried him back to his broom. Then he soared away from the smoking stables, the exploded remains of the house, the darkened milk shed. It all looked so peaceful and quiet down there that just for extra evilness Rodney dropped a fireball onto the scene. It hit the ground and exploded, setting all the farm buildings on fire. ‘Mwah ha ha,’ he cackled. ‘Mwe he he.’ Then he swooped even higher into the sky, all the time with Major held tightly against his chest. ‘Who needs Ginger?’ Rodney thought. ‘I’ve got the perfect replacement!’

  And he raced home to show Janice what he had found.

  THAT BIT

  Ginger woke suddenly. She lay for a moment or two, trying to remember where she was. Oh, how she loved that feeling. It was the feeling of freedom. For four long years she’d woken up every morning, every afternoon, every evening, and every night knowing exactly where she was. You see, when you sleep as often as a cat does, you wake up pretty often too.

  Anyhoo, Ginger woke suddenly. She could hear Tuck sleeping beside her, snoring in his typically annoying way, just too quietly for her to be able to complain about it but just loud enough to be disturbing. Normally this drove her nuts, but tonight she just listened, then smiled as she heard him start talking in his sleep. ‘Ooh, yes, please,’ he said. ‘Ooh, yes, I do agree, I think so, ever so much.’