A Tail of Two Kitties

by Tom Watson

  “People in this city will park anywhere,” Edith said matter-of-factly.

  “And do you hear the police sirens?” Stick Cat asked. “They’re getting closer. They’re probably coming because of the wreck. That’s what police do.”

  “They could be going anywhere,” Edith answered, refusing to concede any of this to Stick Cat. “Maybe they’re investigating the damage done by that ferocious thunder.”

  He looked across the alley and into the piano factory before speaking again. Mr. Music was in the exact same position. He had tried to sit back down on the bench, but he couldn’t bend far enough with his arms caught in the piano. He was clearly growing more and more uncomfortable. When Stick Cat saw just how trapped Mr. Music was, he became convinced that he must do something to help.

  He turned immediately to Edith and looked her right in the eyes. “Edith,” he said. “You’re absolutely right. People in this city park against wrecked cars and over broken streetlights all the time. And I’m sure that what we heard was thunder too. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before.”

  “Sometimes, Stick Cat,” said Edith, and then she paused for a few seconds. “Sometimes, I think you get lost in your own little world—never even aware of the things going on around you. It’s okay—lots of cats are like that. I’m not one of them—but there’s nothing wrong with it. So you didn’t recognize the thunder, no big deal. Take it easy on yourself.”

  “I’ll do that,” Stick Cat said, and nodded his head. “That thunderclap you heard seems to have rattled the building across the street and trapped Mr. Music in the piano. I really want to help him. But I don’t know how to get over there.”

  “I have an idea,” Edith said. She seemed to have grown more confident both in her stature and in her voice since Stick Cat had admitted the big sound was thunder.

  “That’s great!” Stick Cat exclaimed.

  “Yes, yes. No need to worry,” Edith answered, and casually hopped down.

  “Where are you going?” Stick Cat asked.

  “To the bathroom.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to check the fur on my back leg in the mirror,” explained Edith. She kind of stuck her hip out a bit to demonstrate where she meant. “It’s sticking up a bit.”

  “Can’t that wait?” Stick Cat asked quickly.

  “I don’t like walking around when I don’t look my best,” Edith answered.

  Stick Cat glanced across the alley again. Mr. Music was in the exact same position: stuck and uncomfortable. Stick Cat had to hurry. He had to find a way. “Maybe you could look in the mirror after we’ve figured out a way to help Mr. Music,” he said. Then he immediately added, “I think that area of fur looks really nice actually. It’s quite clean and has a wonderful sheen to it.”

  “Thank you,” answered Edith. She stopped and glanced down at herself. “Thank you very much.”

  “Now, about that idea to get across the alley to save Mr. Music?” Stick Cat asked, happy to have stopped this delay. “What is it?”

  Edith cocked her head sideways a bit and looked at Stick Cat curiously. It was as if she couldn’t understand how Stick Cat hadn’t thought of her idea himself. “It’s easy,” she said. “We fly.”

  “Fly?”

  “Yes, fly,” Edith said. You could tell that she wasn’t quite sure if Stick Cat knew what she was talking about. So, to demonstrate, Edith began to hop up and down on her back paws and flap her arms. “You know, fly! Like this!”

  Stick Cat stared at Edith in wonder. After a moment, he said, “You know you’re not flying, right?”

  “Of course, silly,” Edith panted. She was already tired from hopping and flapping. “I just wanted you to know what flying is.”

  “I know what flying is,” answered Stick Cat. He tried not to sound exasperated even though he definitely felt that way. “I also know that cats can’t fly. We don’t have wings.”

  “Oh, don’t get so caught up in the details,” Edith said.

  Stick Cat stopped talking. He lowered his head for a moment and looked at the living-room carpet. He tried to think of all the things that calmed him down: when he sat on the couch next to Goose and allowed him to stroke his back, the slow and melodic beginnings to all of Mr. Music’s songs, Edith’s soft pattern of breathing when she was asleep on the windowsill after a game of StareDown.

  Finally, he lifted his head and calmly said, “It’s an excellent idea you’ve come up with. I wish we could fly, Edith. It would be a great plan. But we don’t have wings.”

  “I know that, Mister Fluffy Pants,” she said, and giggled. “We just need to borrow some.”

  “Borrow some?”

  “That’s right,” answered Edith as she climbed back up next to Stick Cat. “From the pigeons. There are dozens of them out here every day.”

  “You want to borrow the pigeons’ wings and attach them to ourselves somehow?” asked Stick Cat. He was not being impolite. He just wanted to understand what Edith was talking about. There were certainly times in the past when he thought Edith might not have, umm, all her whiskers in the right place, if you know what I mean. But he certainly didn’t believe Edith would consider taking the wings off a couple of pigeons and reattaching them somehow to themselves to fly across the alley. Even for Edith, this idea seemed a little bizarre.

  Thankfully, this is not what she was thinking about doing.

  She turned directly toward him, lowered her chin, and raised her eyes. “Stick Cat, seriously. How could you even think such a thing?”

  “I didn’t think such a thing,” he responded quickly. “I just wanted to make sure that you weren’t thinking such a thing.”

  “I’m not,” Edith answered, slightly offended. “I would never suggest such a crazy idea. I mean, really, Stick Cat. Sometimes I wonder about you.”

  Stick Cat raised both of his front paws, pads out, toward Edith. “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “It’s just all these things going on. The truck crash—I mean, the thunder—and that loud, banging musical note and Mr. Music being trapped. We were relaxing so nicely and listening to the music, and then everything changed instantly. I’m just not thinking straight probably.”

  “It’s okay, Stick Cat. Why don’t you just let me take it from here since you’re all out of sorts.”

  “Okay,” Stick Cat said. He took several calming breaths, inhaling and exhaling slowly and purposefully. “Tell me then, Edith. What do you mean by ‘flying’?”

  “First, we wait for a couple of pigeons to fly by. Second, we get ready to jump,” Edith said, and straightened her posture on the windowsill. She rocked back on her hind legs a bit to demonstrate. “Then when they get right in front of the window, we jump! We grab hold of their legs and fly across that way.”

  Stick Cat could not say anything. For an instant, he wondered if, in fact, tearing off some pigeon wings and reattaching them to themselves might actually work better than this flying idea that Edith had just proposed. He knew the pigeons—and Edith and himself—would immediately plummet to the street from the twenty-third floor. And that was assuming a couple of pigeons happened to fly by his window, they timed their jumps perfectly, and they managed to hold on to the pigeons’ legs.

  “It’s great, isn’t it?” Edith asked. She had that look on her face from earlier when she was, umm, singing.

  Stick Cat looked across the alley and through the windows of the old piano factory. Mr. Music hadn’t moved.

  Occasionally, he would turn his head, and Stick Cat could see that his face was red and flushed. It was quite obvious that Mr. Music was in a good bit of trouble—and a good bit of pain.

  Stick Cat knew he had two problems to deal with. He had to figure out a way to reject Edith’s plan. And he had to come up with a plan of his own.

  He dealt with the first problem first—but probably not in the way that you might think.

  Stick Cat looked away from Mr. Music and directly at Edith.

  He said, “It’s a brillian
t plan. Let’s do it.”

  Chapter 7

  CATNAP

  Stick Cat stretched a little and crouched right next to Edith. He too drew his weight back on his hind legs in a poised-and-ready-to-jump position.

  “Does this look right?” he asked Edith.

  She glanced at him and nodded.

  “So when some pigeons fly by, we jump and grab their legs, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And then they fly us over to the piano factory?”

  “Right.”

  “Got it,” Stick Cat said with absolute conviction. He pushed off with his back feet just a bit—as if practicing his takeoff for the exact moment when a pigeon would fly by. Edith saw this, thought it looked like a good idea, and began pushing off a bit too. “There are bound to be a couple of pigeons any minute.”

  Now, there are a couple of things that Stick Cat knows that you and I don’t. And knowing those things was all part of his plan. Here are the two things Stick Cat knew:

  1. When there are two cats sitting on a windowsill, pigeons don’t fly anywhere near them.

  Cats and birds, you see, do not get along typically. In fact, birds are quite scared of cats because they know this: cats like to catch birds and eat them. Good reason to be afraid of them, right?

  So Stick Cat was certain that no pigeon—even if it was on a direct flight path right past Stick Cat’s window on the twenty-third floor—would ever come close to a place where two cats were poised in a ready-to-jump position.

  2. It was almost Edith’s nap time.

  Stick Cat knew that Edith always fell asleep midmorning. In fact, he often proposed StareDown games at just this time. It was fun to watch Edith try to stay awake when she really wanted to win. Of course, Stick Cat almost always won—but he didn’t tell Edith that. He’d usually say he didn’t remember or that he must have fallen asleep first.

  With these two things in mind, Stick Cat stood on that windowsill waiting to jump—even though he knew he would never get the opportunity—and waiting for Edith to fall asleep.

  As he waited, he watched Mr. Music attempt to free his arms from the piano two more times. He tried to pull his right shoulder back and his left shoulder back, but his arms remained firmly trapped under the grand piano’s heavy lid.

  Stick Cat wondered if Edith was asleep. He didn’t want to look just yet. He didn’t want to spark a conversation that might keep her awake a few minutes longer. So he waited for one minute.

  And then one minute more.

  Stick Cat was debating whether to wait one additional minute when he heard a very familiar sound.

  Edith was snoring.

  While she slept, Stick Cat began to devise his own plan to get across the alley to save Mr. Music. After allowing Edith to sleep for five minutes, Stick Cat tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Edith, time to wake up.”

  She woke right up, refreshed from her nap. She stretched, looked around, and asked,

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Stick Cat. “Maybe an hour or so.”

  Edith licked her paws, ensuring that each strand of fur was again properly aligned. When she was done, she asked, “Did you fly across the alley hanging on to a pigeon?”

  “No,” answered Stick Cat slowly. “A few pigeons came really close, but not close enough to jump. But I don’t think we have any more time to wait. We really have to get over there and help Mr. Music.”

  “It’s just a darn shame we can’t use such an excellent plan,” Edith said.

  “You’re right about that,” Stick Cat said. “But I think I may have come up with another idea.”

  “Is it a good idea?” Edith asked.

  “It’s okay, I guess.”

  “Is it as good as jumping off the ledge, grabbing two pigeons by the feet, and flying across the alley?”

  Stick Cat shook his head as sincerely as he could. “No, no. It’s not as good as that. Not even close.”

  “Well, what is it then?”

  “I’ll tell you, but first I have to ask you one question,” Stick Cat said, and glanced past Edith along the outside of their building. “How do you look in yellow?”

  “How do I look in yellow?” Edith repeated. “What kind of question is that? I mean, I suppose I’d look very good in yellow. But it’s such an odd question.”

  “Why?” Stick Cat asked.

  “Well, because I’m sure I’d look good in any color, that’s why,” Edith explained. She then puffed out her chest a bit and took a quick accounting of her appearance. After several seconds and a couple of primping licks, she added, “Yes, for someone like me, the color really makes no difference.”

  “Good,” said Stick Cat. “Because we’re going to play dress-up.”

  “With human clothes?” asked Edith. She began to get excited. You could tell she thought this idea might be fun. “With Goose’s clothes? We tried that once before, remember? But we never got to the actual dressing-up part. Why was that?”

  Stick Cat remembered. “His socks were all rolled up into balls,” he recollected. “And we just ended up batting them back and forth for a few hours.”

  “We did?”

  “We’re cats.” Stick Cat shrugged. “We couldn’t help ourselves.”

  This made perfectly good sense to Edith, who nodded and then asked, “So, we’re using Goose’s clothes but avoiding the sock drawer?”

  Stick Cat shook his head.

  “What are we going to dress up in then?”

  “That,” Stick Cat said, and pointed past Edith toward Mrs. O’Mahoney’s window next door. The clothesline was attached to the brick wall near the window with a strong metal clip.

  Two things—a bag of wooden clothespins and a yellow apron—were tied to the line. Mrs. O’Mahoney pulled the apron in whenever she baked bread or biscuits and put it back out when she was done. She liked to let the breeze blow the powdery flour off it. And Stick Cat liked to watch the little puffs of white flour escape into the wind.

  “Yuck,” Edith said immediately. “I’m not wearing that thing. It’s too old-fashioned. I have a more modern sense of style than that.”

  Now, you’ve probably already guessed what Stick Cat’s plan is all about. He and Edith would climb into the pocket of that apron hanging on his neighbor’s line. Then they would move across the narrow alley by pulling on the opposite line. He had seen Mrs. O’Mahoney put out and take in laundry hundreds of times, and he was certain he knew how the clothesline worked.

  The problem was, he didn’t think he could convince Edith to do it. That’s where the whole playing-dress-up idea came from. He thought she might enjoy dressing up enough that she wouldn’t notice they were traversing their way across the alley twenty-three floors above street level.

  But apparently that wasn’t going to work, Stick Cat now knew.

  “It’s way too big for me anyway, Stick Cat,” Edith said. Then she turned to him quickly and tilted her head slightly. “You don’t think I’m fat, do you?”

  Stick Cat knew this was dangerous territory to tread. Quickly, he said, “Of course not! In fact, I was about to ask if you’ve been working out. You look so healthy and trim lately.”

  This eased Edith’s mood immediately. “Well, maybe I have, and maybe I haven’t,” she said coyly. “That’s just for me to know and you to find out.”

  Having averted the do-you-think-I’m-fat crisis, Stick Cat tried a different approach.

  “My plan isn’t really about playing dress-up anyway,” he said. “We were just going to ride across that clothesline in that yellow apron’s pocket.”

  “Ride over in the pocket?!”

  “Yes.”

  “Twenty-three floors above the street!?”

  “Yes,” Stick Cat said slowly. He was already pondering an alternative way for them to get over to help Mr. Music.

  And as he was thinking, Edith said, “That sounds like a blast! Let’s do it!”

  And with tha
t, Edith did the most confounded and amazing thing Stick Cat had ever seen.

  She jumped.

  Chapter 8

  “GET YOUR TAIL OVER HERE”

  Before Stick Cat could say or do anything, Edith had landed on Mrs. O’Mahoney’s window ledge. She had simply, and without hesitation, pivoted on her paws when she was on Stick Cat’s window ledge and leaped the four or five feet to the ledge next door.

  “Are you crazy?!” Stick Cat yelled. He was truly astonished at what he had just witnessed. “You did that without even thinking about it!”

  “Did what?” asked Edith casually.

  “You jumped across to my neighbor’s window ledge!” he yelled. And then, as if to explain things further, he added, “We’re twenty-three floors up!”

  Edith checked her reflection in Mrs. O’Mahoney’s kitchen window. After a few seconds, she looked away from the window and back toward Stick Cat. She seemed satisfied with her appearance. “And what’s your point?”

  “My point!?” exclaimed Stick Cat. “Well, my point is, it’s extremely dangerous. That’s my point!”

  “It’s dangerous?”

  Stick Cat shook his head—more to himself out of sheer amazement than anything else. He looked over to Edith on the next ledge and said, “Let me ask you something. Would you jump off a bridge if all your friends were doing it?”

  “You bet I would!” Edith answered without pausing for a solitary moment. “That sounds like fun!”

  “You would?!”

  “Absolutely!”

  “But—” and then Stick Cat stopped talking.

  This gave Edith a chance to ask a couple of questions herself. “When do we go? Where’s the bridge? Is it far from here?”

  Stick Cat looked across the alley toward Mr. Music. He had to get over to his neighbor’s ledge, ride across the alley in the apron with Edith, and then figure out how to get Mr. Music untrapped from that piano.