Catfantastic: Nine Lives and Fifteen Tales Part 9

Maybe it wouldn't even be good to eat. Nonetheless, it was in HIS territory, and HE was going to show it its mistake!

Besides, it might be fun to play with. Before he ate ita"or decided not to. Wart edged forward, as stealthily as he could. The thing stopped.

Wart froze, only the tip of his tail up and swishing impatiently.

Wart could hear his own heart pounding loudly, the "breathing" of the ship-monstera"and nothing else.

Beat beat.

Beat beat.

The scuttler moved on. Wart moved on.

The scuttler c.r.a.pped on WART's Wall! Wart leaped.

One slam of his paw sent the scuttler in one direction and its garbage, breaking up into tiny pieces, in another.

OoooWWWWWWWa"This time the bite was in his shoulder AND the paw he had smashed the c.r.a.p with. GrrrrrrrRRRRRRR! Wart launched and again the scuttler went spinning.

OooWWWWWWa" This bite was his leg, but Wart's feline pride was outraged. No paw-sized scuttler was going to foul HIS territory and send HIM running off, tail drooping!

The trouble was, he wasn't used to this funny flying. Cats hadn't the ability to fly, though they could leap. Wart soared and heard a funny buzz. Then he saw. The scuttler had jumped, too.

And come downa"WHERE WAS HE?

Wart sniffed and started to swing his head around. There was a bright light reflected off the walls, and it made him blink. Had he been facing it directly, or with his good eye, it would probably have blinded him momentarilya"or long enough. He whirled. There it came. He leaped, and this time his paw connected, but not a catch as he intended. The scuttler went flying, and landed with an odd crunch.

Wart stared, but it didn't move. He stalked closer, and almost fell. Between one step and the next, weighta"the humans could have told him he had crossed over into the art-grav sectiona"gripped him. As it had the scuttler. Hard. The scuttler had fallen from a considerable (to its smallness) height. It wasn't moving. Wart batted it against a wall, as hard as he could.

It bounced and then lay. Still. Very still.

Wart stalked grandly up, and gave it a small bat. Nothing.

A bigger bat. Nothing. No fun.

But maybea"he tugged a leg. Hard outside. The inside might be good enough, despite the smell. Ugh, it was tough. Wart struggled and worked, finally he got the trick of it. You gripped one leg between your teeth, and put your paw on the body and worked and worried until the leg came off. Or partly off.

YWEWWWWW! The inside stank even worse than the outside! He spat the end of the leg out of his mouth, and then spat again, just to get the remembrance of that awful STENCH out of his mouth.

Where the leg was half torn off the body leaked some sort of fluid. DISgusting. Awful. NASTY-stink. Wart automatically went through bury-it motions, kicking dirt over it.

Trouble was, there wasn't any dirt there. It still stank. Wart didn't even want to put it in the litter box. After all, HE had to use that.

But where could he get rid of the awful thing? Wart gave the body a kick, and it skittered down the corridor.

If only it didn't stink so, it might be fun to play with. He gave it another kick. It went farther.

Now his paws stank of it. Ugh. But maybea" He kept batting until he was opposite the sleeping room. In the sleeping room was a large potted planta Wart got the dead scuttler up against the pot. Checked in. Yep. Plenty of dirt there. The humans had spanked him enough to keep him from using the plant's dirt for his own toilet needs, but this was different. He leaped up onto the rim of the pot, dug a neat hole, leaped back down, carefully picked up the scuttler by a leg and made another leap. Dropped it in. Covered it back up. Tramped all around to pound the dirt back down.

Smelled his feet. Tramped some more, until good honest dirt smell replaced the awful stench.

Only when there was no smell left on his feet at all did he condescend to clean them, complaining and spitting, as even the memory of that smell lingered.

He hadn't quite finished cleaning his paws when he started feeling sick.

He ran for human-smell, feeling sicker and sicker. He just made it inside the door when the first surge came.

"What thea"" Human-tom turned around.

Wart spewed.

"Wart's throwing up," Human-tom announced the obvious, in tones of acute disgust.

"You overfeed him." Human-mommy was still concentrated on the funny window.

"He still looks like a kitten who needs to eata"I'll clean it up, you keep working on those translations."

"I may never have it any better than I do now." But Human-tom had gotten out of his chair, and was getting a sheet of paper out from the printer, and using it to clean up the worst of the mess.

Wart wanted to help bury it, but he felt dreadful. Human-tom walked out of the room with the paper full of Wart's upchuck, came back a minute or two later with a couple of wet disposables and a spray bottle. He finished getting up Wart's spew in the disposables, and then sprayed carefully over the whole area with the cleanser disinfectant.

Wart appreciated that. Somewhat. He didn't much like the smell Human-tom used, but he liked the sour smell of his own upchuck even less.

Then Human-tom put his cleaning equipment on a tabletop; and swooped on Wart and started out the room.

"What, Jerea"" Human-mommy asked.

"You keep working on those translations. I'm going to put our boy through the diagnos again."

"I told youa"" But he was gone.

Wart recognized the door to the diagnos, which he hated.

The less said about the next few minutes, the better. Human-tom was putting antiseptic on his scratches as he went back into the room where Human-mommy was. Wart stayed out in the corridor and glared. But he was still feeling too rotten to go too far away.

Grimalkin had come in during the altercation, and added her own sneers to his misery. Now she was back in Human-mommy's lap, but Wart felt too awful to be as much as slightly tempted by the swishing tail.

"Food-poisoning." Human-tom flopped into his own chair. "Odd. Maybe we did pick up an alien pest."

"I think I have all the translations." Human-mommy was paying no attention to Wart's misery or its possible causes.

"As soon as this is over, I'll run a deconna"" Then what Human-mommy had said sunk in, and Human-tom stood straight up. "Let's have them!"

"We'll never have the whole thing, but what I have boils down to this. A larger vessel, huge, used some sneaky new weapon they'd never encountered before, ambushed their ship; the fredesser managed toa"I think camouflage itself. Then another, smaller vessel attacked, only one of the crew was able to abandon ship. Destroyed it, I think. He intended to plant a smalla"it comes out as fusion-startera"maybe that's what they use on planets, too, I don't knowa"anyway, he was going to plant that, only it was a portable, all he could carry, and it had to be close to the ship's own reactor to do the job. The last transmission says he'd actually planted or was about to plant the fusion-starter, and he ran into the smaller vessel again. His weapons were limited, but he planned to use a broad-beam laser to burn out their visors, and thena"I haven't heard any more."

"And nothing on our screens." It wasn't a question.

"Zip."

Wart decided it was time he made a pathetic little moan.

"We'll never know how it came out," Human-tom sighed.

"Unless we run into either the scout or the armada it was probably working for or the human (if they are human) vessels. Or hear about them later when they come in and report."

"Them's the breaks," Human-tom said. "If the fredesser manages to plant his little bomb, we'll never hear, they'll never make it."

Wart, hunkered down and miserable, made another, slightly more plaintive (but imperative) moan.

"Poor little man." Human-tom made a gesture, but Wart didn't see it. "Oh, poor kid. I forgot. That's your blind side, isn't it. Herea"" Human-tom stood up, walked over, and gently picked up Wart, petting him softly, while grumbling under his breath, "My own people. Not saying a word about two colored eyes and what they mean in some breeds. Blind in one eye. My own people. N'mind, Wart, little buddy. You're home with us now. We'll take care of you. Anda"" grin in his voice, "a"we'll let you take care of us."

He sat, Wart on his lap.

"I wish we knew," Human-mommy said softly. Wart purred as Human-tom patted him. He knew he had saved his own small universe once again; and the next time a sc.r.a.p of paper, a dust bunny, a pest, or anything else threatened, he would be there.

"How much simpler to be Wart, eh," Human-tom said, with a small laugh. "Not to have to worry about berserker killers like fredessers."

Human-mommy laughed, too, and gave Grimalkin a pat. "Oh, I imagine feline folk have their own problems," she said.

Wart burped, and went to sleep. Grimalkin, the only other being in the room with a good enough sense of smell to catch the awful-tang sneered. Neither of the humans could smell something that faint.

But neither of them could have recognized very diluted fredesser anyway.

Just as Human-tom thought the tiny fragments of the fusion starter were only bits of dirt tracked about by the cats when he swept it up a few ship-days later. (Luckily the only radioactive part was encased in shielding until it was activated.) Evil things can sometimes come in amazingly small packages.

But as Wart, patrolling the ship, could have said, good things come in small packages, too.

Even runt-small packages. Even Warts.

Yellow Eyes.

by Marylois Dunn.

Cat entered the castle through the cat door built into the wall near the kitchen. The dogs also used the door a as did an a.s.sortment of mice, when there were no cats pa.s.sing through. Scenting the various pa.s.sers-through as he entered, Cat thought to himself that it would be better for the entire castle had they made the opening too small for the great hounds. A few cats in the house would have kept the varmint population to nothing. With the dogs coming and going, bringing their fleas and their filth and their aging bones with them, there was no way to control the intruders.

He turned into the kitchen and sat under a table waiting for a handout. The cooks were like the dogs. They came and went. He did not know why or where and, frankly, did not care. There were usually one or two who would toss something under the table for him. Occasionally, he found a cook who would take time to discover his preferences, but at the present time, he did well to get a biscuit that was not too tough to chew.

The alternative was to make his way to the top turret of the castle where the white cat ruled. She had cream for dinner every night. She had the best of the meat, liver, kidneys, and sweetbreads, chopped fine or sometimes lightly braised with b.u.t.ter. Other times, raw. Always tasty.

The white cat was fond of him and generous. It rather hurt his pride, though, to make his way up those long stairs too often. He did not like to seem a beggar.

Of course, he could always hunt, but rats and mice were such filthy things. More often than not, those which lived in the castle lived with or near the dogs and smelled like dogs. When he hunted, he went outside the walls of the keep where there were rabbits, and fat, sweet field mice.

Today, however, the weather had turned foul; cold and wet and his rabbit hunting had gone sour. He came into the castle grumbling to himself and stopped off in the kitchen to see what might be offered. While he waited to be noticed, he attended to his toilet. He began at his shoulders and worked his way down, tonguing carefully until he had all four paws clean and was nearing the tip of his tail. He did this by turning himself almost double and putting one forepaw on his tail to hold it in place while he licked.

An armored warrior came clanking into the kitchen, accompanied by four hounds who slavered and shook water all over the floor. They acknowledged Cat's presence but did not attempt to come under the table where he sat. None of them were fools.

One small female lay down beside the table, watching Cat with her yellow eyes. Have they fed you? she asked.

Not yet, Cat replied. How was your hunting?

The hound picked at the burrs between her toes with her small front teeth. Not very goad, she said. When the rain began, it was hard to pick up a scent. Some of those stupid males went off after a wee little bunny. I knew it was useless, and I had a better trail. For which, I caught a lash across my flanks. If he were not the master, I would think him as stupid as those males.

What were you hunting?

Deer is what he said we were after. We came across some old tracks but nothing fresh. We have hunted too much too close to the castle. The game moves out. We should as well.

I would have settled for a wee rabbit, Cat said.

The yellow eyes looked at him mildly. Come with me sometime. I will chase one your way.

Cat did not answer but thought he would have to be starving to hunt with a hound.

The hound opened her mouth and panted with her tongue curled upward. Cat knew she was laughing at him.

A scullery maid trotted past, kicked at the hound and said "Ho, there, Cat. Is that hound pestering you?" She gave the hound another boot and Cat saw it disappear into the great hall after the others. Strange, he thought. The hounds usually do not acknowledge more than my presence. This one seems almost feline. She does not look like the others either. Smaller. Lighter color. Leaner. Yellow eyes. Cat's eyes. Strange.

Then he did not have time to think about the hound. The scullery maid had brought a saucer of fresh milk and some tidbits of meat. They were cutting the roasted haunch for the dinner table and she had sneaked a few sc.r.a.ps for Cat's supper.

After he had eaten and washed his whiskers, Cat made his way into the great hall where a fire burned fiercely on the large hearth. The sun was down and there was no light coming through the windows, but Cat leaped up on his favorite resting place anyway. Enough heat from the fire came across the room to keep him comfortable on the window ledge. He enjoyed curling on his pillow, paws tucked under his chest, watching the proceedings in the room from slitted eyes. No one noticed him there. He was as much a fixture as the window itself.

The warrior, who ruled under the woman, was speaking. "There is something abroad these nights that I do not like. Have you not felt it, Claire?"

"I feel the winter's approach. Nothing more."

"Perhaps you should light your herbal fires and consult your crystals. Something is abroad. I feel it. The hounds feel it. Something unnatural."

The woman laughed. "Unnatural? What seems unnatural to you, Ruger?"

"The game has all left the vicinity. The dogs feel it. They do not turn their noses after the harts because there are none to find. If I do not take a party out to find what is creating this disturbance, we may eat rabbit for the rest of the winter. It is not a prospect I relish."

"Nor I, my dear. I should have known it was your stomach which was disturbed. The weather is terrible right now. Allow me to consult my resources. Rest yourself and your men until the weather clears, and perhaps, by then I will be able to tell you what you are looking for."

He took her hand and kissed it lightly.

There were many people in the room; listening to the conversation between the master and mistress had kept most of them silent. When it was done, the chatter and laughter began again. Knights seeking ladies. Knights entertaining each other with lies of valorous deeds. Cat wondered what one of them would do if he actually saw a live dragon. His whiskers flattened against his cheeks in amus.e.m.e.nt.

A moist nose came over the window sill and touched his own nose. Cat opened his eyes and sat up quickly. Oh, he said, seeing the yellow-eyed hound looking up at him. What do you want?

That looks like a good place to watch without being noticed. Is there room enough for me?

Certainly not. The ledge is little wider than I am. In fact, Cat craned his neck and studied the hound's size, I doubt you could fit up here alone.