Children of Bast (8 page)

“Dunno. Just know it’s special,” He grinned.

“Yeah, well, Chubby almost split a gut when he heard it, and Treise almost crushed her kiths when she guffawed,” I said.

Adele asked, “Hey, Chad, how do you know all this stuff about names and all?”

“I listened to bašar for hours. Mine were smart ones that loved amai and learned all about us. They’d actually talk to us about us, and I’d listen.” He looked at Adele. “What’d you do, pretty amait? Eat, groom yourself, sleep and use the litter box?”

“I may hurt you real bad in a minute.” She menaced him with an evil stare and a playful hiss.

“By the way, Chad, why’d you cut out if you had it so good?” I said.

“Kids grew up and didn’t play as much. Got so everybody ignored me a lot. I got bored, felt trapped, so I split.”

“I know a lot about that.”

Without warning, Chad dove into the fountain and swam away. “You’ll have to come in a get me, Adele.”

“Drown, you crazy amait.” Adele laughed. “Catch you later, Chad. Behave.”

“Never!” He dove under the water and disappeared.

“Okay, how weird is that?” Adele asked.

“Very weird, but, you know, it sure looks tempting.”

“You’re beginning to worry me, Gaylord. Let’s find some food.” She darted off toward our alley with me scurrying after.

A dumpster provided us with some kind of meat all covered with salty gunk that I didn’t like, but Adele lapped it up like water. After eating and washing, we crumpled down in the shadow of the dumpster and talked

Chapter 7

Cats speak a subtle language in which few sounds carry many meanings, depending on how they are sung or purred. “Mnrhnh” means comfortable soft chairs. It also means fish. It means genial companionship . . .and the absence of dogs.
Val Schaffner

“So
, Gaylord, what are your plans?”

“I don’t have any plans. I like it out here a lot, but maybe that’s because I’m with you.”

“Don’t go sloppy on me, now. Of course you like it out here with me. Even I like it out here with me. But I won’t always be here.”

I stopped bathing and looked at her. “Where you going? What are you talking about?”

“Don’t get hair ball. I’m just saying that you never know. I might decide to leave and go somewhere else, or I might wind up flattened by a car or something. Happens all the time. You got to be able to take care of yourself, Gaylord. First and foremost, you got to take care of you.” She pushed me with her nose.

I must have looked stunned because she smiled and we nuzzled.

“I know you’re right,” I said. “I just never thought of you not being here. I mean, I don’t own you, but I never . . .” I walked into the park that surrounded the fountain and sprawled under a bush, whipping my tail. Adele followed.

“Hey, take it easy. Nothing’s gonna happen right away.” It’s that I’ve been here for a while and I know what to expect. An amait’s life ain’t easy out here, you know.”

“I might just go home.”

She flinched away and growled. “You idiot. Gaylord, that’s madness.” She stopped and sighed. “Look, if I promise to do all I can to stick around, will you promise not to go back to that awful trap? I was kidding about going to the cemetery.”

I kissed her. “Seminary. Okay, I promise.”

“Yeah, well, you haven’t had the pleasure of seeing me through my time of the month. You’ll probably want to leave then for sure.”

“Time of the month?”

“Come on Gaylord. How naïve can you be. I already told you when I come into my heat, I’d mate with a Rottweiler if he wouldn’t eat me after.”

“Oh, that.” It occurred to me that I was a kith, out here running around with amai way older’n me, especially Adele and Chubby. “You get really bad, huh?”

“Like I said, if I tell you to scram, do it. Do not think about it, do it. Run like hell and wait for me to find you. Go to Chubby. He’ll know what to do.”

“After he gets finished laughing himself to death.”

“That too, but I’m not kidding.” Standing up she pushed a paw under my chin and flipped my head back. “Take me seriously, Gaylord. I cannot be responsible if you don’t”

“Okay, okay.”

Again, I was ticked off because she made such a big deal out me being so clueless and dense. I couldn’t help it if I’d been in an apartment all my life with only my maama and sister to talk to. Talking to them was like talking with a chew toy; they walked around and purred, but that was about all. Then, I wondered, how come they didn’t go nuts, too. So I asked her.

“They were probably fixed.”

“Oh. I never thought of that.”

She sighed and gave me an I-pity-you look. “I hate to break it to you, Gaylord, but toms are of limited use.”

~ ~ ~ ~

We smelled them before they jumped us. Thain, like sack of khara tossed from the dumpster, pounced on us growling, yellow eyes blazing, faraawi blown up like a thistle, mouth open ready for combat. Raeed was a dark cloud that fell on us like a bucket of vomit, his face warped with rage.

Adele instantly swelled and geared up for a fight. I swelled up, too, but didn’t have a clue what I should do next. So, I bared my teeth and hissed.

“Told you I’d be back,” Thain screamed.

Adele screamed back, “Yeah, you pile of puke, with Raeed to do your fighting. Why don’t you try me yourself? I’ll be the very last thing you try.”

Raeed, his eyes like headlights and muscles that rippled over his entire scared body, lashed his thin tail and laughed like a demented kilaab. He yelled at us both but focused on Adele. “What fun would that be for me? I gonna rip you to little pieces, Adele, and throw ‘em all over town. Little piece of Adele here, nuther piece there, and one for me and one for Thain.” He cackled and screamed. “Wait! We ain’t gonna have no room for Adele’s little pieces. I forgot. Cuz, Thain and me gonna eat your mouse hearted friend, here. Right Thain?”

“You betcha.” He glared at me. “He looks so nice and sweet and fat, hey, like the spoiled house amait he is.”

For the first time in my short life, I felt deep hatred for something, but I was so scared I shook.

Raeed sat down and grinned at Adele. She strolled toward him, grinning, also, but she never took her eyes of him. She sat down right in front of him and touched her nose to his. Raeed stopped grinning and watched her. Like a flash of lightning, she grabbed his muzzle up to his eyes and—I do not to this day know how she did it, Chubby—flipped that sack of garbage over and back-clawed his throat until I thought she was going to rip it open. Thain froze and gawked. His mouth clamped, Raeed couldn’t make a sound. He gurgled like he was choked. Finally, he managed to wrench his face out of her grip and ran, instantly becoming a dot in the distance. I caught a glimpse of his face when he whizzed by me, and it resembled a mass of bloody worms, and his throat was bleeding. She turned on Thain. He disappeared as quick as the lightning’s flash.

Adele looked at me and smiled, then sat and very calmly washed her face. “That’s how you do it, My Love, if you want to survive out here.”

I was so stunned I had no voice.

~ ~ ~ ~

“Chubby, you know I’ve become a rather good fighter since I’ve been out here, but Adele was terrifying.”

“No amait in his right mind ever wanted to tangle with Adele, I assure you.” Chubby looked off a moment watching memories. “I taught her, Gaylord. I taught her that trick: be calm, take things easy, and then attack fast and without mercy. You know that now, of course, but Adele, remember, was once as green as you were. So, I became her fight trainer, and from what you saw, she was a very good student.”

“That’s for sure. Never on my best day would I contend with her. You did an excellent job, Old Teacher.

Chubby grinned and looked at me. “Let’s get something to eat.”

“Fine with me. Where to this time? Back to Smokey’s or the mollie bašar?”

“Neither. I’ll take you to a bašar food store and we’ll hang around the back. There’s a bašar named Clyde who loves amai and gives us fresh fish. Ever eat fresh fish?” I shook my head. “Sweet like sugar. Nothing like it.”

Clyde was there, we got fresh fish and Chubby was right: almost too sweet but so delicious. We napped for a while when we got back to the shack. When End of Light came, I continued my story.

~ ~ ~ ~

For the next few days I thought a lot about what Adele had said concerning taking care of myself first, especially after the fight with Raeed and Thain. Caring for myself had never been a problem because I was fed regularly, slept anytime and anywhere I wanted, got brushed and pampered. I was a house amait, a pet.

But I always had the urge to be something more. Talking to my maama never helped; she was either passed out from drinking too much nibiit or just not interested. So I dreamed. I pretended to be a sleek jungle amait stalking prey. Ned and Harriet watched TV shows that showed our magnificent cousins in jungles running down animals, killing them and eating them. I wanted to be a lion or tiger.

Sometimes I’d act like a clown, jumping around with my tail arched and my faraawi puffed out in mock attack. I’d charge Ned or Harriet in the hallway and go after them sideways, then dart away in a flash when they tried to get me. Honestly, I didn’t know what I wanted to be, but I knew I wanted to be something more than I was. Escaping gave me opportunity, but I was totally stupid about how to do it. I didn’t have goals, just dreams.

Wanting to do something was okay, but you have to take steps to do it. I couldn’t lay around waiting for it, whatever it was, to come to me or have it brought to me by someone else. But that’s how I’d lived, spoiled rotten. I wasn’t an amait. I was some idea of an amait that Ned and Harriet wanted me to be.

The worst thing was, I began to see myself as they saw me: soft, flabby, compliant and docile, like my maama and sister. After Adele said they might be fixed, I shuddered to think that I could have been fixed, too. I needed a goal. I needed to make a decision about my future and stick to it, no matter what. From what I learned about lions and tigers on TV, to be a real amait was to be a killer.

~ ~ ~ ~

I looked at Chubby. “Following you and Adele around wasn’t any good because all you guys were teaching me was how to scrounge. You don’t kill to eat; you nose around in garbage until you find something prepared.”

Chubby bristled. “Hey, when you get to be my age, hunting’s not easy. I get food where I can and the easiest way. Why do it the hard way, especially when you don’t have much energy?” He looked away from me and I could tell he was angry with where I was taking this.

“You’re like a house amait depending on bašar for survival.”

“Wait just a minute, Whippersnapper. I depend on me, Chubby, the aged patriarch of this clowder. I will never be a pet, getting handouts, even though it might be cushy. You’re still captured in your mind.”

“Yeah, you’re right, Chubby. That lonely mollie bašar whose food you gobble like a kilaab is nothing, right? Huh? What did you say? Can’t hear you.” I laughed but saw Chubby rise and start to puff up, and eye me with that cold stare he was famous for.

“Settle down Chubby. I saw you gobble it down. I gobbled it, too. What it says is, we too often convince ourselves to depend on bašar for everything we need, even here on the street. They’re push-overs and we know it, and we use them, and lose what we are, amai, born hunters and killers.”

“You’re carrying this too far,” He began to pace. “I don’t depend on it, okay? I can still hunt. I’m a damned good hunter. Ask anyone here. Chubby can take a mouse or rat like it was struck by lightning. But why? It’s right here for the taking. Doesn’t make me weak. Just makes me . . . lazy, okay?”

“Chubby, I watched amai, including me and Adele, grubbing around in bašar garbage, and it makes me really sad. We’re built to kill, not crawl around in their leftovers, getting filthy and reeking from their slop. Our heads are like wedges to break through weeds and stuff with ease. We can flatten our bodies and slither like snakes toward prey; our teeth are little needles, and our raspy tongues can lap meat from bones like water. With eyes that see in the dark and with razor claws that renew themselves, we are made to hunt and kill.”

“Have it your way,” He laid down and became a ball of faraawi again, continued to stare at me. “All I’m saying, Gaylord, is if it’s right in front of you, why sweat? That’s all I’m going to say.” He licked his lips and made his eyes slits.”

“I said all this to Adele too.” He didn’t answer.

~ ~ ~ ~

“Gaylord, have you ever eaten a mouse?” Adele asked. “You’re right, we are made to hunt and kill, but when have you ever had to? Didn’t your maama tell that because we’re not wild anymore we don’t have to hunt? I don’t know how to hunt. My maama was taken from me just after she taught me how to clean myself; she never got to hunting. I don’t know if she knew how. But so what? Back to my original question, have you ever tasted a mouse?”

“No.”

“It’s disgusting. When I first hit the street, a sweet old mollie used to bring them to me, still wiggling and squealing. To practice killing, she told me. I was to kill them and eat them. I balked, so she killed them and opened them so I could eat. I puked each time, and all she did was laugh, and kill and bring me more mice.”