Cats on the Run Read online

  The corridor was long and had no describable features that I haven’t mentioned already. Blue carpet, fusty smell—you get the picture. It did have lots of doors leading off it, each to a different apartment, each with a different number, but these were of such a boring and bare beige I can barely bear to bring it up. The only exception was a large pair of steel double doors at the very far end of the corridor. Ginger was worried she was going to go into the corridor and not be able to get back in again. But, as stated, she was a brave-cat, and so she pushed herself forward until she heard a familiar and annoying voice behind her.

  ‘What are you doing? Where are you going? Can I come?’

  It was Tuck. He was sitting in the doorway to the apartment, licking his lips free of fly crumbs and staring out at her.

  Now, unlike Ginger, Tuck had never dreamt of actually stepping outside the apartment, not even when he found the door open that morning. You see, compared to the cage he’d grown up in, the apartment was a huge and exciting world. It even had a forbidden area (the secret-upstairs-locked room) and several places he imagined only he knew about. The back of the drawers in the spare room, for example, or underneath the sideboard. The corridor might as well have been a different planet. But then again, if Ginger was going out there, he was pretty sure he wanted to go too. Heavens, if he didn’t follow her out, she might think she was better than him.

  ‘Where you going?’ Tuck miaowed again.

  ‘Ssh!’ Ginger hissed back at him. ‘Go upstairs. Climb on the double bed and keep it warm for me.’

  Well! Now Tuck was certain he wanted to visit the corridor, for Ginger would never normally encourage him onto the bed. She was obviously up to something. So he trotted out after her, tail in the air like he just didn’t care, and caught up with her at the fourth apartment door. There were only three more to pass before they’d both be at the shiny double doors at the end of the corridor.

  ‘Ooh,’ said Tuck, pointing at the shiny doors. ‘What are those?’

  Now, Ginger was a pretty smart cat as you might have guessed. This was why the Burringos had got her, after all. But she also had a sharp tongue, and unfortunately for her, this sharp tongue sometimes acted before her brain did.

  ‘It’s a rocket ship. You go to the moon in it. What do you think it is, you moron? It’s a lift.’

  ‘The moon!’ said Tuck, his eyes flashing green as they picked up the reflection of an old curry stain in the carpet. ‘I want to go to the moon!’

  ‘I was joking,’ said Ginger, who despite having four legs still couldn’t actually kick herself. ‘It’s a lift, it’s dangerous, and it’s full of vacuum cleaners.’

  Tuck looked unconvinced, but just then the two of them heard a strange rumbling noise from behind the silver doors.

  ‘Oh my goodness!’ said Ginger. ‘Let’s go. Here come the vacuum cleaners!’

  Tuck was halfway back to the apartment door before he noticed Ginger wasn’t running that way too. He turned round and what did he see? Ginger had actually run the other way, towards the silver doors. And now he could see her sitting just to the right of them as they opened and an elderly female human emerged, hobbling into the corridor. Then, as he watched in amazement, Ginger slunk into the empty lift. Now, normally Tuck would have been terrified by all of this because he was in general terrified of everything. But today as the old lady got closer, he found his fear was completely cancelled out by his fury that Ginger had tricked him. He’d been right to look unconvinced when she’d talked about the vacuum cleaners! Now she was going to the moon, and she was going to have as much mushroom sauce as she wanted, and she wasn’t going to take him with her! Where do bogies go to have fun? Snot fair!

  ‘Nooooo!’ Tuck yelled as he ran at his almost absolute fastest the full length of the corridor.

  Have I mentioned what an amazing and beautiful athlete Tuck is? Boy, can he move when he puts his mind to it. This is why he was brave enough to fight Ginger, because he always knew he could outrun her if she ever got the upper paw (which she always did). But he’d never run faster than he did now. Later in the story he does, he runs plenty faster, believe you me, but for now this was the fastest he’d ever run. The little old lady barely had time to say, ‘What a sweet little—’ before Tuck had passed between her hundred-year-old ankles. Apartment doors flew by in a ballistic blur of bland and boring beige as he bombed along the corridor, the wind in his ears and his cheeks flapping from the G-force.

  Ginger heard him coming. ‘Oh no,’ she thought. She’d planned on waiting for the doors of the elevator to close automatically, so she could float down to the ground floor sedately like a lady. Now she jumped up as high as she could to try to press the G button or any button to get the lift doors to close as quickly as possible.

  Damn these six bellies, she thought.

  In her heyday she could knock a milk bottle off a high shelf. Now she barely made it to the lowest button. At last she gave a mighty, huge, slow-motion jump with special-effects sounds (wacker tacker tacker tacker tacker) and head-butted the >|< button to close the doors. They started closing slowly.

  But Ginger had taken too long and Tuck was too fast. He bounded between the closing doors in an even slower-motion dive than Ginger had managed. Can you imagine the background music to that? Then he landed right on top of Ginger so that they rolled in a black-and-ginger ball into the corner of the lift.

  ‘No!’ said Ginger. ‘No, no, no!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tuck. ‘Yes, yes, yes! We’re going to the moon, mushroom moon, mushmoon sauce wheee!’

  Then he said, ‘Are we there yet?’

  This might be a good time to tell you why the Burringos got themselves two cats in the first place. I mean, nothing much happens to Tuck and Ginger for the next couple of hours. They just sit and wait for a long, long time to travel to the ground floor slash moon. Every so often Tuck asks how much longer it will take to get there, but apart from that they just take turns peeing in the corner. Very dull. Unless you’re really into watching cats wee in corners, in which case … Oh, never mind. I may as well just tell you how Tuck and Ginger ended up with the evil, child-grilling Burringos in the first place.

  It was Janice Burringo’s idea. You see, as you may or may not know, witches generally own very clever black cats. Like anything else, these come in all shapes and sizes. For the really rich witch who works hard at school and saves lots of money the absolute crème de la crème of cats is a pure black Purrari. These are famously hard to come by and, as the laws of supply and demand dictate, are extremely expensive. If you and your brothers and sisters and all your cousins and everyone you know saved up all their pocket money for the rest of their lives, you still could never afford one. That’s how expensive they are. But unfortunately, Janice Burringo had expensive tastes. She liked fancy dresses and good restaurants, crystal glasses, and silky undies. If this was a fairy story, she’d be a confusing character because she would be both a witch and a princess. But this is not a fairy story. It’s a gritty tale of life on the streets, and Janice was all witch and a greedy one at that. Oh, how she wanted a black Purrari.

  When Janice first met Rodney Burringo, back in the days when she was plain Janice Phaniss, she thought he would be the man to give her everything she wanted in life. She was one of those misguided people who think you should marry someone for reasons other than love. Rodney, she thought, had potential. So she ditched her then-boyfriend, Richard Branson, and took up instead with Rodney Burringo, who looked like he was made for money. Well, can you guess what happened?

  That’s right! Rodney was not made for money. Rodney was far too sensible for that. A couple of years after they were married, Rodney realised that making money (which he could do only by staying indoors and slaving all night over a smelly, steaming cauldron) was not half as much fun as leaving dog poo in awkward places on pavements. And what was the point of making money if it stopped him doing the things he loved? So Rodney spent as little time as possible with the smelly cauldro
n and as much time as possible with the dog poo. It’s an interesting choice, I know, but hey, it takes all sorts.

  Now, you might be wondering what all this has to do with Tuck and Ginger. But hang in there—it has everything to do with them. You see, Janice’s major downfall in life was a rare condition known in the medical profession as Being a Completely Lazy Slob. And Janice was the laziest lazy slob you can imagine. It’s why she was, like all truly evil people, so stick thin. She might have been a bit curvier, but, you see, she was too blooming lazy to chase children for more than the first hundred metres or so. After that she’d give up and bite her nails instead and watch the poor little mites run screaming into the distance. And she certainly wasn’t going to put all that effort in over a smelly, steaming cauldron to cook up an alternative. Oh big bogies no. She and Rodney ate children less than they did beans on toast or soup out of a can or sometimes cat food because (a) it was in the house anyway and (b) it’s so easy to prepare.

  Let this be a lesson to you folks. Laziness is the most terrible, horrible thing in the world. It sucks you dry and leaves you dissatisfied. And that’s what Janice was. Dissatisfied. Oh, how she wanted things to be different. She wanted to live in a house, not an apartment. She wanted fancy dresses. She wanted lots of things. But she was too lazy to do anything but complain.

  As for Rodney, he was fine. He loved his life, but what was he to do? Make himself unhappy just to keep his lazy, greedy partner satisfied? Many otherwise normal people would do that, but was Rodney an otherwise normal person? He was not. He was a witch! Any part of that unclear?

  Right then: cats. This was Janice Burringo’s idea. Clearly, she and Rodney were never going to be able to afford a Purrari, so maybe, she thought, maybe they could magic themselves one.

  ‘All we need,’ she said to Rodney one night from the sofa, where she was eating chips and watching cartoons, ‘is two cats. One pure black but not very clever and therefore quite cheap. And one really smart one—a ginger, for example. Then we’ll just find a really good spell on Spookle and combine them.’

  ‘What if we end up with a stupid ginger one?’ said Rodney, who like most annoyingly sensible people was always aware of the potential risks in any situation. Janice tutted and threw a chip at him.

  ‘Oh, Rodney Bodney, bidgey pidgey boo, pwease can we try it?’ she said.

  Now, if anyone spoke to you or me like that, we’d probably be sick in a bucket, especially if that person was warty, skinny Janice Burringo. But Rodney found this silliness irresistible. You see, even though Janice no longer loved him, Rodney thought Janice was the bee’s knees. Coincidentally, one of her grandmothers had been a bee, and another one had been a knee, not that this has any bearing on this story, but it’s interesting, isn’t it? No? Oh, suit yourself. The point is. Rodney loved Janice very, very much.

  ‘Go on then,’ he said, secretly hoping Janice would forget all about the stupid idea of combining cats. But Janice didn’t forget all about it. In fact, she did the opposite and started telling everyone that Rodney was going to buy her a Purrari for her birthday. What a silly witch she was.

  Eventually, after about six months of this and a bit more pleading and a few stand-up fights, Rodney realised he’d better pull his finger out and actually do something about getting two cats. One stupid, just like Janice had said, and another very smart one. He’d heard about the dog refugee camp, so eventually, when Janice had reminded him of how much he loved her, he caught a taxi down there. Tuck was an easy choice—he was the purest, blackest cat in the whole camp and quite obviously a sandwich short of a picnic.

  And how did Rodney find Ginger? Ginger was driving the taxi. Rodney tempted her up to the apartment with the promise of a good tip, a saucer of cream, and a little tummy-rubbing action, and he never let her go again. Oh, what a foul and cruel kidnapping! Even more cruel than you can now imagine, but read on and you’ll understand. It was cataclysmic and categorically catastrophic, and to top it off, to this day the taxi company are after Ginger for stealing one of their vehicles.

  Anyhoo, so there’s Rodney with the two most perfect cats for Janice’s big idea, but could he find a spell on Spookle to merge them into her perfect cat? Could he buffalo! He even asked Janice for help, and she too searched for almost a whole hour before giving up and turning on a late-night soap instead. Still, Rodney didn’t give up. After all, he loved Janice and really wanted to make her happy. Also he had vague feelings of status anxiety for not being richer, and he thought having a Purrari might help with these. So he searched and searched. He wrote into What’s On Spelly? magazine and ordered a few back issues of Witch! to see if he could get any ideas, but there was nothing. He found an online forum where someone suggested that there might be something in the Hell o’ Pages, but that book had been out of print for years. Apart from that, there was apparently no spell for merging two cats into one.

  So, as is the way with lazy people, Janice let the idea of the cat-merging spell drift onto the long, long list of things she would one day get around to doing like knitting, swimming on a Sunday morning, running, reading War and Peace. She did none of them and resigned herself to the lazy fact that Ginger and Tuck would remain as two separate and very different cats, who in the meantime needed feeding. That was until … Oh no, I’ll tell you that in a bit. For now, let’s see what our pussycat heroes are up to.

  OH LOOK, ANOTHER BIT!

  Well, as I said, Ginger and Tuck, Tuck and Ginger (got to be fair here) sat in the elevator for hours, waiting for someone to press a button and bring it to the ground floor. You might have thought that in an apartment block of forty-four floors there would always be someone going up or down. But if you had thought that you’d have been wrongedy-wrong, ding dang dong. It was three hours before someone came along and called the lift. When they did, though, well, can you imagine the excitement for Ginger of going down in the lift? For Tuck of going up in the rocket ship? Different but equal, like so many things in life. Don’t worry, I’m not going to drag this out. Movement, noise, excitement, doors opening, lobby, doors to the street, blah, blah, blah. Let’s get on with the next scene, shall we?

  Basically, the lift was called to the ground floor of the apartment building, and then—ding—it opened. Well, Ginger wasn’t going to take any risks. As soon as the lift doors slid apart, she bolted out, ran between the legs of the fat man waiting for the lift and bolted for the street. As you can imagine, Tuck was not about to get left behind. No matter how much he wanted to go to the moon, he was still a scaredy-cat, after all. Besides, he was worried Ginger might lick up all the mushroom sauce before he could get any. It was easy for him to keep up with Ginger. He was an athlete, after all, and sooner than you can say, ‘Oh look, two sweet pussycats running across the foyer of a large apartment building’, they were outside. Out in the real world at last. Except of course Tuck thought it was the moon.

  Ginger breathed in the air of the city street. She’d forgotten how... well, not to put too fine a point on it, she’d forgotten how smelly it smelled. Exhaust fumes, rubbish bins, hundreds of people farting and burping along the street. Yummy yummy YUMMY! The Burringos had a very good cleaner (when she wasn’t leaving doors open), and their apartment always smelled of light but effective cleaning products and a variety of flowers (the cleaner, a lady by the name of Arthur, always brought flowers to her employers’ apartments). But down here, down on the street, it smelled different. It smelled real. It smelled earthy.

  Tuck smelled it too, but of course the smell was completely new to him. The refugee camp where he had grown up had only ever really smelled of dog. Here smelled of everything. A hundred different things he couldn’t name. It was exciting and new and utterly terrifying.

  ‘Wh-wh-where are you going?’ Tuck asked as Ginger trotted, tail in the air like she just didn’t care, down the path between the front door of the apartment block and the pavement.

  ‘Away,’ said Ginger. ‘Away from here, away from you. Away, away, away.’
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br />   Tuck pretended not to hear and kept close to her side. He wasn’t sure he liked the moon as much as he’d thought he would. So far there was no mushroom sauce in sight.

  ‘No way,’ said Ginger, suddenly staring at something on the road in front of them.

  Tuck looked at her and then followed her gaze to see what she had seen.

  And what had she seen?

  Well, what Ginger had seen was nothing short of a miracle. What Ginger had seen was something she had given up hope of ever seeing again. She picked up her pace across the pavement, Tuck still keeping up with her, and then stopped no more than a metre away from her old taxi. It sat there, with its tiger-stripe pattern, chugging away and wobbling like a giant jelly next to the kerb, putt-putt-putting fumes out of its old exhaust pipe. Pretty impressive after four years, I know, but that’s those new hybrids for you.

  ‘It’s still here!’ said Ginger.

  Tuck watched as she jumped up into the taxi and then followed double-quick. He wasn’t going to be left on the pavement of the moon all by himself without any mushroom sauce.

  Ginger jumped up and down on each of the seats, looking under them, exploring the taxi as if searching for something. After a minute or two, she seemed to give up her search and sighed a big, deep, ginger sigh.

  Well, it was a long, long time (four years actually) since Ginger had driven a taxi, and of course Tuck never had driven one. But Ginger thought this was too good an opportunity to miss, so she told Tuck what to do. She made him jump down to the pedals and showed him which one was the brake and which was the accelerator (there were only two pedals because—durrh—cats can drive only automatics). Ginger pushed the car into Drive, which was easier than it used to be now that she was fatter, and she was about to take off the handbrake when something caught her eye. It was a single ginger hair, down on the carpet next to Tuck. Paler than her own coat, it looked like it had been there for years.