Catopolis

CAT CALL 911 by Janny Wurts

The rumor that proved to be no rumor at all began with a no-account rat. Scamper encountered the creature, lean as a snake, twitching its whiskers over the rim of the dumpster. No one else was abroad in the midnight alley, just behind the respectable shop front housing Cat-A-Combs hair parlor. Madame Persian’s haberdashery was locked. The darlings who sparkled in diamond collars never stirred from their penthouse comforts past sundown.

The gleam in the rat’s shifty eyes sparked like sulfur as it bared yellow teeth.

“Hey, Copper!” it taunted. “A dark-doing’sss at large in the city again. Made a moussse eat her newbornsss from dessspair. Ssso also, it missled a dog that ssstrayed and drowned in the river.”

“Feckless folk, dogs.” Scamper jerked his tail in contempt. Rat’s gossip! He dabbed a lick on his orange shoulder and prowled on, supremely dismissive. “Don’t have to be puppies to howl and run riot. And mice eat their young in the lean times without any dark-doing’s help.”

No tip-off had reached the copper-cat dispatcher, back at the police barracks stables. On the hour that Scamper left on patrol, the Chief had been napping, curled on a straw bale, the reports off the streets uneventful enough that no vigilant copper would wake him.

“You’ll wissssh you’d lissstened,” insisted the rat. “Thessse mice lived in sssugarplum plenty behind the wallsss of the passstry ssshop.” With a gnashing of incisors, the creature scuttled. Its last word emerged through the rustle of trash, as it resumed its noisome scavenging. “A nexusss knot’sss forming. My warning’sss the firssst.”

“Get flea dipped, pal.” Scamper twitched his damp hair, not impressed. Rats lied. The whole scumbag lot were a furtive breed, naked of tail, and too garrulous for scruples or dignity. Scamper flicked his whiskers forward, alert. Though loath to rely on what might be a hoax, he was a street copper down to the bone, born to patrol the back alleys. No use wishing such work was the good life, snacking on tuna fish out of a can.

Still, this was not the dockside, and he, dapper fellow, was no rip-eared tom, assigned to a thug’s beat in the slums. The sort of people who started dark-doings seldom strayed from the seedier neighborhoods. No hint of dire trouble blew on the wind. The deserted buildings wore nothing but their usual night-time shadow.

“I’ll be declawed,” Scamper grumbled, “before I ask the Chief to send a back-up squad on a rat-race!”

Scamper loped past the maw of a parking garage and slipped through the short cut under a culvert. Now across the street, he emerged at the pastry shop, but he found no hysterical mice. Only the drunk he had rousted up, earlier, reeling on his inebriated way. The bum shuffled along, a sad, lonely creature in a tattered coat, mumbling admonishments to his reflection in the street side windows. The fellow seemed harmless. Scamper widened his pupils, just to make certain. He engaged the sixth sense, peculiar to cats, and scanned for any latent anomaly.

Nothing emerged. The residue streamed by the homeless man’s thoughts spun off maudlin regrets, not one of them vicious or threatening. Unlike some humans, he blamed no one else for the wretchedness of his condition. His sorry nostalgia stayed self-contained, a wistful murk too diffuse to take fire, or fuse into entangling spite.

Copper-cats hunted the streets for such things. Where acres of concrete replaced living trees, the whisk of the wind raised no rustle of twigs and leaves; here, no falling water or meandering brooks erased the filmy detritus of human afterthought. The work fell to cats, to break the ephemeral ribbons before they burned black and became entangled. That insidious wrack was obvious to felines. Yet people themselves seldom noticed the tempests, unreeled in their wake like thrown litter.

Scamper prowled on. Nothing dangerous lurked here! Surely the feckless rat led him astray. No human seeking a fight walked abroad, and nothing spawned by a late-going hustler held the passion to weave a dark-doing. Nary a trace of wicked intent required a cat scan to chase down and disperse.

“May a plague of fleas chew that rat to perdition!” Scamper huffed, turned left to sweep the back alley that harbored the strip. He stalked past a blinking storefront selling electronic gadgetry and another crammed with tourist novelties.

The recessed doorway beyond sheltered two lovers, breathless with laughter and tender kisses. Contentment lit sparks of delight in their presence. The air danced with showering flurries of gold, wrought by their giggles and happiness. Scamper knew his job. Most agile of his copper colleagues, he pounced on those delectable fragments. Before their shine faded, he batted that merriment into a tingling wad. The finishing touch required cat-magic. Scamper swatted the captured billow of joy under his extended claws.

The shreds scattered. Whirling like falling stars, they sank with a glittering flourish into the pavement.

A cat’s eye could discern the faint sheen that remained. Taut whiskers could sense the vibration. Whether a starved feral, or a pampered pet on a stroll, every feline would be tempted to roll with abandon, paws in the air. In back-scratching pleasure, they would soak up the run of sweet luck that now welled from the sidewalk. Serendipity, also, would touch the lives of unsuspecting pedestrians. A school child might find an escaped coin and buy candy. Or a weary mother might sigh with relief as her cranky infant changed mood to delight. Here, an artist might stumble on fresh inspiration, or a worried man might soften his heart and take pause to lend help to a beggar.

The wide world was alive with such wonders. Wherever people shed formative thoughts, the curious nature of cats would make sport with the exuberant residue. They knew to play tag with the colorful aspects, and weave them into the manifest world.

When the couple departed, Scamper shoved off, no little bit smug that the rat’s doom-and-glooming had given him a false lead.

A woman rushed past, heels clicking as she bustled into the subway. Her fizz of anxiety sent bubbles of energy bouncing off the lit street lamps. Scamper sensed no threatening darkness swirling behind her brisk footsteps. If she resented her job, she did not hate her boss. Though her day had been riddled with disappointments, she did not nurse any poisonous urge to dump her malaise on her coworkers. Her loose discontent would not form a vortex. No quivering, plucked string of entanglement waited to snag into other folks’ unresolved angst.

Scamper detected no stirring of havoc that required destruction with claws and teeth. No suspect thrill raised a hump in his back, or bristled him to spitting temper. Nose working, tail high, he rounded the corner, jinked down the side street, and skirted the packing crates discarded behind the herb shop.

The narrow alley ahead enticed with the rich scent of cat-mint. Most of the neighborhood’s swaggering toms had dropped in for a heady nip. The randy chorus at the Cat-ATONIC Bar surrounded a svelte Siamese. Amorous loungers watched rivals, slit-eyed, while the husky Maine Coon named Bouncer licked his claw sheaths, prepared to break up snarling fights. Tempers ran short, in the late summer heat. The scrappier males were on seasonal edge, hot to test their machismo before the fur-ripping brawling of autumn.

Scamper licked his sharp teeth. As eager himself for a rambunctious change, he marched past, primed to impress the slinky pussies who danced at the Cat-Ass-Trophy Club. Yet tonight, the stair with the balustrade loomed empty. No black beauties or coy little calicoes beckoned him on.

Instead, Scamper found himself knocked on his haunches by cats pelting helter-skelter. Fur on end, the whole kit’n caboodle ran in fear for their lives, darting under the sewer grates or streaking for shelter beneath the parked cars on the side street.

Scamper tensed, primed for uncanny threats. He sighted what appeared as a shadow swooping down on his planted stance. Its wet-blanket force struck him, face on, and bowled him head over tail. Scamper twisted. Agile reflexes brought him back to his feet. Scuffed and furious, he had to acknowledge the filthy rat’s warning held substance. A monster-sized dark-doing devoured the strip, with no apparent clue in the vicinity to reveal how the nexus had started.

“Not on my turf!” Scamper snarled, and crouched. He launched into his best fighting leap. Yet his dagger-clawed swipe missed the coiling disturbance. Again, he was caught by surprise as a tendril snaked out of nowhere and clobbered him sideways.

Scamper picked himself up, spitting curses. The dark-doing lurked in the apartments above! No thanks to the rat, for withholding that detail. Such ill-news should have been dispatched in the first place, by way of a reliable messenger. Situations always turned hairball, whenever a rat told the truth!

Already, the invasive clot had grown monstrous. Its creeping shadow obscured half the alley, with Scamper unable to count the number and strength of the entrenched entanglements. He backed, green eyes slitted, dodging as another eruption shot off more strangling threads. The skyline above was choked under the pall. No good news: the least gleam of stars should have made the uncanny stuff shrink. Even the street lamps failed to pierce through the density of this anomaly. At large and expanding at a ferocious pace, the thing crowded the stance of the small, copper tabby who was pledged to serve and protect.

Scamper hissed, stiff-legged and holding his ground. He was no coward! But what could he do? The entanglement si-phoned off color and life. Deep taproots had sunk into the sewers. Other murky tendrils seeped through open windows, invading the tenements above. Hapless sleepers inside were being snared by the web. The blast of their nightmares was spawning fresh wrack, feeding the uncanny problem.

Scamper’s nape prickled. “Doesn’t that stink like unburied scat!” He had never seen human beings wreak such an insatiable pall. Though natural fear urged him to turn tail, he flexed his foreclaws and dug in to charge.

“You’re not planning to challenge that!” a deep voice admonished, a half-step behind him. “Better to stay safe! A loose grate in the window well opens into the herb shop’s basement. My patrons have taken refuge in there. High time that both of us followed them.”

Scamper hissed, out of sorts with surprise. “Bouncer! Frag your tail, don’t sneak up while I’m on the job!”

The gray Maine Coon cat wrinkled his white nose and strolled abreast, his usual air of muscular unconcern rattled by trepidation. “Do you know what you’re doing, alone in the breach? Whatever that is, no question it’s screwed the prosperity of my establishment.”

“It could do worse than that.” Scamper bared his teeth. “Best scarper, pal. This is copper-cat business and no place for a civilian to be risking his scruff.”

Bouncer stretched, flexing twenty-five pounds of pure feline brawn, sleeked beneath a luxurious coat. “You’re a runt, by yourself,” he pointed out, reasonable.

“Size has nothing to do with superior agility,” Scamper declared, fiercely miffed. The Chief might assign larger toms to the slums. But in a tight scrap, sure as fire singed fur, the little cats often scored first. “Scram, friend. Now! Take the refugees and your kitty bar elsewhere until I’ve unraveled this mess.”

Bouncer curled his tail tip, amused. “I’ve no wish to relocate,” he said, more than tactfully tart, “or lose the ambience of the Cat-Ass-Trophy Club, if this festering trouble ruins the neighborhood. Howl as you like, that cluster hump’s swallowing more real estate for every second we waste in a hissy-fit.”

Scamper conceded that unpleasant point. He dared not risk any further delay, or call on the Chief for a backup squad. Late could become never if this dark-doing bloated past reach of containment. Besides, Bouncer’s moxie was lion-sized. Every thug dog unleashed in the district slunk out of its way to avoid his punitive claws.

“Survive this,” said Scamper, “I’ll owe you a leisurely meal at the Catfish Grill.”

“My treat, for cold shrimp at the Cater Wall.” Bouncer sniffed, still indignant. No copper tabby who defended his digs would be tackling an explosive eruption, alone.

Side by side, the mismatched pair of cats bounded forward, to Scamper’s last minute instructions. “Whatever happens, keep your head down! Duck the large tentacles. If you become hooked, fight back and kick as though the murder itself had sunk fangs in your bollocks! Once I pounce, join the tussle and dig into the entanglement. Snap the binding thread, and bolt for clear air. Don’t be trapped as the mess comes unraveled.”

The pair sprang in step. Then the web closed upon them. A thrill like electricity tingled their hair. The hungry cold of the dark-doing lashed out, insatiable, to overwhelm them. Scamper flattened, while the larger Maine Coon leaped over the obstructive shadow. Wind flicked at their tails, to the rasp of feline claws scrabbling against concrete. Bouncer yowled, then wheeled his bulk across Scamper’s path in avoidance.

“Pussyfoot civilian!” the smaller cat snarled. “Quit trying to protect me.”

“So neuter yourself!” Bouncer swore, his fur singed where a razor-edged ribbon had grazed him. “Dead is no use to anyone, pal. I know what my hide’s worth! Chief would rag me to mince if he should discover I’d hung your cat-sass out to dry.”

Scamper was left too breathless to argue. Fool heroics more likely would see them both killed, with the Chief at the barracks left none the wiser.

Bouncer kept pace, undeterred by good sense, as Scamper streaked onward, scanning the turmoil and gloom for an opening to attack. His trained experience and swift reflexes-even Bouncer’s staunch strength-appeared sorrowfully over faced. The stygian tangle around them now blinded their keen feline eyesight. Its strangling opacity sucked the very sweetness of life from the world. The cats darted ahead by hearing and smell, forced to avoid obstacles by nothing more than the warning flick of a whisker tip.

How deep did this draining disturbance extend? Fear could not grapple the concept. Scamper sprinted, lungs burning. Dodging past coil upon inky coil, he found no safe chance for engagement. Bouncer wheezed, labored, his heavy coat never bred for exertion in summer heat.

We could die here, Scamper realized, cringing with shame. Should he fail to grapple the blight, it would drag a friend down along with him. The moment was lost, to turn back in escape. The dark-doing’s tumultuous chaos had swallowed them, blinding all sense of direction.

Hesitation would become no less fatal. Scamper bunched his hindquarters and pounced, snagging the nearest tendril. Teeth closed and claws ripped, to no avail. His grip met no resistance, no taut wrack of spiteful entanglement. He yowled, off-balanced and bashed topsy-turvy as the ruinous maelstrom closed over him. A growl, nearby, bespoke Bouncer’s attack. But greater bulk lent no advantage. The dark-doing writhed, its explosive ferocity unfazed by their combined assault.

Scamper snapped and bit. He lashed with his claws, seeking for the pattern inside the morass: the hard tie of malice that locked two human beings into mutual hatred. Yet his raking search exposed nothing. No knot existed, to break in release. This mangle of animate thought-stream did not harbor so much as a vicious kink.

Something else was horribly wrong. Claws and teeth sliced only an inchoate emptiness that seared feline instincts with dread. This dark-doing was like no other before. No trained skill, and no trick Scamper knew could unravel the horrible force of it

Now desperate, the cats grappled elusive, black lightning. Neither could see how the other one fared. Exhausted and tumbling, Scamper thrashed as a tendril noosed over his chest. It tightened, driving the breath from his body and throttling him dizzy.

Last sensation, he felt Bouncer’s teeth on his nape, then a tug, before sliding headlong into darkness.

Scamper woke to the scrape of another cat’s tongue rasping across his shut eyelids. He blinked, stirred in protest, shook his aching head. As his bleary vision recovered, he focused on a familiar face.

That worried, green eye, mangled ear, and marmalade nose marked with scars bespoke alley origins and roughneck experience.

“Chief?” Scamper coughed and tried to arise.

The older cat’s paw knocked him prostrate. “You bit off more than one copper could chew!” Chief’s reprimand granted no grace for excuses. “Good thing that Bouncer dragged you to safety!”

Scamper sucked a deep breath. His ribs hurt. His throat stung. He reeked of singed fur and, more faintly, of the sardines the Chief had been munching before being called to the scene. Collapsed in the gutter between two parked cars, Scamper turned his concern back toward the infested alley. “Has the crisis been tamed?”

“No.” The chief perked his good ear, his single eye burning cold emerald. “No copper of mine ventures into a dark-doing alone, far less undertakes the flea-brained idea of involving a noncombatant!”

Still on the sidelines, Bouncer lashed his tail, angered by the dismissal. The tip reeked of garbage, scraped up from the street, which further rumpled his dignity. “No runt-sized shorthair tells me not to fight! Certainly not while that gristly horror invades the strip and threatens my turf!”

Which was the boulder informing the pebble: the Chief winced, mollified, as Scamper bit back that his courageous friend was owed thanks for the rescue. Too upset to dwell on his embarrassing mistake, he added, “What was that thing? I bit the thought-shadow down to the core. Nothing was inside! No strand of hatred between human folks had tangled a knot to be severed.”

“There won’t be one.” The Chief sighed, all at once sounding tired. “The dark-doing that’s blighting that alley has nothing to do with two humans linked by active animosity. What idiot idea took you in without back-up?”

“A rat’s taunt!” Scamper snapped, which was no less than the irreverent truth.

The shifty critter had lied through its teeth, most likely to lure a copper cat into jeopardy. Now maddened beyond the sting of his scrape, Scamper glared in dead earnest. “What created that shadow? How can it exist? What form of nothing on the green earth could fuel such voracious unpleasantness?”

“You encountered the horror of human despair,” the Chief explained, looking fraught. “People who lose all hope can give up their belief that life matters. All by themselves, they can think empty thoughts and punch such a hole in the world.”

“Hole in the world?” Scamper blinked, appalled. “Grief like that puts my tail in a pinch, something worse than a roomful of rockers!”

The Chief lowered his bony shoulders into a sorrowful crouch. “People aren’t like animals, Scamp. Not as cats, knowing since birth to enjoy every day we are given.”

“Dumber than dormice, some human folks,” Bouncer observed in agreement. “They’ll stare at a squawk box for hours on end. Or yap into phones, before visiting. I’ve listened. They’ll squabble over conflicting ideas! Puts a snarking kink in your whiskers, overhearing their petty gripes.”

Scamper furrowed his brow, stunned to disbelief. The tiniest kitten understood how to live! The seasons cued the innate urge to grow, then to hunt, to mature, and to breed. When the time came to play or just bask in the sun, cats knew to indulge in delight.

“Human children don’t have our instincts,” the Chief lamented, quietly patient. “They think, sure enough! It’s their meddling nature. But their prodigious gift of reason gets muddled if they forget to pursue their own joy. When trouble arises, they neglect to give credence to how they feel, from moment to moment. Immersed in the logic of looking for why, quite often they lose their own way.” The Chief shook his head. “Worse for them, if they do as they think they ought and stop hearing the dreams inside themselves. The pity is, most of them have no clue, no concept at all, of how powerful those dreams truly are.”

“They abandon their fun? How do we fight that?” Never had Scamper felt more hampered by the misfortune of his runt size. With no active tangle of discord to cut, surely a giant was needed. What good could a cat do if a human’s own reason squelched pleasure and left them to wallow in misery?

The chief licked a paw, scrubbed at his ripped ear, nerves salved by the comfort of washing. “To lift this blight will take extreme courage, not to mention a copper of uncommon wit and agility.”

Dawn was breaking, gray, above the sodium gleam of the lamps that soon would be extinguished. In that mixed light, Chiefs flame coat shone dull brown. His eye showed a bleak glint as he added, “We haven’t much time. Are you up to the fight?”

“I got my behind kicked. That’s nothing near dead,” Scamper shot back, insulted. He sprang to his feet, quivering with readiness.

Bouncer also rammed erect, bristling. “You’re going back?”

The battle-scarred Chief stood up and brushed past. Lean but dauntless, he skittered across the cracked sidewalk. “We must do just that. And fast! If this case of human despair ends by suicide, a blight will be left in the world. Unless we act first, even cat-magic can’t mend the extent of the damage.”

“Then I’m coming along,” Bouncer declared.

The Chiefs screeching argument fell on deaf ears. No better than Scamper, he could not repress the Maine Coon’s obstinate loyalty.

“At your peril, then,” the Chief warned, and stalked past the flickering street lamp. His brusque tone continued, plunged into the gloom. “My detectives are fishing for clues as they can. Let’s hope they’ve found what direction the battle must take.”

The nexus that had beaten Scamper before now appeared to have swallowed the entire alley. Its hectic growth had not abated, although Chief had dispatched his best reinforcements. Copper cats now attacked the morass in numbers, tearing off scraps with their teeth. For each bite they took, the whirlwind swelled faster. Now fed by its own spinning impetus, thoughts shadows boiled into existence faster than any trained corps could reduce them.

A fat yellow Persian named Sarge oversaw, perched on a trashcan lid to one side. When the Chief sauntered up, he summarized his frustration with a deep growl of annoyance.

Chief’s emerald eye glinted. “Report!”

“The whole stinking list?” Fat Sarge yawned, his stiff silver whiskers raked back. “Petty as flea rash! First off, the human perp’s female. Nagged the living hair off the head of her mate. The poor, mangled creature finally regained his sanity and got a divorce. Since then, the exwife harps on about his allegedly faithless betrayal. We’ve logged her whining complaints by the thousands: that he was a drunk who lounged on the sofa, too lazy to hang up the paper roll next to the toilet! Ten thoughts a minute, she insists how she’s wronged: that the world’s going to ruin; that the rent won’t be paid; or that the fancy new shoes for her kid cost more than her child support.” Sarge heaved a sigh. “You’d think, overhearing, that no patch of soil grows any flowers. Or that toddlers don’t laugh in the park! Who cares a hoot for a label, by gosh? Can a brand-name sneaker matter so much if the kid’s going to splash in the mud puddles?”

“Some folks would refuse to hear the birds sing, even if one perched smack on their noggin!” Chief scratched his jaw, worried. “No clue, yet, what abandoned fragment of happiness lies buried beneath the moil?”

“Not so far.” Sarge paused, on the case as three coppers strolled up. Each one carried a shred of the darkness, torn off and pinned in clenched teeth.

“Good work!” The Chief accepted their offerings, nailed them under a claw, then smacked them with cat-magic to disgorge the misery of their content. Ears back, the cats listened: through strings of obscenities that maligned the weather, then more annoyed words on the dirt dropped by pigeons, and bills that some wretched bean counter had attached with a surcharge for overdue payment.

The Chief hissed, disgusted. “This depression’s entrenched! Defensively held. We’ll face a fight, guaranteed, to lay bare the seed of the problem.”

“Then you’ll storm the core?” Sarge ventured, his yellow eyes bright with concern.

“Yes, but not here.” The Chief cast a keen glance at the pall that lapped toward the bins where they held hurried consultation. “The battle must be taken out of this world, and into the realm of true dreams.”

Fat Sarge slashed his tail. “Whom can you send?” He and the other old timers still mourned the tragedy caused by the last sorry incident. Then, four copper cats dispatched into the breach had died in the line of duty. Their team leader had not been agile enough to salvage the wrecked dream before the harebrained case of human depression blew his brains out with a shotgun. “Who has the cleverness to slip through a wrack this aggressive?”

The Chief looked to Scamper. “You’re the quickest paw we have in the corps. Have you the courage to venture the dream realm? From there, we must try to unravel the thread that’s devouring this woman’s hope. If we find the source, and if we can rip a hole in the cause, a cat who’s quick has to slip through the gap and revive her abandoned enthusiasm.”

As Scamper stepped up, Bouncer also shoved in, “If he goes, I stay with him!”

“What’s the use?” snapped the Chief. “If I can’t tear a large enough breach in the problem, the whole situation will go fur-balls up!”

“Just stop me!” Nose to nose and fur bristling, Bouncer glared until the Chief blinked and backed down.

“I’ll hold the rear guard from here,” Fat Sarge soothed, in no mood himself to knock Bouncer’s bulk back in line. He watched the three felines take up the fray, with the wily Chief in the lead.

The dark-doing had become no less voracious, despite the copper cats’ diligence. Scamper was forced to twist this way and that, streaking after the Chiefs orange tail and with Bouncer a bounding gray blur beside him. The hideous blot would have defeated their rush, had their strategy aimed for avoidance. But this stand would not be made here and now, on the solid ground of the world. Chief did not pounce to wrestle but, instead, charged headlong at the morass with the brave intent to pass through.

Scamper and Bouncer jumped just behind. Their leap plunged them into the heart of the darkness and hurled them into forever. For the dream realm by its nature was boundless, wrought of the fantastical stuff that gave rise to perhaps, what if, and maybe-every rainbow color, and more, that the wakeful eye could not see. Here was brilliant light that could dazzle or burn. All shapes of foolhardy fancy and delight, and shadows too, veiled in the beauty of enchanted mystery, or ghastly with ugliness.

Dream-stuff, spun by humans who were alive, seethed with spontaneous intensity. But not here, where year upon year of suppression had hampered the impulse of playful exuberance. The woman’s despair had eaten away both the bright and the dark. What remained was the clutter and waste of neglect, shrouded in dust and cobwebs. Scamper and his companions picked their way between piles of broken toys. Here they passed a bicycle going to rust and there a rowboat with a hole in it. They rattled through sheets of crumpled paper, discarded ideas piled like fallen leaves. They passed storybooks, abandoned in puddles of tears, soggy pages dissolved into pulp.

Scamper sniffed at the misted air. Its scentless cold numbed his nerve ends. Unlike on the streets, where thought-patterns were vibrant, he had no clue where to begin.

“Listen up!” the Chief urged, set on edge himself. “Somewhere under here there will be a force, an old memory that steals away happiness. We must seek out what’s choking the life from this pattern before we can shoulder the fight.”

Scamper pricked up his ears, widened his pupils, and sharpened his feline senses. He peered into the future and saw only tangle: a dreary array of boring activity, obligation, and burdensome days. The detritus of passionless memories closed in, sharp and relentless as traps. Scamper was slight enough to slip through, but Chief and Bouncer needed to squeeze to force themselves past the tight spots. The way grew more dangerous. Fog, and then drizzle, drenched the cats to the skin. More than once they shied back from the crash, as loose objects tumbled and threatened to crush them.

Though the cats were only a whisker apart, leaden silence wrapped them in isolation. They became wrung by pervasive loneliness until feline spirits pined for sunshine and wind, even a storm to shatter the dreadful oppression.

“We have to go deeper,” insisted the Chief. “No matter how hard, there’s no choice. Give in, and we’ll never escape this.”

Icy rain became a torrential downpour. Scamper shook the wet from his ears, more weary than he could remember. Through the barrage, he heard a voice, far off and terribly faint.

Bouncer heard, too, and the Chief turned that way, shoving into a murk, thick as slush, that hampered his mincing steps forward.

“Look at this!” Scamper scraped at the stuff with his claws, freeing a forgotten tatter of praise and encouragement. Even as the drowned figment emerged, a strident old woman’s scolding arose, overpowering the wisp his cat’s paw reawakened.

“Scrub your face! Don’t touch, you’ll break something! That’s disgusting behavior. Don’t do that, stupid, your hands are filthy! Stop tracking mud on the floor! Didn’t your mother teach you any manners? That’s a horrible way to treat your younger brother. Never mind if he hit you, be nice! No, you can’t have a pet! They carry disease! Never play on the far side of the street, you could be killed by a car!”

“Come on!” The Chief hissed, his fur bristled. “That’s the snarling knot we have to tear through. If we can’t, the sad woman will let go of life, pushed past the edge by her early conditioning.”

Scamper twitched his puffed tail, more than itching to pounce. “Make any kitten toss its kibbles and milk! Couldn’t that witch take a breath without nattering?”

“Likely not.” The Chief sighed, slinking along on his belly. “Who wouldn’t fade, smothered in safety and peace, with the sparkle torn out of adventure?”

The cats crept up on the entrenched bit of thought-pattern. The vortex had formed as a spider’s web, spun from repetitive scolding. The center was gripped by an elderly person whose lips never smiled and who wore a starched dress, drab as the rags in a broom closet.

Bouncer growled, fur erect. “Puts the curl in my back! Shall we jump her?”

“She’ll have allies,” Chief warned. “Other voices, like hers, will arise to defend her over-protective tyranny. They’ll reshape the snarl even as we attempt to rip it asunder. The force in that thought-stream won’t give way for good. Not till the browbeaten human in charge finds on her own the wild urge to rebel and abandons each one of those moribund rules.”

Scamper bared his teeth. “Then how many times must we rip the stuffing out of this fragment of memory?”

“For as long as it takes to breach through,” Chief replied. “You’ll know when we’ve triumphed, no question.”

The cats pounced. They tore, teeth and savage claws, rending the howling memory limb from limb. When the carping effigy rose from the shreds, they scrimmaged and mangled its head, broke its neck, and raked it to quivering ribbons. Each time, the monster twitched and reassembled. They attacked, over and over again, until they were breathless and battered.

Bouncer was puffing. Chief seemed done in. The harder the cats fought, the more the rain fell. Their mouths burned with the salt-taste of childish tears, and their eyes stung, gritted with the ashes sown by wounding regrets.

Scamper grappled until he was numb. All but drowned by the endless rain, he kicked and raked at the gibbering fragments. No warning prepared him. Suddenly the thought-stuff he wrestled caved in. The firm ground melted under his feet. Then the dream realm around him dissolved and ran molten, hurling him toward oblivion.

“Let go!” yelled the Chief. “That’s the hole for your entry!”

Soaked, beyond miserable, Scamper scrabbled at air. He could not control his plummeting fall. Twisting, he tumbled out of the dream realm, unable to salve his wrecked dignity.

The Chiefs cry of encouragement dimmed, lost in the maelstrom now rapidly disappearing behind. “Copper! You have to land on your feet! Keep your wits, Scamp! We’ll keep holding the line in the dream realm. But the game that’s afoot in the world is now left entirely up to you!”

Scamper landed on gravel with a spraddle-legged thump. Pelted by a downpour and shaken half out of his feline senses, he yowled with rage and soaked misery.

His caterwaul caused a woman to turn away from her teetering stance at the verge of the tenement roof. She was not old! Young and worn, with a tired slouch to her shoulders, she was as wretchedly soaked as the cat, her eyes red from incessant weeping.

“Meow!” Scamper wailed. No way could he make such a drenched creature laugh! The woman’s dejection blackened the very clouds. No brilliant idea, amid this aching chill, could lift her dark nimbus of misery. Dense thoughts still poured from her presence like ink. Scamper was too distressed to do battle, far less conjure up the feline inspiration to wheedle her down off the roof.

Scamper squalled again, ears flat in frustration. This woman had learned as a child to hate cats! If he set her ranting, or gave her a scare, she might trip off the brink without jumping.

Worst of all, Chief and Bouncer stayed trapped in her dreamscape, fighting her relentless habit of melancholy, unless the drab cycle was broken.

Scamper shrank down. Huddled, dejected, he glanced left and right. But the flat rooftop provided no cranny for even a small cat to hide. He could do nothing but bawl as the human approached step by step and loomed over him.

“A cat? Oh! Poor thing!” Chilled hands reached down. They stroked his wet copper fur, which was repulsively grimy with dirt and machine oil. “You’re shivering! Starving, too. I can feel every rib! Let’s take you inside. Maybe towel you dry and see what I have to feed you…”

Three weeks later, Scamper crouched in Bouncer’s company, companionably crunching on the promised fillets at the back of the Catfish Grill. Chief lounged nearby, licking his chops, when the Maine Coon posed the curious question. “How in feline daylights did you get that woman to revive her forgotten dream?”

Scamper flicked his tail, purring and pleased. “Wasn’t so hard,” he allowed with a wink. “I chased a rat burglar into the back closet where she’d stashed her art paper and paints. When I leaped on the shelf, I kicked over the tin. Went easy, from there. I just chased the dizzy rodent in circles till I’d scattered her brushes and pigments. Oh, she yelled, sure enough, when she found the mess. But cleaning the spilled colors out of her carpet, she had to remember the fun she once had making pictures. Then and there, she got up and called an old friend from school. Now they go out painting together. Could be the start of a romance.”

Scamper spat out a fish fin and chuckled. “Nailed the rat, too.”

“Tasty business,” drawled Chief, who enjoyed a fresh kill.

Scamper laughed outright. “The tail end is the best! The dead rat brought the woman so much delight, she’s now feeding me tuna fish out of the can.”