Chapter 8

A paw prodding him in the side woke Stick. “Wha… ? Get off!” he growled.

He had spent the night hunting and prowling the streets of Twolegplace; it felt as though he had only just closed his eyes. His muscles still ached with tiredness.

The paw prodded Stick again, harder this time. Opening his eyes a crack, he saw Cora curled up close to him, and Snowy’s white tail poking out from behind a nearby garbage can.

Shorty was standing over him, his amber eyes worried. “It’s happening again,” he meowed.

Stick scrambled out of his shallow nest among the tree roots and shook scraps of dead leaf from his pelt. “Where?”

Shorty angled his ears toward the far side of the patch of rough ground behind the Twoleg nests. “Follow me.” He led the way to the far corner near a gate in the Twoleg fence. “It’s Dodge, Skipper, and Misha,” he added, glancing over his shoulder at Stick.

Stick felt his neck fur bristle. “They shouldn’t be here.”

Drawing closer, he soon spotted Dodge. The huge brown tabby tom stood stiff-legged, his back arched and all his fur fluffed out. A low growl came from his throat. Just behind him stood Skipper and Misha, their eyes gleaming and their lips drawn back in a snarl.

Pinned up in the angle of the fence were Coal and Percy. Stick’s heart thumped as he realized they were alone. “Where’s Red?” he muttered to himself.

A few scraps of food lay at his friends’ paws: a couple of scrawny mice and a bone dragged out of a Twoleg garbage can.

“But it took us all night to get this!” Coal was protesting as Stick and Shorty bounded up.

“Are you too idle to hunt now, Dodge?” Stick snarled.

The brown tabby tom spun around; his eyes glittered with hostility. “We have an agreement, remember? Sunrise belongs to us.”

Stick turned to look at the horizon where the sun would come up. A jumble of Twoleg rooftops was outlined against a sky that was barely turning pale with the first light of dawn.

“You’re splitting whiskers,” he hissed. “It’s still dark.”

Ignoring him, Dodge took a menacing step forward. “If you can’t keep to the rules, I’ll force you to.”

Stick curled his lip. “I’ve had enough of your threats. We were here first!”

Dodge nodded to Misha. The cream-colored she-cat padded forward. Then without warning she sprang forward. Percy let out a shriek as her claws scored down the side of his face, slashing at his eye.

Yowling with fury, Stick hurled himself at Dodge and knocked him onto the ground. The brown tabby tom let out a screech and battered at him with all four paws. Stick could hear hisses and thuds behind him as the other cats clashed, and a thin wail from Percy, who was trying to stagger away with blood streaming from his face.

There was a crash as a Twoleg door was flung open. Twoleg yowling split the air, along with the barking of dogs. Scrabbling on the ground under Dodge’s weight, Stick saw the nearby gate swing open and two dogs ran out. Their tongues lolled and they let out a flurry of high-pitched barking as they bounded toward the cats.

Dodge and his two followers scrambled to their paws and streaked away, their belly fur brushing the ground. The dogs hurtled after them.

Stick limped over to the fence where Percy had come to a stop, blinded and dazed. Beckoning Shorty with his tail, Stick gripped Percy’s scruff and the two toms half dragged, half carried him into hiding behind a stack of wood.

“Hurry!” Coal urged. “The dogs are coming back.”

Stick crouched in the shadow of the wood. He could hear the padding of the dogs’ paws, their panting breath and their snuffling as they nosed around the wood stack. But they were too big to squeeze their way behind it and get at the cats.

“Help me! Please help me!” Percy wailed, his uninjured eye wide with terror. “I’m going to die!”

“No, you’re not,” Stick told him bluntly. “You’ve lost an eye, that’s all.”

Percy let out another wail.

“Don’t make such a racket,” Cora meowed; the black she-cat was wriggling her way along the back of the stack to crouch close to Percy. “Here, let me clean you up.”

She began to lick away the blood from his rumpled gray pelt, and his agonized wails sank to faint whimpering.

Stick could no longer hear the dogs. Peering around the edge of the stack, he saw the Twoleg holding the gate open and the dogs trotting back inside. Dodge and the other cats had vanished. Gazing across the rough ground, Stick couldn’t see any other cats except for Snowy, who had fled up a tree when the fight started. Now she clung to a branch, staring down with frightened blue eyes.

Stick looked over his shoulder at the cats crouched behind the wood. “Where’s Red?”

“I have no idea,” Coal replied. “She started hunting with us, but then she went off on her own.”

“How could you let her out of your sight?” Stick snapped, digging his claws into the ground. “I told you, no cat should be alone just now.”

Coal shrugged. “You can’t stop Red that easily.”

“I’m going to look for her.”

But before Stick could move, Cora looked up and flicked out her tail to rest it on his shoulder. “Red’s full grown now,” she pointed out. “She can take care of herself.”

Stick shook off Cora’s tail. “It’s my fault,” he growled. “If she had been raised by her mother…”

“It’s not your fault Red’s mother isn’t here,” Cora snapped. “Look, with any luck Dodge will feel he’s won enough battles for today. If Red’s not back by sunhigh, we’ll go and look for her.”

Leaving the others with Percy, Stick slid out from behind the wood stack and raced across the rough ground to leap onto the roof of a shed. From there he looked out over the place he had always called home. The milky light of dawn uncovered thin grass and scrubby trees, surrounded by Twoleg fences and dens.

I know every hiding place, every puddle, every corner where mice make nests.

But now everything had changed. The familiar alleys and rooftops hid an enemy: Dodge and the cats he had brought with him to steal this place from those who had lived here forever. Cats who would rather fight than hunt, who enjoyed inflicting fear and pain. Cats who prowled around looking for trouble.

And Red is out there…

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