A cat tries to avoid a trip to a fearful place
I was having a lovely nap on the Flat-Bit-Where-The-Warm-Stuff-Shines when I smelled the dreaded cage of Strange Moving Enclosures and Sharp-Things- With-Wet-Stuff-in-Them-Handled-by-Tall-Tail-lesses-in-White.
No. Don’t go down the Up-Down-Boxes. Don’t. The Tall Tail-lesses were trying to bring me to the Bad-News-Place. And I hated that terrible place. It had visited me in bad dreams many times. My friend in the next Big-Hard-Walls-With-See- Through-Bits had told me of it. He had described it as “a terrible place, where there are many other cats and many Tall Tail-lesses.” But then I smelt my food and heard it being scooped into a bowl. Did I want the food even though I smelt my cage? Or would I just stay up here? I decided to investigate. I jumped to my feet and went down the Up-Down-Boxes.
As I reached the end of the Up-Down-Boxes, I saw the food holder was in the cage. Then, as I was approaching the food holder, hoping to drag it out, the Tall Tail-lesses leaped out from behind me! I started to run back up the Up-Down- Boxes as fast as I could. But they were already behind me and making chase.
Wow, they are really fast! I thought. I ran and ran. Sometimes I ducked under them, but they were always behind me! I ran up and down, left and right, but they were very insistent with their chasing. I heard the cage door rattling. Suddenly, the cage was in front of me. I stopped instantly . . . but they had me cornered.
These weird Tall Tail-lesses! Why can’t they just understand what I say to them? I ask for food, they brush me. I tell them I’m thirsty, they pat me. And now, they were trying to put me in the Dreaded-Cage-of-Strange-Moving-Enclosures- and-Sharp-Things-With-Wet-Stuff-in-Them-Handled-by-Tall-Tail-lesses-in- White! The taller of the two was making noises, but I couldn’t understand them. Why do they do that?
As the shorter Tall Tail-less grabbed me round the middle I growled: “No thank you. I would rather sleep on the Big-Soft-White!” The shorter one almost dropped me. Both Tall Tail-lesses looked at me, silent, their mouths open wide. After a long moment of silence, the taller one made a funny noise like “soh ree.”
Then they picked me up gently, carried me up the Up-Down-Boxes, and put me carefully on the Big-Soft-White. What strange creatures they are!
