This story follows the tale of a Snowshoe called Eli on a quest to find his cat-napped sister.
1 Catnapping Chaos[]
Eli's sister, Tethin, is cat-napped
I was a rare cat. So rare I bet you've never even heard of my breed name before. It's called a Snowshoe. I lived in a small house in a small village. My name was Eli, and I lived here with my sister named Tethin. I was asleep on the window sill. Our humans had gone out for the weekend, leaving us alone apart from twice during the day when the next door neighbour came to feed us. I heard a noise. Instantly alert, I sat up. There was a man outside, and he has a wierd black thing over his eyes. There were holes in it, so he could see out. Well, why would a blindfolded man be walking around the garden!? He came up to the door and got out a screwdriver, and started fiddling with our cat-flap.
There was no time to loose. As the man got the cat-flap away from the door, he climbed in through the gap. I waited until he was all the way in, and then I made my move. I hissed. I strang at him, with my claws out. You know where I landed? Right on his bottom. I was originally planning to stick my teeth into him aswell as my claws but I decided not to... I didn't know where the thing I landed on had been. The man's face turned red, and then he screamed, like a little girl. The sound woke up Tething, and she came calmly padding into the hallway.
"Tethin, run!" I called, but I was too late. The man made a lunge forward, kicking me off him. I was flung against the wall and fell down behing the telephone stand. He grabbed my sister by the collar and ran out of the door, literally smashing it down. I managed to get underneath the phone stand instead of being behind it. I could hear sirens faintly in the distance, but then the world all started spinning and they seemed to fade away.
I woke up to find that it was morning. The next door neighbour had already been and left some food out for me in the kitchen. As I went to eat, I realised that something wasn't right. What was it? Then, catching sight of Tethin's food bowl, I remembered. She was gone. I didn't know where. I would probably never see her again. As I licked the last few crumbs from my bowl, I had a thought. Tethin wasn't here, so... well, I shouldn't let her food go to waste. I ate most of her food too, until I was full up. That's when I noticed that there was a police car outside. There was a policeman sitting at the garden table with the neighbour and asking her questions. I padded over to the door to go outside. I was too full to go through the cat flap, but I didn't need to as there wasn't a door there anymore after the theif knocked it down. I now had the shady spot in the grass all to myself. Maybe Tethin being stolen wasn't such a bad thing after all!
But that night, when I curled up in the cat bed, I was starting to miss her again. Ever since we were kittens, if we hadn't accidentally fallen asleep somehwere else, we would curl up together in the bed. If it was a cold night, anyway. On warmer nights we'd spread ourselves out at seperate ends of the bed and enjoy the feeling of the air conditioning blowing against our fur. But tonight was a very cold night. And it wasn't the air conditioning ruffling my fur, it was the wind. It got in through the door and made the pages on the phone book flutter. And it made creepy noises, too. If Tethin were here with me, I wouldn't be so scared. But she was probably miles away, and I was all alone in the creepy darkness of the night.
The next morning, I was so worried that I could hardly eat any of my own breakfast, let alone Tethin's. Good thing that the neighbour had realised that Tethin was missing and left her bowl empty. My humans were coming back today, and that was a good thing. But I realy wished that Tethin would come back too. I lifted my head from my half-empty food bowl and tried to look determined. Tethin wouldn't come back on her own; she had been stolen. So it was up to me to get her back.
First what I needed was a team. Even I wasn't stupid enough to go out into the wilderness all by myself. I needed to have an audition or something. So, I wento into the front garden and put up a poster, a.k.a peed on a tree at the front of the garden. I just hoped that someone would get my message, which clearly stated;
"Need team mates, auditioning at 12:00 pm (midnight) tonight under the big tree in the park. Signed Eli."
There. Now everyone who could understand cat (basically everyone except humans) would turn up by the big tree in the park at midnight tonight. I needed to prepare myself, so I got into my cat bed and fell asleep so I would be awake tonight.
That night, I was pretending to be asleep. My humans had come back during the day, and had got a builder to come and repair the door. That had kept me awake, so I hadn't slept quite as much as I would have liked. I slunk up to the cat-flap and went through as quietly as I could. Luckily, the adult male human snores really loudly, so quiet noises don't wake anyone else up. I padded down the street, heading for the park, with only the street lights to light up my way. Just before the park, there was a road that was usually busy in the daytime. Because it was so late, there were only a couple of cars, my best guess being they were from the humans who worked late. As I looked across the road I saw that nearly the whole town of cats, dogs and a few wild animals had turned up, and were standing, sitting, or sleeping under the big tree. I didn't blame the sleeping ones, because it was quite late. I waited until there were no cars going past, and then I walked across the street. Entering the park, I went over to the big tree. Cats pricked up their ears, the animals asleep got nudged by the animals next to them to wake them up, and the few mice which had turned up were all huddled together, looking round nervously at all the larger animals. It was time for my audition to begin.
2 The Team Audition[]
Eli holds an audition to find some team mates to join him on his quest
The other animals all sat around in a circle. A very big circle. I invited the first auditioner to come forward. It was a fluffy cat, with tabby markings and a very flat face. I asked him to say a little about himself.
"Um... I like sleeping, going in cat shows, being leader... hey, this audition was to see who would make a brilliant leader, wasn't it?" he meowed.
"No" I replied "It was to help me find some team mates to go on the ultimate quest to save Tethin from whatever fate may lie before her"
"Oh," the cat sighed "never mind." After that, a few of the other cats left as well. I guess some of them turned up in the hope of being a leader. Next up was a Beagle.
"I like walks in the park, playing fetch, chewing my chew toy..." he began. I knew that he wasn't the one, and anyway, from the sound of it, if he came with me his owners would miss him too much. And so, the audition went on.
"I like running long distances" said a Whippet "hadn't you heard that I won the Whippet races twelve times in a row?" Next.
"So, who are you're owners?" I asked a dog which looked like something crossed between a Cattle Dog and a Doberman.
"They don't exist" he told me "I got chucked out the second I moved in." Isn't the world a sad place. Still, there wasn't really anyone to miss him, and because he was a stray he'd have better survival skills than most of the others that had turned up.
"Ok," I replied "you're in."
As soon as I called the mice to come up, they squeaked in alarm and ran away. I don't know why they bothered showing up. So I called for the next auditioner. And boy what a surprise I had.
"I'll be part of your team" she said.
"Of course you can" I replied "but save your special skills for when we're in danger" The girl I was talking to was, in fact, a skunk. I didn't even know there were any around here.
"Ok, we need one more team member" I said. But I turned and looked at an empty space. There was no one left. "oh dear. Looks like it'll just have to be the three of us then"
"Uh, escuse me!" said a voice.
"Huh?"
"Yeah, down here!" suddernly some kind of lizard apeared on the grass infront of me. "You need the fastest chamelion in the whole of the stuff you can think of?" Yes, I reconed I did! He could change colour effortlessly.
"Ok, team" I said, "what are your names, anyway, I never asked that."
"Spike" said the large dog.
"Orla" said the skunk.
"Saint Harold the forty fifth of Scandanavian cul-de-sacs" said the chamelion.
"Uh, can we just call you Rol or something?" I asked.
"Of course you can" he replied "I have trouble remembering how to say that name anyway."
"Right then" I said, at last "We leave tomorrow morning at sevon o' clock." When they had gone, I added "Don't worry sis, we'll bring you back home!"
3 The Adventure Begins[]
The hero sets out to find his sister