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MagnifiCat: an Animal Fantasy
Category:
Fantasy
Publisher: Old Tiger Books
Type: Fiction
Pages: 290
Copyright: 2014
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
A family of cats find themselves on the poverty line in a small country town. When Claude loses his bar tending job and the bank won't grant more time to pay the mortgage, the cats must find a way to save the day. A feel-good book.
Meet the Katt family: Claude (a big hearted marmalade tom cat), his lady cat Mao, Mao’s mother Sylvia and Mao’s two kittens, Pussywillow and Rupert. Despite the love in their little cottage, the battlers are finding it hard to make ends meet. Still, they are happy. Mao runs the house and pots in her spare time; Claude works as a barcat at the Railway Hotel and has a jazz group à la Benny Goodman, called The Rainbow Connection, which makes a little money on the side. The only blot on Claude’s landscape is that, through no fault of his own, he has lost touch with his mother.
Across Main Street from the Katts, live the Franchettis (both calico cats). Mr and Mrs Franchetti are retired banana farming cats; their son Bruno (always referred to on the street as Franchetti), is a close friend of Claude’s, a Vietnam vet and a softie for homeless animals. Franchetti plays clarinet to Claude’s saxophone in The Rainbow Connection. Other members of the sextet are Dollar Dog (trumpet), Wild Cat, who believes he’s the rightful heir to the throne of Ireland (guitar), the wrongly named Major Mitchell, a white cockatoo (acoustic bass), and Maxi-Max, an immense bearded dragon, who plays the drums.
Mao’s mother Sylvia mortgages the house to start a small herbalism business from home to provide for Rupert and Pussywillow’s future education; but a recession hits the small town hard. Animals line the soles of their shoes with their cancelled credit cards, and no one has any disposable income to pay for a herbalist. To add to the family’s woes, the Railway Hotel burns down, and Claude finds himself out of work. There is only one other hotel in the small town and its wallaby owner already has all the staff she needs. Sylvia’s 3,000 pounds is soon gone. (The shire reverted to Imperial currency after the secession of ‘83.)
Claude takes on a variety of casual work, ending up as a nurses’ aide at the Felines’ Nursing Home in the nearby township of Shelley Bay. When Sylvia falls behind with the loan repayments, and the bank won’t grant more time to pay the mortgage, the Katts are in danger of losing their house. Sylvia exhorts the family to economise, and the cats become reluctant vegetarians. Sylvia sells an antique cedar bookcase that had been in the family for years, Claude hocks his saxophone and Rupert takes to fishing to augment the family table. Still, they are living below the poverty line, can’t even afford to have mince in their spaghetti bolognese.
One day, after the family has been grocery shopping with an inadequate amount of money, they find a wallet containing eighty pounds in the parking lot behind the supermarket. It has ID, and Mao insists they return it to its rightful owner. This turns out to be an elderly rabbit named Lucy Lapine, who is searching for someone, but just who this someone might be remains a mystery. The Katts hope for a small reward to ease their situation — being vegetarians, they’ve decided, is a real downer. Instead, the elderly doe gives them a bunch of flowers.
In desperation, Mao and Claude go looking for opals on the ridge to the north-east of town. At the last moment, they are joined by Rupert’s friend Jacko, a neglected rabbit whose drunken father makes moonshine in the hills. Some miles from home, the three are captured by a platoon of rabbits dressed in the manner of foot soldiers from the eleventh century, who work for a mysterious countess, the Lady Lapine. In a serrendipitous ending, the cats find a way to save the day.
Excerpt
Chapter IV Dandelion Wine
“Life is what happens to you . . .”
The frost lay heavily on the paddocks when Claude rose one winter morning, leaving Mao still snoring in their double bed. It was only six o’clock and a Saturday, no reason, you’d suppose, to rise so early, but Claude had a big day planned and he wanted to get started.
In the kitchen, dozens of long-necked bottles made of brown glass stood on the sideboard in sparkling rows, for this was winemaking day. Claude had gotten the recipe for Olwyn’s dandelion wine from Sylvia and had been entranced when he first sampled the results. The wine produced a wonderful high, and because of the lack of preservatives, there was no hangover.
He opened the kitchen windows and sniffed the air. The day was fine, his plans could go ahead. Later on, when the sun had lifted the dew from the flowers, the whole family would have to roam the paddocks gathering pails of dandelions to make enough wine to fill all those bottles.
Claude set to work, raking out the fire box ashes of the night before and arranging the kindling and newspaper, just so, in the old Crown No. 4 stove that Sylvia had received as a wedding present from her parents. “What’s the use of a silver service,” her father, the big Sealpoint Siamese had said, “if you can’t keep warm?”
“Ah, you wonderful Crown No. 4,” Claude said lovingly to the stove. “Not too big, not too little; just right.” He was about to put a match to the creative kindling he’d arranged, and get on with the making of the hot coffee, chocolate and toast he knew it would take to get the family started when Rupert arrived in the doorway, flushed from his paper run, fur fluffed up.
“I wouldn’t light that stove if I were you,” he said knowingly.
“Why not?” said Claude, but he held off with the match.
“Because,” said Rupert, enjoying his special status of I-know-more-than-you-do, “Wild Cat’s sitting on the chimney.”
“What for?” The match was now burning Claude’s large front paw.
“I don’t know,” Rupert said peevishly. “I’m only telling you what I saw.”
“Didn’t you ask him?”
“Heck, no,” Rupert said. “I was too busy trying to get inside. It’s cold out there.”
Claude donned the pair of gumboots that stood at the ready near the back door, tied his dressing gown around his middle and went out into the yard. The wooden extension ladder normally kept in the shed was propped against the side of the house.
Claude looked up. Just as Rupert had said, there was Wild Cat sitting on the very top of the chimney. His legs hung down in his patched and mended jeans. Claude could see the holes in the soles of his army disposal boots.
“Come down!” Claude called without thinking anything through.
“I’m not coming down,” Wild Cat said calmly, “until I get my throne back.”
“Why me?” Claude shouted. “I’ve got a big day planned, and there are plenty of other animals with chimneys.”
“You know what John Lennon said,” Wild Cat called, and he quoted “‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans’.”
“I think he stole that from someone else.”
“Doesn’ matter. You’re the only person on the main road who’s got a chimney, and I need publicity if I’m to get Justice.” (He said justice with a capital J.)
“Would you at least get off the chimney so I can light the stove?”
“Very well,” said Wild Cat. “Never let it be said that the king was unreasonable.” He sat down on the roof with his back against the chimney. “Would you mind passing up a coffee when you’ve got the stove going? It’s awfully cold up here—mind you, though, the view is nice. Oo, look at that, I can see a giant crystal up in the railway yards!”
Claude ignored this piece of fantasy. “Wild Cat, please come down,” he wheedled. “I’m very busy today.”
“Nope,” said the Cat and crossed his forelegs.
“How do you think this is going to help?” Claude demanded.
“I’m making a formal protest. I’ve called the media. I want the world to see that I’ve been Unjustly Treated.” Wild Cat was very fond of capitals.
“I should just leave him up there,” Claude muttered to himself as he went back inside to make the breakfast. But when the coffee had brewed he made an extra strong mug for Wild Cat, and sent Rupert up the ladder to deliver it.
The media now began to arrive: a hippy-looking cub reporter from The Gecko and a television crew with cameras, who began setting up on the front footpath. Claude tried to ignore it all. The Cat could stay up there all day, if he liked. Nothing, but nothing, was going to interfere with his dandelion collecting day.
As he buttered the mountain of toast the family plus Wild Cat would need for breakfast, he was horrified to hear the sound of police sirens. He looked out the kitchen window just in time to see Sergeant Lacey plus Constable Prickle, a young porcupine, pull up in front of the cottage, miniature horses steaming, and run from their lock-up wagon.
Claude thought of the seventy-two bottles of wine already aging under the house; he figured there were seventy-two, give or take a few to pilfering rabbits. Was it legal to make that much home brew? Claude didn’t know. Anyway, the last thing he wanted was the police. He forced himself to remain calm and went outside again, wiping his paws on a tea towel.
“What’s going on ‘ere?” demanded Lacey the Lizard, who’d been called away before he’d had time to eat the eggs he’d so lovingly prepared for his breakfast.
Claude spread out his paws and looked skywards.
“The throne again, is it?”
Claude nodded.
“Now look ‘ere, young feller,” Lacey called urgently to Wild Cat. It was the morning of the judging of the Tidy Towns Competition, the judges were due through at seven a.m. sharp, and Mayor Watson—a koala whose shortness of stature was equalled only by the brevity of his temper—had given Lacey strict instructions to keep the town approaches spick and span. “Clean and clear, Lacey,” the mayor had said. “Clean and clear. That’s half the battle.”
“Come down at once!” called the lizard, “or I’ll ‘ave to charge you with disturbing the peace.”
The Cat sipped on his mug of hot coffee and shook his head. On the front footpath the camera crew had finished setting up. Now a blonde reporter possum stood in front of the cameras. “We are here this morning, outside the home of Mr Claude Katt . . .”
Lacey sighed. “If you won’t come down, I’ve got no choice but to send Constable Prickle up, to bring you down.”
“Me!?” cried the porcupine. He was allergic to heights.
“Now, if I do this, you’ll spend the whole weekend in the lock-up. Come on down like a good feller, and we’ll discuss this sensibly on the ground.”
No use. The cameras rolled as Lacey signalled to Constable Prickle, who commenced gingerly up the ladder. As the porcupine reached the roof and put his foot on the corrugated iron he slipped on the surface, still wet from the dew. With a great clatter he just managed to save himself.
Only a herbalist
Below him, the window opened to reveal Sylvia’s head. She was wearing a mob cap and appeared to have something smeared on her whiskers.
“What’s going on?” she growled, glaring at the camera crew and the morning in general.
“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am,” said Lacey, removing his police cap, “but there’s a strange cat on your roof, and I am engaged in the activity of bringing ‘im safely down.”
“Get off this land,” said Sylvia; she had no time for the police since the incident of the sniffer dog. “Get off this land or I’ll remove you myself!”
“Please don’t be like that, ma’am,” said the lizard. “I’m only doing my duty.”
“Duty, my foot,” Sylvia muttered. Her head disappeared, the window slammed shut and two minutes later she appeared in the backyard, dressed in an old black silk kimono and carrying a furled umbrella.
The porcupine had reached Wild Cat on the roof. “Sir, I must ask you to come with me.”
Wild Cat clung to the brick chimney and called out for the benefit of the cameras. “Justice, I want Justice! My throne has been unjustly taken from me!”
“Mot help us,” said Claude.
“What’s happening?” Mao came into the picture. Sleepy, rubbing her eyes.
“Please come quietly, sir,” exhorted the porcupine, balancing precariously on the pitched roof. He’d only gone up under pain of being discharged from the force.
“Come down from there, Wild Cat!” Sylvia cried in a voice like thunder. “And you two!” she waved the furled umbrella, first at Lacey and then at Prickle. “Get off the property, NOW!”
“Please, Ma, go back inside and go on doing whatever it was you were doing,” Claude implored.
In vain.
Sylvia was the master of a number of martial arts, but kendo had always been her favourite. No doubt she remembered the affair of the sniffer dog as she advanced on the hapless Lacey with umbrella at the ready, and the bloodcurdling scream of a Burmese war cry split the air.
“Have you got a search warrant?” Claude called through the mêlée that ensued.
“No,” Lacey managed to exclaim as he fended off blows.
“Oh, well then,” Claude shrugged, and turned away, leaving the lizard to his fate.
It was over very quickly. Constable Prickle, who’d been battling hysterics the whole time he was on the roof, gave in to them at last and fell. He landed on the milk kangaroo, who was busy setting down the weekend order on the Katts’ front doorstep. Neither was hurt, but the milk kangaroo went away muttering some oaths Claude hadn’t heard in a long time. He hoped Pussywillow hadn’t been awake to hear them.
“Obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty . . . Aggravated assault with intent to commit . . .” droned the desk sergeant at the Tuckaburra police station as Sylvia was charged with various offences.
Being Saturday, the banks were shut, and there were no ATMs in the town. Claude had to borrow her bail money from Franchetti. Who borrowed it from his mother.
“Thank you,” said Claude as he pocketed the seven five-pound notes. “You’ll get it back on Monday. She’s good for it.”
The television crew had caught the entire incident on camera. That night, the shire was treated to a wonderful display of the ancient martial art of kendo, as Sylvia filled up the screen with cat fur and furled umbrella.
The phone rang for weeks afterwards with animals wanting to enrol their young ones in Sylvia’s martial arts studio. Sylvia always declined.
“I’m only a herbalist,” she’d say.
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