The Rats and the Cat
By Angel & Bleu
Angel
It’s a great April morning.  Me (Angel) and Bleu did our usual morning routine, i.e. wake up Mom and Dad by walking on their faces before they woke up, do our stretching routine, go outside for the morning quick inspection to be sure no creatures had invaded our space, then back inside for a nice warmed-up breakfast.

     Dad’s not working, so it’d only be an hour or so before Mom left for work and we had him all to ourselves.  We have a WONDERFUL day planned out for Dad.  We’ll see how many trips outside we can work him for!  The high count of 12 was last month.  Thirteen’s the magic number…

      It’s not even 9:00 am yet, and we already have him down for 4 trips.  Trip # 5 is going to be the second trip down to the creek.  There’s a turtle down there and a big bull frog that needs our attention.  We make a quick trip to the bridge and find that Mr. Turtle and Mr. Bull Frog both have sacked out for their morning nap.   Hmmm – not a bad idea – we’ll go catch one ourselves.  So, back up the hill to the house; Dad’s in the work shop repairing a broken chair.  He’s busy, so we’ll check out the squirrel population in the back yard.  Their population hasn’t seemed to diminish any at all lately.  Every attempt to reduce their numbers has ended up like our episode we told about in “We Have Rats”.

     But Whoa!  What’s that strutting right down the middle of OUR street?  Not a creature that we’re familiar with, that’s for sure.  It looks like a dog, but not quiet.  It looks kind of like that cat a few houses down that we’re always scaring.  But this one’s not inside the house looking out a window.  This creature is on the loose!  Maybe we’d better just run up to it and make it run off?  After all – this is OUR street; nobody goes down our street without our okay.

     I figured I’d  take care of this little task myself, so I kick it in high gear and run up to this creature; I’ll just scare the tar out of him.  So – I raise the hair on my neck up in the most intimidating way, roll that top lip back, and muster up the scariest growl that you’ve ever hear.  Something strange happened though.  The invader didn’t run!  I don’t understand…  that’s foreign to my way of thinking.  He should have taken off like a lightning bolt.  But he stood his ground. Well, actually, he did more than that.  He actually twitched his long tail a couple of times and came TOWARD me.  What’s he thinking?  Doesn’t he know that I’m the Queen of this street?  I guess not.  Okay, I’ll give him the double scary look; I’ll crouch down in attack mode. That’ll do it for sure.  Hmmm, he’s still coming TOWARD me!  I need help.  Where’s my sidekick Bleu?  I need to pull out the Big Guns for this creature.  After all, Bleu weighs 104 and I’m only 80.  (We’re talking ounces here.)

      And just in the nick of time, here comes Bleu from round the other side of the house.  He’d been taking care of scaring the bird feed out of  the last of the squirrels and was coming to find out what all of the excitement was about.  Bleu came charging in, bellowing his meanest sound.  Poor guy – he’s soooooo dumb.  He’s going into this death trap unsuspecting that the meanest creature (except Mr. Coyote) was just ahead.  But to my surprise, Bleu kept on charging in until he got within 2 feet of Mr. Tabby Cat.  Mr. Tabby apparently had second thoughts about having to fend off two of this earth’s meanest creatures – The Mighty Rat Terrier,  so he turned and ran.  In true fashion, Bleu stayed right on his tail.  Not wanting to loose face, I figured I’d join in the chase too.  After all – if there’s any glory to be had out of this ordeal, I want my share.

     We chased Mr. Tabby all the way across the street, back to his house.  There he found sanctuary in a tall pine tree; safe from our attack.  All we had to do now was to strut around his yard a few minutes, and ignore Dad’s call.  He’d come get us.  Sure enough, Dad’s on his way.  We could now leave this scene with honor.

Lesson Learned:  If Mr. Tabby Cat comes down our street again, we’re going to pretend to be busy chasing something else that doesn’t fight back.  Don’t  all of us creatures have to play together nicely?

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