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Lauren`s Story Funny And Cute Cat Photo's Kitten Photo 's Did You Know .... ?? Amusing and True Cat Stories. Cats Around The World. Did You Know......?? Cat Goddesses In Ancient Egypt. Cats That Have Appeared In The News. Cat And Kitten Animations And Gifs. Funny Cat Photo's Cat Photos Did You Know.......?? Cat Photos Basil and Friends. Cat Photos Horses and Pony`s. BARBWIRE CATS. By DAVID PERRY, MOJAVE DESERT. U.S.A. Dogs and Puppies Links for Aristocat Rescue, Charity No: 1098383 Guestbook Event Calendar Barbwire Cats. Part one: Clayton’s Story. My name’s Clayton Goode. I live in the southwest part of the Mojave Desert, in a little tiny town called Barbwire, California. Barbwire was founded in 1935 by some folks who were supposed to be building a new state highway through this area. They’d been hired on by the U.S. government under the Public Works Administration, a plan cooked up by FDR to bring the country out of the Great Depression by putting unemployed people to work building lots of new railroads, dams, hospitals, schools, highways, you name it. This desert is big and desolate. The nearest towns were usually at least two hundred miles away, so the road-crews were completely on their own. To make life a little easier, about every fifty miles, they’d build a temporary camp. These camps consisted of some wooden bunkhouses for the single-men, some wood-sided tents with canvas tops (these were for the married men who often brought their families along with them), and a mess-hall for cooking and eating the communal meals. Then they’d all move ahead another fifty miles or so, building the highway as they went along, and then build another camp, and so on. This way, when the workday was done, the work crew was never too far from a hot meal, a bath, and a bunk. Even today, some seventy-five years later, you can still see the remnants of some of the old road-camps, if you know where to look. In this part of the desert, the weather’s fairly moderate between the tail-end of February, and about the middle of June. Unfortunately, that leaves eight and a half months, every year, of bitter, painful cold, and relentless, blistering heat. The worst part, is that in the summer, when the sun finally goes down, and you’re praying to get a little cool breeze, it seldom drops below ninety degrees, that’s right, even at night. It was torturous work, even for the toughest of men. Well, just about the time the highway workers were getting good and sick of building this highway, a man named William “Fannie” Pfanensteil, the crew’s Chief Surveyor, and a trained geologist, noticed a large outcropping of copper less than a mile from the roadbed. When he core-tested the surrounding area and did some quick calculations he nearly keeled over. He could barely get his mouth to form the words he needed to tell the crew that he’d found an estimated three billion ton mass of pure copper ore “Right over there!” The next day they sent a letter all the way to Washington DC, to the Public Works Administration, signed by every last man, saying, basically, “Thank you very much Mr. Roosevelt, but we quit.” And just like that, what had been simply the latest in a long string of temporary road camps, became the roots of the new mining town of Barbwire, California. Now, they could have rushed right in, blasted out all the copper in about three years, and then just walked away, taking millions of dollars with them, but leaving a three-billion ton, mile-wide scar of desert behind. But they had a much different plan. These people were determined to build a town where they could raise families. They wanted to build a real community, one that’d last. A good and peaceful place, it would be the first real home most of them had ever known. It was kinda like they all went to sleep one night, and had all dreamt the exact same dream. They dreamed of a small piece of America, and in their collective dream, it looked just like they’d always imagined that a small piece of America should look. To get started, there was a lot of the good old sticky red tape to untangle. First they laid claim to a five mile radius of empty desert, with the town proper at its center. This gave Barbwire plenty of room for future growth. Then in 1936 they got San Miguel County to incorporate their new town. They dug their water-wells, drew up plans for business zones and residential zones, and set aside space for public areas, like parks, and a civic center. Neat rows of houses appeared, and these rows slowly grew into real neighborhoods. All the residents of Barbwire had been working people their whole lives. And, like most hard-working people (people who work with their hands, their backs, and their hearts), they knew how to keep their mouths shut. So until they legally owned the land, nobody outside of the original sixty men, ever heard so much as a rumor about the millions of dollars in copper that snoozed like a friendly green behemoth, right under their merry little feet. They had all seen the mining towns that seemed to materialize overnight. Their natural treasures hastily and recklessly looted, until all of the land’s openhanded, unselfish offerings had been raped by dynamite, then ravaged, scraped and stripped to the bone. The ore-rabid miners and the greedy, short-sighted mining companies left behind only wounded land, grieving wind, and the remorseful ghosts of countless blood- drenched sins. But the town of Barbwire would prosper and grow, because the town fathers understood the need for restrained, carefully planned growth. And their first concern, always, was for the preservation of their beautiful land. Any damage or changes to the land caused by their mining operation were repaired as soon as engineering needs allowed. The citizens of Barbwire named their copper mine “The Fannie”, The Fannie Mine was strictly an “excavation” type mine. Excavation was by far the hardest, slowest, and most expensive copper mining method available. But it was also the least destructive method. The ore was mined by digging out a main shaft with secondary shafts branching out where needed. Until 1963, the only alternatives to excavation-type mines were the “open-pit” type mine, and the “strip-type” mine, which were both a lot more profitable, but took a very ugly toll on the land. Sixty equal shares of ownership were issued; one for each of the original road-crew workers, including one for my Granddad, John Goode. I own that share now, and thanks to their good planning, it’s given me a chance to live free of time clocks and tyrannical bosses. The Fannie is still producing in its slow, easy-going way. The Fannie’s production was kept to a moderate, steady level. And to insure that all their eggs weren’t in one basket, the people of Barbwire began creating all the different kinds of businesses that they figured a real town needed. Stores where they could buy bread, meats, produce, hardware, machined goods, dry goods, clothing, lumber, and of course, they built schools, and churches of every denomination, including a beautiful synagogue And something else had happened that brought even more economic security. In 1937 the highway (now called Interstate 395) was finally finished (by a whole different work-crew of course).New restaurants, gas stations, and a nice hotel were just a few of the services that travelers and tourists could expect here. I-395 connected Vincentville, sixty-two miles south, to the great network of highways that winds through the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Central and Northern California, and Western Nevada. Barbwire was now literally, officially, and fiscally on the map. And for almost four years, Barbwire was potentially, pound for pound, perhaps the best place in the country for an honest person to live, raise their family, retire, and finish out their days. Then, in 1941 The Great Attack came. Nope, not the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (that wouldn’t happen until December 7th). This attack was right here in Barbwire, and it began at 8am on March the first. It was a boundless ocean of rats. So immense was the onslaught that resistance was useless. It was an army of rats so dense that it appeared to flow like water. In wave after wave they came, thousands, then hundreds of thousands, then millions and millions of rats. Within forty-eight hours, Barbwire was thoroughly overrun and blanketed by rats. It was really and truly an event of Biblical proportions. Like nature’s revenge for the crimes of other men. You can find the story of the “Barbwire Rat Invasion” in the 1941 archives of “The Vincentville Voice”. With no warning at all, and no time to pack, the entire population of Barbwire (3,766 people), was forced to cut and run. They escaped by driving south, down to Vincentville. And there they stayed, while they tried to figure out how to take their beloved town back from the millions of ruthless outlaws. Meanwhile, back in Barbwire the rats were devouring everything in sight. You see, rats don’t just eat food, no wait, let me to re-phrase that. Rats consider everything food. Rats figure, if they can bite through it, its food. Emboldened by their sheer force of numbers, they were eating the whole town. They ate the wood on the buildings, the cloth in the clothing stores, the insulation from every wire, the tarred shingles on the rooftops, all the paper, and the cardboard, the putty from the windows, they even ate big chunks of the tires on the few cars that had been left in town. And of course, they also ate all the stuff that you and I consider food. The only good news was that rats don’t eat copper ore. Biologists, animal behaviorists, small-mammal specialists, veterinarians, zoologists, and even a few theologians hurried to Barbwire. They came from all over the world to study what they all agreed was, “The single most massive confluence of Rattus Norvegicus (the biggest bunch of rats) in recorded history.” So while the experts argued about what had caused the rat-flood, the refugees from Barbwire argued about how to get rid of them. Someone suggested spraying them with poison from airplanes. That idea was dismissed because, wisely, nobody wanted to go back to a town which was covered by an inch-thick layer of rat poison. The World War One veterans insisted that the rats, along with town of Barbwire, be bombed to Kingdom Come. Someone else said they should leave a lot of poisoned food around for them to eat (the rats, not the veterans). An expert was called in to discuss this idea. He said it would never work, because the rats would quickly get wise to the fact that their comrades who ate the poisoned food were dying excruciatingly painful deaths, and they’d simply stop eating it. After all, rats haven’t survived for 700 zillion-trillion years by being complete fools. There were a lot of ideas how to kill the rats from a distance, neat and clean, with victory as certain as the sunrise, but the experts shot them all down. Finally, with every other conceivable option ruled out, the exiles were forced to confront the nightmarish truth; the rats weren’t going to leave without a fight. Getting them out would require a real blood and guts, affixed bayonets, face to ugly rat-face, murder-fest. They would have to be killed, one stinking rat at a time, in gory, hand to hand combat. It would be a dirty, bloody, and merciless fight to the death. And it was going to take expert rat fighters; ruthless, cold-blooded, highly-skilled specialists, who didn’t know the meaning of the word fear (nor, as it turned out, the meaning of a lot of other words.) The die was cast. There remained just one final chance, one single slim thread of hope. Barbwire was going to need every single kitty-cat it could get its hands on. For more than a week, a crack team of twenty, all-volunteer anti-rat commandos got a chance to once again don their uniforms from “The Great War”. They had done a splendid job of reconnaissance. From atop a low rise, and barely a half-mile from the enemy’s stronghold, they had been able to place the enemy strength at just under three million rats. This vital intelligence was then relayed to the high command. Strategists and tacticians set about crunching the numbers. If they assumed that, on the average, one cat could kill ten rats an hour, that would be two-hundred rats per day, per cat. They further estimated that the maximum time that a cat could do battle, before exhaustion set in, was three days. This meant that with luck, each soldier-cat could account for a grand total of six hundred enemy dead. Very impressive indeed! Except for one tiny problem; using this statistical model, the cat-army would have to be, at minimum, five thousand strong! America rose proudly to the challenge. The wire services, the phone company, and every newspaper and radio station in the nation got ready. All of them went on stand-by, just waiting for the signal from Vincentville to begin the recruitment campaign. Everyone was anxious to help in any way they could. On Monday, March 21, the recruiting phase of the counter-attack began to take shape. The media was geared up and ready to launch the biggest public-service drive ever seen. On March 28 the call to arms was sounded. The papers ran huge headlines above the stories describing the emergency in Barbwire. Radio stations persuaded the top ad-men from Madison Avenue to write inspirational appeals like “America needs your CAT!!!” and, “Hey there Fluffy! Here’s your chance to be a Toughie!” Even the United States Army, eager to join the fight, printed special new posters for their recruiting office walls. The new posters added patriotic cats to the ranks of those whom “Uncle Sam Wants”. The poster showed grim old Uncle Sam, pointing down at a little Calico cat, and bore the familiar caption, “Uncle Sam Wants YOU!” Many people remarked that the cat in the poster appeared to be thinking, “Uh-oh! What’d I do now?” All across the nation, military reception centers prepared for the arrival of thousands of four-footed volunteers. The phone company even hired temporary workers to call Americans at home (right at dinner time) and appeal to them to volunteer their cats. The initial response from the cat-owning public was stunning. During the first week of the recruiting campaign, a measly twenty-four cats “volunteered” for duty. Nicknamed “The Dirty Two-Dozen”, these were all cats that were considered by their respective hometowns to be the neighborhood nuisance; the night-yowling, trash-tipping, garden-pooping, scofflaws and anarchists. They were the cats with poor social skills, chips on their shoulders, and very bad attitudes. Cats that everyone had long wanted to ship off someplace, preferably someplace far, far away. The Army propaganda specialists began, in their words, “Gathering intelligence to ascertain the basis for the failure of the recruiting campaign”. They discovered that, basically, the only reason that people didn’t want to send their cats off to war, was that they would never know what became of their pets when the war was over. They wanted their cats to be returned to them after the war (whether they had survived or not), and to be given some small recognition of their service. Much to their credit, The Army responded, “CAN DO!!” And for every family that had asked for the return of their cat, the Army made special dog-tags. Each tag listed the name, gender, descriptive markings, and family-name and address. And they promised that once the rat-war had ended, every cat with dog-tags would be returned to their homes, whether alive or departed, along with a medal expressing their country’s gratitude. A very snappy, red, white, and blue, silk-collar, from which hung a rat-shaped steel tag, inscribed: “For Courageous Actions during the Battle of Barbwire 1941”. That did the trick. By April 16, exactly 5,297 cats were at the staging area two miles away from Barbwire. The counter-attack was set for the next day, April 17. Lounging contentedly in five hundred roomy and comfy transport cages, the pointy-eared little dogfaces were cool and nonchalant. They stayed loose by playing Chase & Tumble, Who Can Nap The Longest, and Who Can Lick The Highest Spot On Their Own Back. And since not a single one of the 5,297 cats showed any sign of tension, the people taking care of them naturally assumed that the cats were just plain too dumb to know what they were up against. And as always, the cats could not possibly have cared any less about what the humans thought! But a mere two miles wasn’t far enough to dispel the vile, evil stench of three million rats. The diminutive warriors all knew exactly why they were here. And nothing, absolutely nothing, could possibly have pleased them more. They’d come here to this ancient desert to face their equally ancient enemy. And every individual cat was attended by a time-shrouded feeling, a shadowy sense, of having been here, or someplace very much like this before, perhaps even more than once. The cats were grouped into five divisions of just over a thousand cats per division. The divisions were placed in a circle around our town. When they closed for the attack, they would leave the rats little room for escape. The cats were outnumbered by roughly six-hundred to one, but it didn’t matter at all to them. Even if there had been just one cat, all by her lonesome, she would have been ecstatic to fight them. For this was exactly what they had been put here for. At precisely 04:30, the transport doors were opened. The war had begun. The enemy was taken totally by surprise. Their reflexes had been slowed by eating and sleeping all day long for a month and a half, enjoying the good-life. Not that it really made a lot of difference. Even in tip-top shape, the rats would have been no match for the battalions of fanged fury that charged lethally into their midst. Bite, shake, and toss. Bite, shake, and toss. With quick, rhythmic, neck-breaking efficiency, the grim-faced soldier-cats moved forward like a wildfire into the shoulder-deep, undulating sea of rats. From a nearby hilltop, dozens of people witnessed the horrific scene with complete awe. The news-wires were burning up with reports from the front lines. Reporters wrote touching and inspiring accounts of the battle. They wrote about natural leaders who seemed to emerge from the ranks of cats. In all there were twenty-four such leaders mentioned. One in particular captured the hearts of Americans. The reporter dubbed him “Sidewinder” for the peculiar way he had of running and hopping sideways into the fray. The article told how the huge tabby-cat raced back and forth from the fighting to the rear repeatedly, to look after the more timid cats behind the ranks. He was seen by many as he rounded up the stragglers and urged them forward. Speculation was that his strange, sideways gait allowed him to watch both the battle line and the rear echelon at one time, giving him a marked strategic advantage over the enemy. He was a truly remarkable kitty. Some rats did manage to organize into small pockets of fierce resistance. Sadly, one brave little soul, a two year old Tuxedo Cat from Philadelphia, named Bonnie, was hopelessly cornered by thirty of the foul creatures. Quickly assessing her impossible situation, she allowed herself a brief instant to remember her beloved human-family back home, then with her teeth and claws fiercely bared, and a proud roar of fury, she cut down twenty-five more rats before she fell. Others of the brave little lions were lost when they too were cut-off from their fellows and surrounded. By every account, every one of the fallen kitties had acquitted themselves, and their entire race, with the greatest possible honor. By 17:30 the evening on April 19, the last of the fighting was finally and mercifully over. Three million rats lay slain. Two hundred cats had made the ultimate sacrifice, another two hundred were injured, and the rest were all completely exhausted. Wounded cats were treated and sent home in first-class style. Many went home by their own private army ambulance, others by train. The dead were respectfully sent home in wooden boxes which were wrapped in small American Flags. And every single one of the surviving little lions was returned ceremoniously to their proud and relieved families. Every single one that is, except for the cats without any dog-tags. You remember them. They were the heroes that no person wanted back; the loners, miscreants, and misanthropes. These were the ones that stayed to live in Barbwire. And, as you may have guessed, they numbered precisely twenty-four. But even these “undesirables” were awarded the “Battle of Barbwire” Medal. Before the Rat-War, there had never been a cat in Barbwire. Now, not only were they here, they were genuine, honest-to-goodness celebrities. And ironically, the ornery traits that had earned them a one-way ticket to the middle of nowhere were admired by the desert-folks, who considered them “feisty” and “plucky”. The cats belonged to the entire town and vice-versa. They could eat at anyone’s house, sleep anyplace they chose to, and if the mood struck them, they could yowl all night long. And great woe befell the dogs that were caught chasing, threatening, or otherwise hounding one of “The Twenty-Four”. People even drove slower as they went about town, in consideration of their esteemed veterans. An inscribed bronze plaque was created to honor the cats: “Barbwire City Hall Built 1943 Dedicated to the 5,297 Fighting Felines That saved our town from certain destruction At “The Battle of Barbwire”, April, 1941 The plaque was permanently mounted over the entrance of the Town Hall. Now, believe me, I could sure understand it if you think all this was overdoing it a little bit. But if you lived here in Barbwire, you’d understand. If it wasn’t for these mysterious and slightly wacky little animals, our special little town would, quite literally, have been wiped clean off the map. Barbwire had gotten back down to business. All signs of the war were soon healed. Life returned to normal. The passage of time was once again measured only by the ordinary events that confirm that we are alive; births, family, work, christenings, funerals, fireworks, parades, new white paint, and new grey hairs. But as the years have come and gone, the respect and honor that we owe to our furry and steadfast allies has been gradually forgotten. From the beginning, Barbwire has been a very well kept secret. So despite the fact that it’s the greatest place in the world to live, our population hasn’t changed much in the intervening years. Put at 3,766 in 1941 and 8,155 today in 2006, we’ve barely doubled in size in sixty-five years. Coincidentally, our cat population has also only doubled. Due to a very clever band of coyotes with which we share this area, Barbwire hasn’t seen the shameful tragedy of out-of-control cat (or dog) over-breeding that afflicts every major city, nor the wholesale slaughter of its innocent victims. From an original twenty-four cats in 1941, we now have either fifty-three or fifty four, depending on whether you ask Mrs. Santos or Mrs. Cotter. And nearly every single one is descended from the twenty four bounders, cads, and scoundrels who had been left stranded here after the war. For a couple of years, Mrs. Santos, (whose husband had been on the original road-crew) kept detailed (and surprisingly interesting) genealogical records of our town cats. Predictably, she soon found it completely impossible to keep track of who was begetting whom. Mrs. Santos learned that while human genealogical charts are called “Family Trees”, feline charts look more like “Family Tumbleweeds.” It just so happens (and I’m sure you knew that this was coming), that I myself have a cat. But she’s one of few cats in this town that are not descended from The Twenty-Four. I found her quite by accident while driving through the town of Oaxaca, Mexico. Her name is Lupe, and without a doubt, she’s the prettiest, smartest, and sweetest cat that ever lived. Here’s what happened: In May of 1993, my wife and I were on vacation on the Mexican Gulf. We had just walked out of a café, and I as reached out to drop my napkin in a trash can, my eye picked up a tiny movement. When I looked closer I saw a new-born kitten. It was maybe three inches long, and a pale shade of pink. I knew it couldn’t be more than three or four days old. Despite the loud and profane protests of my wife, I picked it up. “Oh my God!” She shrieked, “Put that back! It’s a mouse!” I said, “No its not, it’s a kitten.” “No, no, no! That’s even worse! You know how much I hate cats!” Her anxiety level was clearly rising fast. I told her, “You don’t hate cats, you’re just afraid of them.” It didn’t help. Over the years we’d had this nearly identical “conversation” at least three hundred times. “What do you mean, afraid? I HATE those things!” She began jumping back and forth, from one foot to the other. I tried again, “Listen to me Terry! Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin hated cats. All tyrants and control-freaks hate cats. You’re just afraid of them, because when you were kid, your parents lied to you and told you that cats are sneaky and dangerous. “Dammit, Clayton, stop trying to psychoanalyze me! I hate it when you do that!” She growled the words between clenched teeth. “I’m not! Honest! I was there! I heard the whole thing!” (My wife and I grew up next door to each other, and we had always been best-friends.) And I thought that as long as I was finally gonna tell her, I might as well tell it all. “And by the way, I hate to tell you this, but they also lied when they told you that you’re allergic to them.” “Wrong! I am too allergic.” “No you’re not! I remember exactly what happened! You and I were playing Legos in your den. You asked your Mom and Dad if you could have a cat, because I had a cat and you really liked her. Remember Muffy?” Her vision passed through me as she remembered. Her eyes filled up and almost overflowed, and her face softened as she remembered my old cat Muffy. Muffy was pure black. So black that when the desert sun shined on her, her fur would shimmer and sparkle, and at the right angle it would turn dark blue. Muffy was also, without a doubt, the prettiest, smartest and sweetest cat that ever lived. Terry and Muffy had been great pals, until Terry’s parents torpedoed them. Muffy had been a descendant of The Twenty-Four. Even so, she was amazing and fantastic. I said, “Come on, let’s go. We can talk about it on the way to the vet’s office. Would you drive please?” Terry silently took the keys. We got directions to a veterinarian about six miles away. As we drove I told her the whole story. “You asked your Mom if you could have a cat.” I recounted. “You were facing the wrong way to see her face, but I saw it. As soon as you asked, your Mom and Dad looked at each other and shook their heads. And they both said, ‘No’ at the same time. You asked them, ‘Why not?’ First, your Dad said, ‘Those damn things are sneaky, and dangerous, and they don’t do what they’re told!’ Then your Mom said, ‘Besides Honey, you’re allergic.’ And she winked at your dad! I saw her, she winked, Terry!” I went on, “You asked your Mom what ‘allergic’ meant, and she said, ‘It’s complicated Sweetie, but it means you could die if you have a cat.” The new-born was squirming weakly in my hands. Terry was staring ahead, but I knew she wasn’t just seeing the road. I knew she was seeing the truth in what I’d told her. “Why, Clay? Why did they lie to me?” “It was just the easiest way for them to say no. Cats can be a chore sometimes. People worry that they’ll make messes, they’ve got to be fed, watered, and brushed. If they get hurt or sick it’s expensive to have them treated. Cats are great, but they’re not effortless.” “But why did they lie?” She asked again. “I’ve been scared to death of cats my whole life because of that lie.” “They were just trying to avoid a tantrum Terry, that’s all. They weren’t thinking in the long term, they just made a mistake. When we have kids, we’ll make some mistakes of our own, believe me.” She reached over with her right hand and gently touched the tiny bit of life in my hand. “I love you Clay.” “I can’t say I blame you, Terry.” She backhanded me playfully on my shoulder. “Can we keep it?” “I was just gonna ask you the same thing.” I smiled. The vet told us that the baby was a female. He said she was badly dehydrated, mal-nourished, had worms, mites, an eye infection, and was running a fever, which he said was very bad. He candidly told us that almost no kittens this age,in this condition, survived. He said, “It will take a miracle.” I liked him right away; because against his ever own interests, he was trying to warn me off a bad investment. I asked him to do everything possible to save the kitten. He said “It won’t be cheap.” “Yes it will.” I assured him. We took the vet’s phone number and explained that we had to go to Guadalajara for four days. I told him I would call him every day to see how the kitten was doing. And if she survived, we’d be back in a week to pick her up. After some obligatory haggling, I gave him a fat down-payment and we left. Every day the news from the vet got better and better. By the time we got back to Oaxaca and the vet’s office, the kitten was looking much better. She was moving around and looked strong. She was sucking greedily at the tiny baby-bottle that the vet’s assistant held for her. “Is she ready to go?” I asked the vet. “Yes, fine.” He said. Then he gave us three of the tiny baby-bottles and two cartons of kitten formula and explained how and when to feed her. He also gave us four prescription bottles with different antibiotics, and something for worms, He noticed me frowning at the medicine bottles. “Don’t worry.” He said. “Very mild.” Although I hadn’t asked, he told me I had change coming from my deposit. I thanked him, accepted the money, and shook his hand warmly. Then I took the thirty dollars change into the treatment room, and gave it to the young woman who’d been feeding our new family member. She spoke quietly in my ear, “The Doctor not sleep all night three days to watch baby and give food.” As I drove out of the parking lot, I heard Terry whisper, “Guadalupe, her name is Guadalupe.” Tears were streaming freely down her beautiful face. Within two years, Guadalupe, or Lupe as we called her, was a full grown beauty. She was pure white, except for a miniscule black spot right in the center on top of her head. Her personality could easily be summed up in one word: Love. That’s the only way I can explain it. She gave me the feeling that if I could see inside of her, I would see what love actually looks like; complete, unreserved, and unconditional. I could recognize this in her, because it was the same way that I loved Terry. But Terry was taken from us in October of 1996. Lupe was three, I was forty-four and I was finished, destroyed, and kaput. I guess was a good thing that Terry and I hadn’t had the kids we always hoped for, because for the next two years I closed myself in my house. I refused to answer the door or the phone, and pretty much stopped eating. Sleeping about twenty hours a day, I never cleaned the house. I hardly ever took a shower, shaved, or even brushed my teeth, yuck. The pain of losing her was so horrible, that if my cat Lupe hadn’t been here, following me everywhere like gum on a shoe, sitting with her chin on my leg while I cried, staying on the bed with me for eighteen to twenty hours a day, I really doubt if you’d be reading this story right now. I don’t know when Lupe slept, because whenever I woke up, there she was, lying next to my head, wide awake, watching over me. Now, with all due respect to Terry’s Father, my late Father-in-law, I’ve never seen anything sneaky or dangerous about Lupe. But then again, I’ve only known her for thirteen years, so maybe her sneaky, dangerous side will show up any time now. Yeah, that’s probably it. I have to admit he was right about one thing though, she almost never does anything I ask her to do. I really like that about her, she has complete integrity. I know right away if she’s not gonna do something I ask her. A friend of mine put it like this, “If you want to control something, get yourself a dog.” After about two years, the pain of losing Terry finally passed, and I was lifted out of the darkness. For a long time, it was just me and Lupe. And that worked out just fine. We’re still here in Barbwire, and it’s still a great place to live, but it’s no longer just me and Lupe. Now it’s me, Lupe, and Psycho. My best friend, Sean Moran, is a Deputy Sheriff here in Barbwire. We’ve been friends since the first grade. Once in a while he’ll invite me to go with him on a ride-along. It’s always fun to imagine I’m a cop. I decide (in my imagination) who I’d pull over, and who I’d let slide this one time, with only a warning (such power!). Sean is a great cop. He knows what he’s doing out there, and he still loves people, even after 17 years of police work. Plus, Sean has more funny stories than everybody else I know put together. In April 2003 I went with Sean on a ride-along. It was my eighth or ninth time. A very uneventful ten hours, but I had a blast anyway. When we got back to the station house after “our” shift we drove around behind the Mechanics’ shop to hose some of the desert mud off the car. Now, here in Barbwire, the Sheriff’s Office doubles as the Animal Control Office. There’s a big cage behind the Mechanics’ shop, and that one big cage is divided into three smaller cages. The dog-inmates are kept there until their owners come and bail them out. Or until the Judge says they’ve got to go. The dogs are housed according to the seriousness of their offenses. Just like human prisons, they have Minimum, Medium, and Maximum Security. This is supposed to protect the more sociable prisoners from the real animals. And just like human jails, it is always overcrowded. Whenever I’m at the station, I always stop by the doggy-jail to see who got busted, and to make sure they have food and water. Did you ever see that great children’s TV show where they always sing that song about “What doesn’t belong?” You know, it goes, “One of these things is different from the others, one of these things is different from the rest!” Then they show pictures of four or five things, and everybody is supposed to guess which thing doesn’t belong with the rest. I love that part, and I guess right almost every time. So when I saw a huge tiger-striped tom-cat in the Maximum Security cage, with two Pit-Bulls, and a Doberman, I guessed right away that the cat was the thing that didn’t belong. Looking back, I have decided that this cat must have used some kind of secret Doggy-Mind-Control-Technique to convince the dogs that he wasn’t really there, because none of the dogs were paying any attention to him at all. He didn’t have any Pit-Bull & Doberman attack-type injuries (injuries like those are easy to spot) and I could tell by looking at him, he wasn’t even a little bit afraid. If I had to describe it, I’d say he looked bored and disgusted. He was just laying there among the dogs, doing his time. I yelled for Sean to come here a minute. He came over and I pointed at the cage. “Hey, Inspector Clouseau!” I yelled, “There’s a cat in there!” It was obvious by the look on his face, that he’d been afraid that I would notice the cat. “I know.” He said sheepishly. I took a step forward toward Sean. I Felt anger flaring up inside me. Anxious to shift the blame, Sean blurted out, “Navarro put him in there, not me!” “You’re telling me that Deputy Navarro just threw him in there with those dogs?” Sean rubbed his chin and shook his head, “No, there were different dogs in there then.” “What!” How long has he been in there?” “Hmm, let me see, today’s Friday, right?” He counted on his fingers.” Five days.” “Five days Sean? Why? Why the…why did he do it?” “Look, Clay, if I tell you what happened, do you promise not to get all crazy? I know how you are about cats.” “No, I don’t promise. But Sean, why don’t you go ahead and tell me anyway.” Sean started talking, “OK, last Monday night we got a 911 call from some guy. He’s screaming, ‘Help! Help! Get it off! Get it off.!’ Cathy couldn’t get anything else out of him; he just kept screaming, ‘Get it off! Oh Sweet Jesus! Get it off!’ Stuff like that, over and over.” “So she had to pull up his address from the 911computer, then she dispatched Navarro and Garland to the guy’s house. When they rolled up about two minutes later, the front door was wide open and they can hear the guy inside, still screamin’ “Get it off! Please God! Get it off!” “They had no idea what was going on inside the house, so they went inside ready to Rock & Roll. Well, here’s the guy runnin’ around in little circles, with this big fella here,” He pointed at the cat in the cage, “attached to his head like a stapled-on toupee. The guy sees Navarro with his Glock in his hand, and starts yellin’ ‘Shoot it! Shoot it!’ They told him, ‘Sir, try to calm down, we can’t shoot it because we’d hit you too.’ The guy starts pleadin’ with them, ‘Please, please, I don’t care, shoot it anyway, please! Oh God!’ So they inched up closer and they could see that this cat has all six thousand claws jammed real deep into the guy’s bald scalp.all the way through the guy’s ear, really munchin’ on it, and it’s shaking its head real hard, like its tryin’ its level-best to rip his ear off. Blood everywhere.” “Wait a minute, Sean. Is this one of your bu…?” I was interrupted. “Clay, I swear, I’ll even show you the report!” I could see it was true. “So then what”? I asked, no longer sure if I really wanted to know. “Navarro and Garland get up real close and start tryin’ to disconnect the cat from this guy’s noggin. But when they almost had it off, the cat decides that Navarro must want some too, so he lets loose of the guy’s ear, and…what’s that artery called in your wrist? You know the one… “The Radial Artery, will you please go on?” “So this cat sinks both of his top fangs into Navarro’s Radial Artery, and won’t let go. And now Deputy Navarro is the guy who’s screamin’, “Get it off! Get it off!” So while Garland’s runnin’ back out to the unit, to get his “Hazardous-Materials” gloves, Navarro’s got this cat dangling from his wrist like a giant charm bracelet. Navarro’s tryin’ to get his gun back out to shoot the cat off him, but he’s in so much pain, he starts to feel like he’s gonna faint, so he can’t get it out of the holster. Garland finally comes back with the gloves and gets a hold of our friend here without getting bit or scratched, but when he yanks the cat away from Navarro’s arm, he jerked it too hard, and that artery broke or ripped or something. Man, I heard the blood was really shootin’ out, squirt, squirt, squirt, three, maybe four feet!” “Unreal.” I said. “Then what?” “An ambulance took Navarro and the Civilian to the hospital. And Garland brought the cat here. He just put the cat in a regular cat carrier, and left it here. Then went back to interview the victim’s wife. “She tells Garland that it all started when her husband tried to get the cat off of his lawn. The cat didn’t wanna go. So the guy threw a stone, and hit it right in the ribs. But the cat just looked at him and still wouldn’t leave. So Einstein decides he’ll chase it off. He starts runnin’ toward the cat, stompin’ his feet, yellin’ and wavin’ his arms. But instead of the cat runnin’ away, it starts comin’ toward the guy! The wife said it was the scariest damn thing she ever saw, the way this cat was hoppin’ and bouncin’ sideways toward her husband. Like some kinda Cat-Quon-Do martial arts thing.” “Sideways, Sean?” I asked. “That’s what she said. She said he was moving toward her husband kind of hoppin’ and bouncin’ sideways! I don’t know.” Sean paused to think about the cat sideways-hopping for a second, like it reminded him of something, and then he continued, “So now the guy realizes that our friend here,” Sean Motioned at the cat in the cage, “is really into the whole fight idea. So he turns around and tries to run back into his house, shrieking for help like there’s a two-ton, Bengal tiger after him. But psycho here catches him and climbs up his back to his head, and that’s when the guy called 911.” “Why didn’t the wife call?” I asked him. “Personally, I think she was laughin’ too hard”, he said. Then they see that the cat has got his fangs I shook my head. “Wow, what a mess. So then Navarro came back here after the hospital and tossed the cat into the Maximum cage, right? Then what, he just walked away?” Sean said, “That’s it. He figured he’d let the dogs get his revenge for him.” “Yeah”, I said, “Talk about your nine lives, huh? Well, you know we can’t just leave him in there forever Sean, right? I mean he’s been in there 5 or six days and he’s healthy as he can be, so it can’t be rabies.” “Yeah, I guess not”, He looked down to avoid looking at me. “Then what’s the problem, Sean?” “I’m sorry, Clayton, but I’m not going in there to get him.” “Oh, but you are Sean! What’s wrong with you? Is the big, bad policeman scared?” “I’m not scared! I just don’t like those things!” He glared at me. I didn’t think my “Cats aren’t dangerous.” speech would be much help under the circumstances, so I too shuffled my feet and stared at the ground. Finally, Sean confessed, “OK, I’m scared! There! Are you happy now? You stupid jerk!” “Come on Deputy Moran, where is your pride, Sean lad?” I tried to joke. He said “I left it at home, along with your brains.” We both laughed, but it was a nervous laugh. I said, “OK look, I’ll go in and get him out. But you stay right there, and if any of those jumbos even wags his tail at me, mace him severely. By the way, where’d you get those monstrosities from?” Sean smiled, “We confiscated them when we busted the dog fight championships over in Bridgerton on Wednesday. Damn! I wish I had been working that day. There would be some sorry-faced humans sitting in that cage with these innocent animals. But it’s probably better for everyone that I was off that day. I said, “Ok, change of plan. If anything happens, mace down the whole cage. Everything except for me and the cat, understand Sean?” Suddenly the idea of Sean spraying mace in my direction, made me feel a little sick. Through an evil-looking grin, Sean said, “Sure Clay, you know you can always count on me.” Everything went fine, neither the cat nor any of the dogs gave me any trouble. I could see that this bad-boy wasn’t really tickled with the idea of me picking him up, but even so, he was smart enough to know that it was his best option. I liked this cat, liked his spirit. I told Sean that if anyone asked about the cat, Especially Navarro, tell him the dogs just ripped him to shreds. I put him in an extra-large cat-carrier (he is an extra-large cat) and brought him home with me. He was wearing a very old threadbare collar that was too small and tight around his thick neck, so I took it off of him and brought it in the house. It had a rat-shaped steal tag hanging from it. I washed off most of the rust and read the inscription; “For Courageous Actions During The Battle of Barbwire 1941”. This bruiser was only about two years old, not sixty-three, so where did he get it? I stood there thinking about it, recalling the stories of the Rat-War of 1941. It all seemed to become clear to me. For sixty-three years, somebody had made sure that this medal was passed down, all the way from its original recipient, to a cat chosen from each generation. Maybe that was why he hadn’t run from the guy that threw the stone. By some mystical means he felt that as long as he wore that medal, running from a fight, as much as he might really want to, would simply not be possible for him. Now I understood the lonely and violent life he had inherited. Remembering what Sean had called him, I named him Psycho, for luck. I let him stay in the garage. I gave him plenty of good food and water, and he seemed very content to be safe and at peace again. I had his medal cleaned and polished like new, and got him a new, red, white, and blue silk-collar for it. When he saw it, he trotted right over to me and let me put it back on him. I kept him in the garage for three days, so he’d start to think of it as home. Then I started letting him out during the day. He always came home (to his garage) just as the sun was setting. That’s when the coyotes are coming out to hunt. And he was more than welcome to stay and be my garage-cat as long as he wanted to. In the meantime, Lupe was just itching to know exactly what was happening. Her curiosity must have been unbearable. It seemed to me that it was all she thought about. She stayed by the inside garage door practically twenty-four hours a day, listening and sniffing. I just assumed she was upset that her territory had been violated, and whoever was out there could not leave too soon. I thought that she was either worried that I was going to replace her, or she just purely hated the idea that somebody else was eating her food. I gave it a good three weeks before introducing them. I just opened the door and let them handle the formalities themselves. Now, I don’t know why, but I guess I had just assumed that Psycho would approach the door and eventually come inside the house. So I was very surprised that it was Lupe who made the first move. Without any hesitation, she marched confidently into the garage, walked up to him and stood not more that three inches from his face. She looked him up and down. Since he'd already gotten himself all cleaned up, he passed the appearance phase. Then she sniffed him all over, and again he seemed to pass inspection. Then she walked back around in front of him and looked him in the eye. To my horror, he started to puff-up and to growl at her. She appeared not to notice, and then she began the entire inspection over again. Once again, when she got all the way around, he made threatening noises and movements. I was ready to intervene at any second. I was afraid that she didn't recognize the danger signs, because she'd never even met another cat before, especially one like him. She seemed completely indifferent to him, like she’d gone through this procedure a million times, and was a little annoyed by having to do it again. So I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when her left paw flashed out and slashed at the tip of his nose, hitting him three times in a half-second. I started forward to grab her away from Psycho before he could retaliate. I could see a lot of blood on his nose, and there was a big drop of blood on the garage floor. But except for the lightning-fast strike, Lupe had not moved. She was still sitting calmly in front of him like nothing unusual was happening. Psycho turned around and walked away as fast as his dignity would allow. He was doing that head-shaking thing that cats do, trying to shake off the pain and blood. His Rat-Medal jingled as he retreated. I was shaking all over, like a dog tryin' to pass a peach-pit. When I turned and walked back toward the door, Lupe was proudly bouncing along beside me. I can still see it right now like it was five minutes ago. And I'm still completely astonished by the whole scene. She is a gentle and affectionate cat. Why had she done it? Moreover, how had she gotten away with it? She knew nothing about other cats. How could she have been so confident, so calm? WHAT WAS SHE THINKING? I started to see her in a whole different light. But I hadn't seen anything yet. Ra-oula Part two: Ra-oula’s Story My name is Ra-oula. Everybody calls me Lupe. I am Clay’s little white cat. But my secret name, the name left for me by the Elders, is Ra-oula, which in Furless, means White Angel. I have knowledge of things that I have never seen. I know many things that I have never learned, and I have seen places that I have never been. I know two different kinds of things; things that I have learned during my own life, and things remembered, gathered together, and left for me by my Kind. If I learn anything new, and if it’s important enough, it will be added to The Memory of my kind. But after so many thousands of generations, most of us living today will not leave anything new. We share our close-world with the Furless Ones. They do have a little fur, but compared to us, they are furless. They are noisy and clumsy, but some, like MY Furless-one, are wonderful. Their ways are very different from ours, but we get used to that. We have to; the survival of our Kind might depend on it. Like us, they are all different from each other. Some are mean, some nice. Some are playful, some serious. And like us, they can change from one aura to another very quickly. Fearful one moment, brave the next. Sad one moment, happy the next, and so on. Their Elder-Marks differ too; some have very light skins, some have very dark skins, but most are shades between. Their eyes are Sky, Earth, or Tree, and also shades between. When I was little, before I received The Memory, I had never met another of my Kind; so naturally, I believed that I was one of the Furless Ones. I watched my Furless One very closely, to try to learn the things I would need to know when I got big. Now I know how to do all the things that he knows how to do, but I cannot do them. And that is as it should be, because, as I later learned from The Memory, there are many things I can do, that he cannot. He can learn only the things that he is taught in his own lifetime. But I know everything ever learned by all of my Kind. All of their knowledge and experience lives within me, in every cell of my body. When I was very young, and The Memory first spoke to me, I would not listen. At first, I refused to listen because I was afraid of it, then because I was confused, and then, worst of all, because I was too proud. I thought I knew everything already. But as time passed I realized that were so many things I did not know; what was it like outside my house? Where did the birds go, when they flew out of sight? Who were the others who looked like me, that I oftentimes saw outside my favorite window? How does my Furless One, so loud and slow, catch all the food that he brings home? But most especially I wondered; if I am not of his Kind, then what am I? So many questions kept biting at me. Soon the joy of life was gone. I no longer had any purpose. I was sad and constantly worried, but didn’t know why. I was lost, but didn’t know where. I was dying, but didn’t know when. I was angry, but didn’t know at whom. I was afraid, but didn’t know of what. And I needed help, but didn’t know how it would ever come. I longed for The Memory to come back and give me a second chance. When The Memory finally did return for me, it was gently laughing. “Ra-oula, are you Ready yet?” Oh yes, I was ready. “Ra-oula”, it scolded. “The greatest obstacle to learning is knowing. Now, Ra-oula… REMEMBER!” In a blink, I found myself outside, in an endless place. All around me were trees and sky, and everywhere I looked, there were Others, Others of every Kind. There were tall Kinds, fat Kinds, slow Kinds and fast. There were crawling Kinds, climbing Kinds, swimming and jumping Kinds. There were Kinds that were in big groups of their own Kind, and Kinds that walked alone. There were Kinds that lived under the ground, and my old acquaintances, the birds, who lived in the sky. I was not alone. There were others of my Kind. We lived in small groups. We hunted day and night. We ate only if the hunt went well. I saw new ones of my Kind being born, and saw some carried off by huge birds or others. I was a father of my Kind, and then I was a mother. I was a little-one, playing with my brothers and sisters, how we loved each other. I was a hunter. I was catching an animal to eat. I was caught and eaten by another. I saw the big water dry up. We all had to walk for days and days. Many of us died along the way. We finally came to a place with more water. My, how we drank then! We survived. The Memory is showing me everything so fast. It is all flying by me, through me, into me. As it rushes on, it answers all of my questions, even ones that I have never asked. At last I know what I am; I am........Rawrhah-pdddrrup! In Furless, it means Cat. The Memory shows me a small fire. A Furless One is eating. I see a rat; it is eating too, eating the Furless One’s food. I feel an overpowering hatred toward the rat. I hear the Furless One make a loud noise, and see it wave its front legs at the rat. The rat looks at him, and then it keeps eating. Furless Fool, I’ll show you how my Kind deals with vile, filthy rats. I find the breeze; it must blow toward my face if I am to hunt. I move so very slowly. I become the soil, the bush, the rock. I know that I can not be seen, can not be heard. I breathe shallow and quiet. I step, one…foot…at…a…time, patience, patience. Words come to me; she who hunts the slowest, eats the soonest. I pause between steps and stand stone-still, then slowly forward. When cover runs out, I crouch down as small as I can. I wiggle all of my strength down my body, down to my back legs. I close my world down. Nothing exists but me and the rat. In an explosion of power, I leap forward. In one motion, without slowing, without mercy, I bite into the rat and keep running. I run with the rat in my jaws, until I’m out of sight of the Furless one. I stop to see if he is chasing me, to get his rat back. No. He must know that it would be pointless. In time, the rats are sent to bring plague to the Furless Ones. I see two armies preparing for a final, winner-take-all battle. An endless valley is filled with countless millions of rats; their ranks reach all the way to the horizon. And in the distance, a tall mountain is beautifully alive with a million of my Kind, preparing for war. The battle races by my eyes in short, gruesome visions. When it’s over, all of the rats are dead. But the number of my Kind has fallen from a million, to only a few hundred. My heart is aching. The Memory tells me, Ra-oula, do not mourn. This war had to be fought. The rats were destroying the whole world. This war, ten thousand years ago, almost cost us our entire Kind. But never forget, in the end, and still to this day, it is our Kind that has triumphed. The Memory becomes more and more about the Furless Ones. I am hunting rats in ships on the ocean, in grain bins, in grass huts and palaces alike, in tiny villages and giant cities. I know that wherever the Furless Ones are, the rats will go. And wherever there are rats, the Furless Ones will always want me there. Still, The Memory races by. Many Furless Ones now feed me whether I hunt or not. We live together in the same houses. Our lives, and our destinies, are intertwined. Some treat me as their own kind. I have helped to give them a better life, and they share it with me. Now The Memory slows down for me. I see a little-one of my kind, newly born, eyes still not opened, unable yet, to walk. It is white. It is in a pile of dirty papers and rotten food, and very sick. Then I see my Furless! He takes the white little-one from the lonely place. He takes it with him to my house! As the little-one grows, the two of them become very close, as though they are of one Kind. Then I hear him calling, “Lupe! Lupe!” It is me he is calling. I feel so happy that I fear that I will die of happiness! I am growing old now, and I am afraid. Not for myself, not at all. I am afraid for him. I know that he needs me. I worry what will happen to him when I have gone. Nobody knows him like I do. When he is sick, I keep him company. When he is sad, I act the clown. I run, I flip, I chase shadows, I attack his feet and fall over dead, as if from the smell. If that does not work, I just sit with him, so he knows that he is not alone. And when he is happy, we rejoice together. But I have one small hope. There is another of my Kind. It is in my garage. My Furless takes some of my food to it every day. I have not seen it, but I know it is a male. A male is not the best one to take my place, but as my Furless says, you must play the hand you are dealt. It is time to meet the new Rawrhah-pdddrrup. I am not sure what to do! I have never even been near another of my Kind before! But The Memory will know. My Furless opens the door. I walk into my garage and see the Rawrhah-pdddrrup. He is a giant compared to me, and wild. I can see the ugly marks of many fights. He makes threats at me. The memory says, do not listen to him, show contempt, and insult him! I walk in a circle around him, sniffing at him. He watches me but does not move. I smell a faint odor of dogs on him. I look in his eyes and tell him that he stinks. His eyes grow wide with fury, and his threats grow worse. Do not listen! Do not fear! Insult him again! It is the only way! I sniff at him some more, and I hiss the meanest, most offensive insult in my language, you smell like a DOG!! ……OK, now what do I do??? Now STRIKE!!! The Memory is in control. My left-front leg flashes out, claws set to kill. One! Two! Three! Striking him on the nose. I smell blood. Now Ra-oula, wait. I can see his eyes as they fill with pain and humiliation. He turns away and half-runs under my truck, leaving a blood- trail. He believes he is running from the crazy white cat, but I know he is running from The Memory. Enough for now Ra-Oula, leave him be. My Furless and I go back in my house. I go to my bedroom to think about the things that have happened. It is not over, Ra-oula. He will test you, but you will be ready. I knew that the Pawrhah-pdddrrup in my garage would be coming into my house soon. The weather was turning cold and My Furless would be worried about him. I began to prepare. After all, I can’t let The Memory do everything. I checked to make sure that my scent was everywhere that he might want to sleep. I napped on things and in spots I would never have considered before. I dug out all the toys my Furless had ever brought me. I had never used them, but now I would. I would chew on them and put my saliva on them. It’s not easy having a visitor, everything must be just so. The day that I knew would come, finally came. He was in my house. For the first three days, he stayed away from me. Then, when he had relaxed a little, I demanded, in a very rude voice, to know his name. He said his name was Wahhhrom, in Furless it means; Buddy, Chum, or Pal, isn’t that nice? My Furless was calling him Psycho. And it was not long before Psycho wanted to play with me. He thought he was so clever. For his first assault, he lay upside-down in the, Look! I’m lying helpless on my back position. In this technique, the careless victim, tempted by a nice soft belly, closes in. But the Helpless on Back, as it is known, is a deadly trap, and that which appears to be so helpless, is really the ideal fighting stance for my Kind. All four feet, each one armed with five Daggers of Doom, are free to slash, and the Fangs of Finality, free to snatch away the life of the gullible prey. I put an unsuspecting look on my face, and slowly I closed in.…. I pretended to look at his nice, soft, exposed belly, but at the very last moment I lunged to my right, clamping my fangs onto his throat, and pinning his head back against the cold tile floor. I kept my body sideways to him. He could not touch me, and any sudden attempts to escape would bring him serious injury, or worse. His surrender soon followed. As I expected, losing the first round only made him more devious. He began to search out an ambush site. He decided on the kitchen counter. He could wait there for me to walk by below, and then pounce on me with all of his weight. There was plenty of clutter up there, so he could conceal himself, lying in wait. But the successful ambush requires at least two ambushers. Because they must take turns sleeping. Wahhhrom was all alone. I stayed away from the kill zone. I pretended not to see him. I made many false starts toward the kill zone, but then I would stop and change my mind. Each time I started to walk into the ambush he would ready himself. For my Kind, these alerts demand total concentration, and lots and lots of adrenaline. After ten alerts, Wahhhrom was tiring. Maybe she will come after I take a little nap… He didn’t even stir as I leaped silently to the counter behind his sleeping form. I bit into his tail. His shriek was truly chilling. Next, I knew he would try to “play” again. But first he would be patient, win me over, and lower my defenses. For a long time he was very friendly, even charming. I played along. Then one morning as I was walking across the living room, he suddenly dashed in front of me, cutting me off. He stood in front of me, his body swaying in a slow, menacing rhythm. It was the Cobra Style, and it was meant to intimidate and confuse me before he attacked. Instead, I would show him a little variation on the Helpless on Back technique. Instantly, I dove forward, aiming for the smooth, slippery floor just in front of him. Then I twisted my body half way around as I slid under his chest, between his long front legs. By the time I stopped sliding, I was directly under his belly, Helpless on Back. I went to work. I sank my fangs into his upper leg and shook my head. At the same time, all of my claws raked his belly. By the time he realized where I was, his pain was pitiable. He pried himself free. He was now in a full-fledged panic. As I had anticipated, he tried to escape down the hall. If he got into to the bedroom, I would lose the advantage. I could not go around him, I had to go over. I calculated the distance and speed I needed to leap over him, to cut him off. I leaped forward, turning half way around in the air. When I landed in front of him, we were face to face again. He was far too surprised to put up a defense. My strikes landed freely. Once again he roared in pain, and then he turned around and sprinted off. I was having so much fun, I am afraid I over-did it a little. I went on the offensive, setting traps for him. I found the perfect spot. Under the dining room table, there is a forest of table legs and chair legs. I found an opening between them that was just barely wide enough for me to squeeze through. Then I staged a staring-contest and let him win by slowly backing away. When he saw that I was backing up, he became over-confident. He followed me step for step. I backed up all the way between the legs of the trap. He tried to follow me under the table but only his head fit between the legs. When his shoulders hit the legs, he realized his mistake, too late. His face was all mine. Whap, slap, bap! He panicked and tried to back up too fast, banging the sides of his head hard against the chair leg. By the time he freed himself, he was one downcast Pawrhah-pddddrrup. I feel a little sorry for him. He had no idea that he was fighting not just me, but all of the Elders too. They tell me it was necessary, because finally he is not so proud. Now when The Memory comes to him, he will be able to hear it and listen. He will need to hear it, for he has been chosen to care for my Furless, after I have gone. Wahhhrom Part 3, Wahhhrom’s Story: I know every outside-cat in this town. Not only do I know all the outside-cats, I know a lot of the easy-money, life of Reilly, inside-cats too. Sometimes I would talk to ‘em through their windows. I never told ‘em this, but in my opinion they were all fat and soft, more like giant mutant hairy potatoes than cats. Most of ‘em can’t walk fifteen feet without collapsing for a six hour nap. And they’re so naïve. A lot of them used to tell me they envied me. “You’re so free! What I wouldn’t give to be an outside cat!” I never told ‘em about the drawbacks. I figure, hey, let ‘em have their dreams, right? I know most of the humans too, how boring can ya get? Sometimes I wonder how they can stand it. They clump to their cars, drive off, come home, and clump back to their house. They never run fast, climb or jump, they just clump. I’ve watched them through their windows and I swear I’m not making this up, but I’ve never seen one clean itself! Listen, life’s short, and I didn’t have time for anything boring or smelly. So when they were smart, and they left me alone, I left them alone too. I know all the streets and alleys in this town. In fact, I know every square inch of this burg like the back of my paw. I also know everything that goes on here too. We got a grapevine like you would not believe. Some of the outside-cats are OK. Like Baby Gino for instance (everybody with half a brain calls him just plain Gino) I used to check in with Gino a couple a times a week, to get the latest goings-on. He always knew everything, like who had kittens, who got Coyote’d, and if there were any new humans in town that were good for a bite to eat. Baby Gino is one of about three male cats I know who have good sense. He don’t wanna fight every time he sees another male (which I’m very happy about, because I’ve seen him fight, and I want no part of that!) One time he told me that there’s just one good reason to fight another cat, and that’s if you’re fighting over a female. Even then, he says,you should try to talk your way out of an actual fight. Ya know, compromise, negotiate. Gino calls it “Catplomacy”. It works like this: In as much detail as possible, tell the guy what you’re gonna do to him and stress how much it’s gonna hurt. Describe how grotesque he’s gonna look when you are finished with him. Tell him what you have done to other hombres who were a lot tougher than he is (it is OK to exaggerate here). Then promise you will not tell anybody if he should decide to play it smart and slink off. Ya know, tell him you will give him a break this time. Usually they buy it, but not always. So unfortunately, you always gotta be ready to back-up everything you say. That’s the only thing I didn’t like about my life, all the fighting. Every year, when spring rolls around, most a’ these hairballs think they’re supposed to fight every time they run into another male, even if there aint a female within a mile! That don’t make any sense to me. Fighting another cat ain’t a stroll in the park, believe me. I’d rather face a coyote any day. I could always outmaneuver one Coyote. But what’s scary is, there’s almost always more than one. They like to hunt in twos and threes, and they are very, very good hunters. If you ever sense there is more than one coyote around, scram or you’re a hot meal, period. But at least Coyotes aren’t interested in hurting you. They’re professionals. It’s not personal. They just want to eat you, and everybody’s gotta eat, right? But, I digress... Fighting another cat is strictly about pain. We never kill each other. The goal is to cause so much pain that the other guy just can’t take it any more. If you can do that, he will realize that discretion is the better part of valor, and he’ll put four to the floor. I hated that. I especially hated fighting for no reason. It’s stupid, it’s painful, and there’s no percentage in it. Baby Gino said it was because I’m smarter than most of these clowns. Maybe he’s right, I don’t know. All I know is I’d prefer to get along with everybody. Life’s hard enough already, and there are a lotta other things I’d rather be doing, like hunting birds and mice and lizards, and exploring new places. And if I had to choose between hunting and exploring? That’s easy; I’d take exploring, hands down. I’m an explorer and an adventurer, always ready to risk it all for a new discovery. My Mom said I inherited that part of me from my Great, Great, Great Grandma and Grandpa. Their names were Cookie and Sidewinder. They were world-famous adventurers. Heroes, even. My mom always used to tell us about how Sidewinder and Cookie came here to the desert a long time ago, from thousands of miles away, to fight a war against millions of rats ( I wish I coulda been here!). She told us how fearless and bold our Grandma and Grandpa had been. She said Grandpa Sidbattle on the north side of town, with Grandma Cookie right there beside him. “Legendary Adventurers”, Mom had called them. After the rat-war, the humans gave each one of the rat-fighters one of these special collars. The one that I wear belonged to Grandpa Sidewinder. My sister Gypsy, wears Grandma Cookie’s war collar. My mom said when the time was right, we’d know who to pass them along to. When I was about a year old, Grandpa’s collar fit me perfect. But my mom didn’t know I was gonna keep growing, even after all my brothers and sisters stopped. After my family went their separate ways I kept getting bigger and bigger, and my Grandpa’s collar kept getting tighter and tighter. At first it was just annoying and I could usually ignore it. But after a while it really started to bother me a lot. It was almost all I could think about. I was so miserable. I tried to take it off, but no go. I scratched at it till I was bleeding and raw. I had a headache all the time from the pressure on my neck. I tried not to run too much because I couldn’t really breathe right and running made my head hurt even worse. About a month ago I was walking down a sidewalk (minding my own business, of course) when this mean little upstart runs up to me outta nowhere and he wants to fight! Just like that! But with this collar choking me half to death, the last thing I wanted was a fight. I started trying some Catplomacy on him. I almost had this dopey cat convinced too. Anyway, I guess we were talking too loud, because some nutty dame comes outta her house and sprays the both of us with cold water from a hose! All of a sudden this genius cat decides that it’s my fault we got sprayed (you tell me, how was it my fault?) and he jumps me! I tried to fight back, and I did OK for a minute, until I lost my breath. I knew that it was time to breeze along. I turned to haul my buns outta there, but he got ahold of them from behind, and to make a long story short, I took a thorough mauling. When I finally got loose, I ran for a block before I had to stop and catch my breath. My head was pounding, I was all shredded from the fight, my collar was choking me, and I was soaking wet. So I found some soft grass and decided to rest, dry off, and lick my wounds. I’ve had my share of hard knocks, but that was the worst I ever felt in my life. Just as I was calming down, getting dry, and starting to feel a little better, I heard a man yelling in my direction. I looked to see what all the hubbub was about. I saw a man standing on his porch and I realize that it’s me he’s yellin at. Once again, I figure it’s time to be elsewhere. I get up to go, and the man throws a rock and BINGO, hits me right in the ribs! I was in total shock, first from the pain, then from the surprise that a human could throw a rock that good. Now I really want to bug out. But with all my aches and pains I was movin’ too slow for him, so he starts to run toward me! He was stomping at the ground, waivin’ his front legs, and tryin’ to make scary noises. Enough was enough. I just could not bring myself to run away again. It never happened before, but I nutted up. Turning toward him, I began to close the distance. Now apparently, when Mr. Rockthrower sees me comin’ after him, he re-evaluates his priorities, his recent unfriendly behavior, and pretty much his entire life up to that moment in time. He screams, turns around and tries to flea! I was outta control. I caught him, climbed up his back all the way to his conveniently hairless head and dug in. I leaned my head down, and tried to relieve him of his right ear. He swatted at me, but I had way too good of a chomp on him. Looking back on it, I aint proud of what I did. But that’s a catfight for ya’. After a couple a minutes, two other humans come in, big ones. They tried to pull me off Rocky-Boy, but I ain’t finished with him yet! I warned the two new men to leave me alone, but they kept grabbin’ and pullin’ at me. It’s three against one now, but I was still so mad I didn’t care. One of the new guys got too close to my teeth and got a real bad bite in his front leg. They finally got a grip on me and stuffed me into a little box. They put me into a car, took me to a building over by the railroad tracks, and left me behind the building. Later that evening, the one I bit on his front leg came back. When I saw it was him, I figured “Uh oh, this is it. I’m goin’ to the big litter-box in the sky.” Instead, he picks up my box, opens the little door and DUMPS me into a big cage with four dogs! Then the man points at me with his good hand, says something to the dogs, gets in his car, and drives off. What a relief. I started to think that maybe I’ll survive this after all. A lotta cats have major problemos with dogs. I don’t. My mother taught us all about dogs when we were babies. She told us that you have to read a dog. She said that dogs are naturally friendly. She said that dogs have to be trained to be mean, or to attack cats. I can tell right away if a dog is gonna attack me or not. Most dogs won’t. But even a friendly dog will chase you if you run. So I only run from a dog if it’s givin’ off danger signals. I knew I could relax with these dogs. All four of these guys were locked up for biting people, not cats. Here we were, all in the same boat, and we got along great. Two days later a truck pulled up and took ‘em away. I was sorry to see ‘em go. But it was nice to be alone. That night, the man I had accidentally bit came back and put three more dogs in my cage. These three were a different story. These dogs were trained killers. My hope of survival vanished like a cute little mouse down a cold, dark hole. Two of my new cellmates were short and bulging with muscles. The third one was tall and wiry, with the biggest, whitest, sharpest teeth I ever saw. One of the muscle-heads grinned at me while licking his lips. “Hey look fellas, the cops left us dinner. Now that was real considerate of ‘em!” I felt nauseous. Then the tall wiry one says, “Wait just a moment please.” He walks right up to me, bends down, and looks straight at my throat. “Leave him alone,” He says. “Do you see that collar and tag he’s got on? That, my hyper-salivary friends, is known as a ‘Ratty’. The rules are exceedingly clear on this matter; it is strictly forbidden to harm any cat who’s wearing a Ratty.” The flat-faced drooler starts growling, “I don’t give a rat’s tail if he’s wearin’ a tutu and tennis shoes, I’m gonna eat him!” “I’m very sorry, but I shall not allow that to happen,” Says the tall dog, “Unless, perhaps you’d care to try and eat me too?” He walked over next to me, turned around to face the other two and snarled at them to reveal his suddenly beautiful teeth. Now there are two of us facing the two of them (all right, all right, one and a half of us, jeez!). The second muscle-dog spoke up now “He’s right Bro, we better not eat him. I think I hearda that “Ratty” thing before” He sounded very disappointed, but at least he stopped all that disgusting drooling, which had formed a huge, gaggy, slimy pool on the cement floor. They explained about the Rat War to the first muscle-bound thug. He cooled off, even became respectful. For the rest of our time together, they were real nice dogs. They shared the food and water. That night, when it got cold, they even invited moi to huddle up for warmth. I said thanks, but no. (I will never be that cold) A couple days later, two men who I did not know came around. I figured they were here to take the dogs away, like before. But after a long discussion, the bigger one opens the cage and picks me up! I didn’t know what he had in mind. But hey, whatever it was, it couldn’t be too much worse that layin’ on a cement slab, eatin’ dog-food, could it? Besides, I’d stand a lot better chance of escaping once I was outta this cage. I exchanged good-byes with my new friends, and the man put me in a nice big box and gave me some good food. He put my new box in the back of his truck. The wind felt so good; so clean, fresh and free. Things were looking up. The man drove to his house and lifted my box outta the truck. He put my box inside the garage, and opened the little door to let me out. He left and came back a minute later with some fish and water. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was, and I drank till my tongue was tired and my stomach bulged. He took my collar off very gently, snipping it with tiny little snippers. What a big relief. He rubbed something on the sore spots. The pain almost vanished. Nobody had treated me that good since I lost my Mom almost a year ago.. When I felt my purrer start up, it surprised me a little, I had forgotten I could do that purring thing! The only thing that coulda made it better was a nice lonnngggg nap. The man gave me the softest, warmest thing to sleep on, exactly my size…BIG! So curling up, I bid the world good night. I stayed there, resting inside the garage for a few days. Soon I began to feel like my old self again; jaunty, strong, and oh-so-handsome. I knew there was another cat living inside the house, a female. I wanted to make a good impression so I spent hours and hours washing off the aromas of my recent adventure. After a few more days, the man opened the door and let her into my garage. She was so cute. All white with a little black dot on her head. It was a shame I was gonna have to show her who’s boss. I don’t wanna bore you with a lotta details about how I accomplished it, let it suffice to say that the other cat in this house harbors no delusions whatsoever about who’s in charge, none, zero, zilch. Moving on to more pleasant subjects: One morning last week, I was baking nicely in a windowsill when a couple of hoodlums I used to run around with stopped by. It was Bowlegged-Bob and his slack-jawed brother, Booster. They were teasin’ me big-time about my new indoor lifestyle. “Hey Booster! Look at the hairy potato!” “I see it, Bowlegged Bob. Wait, isn’t that…no it couldn’t be.” “I think it is, Booster! Better take a good look, next time you see him, he’ll weigh seventy three pounds. And look how pretty he is, all clean and shiny! I faked a yawn to show how much I was ignoring them. Then I heard a familiar voice. “What’s up fellas,? There a problem here?” It was Baby Gino. Booster looked at the ground and mumbled as he backed away, “Oh, hi Gino. We were just in the neighborhood. We stopped to say hello to our friend there.” He pointed his nose at me. “Well, we better be in the wind, heard about a bunch a’ lizards livin’ over at Raccoon Ridge. Thought we’d take a looksee.” “Yeah, that sounds real exciting fellas, have a blast.” Gino sarcasticized them. When they had left, Baby Gino Told me, “Don’t listen to those fools Wahhhrom, you’re exactly where you’re supposed be, stay with Ra-oula and the human, you have a family now”. I didn’t get it, this wasn’t my family, and I didn’t intend to stick around here forever. I heard Lupe make a “Huff” sound behind me and looked over my shoulder. Her brilliant blue eyes gave away nothing, just her usual smug mug. “I don’t understand, Gino,” I said. “It’s been real nice here, but I’m an outdoor cat. I’m just hangin out here for a while. There are too many new adventures out there.” “Patience, my young friend” Gino said. “You have so many things to learn. Things you’ll never know as an outside-cat.” “Wahhhrom?” It was Lupe. “We love you, Wahhhrom. A lifetime of your adventures aren’t worth one minute of love. Moreover, if you are patient, you will soon experience the adventures of a million lifetimes. Every adventure of every cat that ever lived will be yours.” I wasn’t havin’ it. “Listen my friends, I appreciate the sentiment, but exploring is in my blood. I couldn’t give it up even if I wanted to, which I don’t. Sure it’s got its down-side. I didn’t like jail very much, and sometimes things do get rough out there. But I have a lot of places still to see. There are still new adventures I need to have. Maybe I’ll come back here someday when I’m older. I‘m very fond of Clayton and Lupe. It’s tempting, but I’ll be unhappy if I stay here too long.” “Wahhhrom?” Someone else was now calling to me. At first I thought it was Lupe again. I looked back at her. She shook her head, nope, it wasn’t her. “Gino, did you hear something just now?” I asked him. He didn’t answer, he just looked at me with sad eyes. “Wahhhrom?” There it was again. I was getting spooked. “Who is that? What do you want? I demanded. “It’s me, your Grandpa Sidewinder, Wahhhrom. I must have a word with you.” “It’s a trick, a game of some kind,” I thought. I ran all around the house determined to find the source of that voice. But it was coming from inside of me. “It’s not a trick, Wahhhrom. It’s really me. If you’ll listen for a moment, I promise to leave you alone. The decision to stay or go will always be yours. It has always been so for our kind. No one can force us to do anything. All I ask is for a little of your trust. The other Elders and I are preparing a tremendous gift for you Wahhhrom. It is the complete memory of our kind. Everything that has ever been seen, or done, or learned by every cat that ever lived will be yours, but it requires a quiet peaceful life if you are to hear it. Then, once you’ve received The Memory, you will still be free to choose to return to your old life. I give you my solemn word.” They had me. How in the great furry world could I have refused him? He was the one cat, the only cat in all furry creation that could have convinced me. “Ok, I will wait Grandpa, how long will it be?” “I can’t say precisely, my Kitten. Just be patient. And try to be good...please? We are working on it. Meanwhile, stick close to Ra-oula. Take care of her and Clayton. They have many, many friends here among the elders. And Wahhhrom?” “What is it Grandpa?” “I’m proud of you, little one. We all are.” The End Barbwire Cats Is Copyright © To David Perry. Mojave Desert. 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