Rescue mission

Here's the latest bit of writing that I just completed for my ongoing novel. In this next episode of BRYAN THE TYGER, my alter ego rescues a kitty-cat from his career as a housepet.

P.S.

In other news: my Public Private Diary is fully printed; also I made a list of my latest novels that have been printed but not included in any collection.

Chapter Eight 

So I gallop Tyger-style to Philadelphia, where Zephyros the housecat is being held captive as a pet by a family of four. – When I arrive at the correct address, I look up at the building and try to determine what type of place this is. I think I’m right to call it a Tudor home; for it has a steeply pitched gable roof, a masonry chimney, embellished doorways, groupings of windows, and decorative half-timbering.

I ring the doorbell and a robo-butler answers.

“Oh, it’s you,” he sez. “Just a moment . . .”

He shuts the door and I hear his muffled voice from within announce: “Mademoiselle, that famous author is here to see you.”

A female voice answers: “Ooh, I’ll be right there!”

Then I hear footsteps crescendo in volume until the front door reopens. Standing in the entryway is a human businesswoman: Mrs. Rebensdorf, I presume.

I open my Tyger-jaws to introduce myself; and the woman immediately begins to scream bloodcurdlingly, as if we are in a horror film. I try to raise my voice so that I can be heard above her panicking — I shout:

“Have no fear, I am Bryan the Tyger; I am a friend of Zephyros, whom you know as Mister Whistle: your housecat. I’m the one who spoke with you on the telephone earlier — you said your name is Peggy, I think? I take it that you are the matriarch of this family. Please stop screaming: I come in peace — my only desire is to visit with your kitty.”

The woman screams louder and with greater abandon; then she shouts: “Oh my god it’s some sort of saber-toothed panther! Now it’s roaring and growling at me! Help, help! He’s surely intending to ambush me!”

I step forward as she backs away in fear, and I begin to call out: “Zephy! hey, Zephyros! Can you hear me? It’s Bryan the Tyger, I came here as fast as I could run — you probably didn’t have time to hang up the phone yet, that’s how speedy I am.”

The woman continues to scream; and she shouts repeatedly: “Go away! Get out! Back, Simba! Bad boy! Away with you! Aroint thee, Simba!” (I don’t know why she keeps calling me Simba — I’m not a Lion; I’m a Tyger.) And she now grabs the tennis racket from the table in the front hallway and begins swinging and jabbing it at me while spazzing and shouting.

A male human and two young kids now appear at the top of the stairs of the house’s upper level. I’m guessing that this is Mrs. Rebensdorf’s husband and children. The three of them look down in terror as I continue slowly to step further into the house, searching around for my little colleague Zephyros.

Suddenly I spot the poor kitty — he’s in the left corner of the living room, over there between those two houseplants. My attention is drawn to that spot because one of the children just shouted: “Whistle, attack that dog-faced pony-devil! Sic him! Use your fangs to bite his neck!” – And when I look to behold the speaker of these remarks, I see a little girl about nine years of age who is holding a book that she was presumably in the middle of reading before I showed up (its title is Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, so I immediately respect her as a soul with aesthetic discernment); studying her face, I note the direction in which she is gazing after having shouted the above commands; and thus following her eye-line over to the far corner of the living-room, my vision alights on our mutual friend the housecat: as I predicted, Zephyros is in the act of trying to replace the telephone’s receiver upon its base. He’s having trouble because his paws are small but the phone is big.

“Would you like me to help you hang up that receiver, Zephyros?” I ask Mister Whistle.

The cat looks up as if it’s the first time he’s heard his own birth-name spoken after zillions of years of being held captive in this alien environment.

“Oh, yes, thank you!” Zephyros sez; “I’ve been trying to hang this thing up ever since we ended our call.”

“No!” shouts the younger brother of the girl who shouted before; “Whissy, listen: Don’t meow at him! MAUL him!!” (By “Whissy” I know he means Zephyros; and by “him” I assume the lad means me: Bryan the Tyger.)

I pace past the still-screaming Mrs. Rebensdorf and help Zephyros hang up the telephone.

“O god, he’s going to slaughter our precious pet Whistle!!” sez the deep-voiced husband from the top of the stairs.

“Thanks so much,” sez Zephyros to me; “I assumed that I could replace the telephone’s re­ceiver upon its base all by myself, but it turned out that this task was too difficult for me.”

“Stop meowing, bite his face!!” demands the girl whose taste in literature I respect.

With a friendly jerk of my head, I say to Zephyros “Hop on my back. Let’s leave this place.”

“Heavens no! Simba’s roaring!” screams Mrs. R. “He’s gonna eat our poor baby Whistle!”

“Thanks again,” sez little Zephyros, as he carefully climbs up my leg and labors onto my wide, strong back.

So, with the whole family freaking out in panic-mode, I gallantly rescue my friend from his bondage. I try to do this peacefully, and I almost succeed, but at the last instant, Mrs. Rebensdorf’s husband slides down the stairway’s bannister and tries to pose like a tough guy right in front of us, blocking the exit. Therefore I raise my right forepaw menacingly and extend my claws like a switchblade, (I’m not planning on actually using my mighty paw: I’m just hoping that the sight of it will frighten him) — however, instead of stepping aside as I hoped he’d do, the husband puts his dukes up and starts punching at the air between us like a boxer, thus I have no choice but to bat him: so I swipe forward gently, and this results in my claws leaving an awesome-looking scar on the side of his face. Then he falls down bawling and we leave.

So that’s how I rescue my good friend Zephyros from being enslaved at the lowest level in the pyramid scheme of the Rebensdorf’s household. He rides on my back all the way to the border of Austria; at which point, I crane my head back to address him, saying:

“Hop off, now. You can walk from here. Do you see that castle on the horizon? That’s your new home. Just tell Devlin (the robo-butler at the entryway) that I command him to let you use the main guest bedroom. And try not to swim too much in the ocean that surrounds the castle’s peninsula, for it is shark-infested. I made it that way for our own protection: when I initially purchased the place, the sea was just a freshwater paradise without any predators; but then someone came by in a rowboat one day (I’m thinking that it was a cop) and threw a tennis ball at one of our castle’s windows which ended up breaking the outer pane: At that point I grew paranoid and had a shiver of sharks shipped in from Brazil.”

“Brazil has sharks?” little Zephyros meows.

“Indeed it does,” I nod somberly while blinking, “the coastal waters off Recife are home to many aggressive sharks, and in the last twenty years a spate of attacks has made this one of the most dangerous places in the world to swim. However, henceforward, it shall be safe, since I had all those evil creatures translocated to my castle’s peninsula.” I nod again, indicating the point on the horizon where we can plainly see my headquarters aglow with virtue; then I add: “It’s over yonder. Go now and walk there.”

“OK, I will,” sez the ex-housecat Zephyros. “But where are you off to? And why can’t I join you? — Perchance I would make a decent sidekick.”

I laugh long and hard at this idea.

“No-o-o-o-o, no, no, no, no, my dear little pal,” I say. “If you were my sidekick, I’d need to spend about ninety percent of each mission rescuing you from whatever new trap you’d have gotten yourself into. Cuz you’re the type of cat who is always falling into lava or getting duped by a crafty marsupial. Please, go relax in the castle; just let me embark upon my next adventure alone. For I plan on returning to the convent (remember the one that I told you about while we were traveling here afoot from Philadelphia?) because I really enjoyed talking to those nuns who live there; and I don’t feel that I got to spend enough time with them — during my last trip I got sidetracked and wasted the entire vacation vainly trying to tempt their wooden Christ figurine to have fun. (It is impossible, by the way: Don’t bother — that guy’s a stickler for prudence.) But the notion will worry me, and I’ll be unable to let loose and enjoy my return visit to the nunnery, if I know that you’re out flutzing around in the world and getting into all sorts of jams.”

“That’s OK, I understand,” sez little Zephyros. “I’m not really much of a wildcat myself, anyway. I’ll be content to live in the castle. You have toys there, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, there are plenty of cat toys,” I say.

“And cans of tuna?”

“Tunafish, yes.”

“Then I’ll be in heaven,” sez Zephyros. “So it’s fine for you to go on without me. Tho, if possible, please jot down the gist of your exploits on a detective’s notepad, as they happen. For, when you return, I’ll be eager to hear you narrate your adventures.”

With my massive right forepaw, I pat little Zeph on his kitty-cat head and say: “You got it, friend: I promise to keep a meticulous record of all my expenses on this journey.”

Then I gallop off into the sunset, and Zephyros turns and prances toward our castle.