The Chiefest Cat in the World

       Starting from the breakfast of Day X, Kitty said farewell to all her humans, even to Half-Cat, by climbing and hugging them and purring into their ears that she appreciated them a lot. As an incentive to miss her harder. Then she pondered whom to ask to help her change into her Grade B collar but decided against it. A human might suspect something before time and lock her in a room, and how would she check their loyalty then? So she stayed in her scarf knitted by Long-Braidy, which was not bad as it was softer and warmer than the collar. In the dinner time, Kitty stole a fat bream from the kitchen, and at dusk, fish in teeth, she went down to the pier. Beside the minuses, winter also has its pluses—a whole two of them. First, Monsters are lazy, and second, you can walk on water. On the ice lying on water, to be more exact. Kitty rubbed her head and side against a pier post to leave some fur as a prompt to her humans and jumped down on the smooth snow-covered ice to leave her paw prints. She didn’t want to be lost for good. There had been an occasion once, she had been playing hide-and-seek with her humans and had realised after sitting on a wardrobe for some hours that nobody had been seeking her at all! Climbing over an offshore barrier gate, Kitty asked a guardian cat on duty to show her humans where she headed. The cat chided her for making her humans go out into the Silent World unguarded, but otherwise didn’t hinder her. And he bit a very modest piece of the bream as a passage fee. Then Kitty was marching over the endless, empty white plane,chasing the moon, on and on and on. She nearly blistered her poor paws over the weathered snow crust, she was cold and hungry, and still she reached the nearest bump of an island when it was dawning already. And she still had to have a snack and a nap. She made herself least uncomfortable in a willow bush and ordered her tail to stand guard. He waved his end in agreement and dropped down to sleep in a second. Oh, she thought. What would her escapade prove? Her tail would often fancy himself to be the head. Her humans might find her just to fetch her back as a lost sock and not to pay their dues. If they came at all. What a horrible idea might come under stress. Kitty squeezed her eyes shut and slept through the daylight until Chiefgull woke her up. Just to be on the safe side, Kitty had asked him to drop a hint of her whereabouts to her humans if they got lost without their cat. And to inform her of the search progress. Chiefgull burst into laughter: her humans weren’t going anywhere. Sure, they had noticed her absence but thought aloud that she went to chase squirrels and would return soon. And he added, quite acidly, that her foot march was spectacularly short—some minutes of a bird’s flight away from the village, just enough to make a cat laugh. Well, Kitty didn’t laugh and pouted. As an apology, Chiefgull disgorged two pieces of sausage for her. Kitty buried the recycled food, then dug it back up, and ate. Right, that was the sort of sausage used for pizza. The desire to be back in a warm room on someone’s lap was unbearable, but the pride won, for now. Kitty was not some tail to run to her humans at once. Her tail agreed with her and twitched to propel her forward, and she went further away from the village. The islet ended in another open stretch of ice and snow, and the wind was blowing Kitty off the course, she barely made it to the dark wall of no-nonsense and very quiet forest. The wind couldn’t break into the thicket, just as the moonlight, and the wood was full of snow and suspicious rustles, and Kitty could see just some jumps ahead. Oops. That is, if she barely saw the sky now, Chiefgull wouldn’t see her from above the next day? No, that wasn’t a good idea. Kitty climbed into a thick spruce and decided to walk during the days from now on, and only in clearings and openings. The bream was yummy, by the way. When it dawned at last, as much as it could dawn on an overcast winter day in a forest, Kitty realised she had no idea where to go. No sun, no horizon, no landmarks, tired paws, runny nose, fish mostly eaten, a great tit escaping because someone (Kitty believed it was her tail) sneezed at the wrongest moment; fur covered with dry needles and broken twigs... And it was snowing, meaning her tracks would be covered soon, and she would be lost foreeeever! It was high time to climb a high tree and blaze a siren, but Kitty still resisted her urges. It would be so unprofessional, and she was a highly competent B or higher grade cat! And Kitty waded through the snow to… to somewhere, first to one spruce, then to another one, then to a pine tree. Or should she climb the pine? What if the tree height could count as sufficient walking distance and allow Kitty to feel all independent? Half-Cat or Loud-Woman would take her down later. Wading was a very tiresome way of walking. Should she try hopping like a great tit? Kitty tucked all her paws together, targeted the pine, jumped, and sank in a snowbank, with tail and head and all. As a real pro, she didn’t say anything aloud. She didn’t get scared, not at all, and even if she scrambled around like mad, it was only to beat the loose snow down into a better launch site. Snow didn’t get any more compact. Once out of breath, Kitty stopped thrashing around and heard a suspicious sound—a sort of pace, but drawn-out and raspy. Something Monstrous. But she could only see snow in front of her nose. She bristled, but she couldn’t tell if it was for the cold or for the closeness of a Monster. And her runny nose didn’t make out smells. There was no dark noise in the head, but in the summer, her humans had been hunting some formless, soundless, odourless critter, so the silence was not a clear sign. Then it’s time for the first rule. Stand still, stay silent. Kitty stood very still and… and sneezed three times in a row. Oh, dear paws. She still couldn’t jump out of the snowbank, and the steps grew closer and closer. She prepared to tear off Monster’s snout, paw, tentacle, or whatever, but all of a sudden she was gripped by the scruff of her neck, lifted, and dusted down. Half-Cat snorted, said “you stupid” in the cat language, and put her on his shoulder. Kitty seized his cape and said nothing, she couldn’t find a proper reply. And Half-Cat was turning back in his tracks, but slowly because he had strange laths attached to his feet and a pole in hand, and those laths kept him from sinking into the snowbanks and were making that strange sound. In that neat and fast way, they got to a small clearing in a ring of spruces, where fire was burning, a tent was set up, and all of Kitty’s humans were so very glad to see her, and they patted her, wrapped her in warm cloths, and gave her food. Overjoyed, Kitty didn’t mind being just a tail or a pet, and through the whole night she was sneaking between her humans, pawing them gently one by one to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. The morning was even better. The humans rolled up the tents, put on the same funny laths as Half-Cat’s, and went in the direction of Kitty’s escape rather than back to the village. They were discussing (actually, Loud-Woman was shouting at Soap-Smelling) that they should move their skis faster, or they didn’t get even to Keuruu, let alone Pori, before spring when navigation from Saimaa was scheduled to open anyway, and what would be the benefit of travelling to an all-season port by land? Biggest-One replied that the primary benefit was to save Loud-Woman from boredom, and winning some time was a collateral issue. But Kitty was at peace. She had no doubts anymore. Her humans might think they were choosing their own routes or owning her, but the laws of nature ran deeper, and instincts would make them follow their cat and her wishes even when she was lying on top of Biggest-One’s backpack rather than walking ahead to show the way. And of course, she wouldn’t let them scatter.