Chapter Five

Out With A Whimper

Because Mungojerrie had started out so early, he was actually ahead of the rats by a long distance. The problem was, his plummy sense of direction had either deserted him or never really existed. He lost a good deal of time searching street signs, and even the gray queen who had helped him before was holed up somewhere out of the rain. He didn't even notice the drops steadily soaking into his orange fur.

It must have been the same providence that saved him from the alley on that dark night that led him down just the right street, but smack into a huge black and white Cat.

The Cat puffed and grumbled, and stared down at him. "What is the meaning of this, I ask you sir?" he bellowed, brandishing a large silver soup spoon menacingly. "I am on the way to eat stuffed goose at Blimp's, I'll have you know, and besides which, I am not very keen on all this precipitation." At that, he held his spoon above his head to block out the rain.

"Listen," Mungojerrie began frantically, "I'm trying to find Jenny-somethin-other, do you know where she might be?"

"I have no time for frivolous chat," said the giant. "It is lunchtime."

"I just need you to sorta point me in the right direction," Mungojerrie insisted. "Do you know where that might be? I'm tellin' ya, sir, it's life or death!"

The tuxedo Cat shook his head, looking down his nose. "I'm not going to tell a ragamuffin where the lovely Gumbie Cat lives, much less at lunchtime. Good day, my boy!"

That was too much for the thief. "You listen, my boy," he said threateningly, grabbing a pawful of the tuxedo Cat's cravat and dragging the huge face down to his own level, "you tell me where she lives, otherwise there'll be trouble for you, you know what I'm sayin'?"

"Oh, oh, pardon me, she lives that way! Please don't mug me, or shoot me, or whatever you do!" he pleaded.

"Fine then," Mungojerrie said, brightening, "thanks loads!" He left Bustopher Jones sputtering something about the way this city was going, what with danger lurking at each street corner, and Mungojerrie rushed between the two buildings the Cat About Town had indicated with his spoon.

As he rounded the corner he recognized the neatly pruned hedges, the tidy garden, and the white fence of Jennyanydots' house. He also noticed Alonzo, talking to a queen and discussing the advantages of being a tom of his stature and strength. The last words Mungojerrie had heard from Alonzo – "Never let us see you in our territory again," were no joke. And Alonzo wasn't much taller than he was, but he was much bigger. Mungojerrie leaned against the wall and tried to think, a difficult thing for him at any time, but made harder by the wetness of everything and the clock ticking away before Macavity got to Bombalurina. He eventually decided that he would just have to find Bombalurina's house, and get her away from it as soon as possible. Wiping a mix of rain and sweat off his neck, he started off again.

Mungojerrie shouldered his way between a pair of trashcans, and suddenly felt his back collide with the pavement behind him. He looked up to see the sky, mystified, and realized he had run full force into someone. He picked himself up and surveyed the area, and turning completely around caught sight of the most blessed, beautiful thing in the world.

"Bombalurina!"

"Mungojerrie?" Bombalurina stared at him in disbelief, then quickly looking around for anyone else she told him, "You had better get out of here! Alonzo's right down there," she motioned with her head, "and if he catches you…. Well nothing horrible will happen, it is just Alonzo, but you still don't want to be found on this street. What are you doing?"

Mungojerrie had flung himself at the red Cat. "Bombalurina," he said rapidly, "you're in big trouble."

"What are you talking about?" she asked, detaching herself with a joking expression.

"Macavity's after you."

Bombalurina pulled away, and her green eyes searched the street as her fur stood on end. "What do you know about Macavity and me?"

Mungojerrie was ready to open his mouth and tell her everything, but then he hesitated. Did he want Bombalurina to know he had delivered her death warrant?

No, he did not. But what could he say, as she stared steadily at him?

Mungojerrie shifted as he tried to invent a story, when he heard the sound of paws on the road not far away. He pushed Bombalurina into the shadows and peered around the trashcan, coming face to face with his sister.

"Mungojerrie!" Rumpelteazer cried, breathless. "I came as fast as I could! Macavity knows somethin's up! He's so mad he didn't even send that Augustus tom – he sent rats."

Mungojerrie's eyes grew wide. "Rats?"

"They're awful! Quick, you gotta hide! They're on their way now!" Rumpelteazer looked past him to see the red queen. "Is that her? Well I've seen better, but she doesn't deserve to be dead!" The little calico thief nodded and then darted away to find a safe hiding place from the scene of the crime.

"Now do you believe me?" Mungojerrie asked the shaking Bombalurina. "Now come on, we gotta find a place to hide you!" He grabbed on to her wrist in an effort to move her, but she remained where she stood.

"But what if they catch you?" she whispered. Gone was any toughness, she was frightened now, and unreasonable, and she didn't want Mungojerrie to get caught. "You aren't supposed to be in Jellicle Territory!"

"I don't care!" Mungojerrie yanked her behind him. "What if Macavity catches you?"

When it was time to be a hero, it came in handy that Mungojerrie had been a thief. Bombalurina was naturally light on her paws, and Mungojerrie was silent by practice. With renewed purpose he led her around behind Jennyanydots' house. Keeping his eye on Alonzo the whole time, who was too absorbed in the white queen he was talking to to notice anyone else, Mungojerrie pulled Bombalurina to Jennyanydots' back door and easily picked the lock.

The door swung open, revealing the servant's quarters, and an open human door that led into a hallway beyond.

"We're here now, so go away!" Bombalurina told him frantically, trying to push him out the door. "M-macavity won't find me here."
"Yes he will," Mungojerrie informed her. "He has agents at all street-corners at all hours. If they didn't see me pull you in here now, they've seen you loitering around here before. We have to find you a hiding place. Something they'll never suspect."

There was a trunk in the corner, but the lock was broken and besides, it would be too obvious. There was a wardrobe, but the doors wouldn't open from the inside. Not under the bed…

Mungojerrie tried to remember the room he had stayed in before. He knew the hatbox there wouldn't work, and the knitting basket was too small. Mungojerrie placed his paws to his head in a mighty effort at thought. You ought to know what he remembered.

He remembered peeling up the rug, and finding a hole in the ground large enough for a Cat and a store of silver. And the rats would never find it.

"Come with me!" Mungojerrie cried jubilantly. He looked at Bombalurina, and Bombalurina looked at him, and a scream echoed down the hallway.

"Oh, disgusting! Kill them!" It was a queen's voice, but it was soon drowned out by the frantic hisses of two Cats outside and the horrible, scratching claws that grated against the floor in the hallway.

The rats had come.

Mungojerrie flung the rug aside, jumped into the gap and pulled Bombalurina after him. Pulling the rug back into place, he slid the floorboards over their heads and shut out all the light.

Bombalurina breathed heavily. Mungojerrie backed away to give her some space but, forgetting he was hiding in a silver store he edged right into a fish fork. Stifling a gulp, he strained his ears for the sounds from above. The shuffling rat sound grew louder and louder as the wretched little creatures swarmed into the room to do the job they had been sent to do. A rat is a primitive animal, but it knows when it ought to find something it is not. They wriggled into boxes and bags, knocked half-shut closet doors wide open, and investigated under the bed, but to no avail. The two Cats that were their adversary were safely hidden away under the floor, the place they least expected.

Mungojerrie and Bombalurina scarcely breathed as they waited in the dark, listening for the sound above to die away, and after years and years of minutes, it finally did. The rats, poor unfortunate things, had to return to Macavity with the report that they had utterly failed, and that Bombalurina was alive. Hopefully he wouldn't understand them.

Mungojerrie tapped the floorboards and rug out of place and a square of light greeted him. He hoisted Bombalurina out, and climbed out after her, then lay on the floor in exhaustion. She was alive, but she wasn't safe, he realized, and he was going to have to figure out a way to hide her from Macavity permanently and –

What was she looking at him for?

Bombalurina was certainly looking at him. Studying him, more like it. "You just saved my life," she stated. "Mungojerrie, you're a…you're a hero. My hero."

Mungojerrie blinked.

"You really are, do you understand me? Macavity would have killed me if it weren't for you. I didn't even know heroes really existed but…apparently…they do."

Mungojerrie opened his mouth to say something, but what he intended to say will never be known, for at that moment Alonzo barrelled into the room, followed by a distraught white queen called Victoria.

"What are you doing here?" Alonzo made a rush at our hero, then stopped abruptly, and turned to Bombalurina. "What was he trying to pull?"

"Nothing," Bombalurina said calmly, happily noting the jealous look on Victoria's face.

"Didn't you see those awful rats?" Victoria cried.

"Something's going on," Alonzo said, "and I'm going to find out what is. I've called Munkustrap. Do you hear me?"

"Why don't you just do the job yourself?" Bombalurina said in an undertone, mischievously glancing sideways at Mungojerrie.

"Because I'm not authorized," Alonzo said. Although it could have equally been an excuse, because now he wasn't exactly sure if Mungojerrie was as evil as he first thought.

The following scene resembled, quite similarly, the scene from a week before when Bombalurina had saved Mungojerrie. Munkustrap appeared in the doorway to the room, Jennyanydots and Jellylorum rushed up behind him, Coricopat and Tantomile sidled in effortlessly, and Old Deuteronomy appeared last of all, but with a deal less fanfare than before.

"Munkustrap," Alonzo said, "we found Mungojerrie in our territory again."

"There were awful rats," Victoria said, rather spoiling her nice curtsy. Munkustrap looked past them both, and again Mungojerrie had the distinct feeling that the room had enlarged and he was stranded in the middle of it.

"Mungojerrie, what do you have to say for yourself?" asked the Jellicle guardian.

"I was just doin' my good deed for the day," replied the calico thief. "I didn't mean to stay very long. Got business at Victoria Grove to attend to." He shifted uneasily.

It seemed there was a debate going on between Munkustrap and Old Deuteronomy's eyes, when Bombalurina said plainly. "He saved me,"

"What?" Munkustrap looked at her sharply.

"It's true. I made some bad choices in my life and I was about to pay for them, when Mungojerrie swept in and saved me. Macavity was going to kill me."

There was a thud as Demeter dropped to the floor.

Taking little notice of this not unusual occurrence, Bombalurina continued. "I think it's a very extraordinary act, considering Mungojerrie works for Macavity."

That last line was spoken very pointedly, and Munkustrap knew it.

"I don't work for Macavity anymore," Mungojerrie said, having just decided it.

"What about the rats?" Victoria insisted, clearly traumatized.

"What rats?" Jennyanyadots asked.

"There was a bunch of rats," Mungojerrie explained, "that worked for Macavity. They were gonna do the job or somethin'. I dunno, I just didn't want to have to meet them."

"I assume that was an understatement," Munkustrap said severely, but Jennyanydots interrupted. "What's going to happen to the rats?"

"Jenny," Jellylorum said calmly, "they're probably going to be…disposed of."

"Oh, no they won't!" Jennyanydots announced. "Not now that they've stepped foot in my house! I will adopt them as if they were my own!"

"What about Mungojerrie?" Bombalurina drawled. "He worked for Macavity, and he's in your house, are you going to adopt him?"

"No, it's all right," Mungojerrie said hastily, rather disturbed by the prospect. "Trust me Munkustrap – sir – if you don't…you know…punish me, I can just leave. I'm never coming back. Rumpelteazer and I will lay low for a while." He thought of something, apparently important, because he walked right up to Munkustrap. "Bombalurina is a marked queen, now. If Macavity finds out she wasn't killed, he'll come after her himself. You'd better keep a close eye on her."

The room cleared as Mungojerrie walked out of the room. He didn't know that heroes felt so tired all the time. Alonzo looked away from the thief, Munkustrap looked directly at him, Jennyanydots seriously considered adopting him, and Old Deuteronomy suppressed a smile when the calico thief absently patted the great stomach of the Jellicle Leader as he passed him, creeping slowly down the hallway.

Mungojerrie soon found that living the life of a hero meant less time in the spotlight, at least in his case. It turned out, at least for a while, that Macavity was fooled into thinking a calico tom and a scarlet queen had been destroyed by a set of rats. He never saw his rats again, although he didn't particularly care now.

The truth was that Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer were no longer the notorious couple of Cats they had been. Hidden away in the basement at Victoria Grove, they operated on a much smaller scale than they had, burglaring only on weekends and occasional national holidays. Why were they never reported to be seen, considering Macavity had so many agents? Well, the answer to that had to do with a certain bet Rumpelteazer had made in a certain craps game which prevented their doing so at the threat of their lives.

Mungojerrie knew his deed was noble, though for a time he failed to see the beneficial results that came of it. Then one Monday morning in the following May, Rumpelteazer came crashing down the stairs of the basement. It was Mungojerrie's turn to sleep in that morning, and he lay on his stomach in the Cat bed, staring out of window.

Rumpelteazer rushed up, carrying three doughnuts, a bottle of milk, and a tiny envelope, the kind used to send a note in a bunch of flowers.

"Look what I found," she said, tantalizingly holding up the note in front of Mungojerrie's face. "I think it fell out of a flower arrangement."

"The man never sends the lady flowers," Mungojerrie reminded her,.rolling over on his back with a groan.

"I wonder what it says?" Rumpelteazer pondered, holding it up to the window.

"Open it."

Rumpelteazer nodded seriously, then slit it open with her paw. Mungojerrie really could have cared less, but as Rumpelteazer read the card her face grew more serious and confused, so he became curious.

"What is it?" he asked.

Rumpelteazer held up a paw to shush him, and kept reading.

"What is it?" he pressed, crawling out of the Cat bed.

Rumpelteazer turned her back to him, and kept reading.

"Rumpelteazer!" Mungojerrie jumped up and yanked the card from her paws. As he read it, he became convinced there must have been a mistake.

They had been invited to the Jellicle Ball.

"We never go to the ball!" Rumpelteazer thought aloud. "We're never invited!"

Mungojerrie ignored her. He had a brief imagining that the card smelled like roses.

"What am I going to wear?" Rumpelteazer cried. She shook Mungojerrie at the shoulders. "I 'aven't a thing to wear! I wonder who invited us?"

"We can't go anyway, we'll be noticed," Mungojerrie reminded her absently, staring at the Cat-style handwriting on the bit of paper.

Rumpelteazer stared at him in disbelief, and then she caught the expression on his face. She was not quite so dumb as her brother thought she was, and she figured that, with a little bit of ingenuity, she could convince him to attend the ball.

Meanwhile, Mungojerrie had worked out the idea that, sometimes, it is better not to go out with a bang, but with a whimper instead. That, probably, is more heroic.

He tucked the card into his vest. For safe-keeping reasons, of course.

THE END