Cats on the Run by Ged Gillmore

Author:Ged Gillmore [Gillmore, Ged]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780994178626
Publisher: Ged Gillmore
Published: 2015-07-01T07:00:00+00:00

‘Ha! I remembered it, Ginger. Bet you thought I wouldn’t. A fox’s favourite food is—oh! Oh, oh! Oh let me go, Ginger! We have to—’

‘What is it?’ said the fox, who had turned at the noise Tuck was making and suddenly realised Tuck was no longer behind him. He stood about three metres away from the cats, his narrow eyes sparkling in the thin moonlight. ‘What the devil are you two doing back there?’

‘Just one second, Mr Snotgood,’ Ginger called out to him. Then in a very hushed tone she said to Tuck: ‘Listen to me. You have to do precisely what I say, do you understand?’

But Tuck didn’t seem to understand anything. He was snivelling and whimpering and trying with all his might to pull his tail from under the weight of Ginger and her six bellies.

‘Tuck.’

‘It’s a fox!’ he hissed at her. ‘A nasty, evil fox.’

Ginger sighed heavily and tried to ignore the fox, who was clearly getting impatient. ‘Do hurry up, people,’ he was saying. ‘Mrs Snarlsgood does so hate to eat late.’

Ginger leant slightly, not wanting to take her weight off Tuck’s tail, and gave Tuck a full sideswipe across his whiskers. Biff. Just like that. Now he was listening.

‘You must do exactly as I say,’ she repeated. ‘Do you understand?’

Tuck nodded.

‘Repeat it.’

‘It,’ said Tuck.

‘No, I mean, oh don’t worry. Listen, when I say go, you must run as fast as you can around that tree.’

She pointed at a tired, old gum tree fifty metres away. Tuck stared after her paw into the gloom and didn’t see the suspicious fox edging nearer. ‘And then,’ Ginger said, ‘around that one over there’. She pointed to the left to a huge fallen oak and watched over Tuck’s shoulder as the fox got closer still. ‘And finally,’ she said, miaowing more quickly now, ‘over-to-that-one-and-straight-back-here-as-fast-as-you-can. Faster than you’ve ever run. Are you ready?’

The fox was really close now, and Ginger could see him jostling his haunches ready to pounce. She lifted her weight off Tuck’s tail and shouted, ‘Go! Run, Tuck! He’s right behind you!’

Do you remember earlier in the story that I said Tuck would run far faster than he did down the corridor outside the Burringos’ apartment to the lift? You don’t? Well, I did, and this is the bit where he does it. And so would you if you were a cat and you had a big posh fox on your tail! Tuck jumped over a log and around a root and past a puddle and under a twig and over a mound and all of it faster than you could say, ‘Je suis perdu à Paris sans une parapluie’.

On and on Tuck ran, the first tree much further in the twilight than he’d thought, even though he was running faster than he’d ever run in his admittedly not-very-long life. The details of the forest blurred either side of him, parallel streaks of brown and darker brown and maybe green, but all of it in the pale half-light looking a bit dark-browny.

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