The Killer Cat by Paul Hutchens

Author:Paul Hutchens [Hutchens, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-57567-757-6
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Published: 1998-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

He started to singsong it again. Then he stopped, stared, and yelled, “I thought there were six little pigs! She’s only got five!”

He was joking, I thought. It was a good poem to quote, cute and just right for Addie to hear. She was so proud of her frisky little curly tailed family. There were six in the poem and six in the pen.

Poetry plopped down his bait can. It fell on its side, and the squirming worms started to worm their way out in every direction there is. He quick set the can right side up, scooped up each runaway worm, and put it back in. There was a very sober expression on his face as he asked me, “How many pigs is she supposed to have?”

“Six!” I answered. “Don’t you remember? You saw them the morning after they were born, the day Chuck Hammer was here!”

His answer came in a grim voice, “She’s got only five now. You sure one of ’em didn’t die?”

I still thought he was only pretending to be excited, so I said, “Oh, the other one’ll be back in the pig house somewhere.” But his excitement was like measles. It was contagious, and I was about to catch it from him. I was seeing again what I’d seen last night—two fiery eyes too wide apart and too high from the ground to have been Mixy’s.

We left our spade and the can of worms and in a minute were inside the hog lot, looking all over for a cute little curly tailed rascal of a piggie that was probably taking a nap or wallowing in the mud all by himself.

We looked inside the pig house, under the straw, all around under the weeds in the lot, and there wasn’t any little red-haired pig child—not in the straw with its mother or anywhere else.

All of a sudden Poetry’s eyes narrowed, and for an anxious moment we stared at each other. Then he said excitedly, pointing down at a patch of chocolate-colored grass near the gate, “That looks like dried blood!”

I had been afraid to tell him what I thought I had seen at this very place last night, but now, I decided, was the time to tell. I was sure now that those two fiery eyes had belonged to Old Stubtail himself. He had really come back from Parke County.

“I saw Old Stubtail last night,” I said. “He was crouching right here. When I turned my flashlight on him, he slunk away.”

Poetry whistled an exclamation that said he was getting even more excited. It also seemed to say that this time he really believed me.

No wonder Old Red Addie had been acting so strange. She’d lost one of her little red-haired family and, like Little Bo Peep and her lost sheep, didn’t know where to find it. It would never come home, wagging its pretty curly tail behind it. It would never go to market, never have roast beef, and never go, “Wee-wee-wee” all the way home.

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