Catland - a humorous fantasy

Chapter Nineteen: The Sump

It was strange, the way Leopold walked the streets of Catland.  This was his home, the city he had been birthed and reared in, yet he seemed to see it with eyes as fresh as any newcomer's, and to drink in its delights with all the eagerness of the most enraptured tourist.  Greg was bemused, and even considered asking Leopold for an explanation, but he was afraid that would come across as impertinent, so he kept his mouth shut.  The longer they spent in the underground cat kingdom, the more he felt awed by the cats around him, and especially Leopold, whose bearing had become more and more convincingly regal as their stay continued.  Greg found it hard to believe that Leopold had once been "his" cat—nameless and cowed, depending on him for food and shelter and (occasionally) companionship.  Now Leopold seemed every inch the king: haughty and gracious, suave and masterful, with a stride as bold as thunder and a gaze as bright as the Great Crystal itself.

They took their lunch at a pleasant open-air cafe, beside which a narrow stream tumbled along a cat-made channel that plunged between the walls of the tall brick buildings that loomed above.  Lunch was fish again, and Greg was already beginning to yearn for the simple joys of a hamburger; but the food was excellent, and plentiful, and afterward they reclined in the dappled shade of a little fern-grove, and Leopold answered the question that Greg had not dared to ask.

"This is life," Leopold breathed, stretching his legs out lazily, with a degree of flexibility the yogic masters could only envy.  "I had no idea ordinary things could be so ... enjoyable.  In the palace, we have all our needs provided for.  Food is brought in, clothes are made to order, entertainment is summoned at our pleasure.  It's terribly convenient.  But this is ... this is ..."  He searched for words.  "This is rich," he said at last, drawing out the last word with unmistakable relish.

"Haven't I been telling you?" put in Millicent Lamley, her tail twitching in the sun.  Even Millicent seemed at her ease here, beneath the covering ferns, with only the tripping babble of the stream to disturb the quiet.  "You Bannockburns have the world at your paws, and you call that living.  Out of our hearing, you call the Lamleys the Gutter Kings, and think it a grand old joke.  Never has it swum into your ken that greatness and comfort are nary the same thing.  Some, indeed, would name them enemies.  You say we reign over a trash-heap, and that may be, but we reign free."

For the moment, she seemed to have forgotten her family's tragedy.  Greg was in no hurry to remind her.

"I tell you," Leopold pursued, "I'm seeing a side of this city I've never seen before!  And I like it.  And I long to see more."  He sat up now, his eyes avid and gleaming.  "Let's go exploring."

Nobody had any objection to that, so they set off downstream, following the little trickling brook.  The stream dodged between buildings and vanished into alleys, following a madcap course of its own devising, but the cats were nimble, and Greg tried to be nimble, and when they couldn't squeeze through whatever obscure gap or crevasse the brook had chosen for itself, they would loop around and pick it up on the other side.  They were following the stream for no particular reason—simply for the love of the chase, you might say—but it led them downhill (as streams generally do), and that meant leading them to the outskirts of the city, and soon they found the buildings growing scarcer, and lower, and poorer, and the cats around them grew poorer too.  Mud-streaked hovels replaced the bustling commerce of the city center, and lean cats with matted fur replaced the slick and preening specimens who had congregated near the Twine and Bell.  Rubble was scattered here and there, and the rusty mouths of drainage pipes dotted the great concrete wall that loomed ahead of them, higher and higher.  Greg found himself remembering how far underground they were.  The cats had done an extraordinary job of making this vast subterranean chamber their own, but once it must have been a part of the human city's sewage or drainage system.  Perhaps it still was.