Catland - a humorous fantasy

Chapter Thirty-Five: Headline News

There was a stunned silence after that, as well you might imagine.  The mice stared open-mouthed at the cat who had eaten their king, and the cats glanced nervously at the mice, uncertain how they would react.  The battle had been fierce, with losses on both sides.  The cats were not eager to continue it, although they would sooner have died than admit this.  For the first time in any of their lives, they were not particularly keen to mangle and consume mice.  Fish are fine, they were secretly thinking.  Fish are really quite tasty.  And besides, fish didn't have swords.

(Swordfish had swords, of course, but they were ocean fish anyhow.  The cats wouldn't have cared if they'd had bazookas.)

In spite of his affection and even admiration for Leopold, Greg couldn't help feeling that the situation could have been handled with a bit more tact.  He didn't know much about the intricacies of court etiquette, but he was reasonably certain that physically swallowing a king was some kind of faux pas.

For a long, trembling moment, the mice themselves seemed unsure how they ought to react.  Then, with a single, unanimous will, they turned tail and skittered away across the square.  The noise of their stampede was somehow both tiny and massive, and the spectators lunged out of their way as they flowed like a fuzzy river down a broad avenue and out of sight.  The mice had come at their king's summons; with his death, their duty was ended.  Perhaps they had never wanted this fight to begin with.  Perhaps they, too, had grown weary of the carnage.  Greg never knew.

The cats stood abandoned in the center of the square, battered and bloodied, but, for the most part, alive.  Leopold clambered down from his perch on the sign and joined them.  To Greg's enormous surprise, it was Millicent who knelt first.  Without a trace of hesitation or self-consciousness, she dropped to one knee and bowed her head.  Leopold gaped at her for a moment—and in that moment, Jasper knelt too.  Tanner and Septimus hastily followed his example, and Graydon Heppingworth, yawning, joined them.  Byron Lamley was among the last to kneel, but as he dropped to his knee, there was a proud smile on his face.  Gurgeon was the very last, but when he saw that he was the only cat still standing, he made haste to genuflect.  Greg stared down at this little impromptu ceremony, feeling both a glow of pleasure and a certain wry amusement.  These cats and their funny little customs! he thought.  Well, live and let live, I suppose.

Then Leopold raised his head to look at Greg, and the cat's eyebrows rose expectantly.  Well? the eyebrows said.  Isn't it your turn now?

It seemed absurd to kneel down before a creature so much smaller than himself—especially a cat, especially his cat, and especially in front of a number of TV cameras, which Greg had just started to become aware of.  Being human-sized again and back in the human world made Greg feel more like a human, and less like a cat who just happened to be terrible at all the things cats were good at.  Humans didn't bow down in front of cat monarchs!  It simply wasn't done!  But Leopold was still looking at him, eyebrows raised in mild expectation, and Greg started to feel that it would be more awkward not to kneel—and so, with a resigned sigh, he got down on one knee and bowed his head and tried not to feel irretrievably stupid.  He failed.

"You may rise," intoned Leopold—and one of the TV reporters seemed to take this as her cue.  As the cats got to their feet, she dashed forward and thrust her microphone into Greg's face.

"Mister Cat!" she said breathlessly.  "Can you tell us what's happening here?  Is this some kind of cat invasion?  Are you a mutant?  Are you an alien?  What's going on?"

The poor reporter seemed almost hysterical, and Greg could certainly understand where she was coming from.  He had pretty much spent the last week of his life in a state of near-screaming confusion bordering on madness, and he recognized on this woman's face the visual expression of what was now almost his habitual inner state.  He wanted to speak words of comfort to her, to explain that even though all of this might appear somewhat strange, it was actually quite reasonable when you came to look at it calmly, and anyhow it was not any more strange than some of the things that regularly happened in the human world, which was both comforting and exactly the opposite.  Unfortunately, the words to express these soothing thoughts didn't enter Greg's mind at this particular moment, so instead he said the first thing that popped into his head.

"I'm an alien," said Greg.

Immediately, the enormous stupidity of this remark—which was not lost on him—made Greg wish that he could just shrink away and disappear.  Then he remembered that he could pretty much do that. 

So Greg donned his necklace again, shrank back down to cat size, dashed over to the open manhole cover, and disappeared into the bowels of the earth.  It was the most gratifying response to an embarrassing situation he had ever had occasion to implement.  He would have to remember this trick for parties.

The other cats followed Greg's example, and soon the square was empty, save for a few dozen human spectators and several news vans.  The news reporters stood stock-still for a few moments, with visions of prestigious news awards dancing in their heads.  The spectators hung around, hoping to be interviewed.  And of course, practically all of them were.

*          *          *

Back at the palace, there was a great deal to do.  Somewhat to Greg's surprise, Leopold began his reign by pardoning all those who had aided or served the false king.  "Perhaps you were duped," he told them.  "Perhaps you were threatened.  It may be that some of you despised me; if so, we shall know in time.  For now, you are my subjects, and if you serve me faithfully, I swear on my honor that I will serve you too."  It was an impressive speech, and the cats were impressed.  They knelt down and swore their loyalty—and, to all appearances, they meant it.

Greg did wonder what had become of Glimmerind—the arch-traitor, the arch-conspirator, the one who should suffer for his crimes if anyone should.  He found a quiet moment to take Millicent aside and ask her.  Her jaw tightened before she answered.

"You might say we settled our differences," she said.

Greg thought he understood.  "He gave you the mouse king," he guessed, "and you gave him his life?"

Millicent looked him in the eye for a long moment.  "He gave me the mouse king," she confirmed, "and I ripped his throat out for him."

Greg wished he hadn't asked.

*          *          *

A grand coronation was held at dusk, and Leopold swore before the whole kingdom to be the kind of king his father was: just, kind, and all-patient, not besotted or inveigled by his own power and royalty, but devoted to his people and to the glory of his realm.  He swore to pay regular visits to the Sump, as no king before him had done, and to make sure its people were healthy and provided-for.  Moreover, he vowed to bind his house to the house of Lamley, so that for the first time in history, all the cats of this hemisphere should live under one king.  To that end, he had asked for the hand of the bold and beauteous Millicent Lamley, and she had graciously assented.

A low murmur greeted this announcement, and Millicent stepped forward, looking at once terribly embarrassed and terribly happy.  Greg felt a pang of envy, but for the most part he was relieved.  There was no future for him and Millicent.  She was beautiful, and wonderful, but she was a cat, and he was a human.  In fact, after spending the last week of his life in Catland, Greg felt more definitively human than he had ever felt before.

The festivities lasted long into the night, and catnip was chewed and sniffed with wild abandon, by king and commoner alike.  It was a wonderful party, and Greg enjoyed seeing his friends so happy, but he could already feel his mind and heart receding from the joys and trials of this uncanny place.  Catland was for cats, and Greg was now—and had always been, and always would be—human.  And his thoughts began to turn towards home.