Interview With The Jellicle

Untitled Part 1

Interview With The Jellicle

Zara Forbes for Fullmoon Magazine.

I am here at Thames Scrapyard at five o'clock in the evening in order to conduct an up close and personal interview with a very special person indeed. Special, because he is part of a tribe of cats, known as the Jellicle cats, who have chosen to take up residence here in amongst the cacophony of debris and rubble which has been piled high within the confines of the towering breezeblock walls, thus calling this place their home.

I am keen to find out more about them, so, prior to our interview, I met up with their chief at the entrance to the aforementioned scrapyard, and as usual, this being England, the sky looked like opaque smoke swirling around the inside of a glass bottle, reaching it's murky tendrils down from the heavens with the sole purpose of plastering every available surface in a sugar dusting of drizzle, also rendering the surrounding air a perm's worst nightmare!

"Here goes!" I thought, feeling rather doltish at the possibility of attempting to communicate with a cat. I addressed the surprisingly handsome silver Tabby, who was sitting on the wall, distractedly washing his face and paws. "Are you Munkustrap?" I asked with uncertainty, and to my utter astonishment, he glanced at me mid-lick, stood up and shook a plume of fuzzy spray from his water bejewelled coat, before meowing in a tone that appeared to convey,

"Greetings human, yes, it is I." He arched his back with a satisfied yawn and stretched out his legs, before briefly tilting his head skywards as if to sarcastically comment, "My, what lovely weather this is, wouldn't you agree?" Then he jumped down off of the wall, the soft pads of his paws making a soft 'thud!' as they impacted with the damp pavement and began to walk purposefully through the open gate, turning back to meow at me again, appearing to say, "Follow me please!" So I followed his stripy tail as he held it aloft like a beacon, leading the way down a path which was walled in on both sides by piles of scrap metal bits and bobs as well as plastic this and that, navigating the undulating, twisting and turning terrain until I began to feel quite disorientated, especially when I was led down several muddy side tracks. After walking for some time, the cat suddenly braced himself and leapt a sheer vertical wall of junk up to a platform above. Now let's just think about that for a second, shall we? Let's just say that I possessed the same gravity defying ability that that cat had just displayed, except that, instead of being three feet tall I was five feet tall? Then that would be the equivalent of me jumping to the top of an average telegraph pole! Hence, it was hardly surprising really when, for a brief moment, I began to feel a twinge of apprehension, that this was possibly all a big mistake and what I was actually doing was making a complete fool of myself by partaking in this mad goose chase, running after a cat who was in actual fact just trying to get away from this strange human who just so happened to be following him! On second thoughts I needn't have fretted, because a minute later a rope ladder was thrown down to me and I heard another meow echoing from somewhere high above my head, which I took to mean, "You may climb up now!" My wide eyes took in the rather flimsy rope, the height at which I was being expected to climb to (in my heels I might add!) and the not-very-stable looking pile of junk that it was all perched on top of! If that wasn't enough, without warning, my vision suddenly blurred and my world shifted out of focus for a brief moment.

"That's odd!" I thought to myself, feeling confused and just a tad alarmed, "am I having a stroke or something? That would be just my luck!" I rubbed my eyes and when I opened them again I noticed that everything around me seemed to have become inordinately larger, the small hillocks of odds and ends having suddenly turned into mountains, with the rope ladder now seeming to stretch up into the Heavens themselves. Or was just it possible that Dave Stockley, my photographer, and I had in fact, shrunk? No! It wasn't possible! Was it? I sighed, taking off my heels and handing them to Dave before taking a deep breath and grasping the ropes with my manicured fingers. "The things I'll do for a good story!" I thought, "This is no time for health and safety that's for sure!"