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Words: 24535 in 15 pages
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The characters and situations in this book are wholly fictional and imaginative: they do not portray and are not intended to portray any actual persons or parties.
SWAMP CAT
The sound came to Frosty as a mere vibration that hummed about the fine hairs in his inner ears and set his whiskers to tingling. About to leap from the shelf on which he crouched and resume the boisterous play with his two brothers, he remained where he was and strained for a repetition of the noise. He knew only that it was. Before he could continue playing, he must know what it was.
On the chaff-littered floor of the shed in which they lived, Frosty's brothers engaged in a mock war. They slapped and bit each other, but their claws were sheathed and needle-sharp baby teeth did not penetrate the skin. Breaking, they raced pell-mell across the shed. So nearly alike that no casual observer could have seen any difference between the pair, one gray kitten stretched full-length behind a little heap of chaff and waited in this cunning ambush for the other to venture near.
They too would have stopped playing if they had been aware of the noise, but only Frosty knew it because only his senses were keen enough to detect it. However, more than just superior powers of perception set him apart from the kittens on the floor.
The mother of the three, beloved pet of the household, was a medium-sized gray cat that had never done much of anything except doze in the sunshine in summer, lie beside the stove in winter, rub against the legs of the various members of the family when she was pleased, sulk when she was not, and somewhat indifferently carry on various affairs which no cat ever considers the business of any human. Their father was a huge black-and-white old tom. A confirmed wanderer and unregenerate adventurer, he bore as many battle scars as any soldier ever carried. Smart and crafty, he had never offered allegiance to anything save his own wanderlust and he feared nothing.
From point of lineage or breeding, neither the gray mother nor the black-and-white old tom were distinguished by anything special. Products of generations of cats that had been allowed to wander where they would and breed as they pleased, in local parlance, they were just common cats.
It was a misnomer, though, because there is no such thing as a common cat. Perhaps because they were a little nearer the source of things, the ancient peoples who brought cats from the wilderness to their firesides understood this perfectly. They knew that cats are proud. They applauded their intelligence, warmed to their complex characters, marveled at their temperaments and tried eagerly to fathom that unfathomable mystery, so that they might understand why cats were as they were. Failing, they accepted their failure with wisdom.
They could not understand cats any more than they could understand why gold glittered or precious jewels sparkled, but they did not have to know why a flawless diamond or ruby came about in order to appreciate it. They bowed to perfection and they acknowledged the perfection of cats by making them their equals, or even their superiors. Cats had first choice at their own tables, and whole villages walked in the funeral procession when a cat died. They made cats the companions of kings, and it was death to the commoner who hurt or even touched one. They put cats in their temples and worshipped them; many a figure which meant a god to these ancient peoples wore the head of a cat on the body of a man.
Some part of what had impressed these ancients was evident in Frosty as he lay on the shelf and waited for the sound to repeat itself, so he could identify it. Though he gave his entire being to the task at hand, his was not the strained tension of a dog that concentrates completely on just one thing. Rather than fret toward the source of the sound, it was as though Frosty had opened an invisible door which not only could but must let the source become one with him.
Blood brother to the two kittens on the floor, Frosty was a third bigger than they. But the lithe slimness of his mother had tempered the blocky proportions of his father, so that he combined size with strength and fluid grace. His basic fur was jet black, but single white hairs were so scattered through it that he looked as though he were sprinkled with hoarfrost. His eyes were remarkable, and somehow seemed to reflect the accumulated wisdom of all cats since the first.
A split second after the first tremor, the noise came again, a tiny bit louder, and thereafter resolved itself into a pattern of rhythmic noises. A horse was coming, and because the tremors strengthened with each step it took. Frosty knew that it was coming toward the shed.
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