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Two Cats In A Bag
by Paul Garner

Two cats in a bag...

Tabby says, "We gotta get out of this hole, dig?".
"Strange way out of a hole," says Marmalade, "but I think your plan's got soul."

She dug and scratched, and scratched and dug until there was more hole than bag, no going back - the night was superblack, they looked around - "What now?" says Marmalade, just then the door cracked open - it was Papa. "Damn cats," he roared and went to get a brand new bag. "Split!" says Tabby and bolted out the back window, Marmalade close behind, lickety-split past the trash cans, past the dead dog (Mr Fido - he had it coming), past Old Tom as he was sneaking Sally down the alley, and finally up the scrawny old tree out behind Toni Pepperoni's.

Marmalade was all puffed up in a catfro but Tabby's fur was limp and sticking to his skin, tail hanging down and shivering shoulders. "I gotta score Mar," says Tabby and scuffs his way back down the tree. Marmalade didn't say nothin' - she knew Tabs had a bad honey habit and there was nothin' she could do to help. They were headed for Buzzbee's Jive Hive, a gap-in-the-fence honey joint over on MLK and 75th... always a good time to be had if you didn't mind the neighbourhood... though she often wondered how Buzzbee managed to avoid the attention of the fuzz, or the buzz; Big Bumble's honey mafia. Rumour had it he was connected to some hornets out of Chinatown, but no one was exactly dancing in the open about it.

Tabby was a regular and the drone on the door buzzed them in with no fuss. There was only a dim amber glow of light inside. Yeah the Jive Hive was a seedy dive and most of the regulars were here tonight - a mix of wannabe hipsters like Funky Monkey (just a junkie, his real name was Bobo), Disco Weasel and Tiddles the poodle. Stone-Cold Turkey and some of the other poultry were doing the chicken strut out on the dancefloor. Then there were the real down and outs, like that sorry bear; Vinnie? Winnie? Always here with his pimp, that punk kid Robin... his mind was gone but as long as he had one paw in the jar he was happy.

Tabby fell somewhere in the middle. He found an empty hexagonal booth and ordered a jar of Special Clover '59 and a saucer of milk, straight-up, for Marmalade. Just then Disco spotted them. "Yo Tabs what's happenin'? Marmalade! Lady Marma... get up offa that thing pussycat and let me look at you!". "Fucking weasel," muttered Tabby and took a big lap of honey, "he'd better not come over here...". Disco got off his stool at the bar and started in their direction but was distracted by a slender, glossy-scaled young lizard who'd just walked in, couldn't be more than nineteen or twenty. "Well hello! You looking gecko-fabulous baby!" She flicked her tongue playfully at him and they went and took a booth together. "Fucking weasel," muttered Tabs again and lapped greedily at the honey. Marmalade watched him with that feeling she always got; a strange mixture of compassionate pity and bitterness. He'd be high pretty soon, purring all out of his head and rubbing up against the table, but that wouldn't last long before he'd crash out into a catatonic haze for several hours, eyes rolled back in his head.

All of a sudden there was a shout and a gunshot at the far end of the room and a lot of buzzing, fluttering sounds. Tiddles ran past Marmalade, heading for the door, yelping something about the Moths and the Hummingbirds fighting again. Some of the other patrons were making a beeline outta the hive but others were looking round nervously, unwilling to leave their jars, and a few were crashed out oblivious to it all, even the gunfire. "Fucking curly-tongues, let's get out of here," hissed Maramlade but at that moment a stray bullet hit Tabby in the shoulder. He looked surprised for an instant, then just lay back purring. He was feeling no pain right now and his high was starting to kick in so Marmalade grabbed the scruff of his neck in her teeth and, with some effort, dragged him out of the bar.

"Come on Tabs, get it together. You've been shot, cat!" says Marmalade once they're outside, but Tabby was just rolling around on his back in the dust.

"Look, if you think I'm dragging your mangey honey-trippin' ass all the way home just so you can curl up and die on me... well... you're wrong," says Marmalade, kinda choking on the last part, maybe just because she'd bit Tabby hard on the ear at that point. To her surprise, Tabby rolled woozily on to his feet and made a half-assed attempt to wash his face.

"I can't go to the vet, Mar, you know that," says Tabby. She looked away.
"Come on, let's find a nice warm lawn somewhere Mar."
"Tabs, I..."
"Some place in the suburbs with a lawn and a goldfish pond and a tree and budgies next-door and no dogs on the whole street..."
"Tabs, ain't nowhere like that round here."
"...and playful leaves, and a warm spot to stretch out on."
"Tabs..."

Just then there came a fluttering on the air. For a moment Marmalade thought the fight had progressed outside, but she happened to look up in time to see a shimmering cloud of orange descending from the East, where the first rays of dawn were just glinting on the horizon. It could only be Queenie Vermillion and the Monarchs, baddest butterfly gang on the whole Eastside. They controlled most of the honey distribution in the city at large, not to mention bootleg nectar. Their arrival would either make things worse or cool down the situation, it was always hard to tell... about to find out. There were hundreds of them, armed to the antennae, and they landed en masse in front of Buzzbee's. The largest, brightest butterfly tiptoed, as butterflies do, over to Marmalade.

"I'm Queenie, what's the word pussycat?"
"Hummingbirds and Moths again... they just started shooting... Tabs got hit."
"Hummingbirds? Small time street punks should know better. And Moths are scum. This ain't the way it's got to be."

Vermillion fluttered her wings thoughtfully for a few moments.

"Your boyfriend got shot by a Moth eh? And he needs help, but not the official kind, am I right?"
"I don't know what to do Queenie..."
"Can he walk? No... he's shot and he's high. Shot by a dirty moth."
For a moment Marmalade felt bewildered as it seemed that Vermillion's wingtip eye spots were staring into her soul with a deep unblinking gaze, then Queenie folded her wings back and broke the spell, turning to her gang.
"Okay, I want you to take these sorry jive cats back to the pad and see that they're taken care of."
"But I'm okay... it's just Tabs..."
"Shut up kitten," says the butterfly, and that was the end of that.

About a hundred of the roughest looking butterflies you ever saw caught ahold of Tabs and Marmalade and lifted them up, up into the air. Marmalade was normally unafraid of even the movingest branches at the wavy top of the tallest tree, but now for the first time in her lives she felt the scary thrill of vertigo come over her. She looked over at Tabs to see how he was but Tabs was crashing out from his honey fix and the fur around his wound was thickly matted with blood.

"I feel like I'm flying, Mar."
"You are Tabs, you are. Does it hurt too much?"
"It's alright Mar, I'm only bleeding."

Looking down on the city, carried on the wings of a hundred butterflies, all the troubles of 'down there' seemed to fade without a care, for the slightest of moments, as if she could just look the other way or slip behind the shadow of a cloud and her worries would lose sight of her and wouldn't be able to follow any longer, and she could be free, care free, if not forever then at least with a head start. Is that how Tabs had got hooked on honey in the first place... playing hide and seek with the world on his back? Trying to stay one step ahead, but tied to a post, running in circles? Suddenly she felt sick and scared and wanted to land.

"Stop fidgeting kitten," said one of the butterflies, "we're nearly there."

They landed in a garden. The grass was soft and already warm from the morning sun. Somewhere behind them a water fountain was trickling and tinkling with a constant temper but an ever-changing melody. A golden red leaf danced past haughtily but Marmalade was not in the mood to play. Tabby cracked one eye open, weakly at first, then a little wider.

"Where are we, Mar?"
"In the garden like you wanted, Tabs."
"My shoulder hurts."

The butterflies came by with a saucer of water, and a large one with slightly ragged wings stepped forward and said, "Queenie will come by in a few days. Don't leave the garden before then; it's the safest place for you." Then they flew off westward and Marmalade and Tabs were alone again. Marmalade did her best to clean Tabby's wound but there didn't seem to be much else she could do and before long she had fallen asleep in the radiant heat of nearly noon.

She didn't know quite how long had passed before a tiny voice woke her up, saying, "Can you turn him over for us, we need to see the wound."

Marmalade looked around with a start, but couldn't see who'd been talking.

"Oi, down here," said the little voice.
She looked down but didn't see anyone.
"It's me, er, us..." said the voice, "the daisies."
"Oh I'm sorry," said Marmalade.
"That's okay. Look, if you turn him over we can attend to his injury. Bullet wounds are our speciality actually."

With a bit of trouble, she rolled the inert Tabby over.

"How do you manage to..." Marmalade started to ask, but the daisies interrupted and shushed her.

Then a slight ringing sound came around from the back of her head, ever so quietly, so as she hardly knew she'd noticed it, and stopped in front of her. Another faint ringing sound, like a pure tone of the tiniest bell, came around from behind her and joined the first one, this time at a different pitch. Then another, and another, until she lost count, each one harmonizing subtlely with the last note, until the air was awash with... a huge sound in miniature, so beautiful and so complex that it made her feel a little dizzy. Then each of the many tones started to change pitch, some up, some down, but always in perfect harmony, and she realized that the daisies were singing. Then she passed out.

When she came to the first thing she noticed was Tabby chasing a particularly cunning and cheeky leaf in the dappled afternoon light.

"Tabs! Are you okay?"
"Yeah babe, I've never felt better," said Tabby and he bounded over playfully.
Come to think of it, she felt pretty good herself.
"I've got so much to tell you," said Tabby.
"Your shoulder?"
"It's fine. I feel fine. Great in fact. It's like my first honey trip, only lucid and clear. And... and... I've discovered the truth about the sky."
"The sky?"
"Yes - it's very big! And it has an inside, but no outside! ...And sometimes, when the sun is shining like it is now, and the air is crisp and clear, you can see the whole history of the world in the edge of a blade of grass. And... and... if you relax your mind and look uncarefully at the ripples in the fountain pond you can tune in to the carrier wave; the master signal of the Universe... you can actually see, uh, hear... hear-see the soundshape of the whole Universe as it passes by, broadcast across the face of Nothing, an echo of the original un-Purpose."
"Tabs! Slow down! Sit down and have a rest. Let me see your shoulder... the honey's still in your system you know."

Tabby laughed and lay down beside her so she could see his shoulder, which showed no sign that it had ever been injured. Marmalade didn't know what to say; it was a miraculous recovery. She was just thinking about how the daisies could possibly have patched up the wound so effectively when she thought she heard a sound, like thousands of whispers on the wind. Her ears pricked up and she listened carefully, but it just sounded like the rustle of the breeze now.

"Ah! You hear it too!" cried Tabby.
"Hear what?"
"The whispers on the wind!"
"It's just the breeze in the bushes, Tabs."
"No, no, you're listening too carefully! Think about something else... come play a game with me... I know some cheeky leaves who like to be chased!"

He bounded off, and since it felt like a good idea she followed. Before she knew it they were having a great time... more fun than she'd had since she was a kitten in fact, and that was too long ago. Suddenly she realised she could hear the whispering voices on the breeze again. This time she concentrated hard on chasing a leaf. She found the less she listened to the wind the more clearly she could hear it... a sound like a million voices all speaking clearly at once, in every different language... it was incomprehensible yet she felt at the same time that every individual strand was a monologue that would be meaningful in isolation... as if she was listening to every word ever spoken by everyone who ever lived... the undying vibrations of their voices still carried on the living breeze. And it was beautiful.

"This is a magic garden!" she exclaimed suddenly.
"With magic daisies!" laughed Tabby.
"The sun feels so warm..."
"And the grass feels so soft..."

Just then a tiny shadow passed in front of the sun, but they didn't notice it.

"I wish we could stay here forever and not go back to the ghetto."
"You can't," said a stern voice, startling them both. It was Queenie Vermillion.
"This is indeed a magic garden with magic daisies. But you can't stay here. For a start, it's my garden; I won it off an Irish prince seven years ago, in a poker game."
"Aha," said Tabby, "I play a bit of poker myself."
"But even though it's my garden and I won it fair and square," (at this Queenie fluttered her wings unconsciously), "I can't stay here either."
"Why not?"

A tiny daisy voice piped up, "Because it's a magic garden, with magic daisies, and it has certain magic rules. Besides, you have a life in the outside world, you don't really want to stay here forever."
"But rules were made to be broken..."
"Some rules are unbreakable, by definition. Such as magic rules."
"I'm not fond of my life in the outside world."
"What is so much better about our magic garden?"
"The sun is shining, the grass is soft... the leaves are playful..."
"But the sun shines in the outside world, there is soft grass outside, and while I admit that many of our leaves have great spirit and character, there is certainly much fun to be had with the leaves outside."
"But I feel happy here."
"There is happiness to be found outside also."

Queenie was looking impatient. "It's time to go, pussycat. Don't make me kick you out."
Tabby was looking thoughtful now.

"It doesn't seem right to me that a drug-dealing gangster should end up with this magic garden!"
"I hope you're not being ungrateful..."
"But it doesn't seem fair!"
"Fair? There is no justice in the world except that which you create for yourself. As far as I'm concerned it's entirely fair. Now, time to go!"

At this a flight of butterflies settled on Tabby and Marmalade and started to lift them off the ground. The two of them looked back sadly as they slowly rose away. With only a cold, dark alley to look forward to, they both wondered if they'd ever be so happy again as they had been that afternoon.

"I want to stay!" shouted Tabby, even though it was too late, then he closed his eyes for the rest of the journey home.

As the butterflies turned to the west, Marmalade thought she heard the daisies calling out, just on the edge of her hearing, saying, "The only way to stay is to become one of us, but now is not the time." Then their voice was lost amongst the sounds of the city below... and the flutter of a hundred butterflies' wings... and all the untold millions of whispers in the wind.


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Copyright © 2002 - Paul Garner.