Dinner Ticket

And that was when he sat on me LIKE A 50 kg. BAG OF CAT FOOD… how I would have loved to have a 50 kg. bag of cat food! But I didn’t. I didn’t even have an owner back then, so I was out on the street, a pretty little black cat…. I’m sorry, let me introduce myself and start my story properly.

My name is Noir. I gave myself the name, but most humans call me ‘Shoo Cat’. Noir speaks in reference to my midnight-black fur, but ‘Shoo Cat’ is just derogatory. I much prefer Noir.

It all started last month. I was picking through some trash cans behind an old abandoned building when I smelled a lovely aroma. I proceeded to investigate. The back door was open a few inches, so I slipped inside, and there in the middle of the floor was a large plate of food. Now, when you have not had a substantial meal in about two and a half weeks and you see a large plate of food, what do you do? I don’t know what you would do, but what I did was run like an Olympic sprinter to get to that food.

When you are half starved you don’t pay attention, and neither do I. If I had I would have noticed the large metal cage around the food. Since I was not being attentive, I found myself locked in the cage! But at least I had the food. And the humans who found me there seemed really glad to see me.

They must have noticed how skinny I was, because they put me on a feeding program, kind of like the opposite of a diet. It was wonderful. They set up food stations for me all around the city. All the entrances to the food stations had a cat door, which the men unlocked when they were expecting me for dinner. They also attached a rather large collar around my neck. The collar was kind of scratchy, but I put up with it because that’s where they put my meal tickets. Several times a day, they sent me from feeding station to feeding station where the men at each took my ticket, read it to make sure it was authentic, and then (the only reason I stuck around) they fed me.

So, it went on like that for the next three or four weeks, and I think I was getting the hang of it. I soon knew all the routes so well I could make it from one food station to another in almost half the time.

Yesterday, when I got to my destination, I went through my cat door and finding no one in the room, I settled myself in one of the chairs. And that’s when I got sat on! It’s not my fault the chair I sat in just happened to be the boss’, though it is my fault that I fell asleep.

Anyway, I had fallen asleep and the boss came in. He crossed the room to the desk and sat down right on me! Not a gentle up-and-down-and-apology, mind you, I mean that he came out of the sky LIKE A 50 kg. BAG OF CA… scratch that—(pardon the cat humor)—LIKE A SACK OF POTATOES!

If you are ever landed on by a sack of potatoes you will probably react just like me, and that is to scream, and scratch, and bite. And though I’m sure that a sack of potatoes wouldn’t mind if you screamed, and scratched, and bit it, a human does.

What the boss said next I’m not going to repeat. And then he tried to strangle me; humans are odd that way. Thankfully, I was able to dart beneath a sofa before his large hands could encircle my neck. After a while, I slipped out from under the couch and out the cat door, into the alley.

I wandered around hungrily for a time, until I came across some promising-looking garbage cans. I picked through those for a while; about the best I found was a half-eaten doughnut.

It was getting pretty cold out, when the back door of the building opened and a big guy in a uniform came out. I was so busy gnawing at my doughnut that he had me in his hands and was carrying me into the building before I knew what was happening.

“I told you I heard something out back, Connery,” said the burly policeman, coming back in with a pretty little black cat in his arms.

“Ok, so my hearing ain’t what it used to be,” shot back the elderly desk sergeant, “What was it, any-how?”

“This cat,” replied the first, scratching the small feline behind the ear.

“Say, she’s a right purty little thing, Munro,” said Connery.

The room was warm and smelled of tuna sandwiches. I jumped down to investigate.

“What’s going on in here?” asked a middle-aged officer, entering the room.

“Nothing much, Sharpe,” replied Munro. “Just a cat.”

“How can you play with cats at a time like this?” demanded Sharpe.

“We was not playing,” retorted Connery.

“Well then, what were you doing?” asked Sharpe, with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

“I brought her in from the cold,” stated Munro.

“You’re supposed to be cracking this case. Shoo, cat!”

I was starting to feel quite at ease with my rescuer and his pleasant companion, when they were joined by this very obnoxious man. Though we had not been introduced, he addressed me familiarly by name. I looked down at my chest. No, I was not wearing a big stick-on name tag that read ‘Hello my name is Shoo Cat’. I don’t know what gives humans this impression. I decided to ignore him. His kind deserves no better.

“Well, I said there was something out back and Connery didn’t believe me, so I went to investigate and found this here cat,” Munro explained.

“Speaking of this here cat,” interrupted Connery, “She’s got an awful big collar fer a cat, don’t she?”

“Now that you mention it, yeah, she does. And no name on it either,” pondered Munro. “I wonder if…”

He grabbed a small black notebook and a pair of gloves from a desk drawer.

I was certain I had discovered the location of the tuna sandwich, in a black tin box under the desk. I was trying to figure out how get at the food when the guy suddenly slipped off my collar and stole my meal ticket, my means of sustenance!

After putting on the gloves and giving the notebook to Connery, Munro gently removed the collar from the cat’s neck and studied it intently.

“There seems to be a secret pocket in this collar,” he announced after a long time “And… yes, there is a note in here.”

“Hey, that’s my meal ticket!” I hissed. “But you can keep it if you feed me,” I added in my sweetest meow. They paid no attention.

“I think this cat is a message carrier for the Raiots and, if my suspicions are correct, this is how they are slipping messages past us so easily,” said Munro, with an air of confidence.

“What does the note say?” asked Connery impatiently.

Munro showed them the typewritten slip: Down riverbed, 0.002 Sitting.

“What in the world does that mean?” exploded Sharpe.

“Well, obviously it’s in code,” replied Munro.

“I’ll get my best men on it at once,” said Sharpe.

“If I may make a suggestion,” interrupted Connery, “We may not need to.”

“What do you mean by ‘we may not need to’?” inquired Sharpe.

“Well, the way I see it,” mused Connery, “If we let this here cat loose, she could lead us to their base.”

“That’s an excellent idea!” exclaimed Munro.

“It could work, at that,” pondered Sharpe.

“Let’s get a band of men and storm the place,” shouted Munro.

“Now, hold on a minute,” countered Sharpe. “We still should get the code men on this.”

“Well, alright,” consented Munro. “But I still say we raid the place.”

The place seemed to be getting pretty busy, with lots of men shouting and telephoning and assembling in their noisy boots, but I didn’t pay much attention. I was still trying to get at the tuna sandwich. Then suddenly my rescuer picked me up and put me outside again, in the cold.

I waited for them to let me back in, but they didn’t. I guess the ticket was expired.

I was ravenous, so I decided to try one of the food stations, even though I no longer had my ticket. That wasn’t my fault I had lost it, after all. Halfway there I had the sneaking suspicion I was being followed, but when I turned there was no one in sight. So, I continued on my way.

When I got to one of the food stations I went through my door. The men were just checking for my missing meal ticket when guess who busted the door down? My rescuer and all the other guys from the tuna sandwich and doughnut place!

They told all of the men in the food station to freeze. And they were freezing, with all that night air coming in through the open door.

We all went back to the nice warm tuna place. I was looking forward to a nap, but the guy put me outside again! I just can’t understand human behavior.

So, I went to another food station, and the same thing happened.

It went on like this all night, until I’d visited all the food stations. I was about dead on my paws when finally my rescuer took me inside, and boy, did they ever give me a feast! Tuna and milk and Boston Cream Supremes.

And then the guy did the strangest thing. He put a big stack of green paper in front of me. He said some thing about ‘reward’ and ‘$20,000’, but I was too busy eating to pay much attention.

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Story image:

Design by James Riley; This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada License (CC BY-SA 2.5). Background image: “Alley” by Edgar Alfonseca | Flickr.com; Used under CC BY-SA 2.0. “Trash Digging Cat” by Denis Sazhin, US | thenounproject.com. Used under CC BY 3.0 US.