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- Herausgeber: Pushkin Children's Books
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
A thrilling, funny story about a heroic cat on a mission Baguette is just a regular house cat. He likes to sit in the window, watch the birds, and eat three square meals a day. But what's a regular house cat to do if he falls in love with a beautiful street cat who has some very strange - and really rather dangerous - demands? Baguette must travel back through the Ocean of Time to the lost island of Catlantis. He must find a way to save the nine lives of all cats before it is too late. And he must outwit the wicked black cat Noir, who is hot on his tail. Only then can he hope to win the paw of Purriana... Anna Starobinets is an acclaimed, award-winning Russian novelist, scriptwriter and journalist. She is best known as a writer of dystopian and metaphysical novels and short stories, and is also a very successful children's author. Catlantis is her first children's book to be translated into English.
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Contents
CHAPTER 1
The Cat Everyone Respected
Baguette the cat liked to lie in the window and watch the birds. The birds were not afraid of him. First off, they had bird brains and always forgot that cats could hunt. Second off, during their more enlightened moments, they knew that Baguette was looking on them not as prey, but more from a philosophical point of view. He did not intend to attack them because the Petrov family, and Baguette was a part of this very family, lived on the twelfth floor of an apartment building. And so, the window in which Baguette was lying, was also on the twelfth floor. Baguette was a very smart cat and had no intentions of jumping out of something that high up.
This particular double window had small square ventilation panes in its top right-hand corner. Mama liked to open them to let in the winter breeze, and it was precisely in this porthole that Baguette liked to lie. He always picked the most comfortable pose: his ginger tail hung inside the room, his whiskers poked outdoors, and his downy belly was suspended in the six-inch gap between the two panes. So that he wouldn’t fall out, all twenty of his claws dug tightly into the window frame.
“Oh, my!” Mama Petrov would yelp whenever she saw Baguette in this position. This time, she called out to her husband, “For God’s sake, you’ve just got to put a screen in that window. Yes, darling, for the health and safety of our cat.”
“A screen!” said Papa Petrov. “What kind of screen?”
“Oh, you know, the kind for flies and mosquitoes.”
“For flies?” Papa frowned. “You mean the thin, synthetic kind… Am I understanding you correctly, darling?”
“Yes, darling.”
“Hmm, I’ll think about it… but first, have I understood you correctly? Do you have absolutely no respect for our cat?”
Mama bit her lip. This was quite an accusation. The thing is, everyone in the Petrov family—Mama, Papa, both grandmothers and grandfathers, the little girl Polina, her older brother Vadik, and even the dog Bonehead—everyone had great respect for Baguette ever since his heroic feat.
“You don’t respect the cat who risked his life for our family?” continued Papa. “The cat who travelled from the past into the future and ventured into the Land of Good Girls? The cat who courageously fought an army of chiming clocks and rescued our beloved daughter Polina from that world of the past? How can you disrespect such a cat?!” For emphasis Papa would point at Baguette, who continued to sit nonchalantly in the open window, keeping a philosophical eye on the birds and pretending not to hear a thing.
“Why would you think that, darling?” Mama protested in a quivering voice. “I have the utmost respect for him.”
“Well, then, explain to me how, my darling, how you can suggest this idea of a fly screen? How can you compare a cat to a fly?”
“But I wasn’t—”
“An intelligent cat with a simple-minded fly! Do you really think that some thin screen is a match for our Baguette? You think he won’t be able to tear it to pieces with his claws? Maybe you think he’s going to beat his wings against it and buzz?!”
“You’re absolutely right, my darling,” Mama agreed. “A fly screen won’t do at all. But we must think of his safety! Well, then, how about bars?”
“What?”
“Bars.”
“Bars?” asked Papa. “Did you say bars? The metal kind?”
“Yes, darling, the metal kind. The kind you install for burglars and thieves.”
“You mean like in prison?”
“Well, yes, but it’s for his own good—for his health and safety!”
“I don’t believe it!” Papa was now marching about the room. “So, you’re saying that we have so little respect for our cat that we’ll turn our house into a cat prison, for hisown good? We’re to imprison a free animal! We’re to install the bars, humiliating this superhuman being in front of our neighbours, in front of his friends and acquaintances! Are you being serious?”
Baguette nervously swung his tail to the rhythm of Papa’s speech. He was almost positive that the Petrovs would not install bars on the windows. Nonetheless, the possibility worried him, and even the smallest worry about this topic was enough to disturb his mental equilibrium. His fur would start moulting then and there, and he would even feel the need to jump down from the window. In this state of imbalance, the cat had no business lying in an open window on the twelfth floor.
“Bars! Humiliating our cat in front of his beloved!” continued Papa.
“He’s too young, he doesn’t have a beloved,” said Mama with little conviction.
“Well, I’m pretty sure he does,” maintained Papa. “You still think of him as a kitten, but he’s been a man for quite some time.”
CHAPTER 2
Love and Bars
Papa was right: Baguette was in love. Her name was Purriana. She was slender and striped, her nose was as pink as a rosebud, her whiskers as white as snow on New Year’s Day, and her coat shone like a diamond necklace. Every night Baguette would purrenade her from his window. Purriana loved the purrenades and she loved Baguette and… and… and she was a stray.
Which explains why Baguette was always so distressed when the Petrovs discussed window bars. There is nothing more embarrassing to an indoor house cat than to purrenade his beloved stray from behind bars!
“Who cares?” Bonehead the dog was surprised. “Bars or no bars, isn’t it all the same? If she loves you, she won’t even notice the bars.”
“You’re the only one who doesn’t notice bars, Bonehead!” Baguette involuntarily let out his claws. “You don’t even notice your own collar!”
“Hey, what’s wrong with my collar?” Bonehead began twisting around trying to see his collar and its shortcomings.
“What’s wrong with it?!” protested Baguette. “Why, if they tried to put a collar on me, I’d… well, I wouldn’t allow that kind of embarrassment. I’d borrow your leash and do myself in straight away—with that very collar!”
“Why?”
“Because nothing matters more than freedom. I’m a free cat and—”
“If you’re free, why don’t you go outside, my friend?” Bonehead wondered. “Why do you stay here in captivity, eating our bread and—”
“I don’t eat bread.”
“You eat our fish and our chicken, you sleep in a human bed, you warm yourself by the radiator, you beg everyone to pet you—”
“I don’t beg!”
“You let people scratch you behind your ears. Is that what you call freedom?”
“Yes, this is my kind of freedom,” said Baguette with a frown. “A household freedom. But I won’t allow it to be restricted by bars. If Purriana sees bars, she’ll surely stop loving me. You have to understand, Bonehead, that it’s all a question of status. Without bars you’re a free house cat. You can purrenade your beloved through an open window and in doing so you offer her everything you enjoy yourself: the comfort of home, central heating, three daily meals, professional behind-the-ear massage, a clean litter box, clean sheets, vitamins for your fur, veterinary services—in a word, stability. But when you sing to her from behind bars you’re offering her… well, you aren’t offering her anything. She sees that you have no say in your own life and she chooses the street, she chooses the alley, she leaves. She leaves with the black cat Noir.”
The black cat Noir was also a stray. He lived by the rubbish bin in the alley, hunted pigeons and ate scraps. Once he even ate a parakeet who stupidly flew out the window of a nearby apartment. Another time he caught and ate the neighbour’s hamster—and both crimes remained unpunished. Everyone avoided Noir; they preferred to keep their distance from his bin. The fact of the matter was that Noir was not just a black cat, he was completely black, extremely black, as black as coal, there was not a single spot on his body that was not black—and cats like that were bad news.
