Life Without The Boring Bits Read online

  That night after Jim and his family were fast asleep and She tucked up in her virginal bed watching a DVD of Pride and Prejudice, Phluphphy squeezed through the cat-flap in the laundry door and stood assimilating the backyard. No bits, burrs or mud, for sure. Neat as a pin. Reasonably large. Paved with pastel-colored concrete slabs. Bounded by six-foot-high fences of dark green wooden palings dove-tailed into each other. A tiny shed in the back left-hand corner. A circular, crankable-uppable clothesline. Earthen flower beds, a bird bath and a sun dial.

  His initial reaction was a wave of despair: this immaculate exterior space held no subjects!

  “Hey, ponce-features, take your lily liver back into your house or I’ll carve you into cutlets and feed you to Otto!” said a loud, unmusical, aggressive voice.

  Unruffled, Phluphphy searched until he found its source, a skinny black feline shape atop the shed, its eyes glowing yellow. All the better to see (and to imbue himself with a certain princely dignity) Phluphphy leaped onto the sun dial.

  “A subject!” he said, delighted. “Bow down before your emperor, you unruly, vulgar creature! What is your name?”

  “One thing for sure, it ain’t Nutless Wonder like you, sport. Me name’s Tom.” Sidling to the edge of the shed roof, Tom arched his back, hissed and spat. None of which even dented the house cat’s monumental conceit. It just sat on the sun dial in all its silver-shot glory and regarded him haughtily.

  “Why is it that no one speaks with true erudition?” Phluphphy demanded. “Your proper name is Thomas, but Thomas who? Wolsey? More? Tallis? Boleyn? Tank? Twitchett? Well, no matter. Bow down to your emperor, Tom.”

  “Nyah, nyah, emperor who?”

  “Phluphphy.”

  “Oh, Jeez, you are the Emperor! Pardon, O Exalted and Great One! Pardon, I cry pardon!” Tom said, lying flat and cringing.

  “Speak decently and I may forgive you,” Phluphphy said, his voice mellifluous. “Incidentally, what is a nutless wonder?”

  “Um — well — er — actually it’s a sort of a battle cry,” said Tom. Then, catching sight of Jim emerging from the cat-flap, he tensed, ready to spring. “Egad! What a fat and sonsy rat!”

  “Cease and desist, varlet!” Jim snapped, standing on the sun dial next to Phluphphy, one paw familiarly on Phluphphy’s arm. “I am James called Jim, Lord High Privy Seal and Chancellor to the Emperor Phluphphy, and recently invested Baron of the Basket. I am no one’s dinner, least of all yours.”

  “Listen, sport,” said Tom, reverting to type, “I am driven by two primal urges — sex and food. It’s a week since I’ve had a woman, and a month since I’ve had a decent feed.”

  “Well, you can’t have my woman,” said Phluphphy. “She’s in bed drooling over Mr. Darcy, and matters carnal are not in the province of a sovereign. However, a good ruler must feed his subjects, so I will — no, not feed you, precisely, but show you how to feed yourself. In return, I expect to see more subjects turn up the next time I hold court, five nights from this one. Have I your attention, Thomas called Tom?”

  “Yes, Your Exalted and Imperial Majesty.”

  “Excellent! First of all, as we mammalian animals are very telepathic, I serve notice on all my subjects that Court when I hold it will not incorporate vocalization. Think-speech only, which does not mean sloppy syntax, understood?”

  “Yes, Your Exalted and Imperial Majesty.”

  “Excellent! Now, your dinner, Tom. Three doors down from here,” said Phluphphy in lordly tones, “is a supermarket that has open display cases of meat. Including sirloins, rumps, fillets and rounds. Or there’s lamb if you fancy it, as well as pork, veal and offal. Also, in a separate section, prawns.”

  Tom had jumped down from the shed roof and was now in a more suitable position, looking up at his Emperor on the sun dial. “That’s all very well, O Exalted One,” he said, “but as I have no access to the supermarket, what boots me it?”

  “Abandon this Tudor complexity!” Phluphphy ordered. “Ordinary but grammatical language will do fine. Speak on, Tom.”

  “The supermarket meat and prawns may as well be on the Moon.”

  “Nonsense! The first thing you must do is find yourself a rat-companion as your colleague. Then as you find other cats, each must have a rat-companion. The Lord High Privy Seal’s family is about to leave home and will suit your purposes eminently well, as James is their father and they know their Emperor. This will limit your raiding parties to five cats and rat-companions each night, repeating every fourth night.”

  “This is a boring bit!” growled Tom.

  “The fact that you find it boring is why you are starving and I am eating chicken breasts poached in white wine, you foolish cat. There is method in what I say. Jim, which of your fifteen children for Tom?”

  “Ned. Fly, spry, eagle-eye.”

  “Thomas called Tom, I formally dower you with Ned as your rat-companion. Due to his own semistarvation before I came to live with Her, Jim is very familiar with the back of the supermarket, and he will teach all the rat-companions how to get inside it.”

  “I’d rather eat Ned,” said Tom mutinously.

  “And fill your belly meagrely once? Think, Thomas, think!” Phluphphy cried, frustrated. “Five containers of meat per night, each in a styrofoam tray wrapped in clear plastic. You need your rat-companion’s paws to get the meat out of the trays without wasting a single fiber. Left to yourself, you’d leave a trail of plundered trays behind you, and next time you came, it would be impossible to get in. The whole object of this is to feed you and keep you fed, plus feed four of your fellows, and keep them fed. With a small, rat-sized portion for each rat-companion.”

  “All this detail is incredibly boring!” Tom exclaimed.

  “Listen, Doubting Thomas,” said Phluphphy in the back of his telepathic throat, “I am outlining a plan — a plan that will enable you and however many other cats I decide will eat well for the rest of their days. The crux of the scheme is that the supermarket should never realize that it is being plundered. Therefore the same amount each night — never more than five trays, always taken from the front row of the display case. Capice?”

  “Boring!” said Tom. “Besides, it’s limited to five cats.”

  “Ah! But how many other supermarkets, fishmongeries, bakeries, butcheries and delicatessens are there in our neighborhood, pray tell me?” Phluphphy demanded sweetly. “Three doors down is just the start, though I recommend that the Court be set at thirty cats and thirty rat-companions. That way, every cat and rat-companion can eat every night, just in different places, according to taste.”

  “Rat-companions! Tchah!” said Tom.

  “They will keep your depredations undetected,” Phluphphy said. “Each raiding cat will pull his tray of meat outside whatever building it was inside, then pull it to a secure spot where the rat-companions can speedily and tidily unwrap it, and the two together can then dispose of the evidence tidily inside a trash receptacle of some kind. There must be no evidence! For his invaluable services in finding a way inside each building and also disposing of the packaging, each rat-companion will be given a rightful share of the loot. I have spoken, there is no more to be said,” the Emperor concluded grandly.

  Tom’s attention had finally been caught; he put his head on one side and his eyes gleamed as yellow as a real estate agent’s premises. “You are very clever, O Exalted and Imperial One,” he said. “Boring, but sensible.”

  “Just remember the two imperial rules: neat and tidy theft, and unnoticed theft,” said Phluphphy severely.

  “I hear and obey, O Great One!”

  “Once you widen your horizons to the other supermarkets and butcheries and fishmongeries, you will have a deep well in. which to dip your bucket.”

  “Bucket? Dip — lucky dip?” asked Tom.

  “A metaphor, Thomas. I perceive that the quality of my subjects will not always equal their quantity. What I meant, Thomas, is that the more sources of food you find and the more surreptitiously yo
u steal, the better you will eat.”

  “Emperor Phluphphy, I worship you!” Tom cried.

  “Thank you. As my third subject, I hereby create you Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and your rat-companion Ned my First Sea Lord. Arise, General Thomas!”

  In that way Phluphphy established his Imperial Court. When She realized that he liked to sit on the sun dial after dark, She had the gnomon removed, making it a far more comfortable seat; it was the wrong gnomon anyway, fashioned for England, a good twenty degrees sharper of inclination than the Realm of Phluphphy. Thus Phluphphy could sit looking down into a glowing sea of adoring eyes in rapt faces, for word of his wisdom, his sagacity, his glory, his beauty, his power and his uniqueness had spread, and once a month he held open Court, to which anybody could come. Knowledge of — and participation in — the shop raids was limited to the thirty cats and rat-companions of his official Court, which he convoked every four days as the clock on the Town Hall struck midnight.

  It may perhaps be deduced that all was going swimmingly in the Court — and world — of the Emperor Phluphphy, and indeed all did for a considerable time.

  Then, on one unforgettable night of sultry heat and cloying humidity, Her wooden paling fence shuddered, bowed, cracked, split, splintered and burst: into Her backyard erupted someone Phluphphy had heard lots about, but never seen — the Doberman/Weimaraner/Alsatian crossbred monster named Otto the Terrible, scourge of postmen, little old ladies, pussycats and chihuahuas.

  So great was the fear that no one in the Court, not even General Tom and his rat-companion Admiral Ned, tried to flee; every pussycat and rat-companion sat frozen into a motionless, graven statue. Otto the Terrible shoved his way through the petrified ranks until his head — the same height as the sun dial — loomed in Phluphphy’s face. Its lips were peeled back in a shocking snarl, its fangs dripped what might have been saliva, or might have been a smoking acidic venom, and its eyes looked into the depths of a pussycat hell.

  “You’re the Emperor Phluphphy?” Otto growled.

  “I am,” said Phluphphy, casually licking a paw.

  “Prepare to die, usurper!”

  In answer, Phluphphy did a backward flip off the sun dial and landed neatly between General Tom and Admiral Ned — that is, in the midst of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which hadn’t yet recovered enough to semaphore Air Marshal Tiddles and Commander Mike, who had been practising a new technique of flying leaps to get at one shop’s elusive cache of Japanese export rib-eyes — Air Force stuff.

  There Phluphphy pirouetted with a couple of entrechats thrown in, while his subjects, finally galvanized, scattered just enough to give their Emperor room.

  Very strange things began to happen. Phluphphy seemed to grow in size until he looked like a spiky stainless steel tiger, and out of his soft, pampered feet there issued immensely long claws that gleamed like brushed chrome. His ears flattened against his head and his mouth opened in a snarl that made Otto’s look like a beneficent smile. After which, very carefully, one leg at a time, he began to advance on Otto, all the while emitting a frightful screech that zoomed at the speed of light into a vestigial part of Otto’s brain that God had stamped “utter disaster” and hitherto not opened once. Now it opened.

  Phluphphy kept advancing: Otto stood paralyzed.

  At a yard between them, Otto spoke: “Shit! Oh, shit!” And broke and bolted for the fence, where he fought and scrabbled to find a passage through the wreckage.

  The screaming Phluphphy bounded in pursuit as his Court cheered resoundingly.

  “That wretched dog Otto broke into my backyard last night,” She said to a friend over morning tea and scones in her conservatory, “chasing a cat, apparently. And would you believe that my Phluphphy put him out? A terrific racket came from my backyard, so I got up in time to see the whole thing — I was staggered! Who would ever have dreamed that my diddums-widdums could act with so much flair, élan, panache and positive éclat? Truly amazing!”

  “He’s too fat,” said Her friend. “Feed him scraps and kibble, like everyone else.”

  Phluphphy opened one eye to glare at the friend. Interfering sadist! She was always trying to undermine his position.

  “After last night, I’d feed Phluphphy caviar if he wanted it,” She said firmly. “The vet says fat cats don’t live one day fewer than thin cats. Your trouble, Doris, is that your Maurice uses a litter box, whereas my cuddums-wuddums goes in the toilet.”

  Unanswerable, thought Phluphphy complacently as he lay charmingly posed on a chair at the same table. My chicken breasts and prawns and fillet steak are safe. Last night was sheer bluff on my part. Not, mind you, that I wouldn’t have given a good account of myself if Otto had grabbed me. He’s a shake-and-break exponent: grabs the victim by the scruff of the neck and shakes to break it. But if he’d done that to me, all his jaws would have closed on would have been fur, fur, fur. In the meantime I would have had one of his eyes and a good chunk of nose.

  Still, bluff is the way to go whenever possible. Wiser, smarter, longer lasting. Without getting a drop of Otto’s spit on my beautiful coat, I have ascended into the aether of myth and legend as far as all my subjects are concerned, and I am now the Emperor of Her city. Hmmm … I will have to increase the size of my bureaucracy so that not all my ever-increasing number of subjects arrive in Her backyard on one and the same Court night. A good job for the entire twelve in Jim’s latest litter … I do wish he understood contraception, but he says he’s just doing what comes naturally. Where would he be without Me?

  A rhetorical question; every member of the Imperial Court was well aware of the answer. That life was never boring lay in the strategies and tactics necessary to keep everybody fed so well that bodies were plump, coats shiny, noses moist, and eyes sparkling.

  One month after the night of Otto’s invasion, Her friend came to morning tea and scones again, agog with news.

  “You’ll never guess!” the friend cried, smiling all over her face. “Otto has lost a leg, and old man Grouch is going to put him down because he’s useless as a guard dog anymore.”

  The charmingly posed Phluphphy fell off his chair in shock.

  “What happened?” She asked; She rather liked Otto.

  “Chasing a truck. Honestly, that wretched dog has every bad habit a dog can have.”

  “But I don’t understand! Why didn’t the vet just put him down at once, if that’s what old man Grouch wants?”

  “Oh, his kids adore Otto, and begged the vet to save him. Now the bill’s arrived, and old man Grouch says it would have been cheaper for him to have his leg amputated. If he could, he’d put the vet down, but as he can’t, the dog’s his victim.”

  “Can’t his kids coax him out of his mood?”

  “Old man Grouch? You’re joking!”

  That night Phluphphy called an emergency meeting of the Court, thirty cats and thirty rat-companions.

  “Finally we have a mission of mercy,” he said from the sun dial. “That is the one aspect of imperial rule I have not had a chance to exert. We are going to rescue Otto the Terrible from sentence of death passed on him by his owner, old man Grouch, because he has lost a leg and is as useless as expensive.”

  Such was Phluphphy’s thrall that not even the resident chronic grumblers, Merv and rat-companion Bert, protested. Every head nodded solemnly, every pair of loins visibly girded for the fray.

  “Where does Otto live, General Tom?” he asked.

  “One block down, half a block over, O Exalted One.”

  “Traffic?”

  “From now until dawn, virtually none.”

  “And the air is clear,” said Air Marshal Tiddles.

  “And the pond in the corner park is deserted,” said Admiral Ned.

  “Then we start out in military mode,” Phluphphy ordered. “The Chiefs of Staff send out rat-companion scouts, while we, behind the Chiefs, move as a mass packed densely together. If any dog should try to challenge us, whoever is nearest does the bluff whil
e his neighbors sneak up on either side and go for the eyes. When we reach old man Grouch’s, I expect the scouts to have found Otto. They will lead us straight to him.”

  “What if he’s inside?” asked Merv the grumbler.

  “Pish! Tosh! Rubbish! Otto will be in the backyard, he’s not a house pet. Now march!”

  Down the side passage, out the front gate, onto the footpath, and down the sleeping street they went, the Emperor Phluphphy escorted by thirty cats and thirty-one rat-companions, the front rank appearing, disappearing, materializing, dematerializing as scouts went out and scouts returned. Even the most whispered telepathy never bobbed to any mind’s surface: this was a silent mission! No sleeping dog, ferret, gerbil, mouse, bunny-rabbit or hamster could be inadvertently aroused by a drifting wisp of thought.

  It turned out to be easy. The Grouch residence was sprawling, poorly fenced, and had a huge backyard liberally dewed with rusting car bodies, washing machines, motors and old house bricks.

  Otto was lying on a hessian bag in front of his kennel, on his side, three legs resting on the ground, and where the left hind leg should have been was covered in grimy, bloodied dressings. His head was stretched out, his eyes closed.

  “Too late!” said General Tom.

  “Dead as a doornail,” said Jim.

  “Pish! Tosh! Rubbish!” said Phluphphy, pushing to the front and standing next to Otto’s head. “Wake up, you fool hound!”

  The eyes opened, the head lifted; Otto heaved a huge sigh. “Oh, shit,” he said. “Come to gloat, eh?”

  “Gloat? I? Never!” said Phluphphy bracingly. “What is this nonsense? Why are you lying here defeated?”

  “I’ve lost a leg. I can’t run or even walk again — I can’t earn my keep,” said Otto on a whine. “Tomorrow I’m going to get a dose of terminal lead poisoning in the left ear.”