Young Fredle - Louise Yates [29]
“Steps?” Fredle guessed.
“See? What did I tell you? You do know things.”
“Are these steps?”
“I think so. Probably. They look like the other steps, don’t you think? But this is the farthest I’ve ever gone, around the house. I don’t know what comes next.” She hesitated, then asked, “Do you want to keep going?”
Fredle did.
Single file, they went along the edge of the steps, Neldo in the lead, but found no cracks or openings in the wood. They had just passed the first corner, where the steps came down to the ground, and were crossing over stones that were small and sharp enough to make the going uncomfortable, when Fredle heard a hissing, purring sound.
He froze.
“Well, well,” said a soft voice.
Neldo had disappeared.
“What have we here?”
Fredle turned his head, just slightly, just enough to glimpse—exactly what he feared. A cat. He knew this cat. It was the kitchen cat, a long-legged, orange-colored, yellow-eyed beast that all the mice knew hunted only for the fun of it, just to catch and went mice and not because it was hungry. Missus fed that cat its own food in its own bowl. All the mice knew that, because when there was no other choice they sometimes raided that bowl.
The orange cat was crouching, low, ready. Its tail—the end twitching—swept the ground. Fredle looked around desperately. There was no shelter. Where was Neldo hiding? There was no sound except for a distant barking and some insect, humming happily to itself.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked the cat, still without moving. Any mouse knew that the moment you moved, the cat pounced. “It’s not as if Missus doesn’t give you enough food.”
“I might as well ask what you’re doing outside, a fat, healthy house mouse like you.”
“We never hurt you,” Fredle said.
“You’ve taken my food out of my bowl,” the cat answered.
So he was going to have to make a run for it. Fredle knew that, and he knew how slim his chances were. What he didn’t know was what way to run—ahead was unknown and behind there was no place for a mouse to hide from a cat except among the tall flowers, which would offer little protection.
Back or forward? Forward or back? He couldn’t decide. But he had to get moving because if he didn’t, he had no chance at all.
Back, he decided, since he’d rather went among those flowers than anywhere else, and he tensed his—
“Patches! Hello, Patches! You’re outside! Do you want to play?” barked Sadie, bouncing across the grass toward the cat, with Angus following. “Look, Angus, it’s Patches! He’s outside!”
Fredle took advantage of the cat’s momentary inattention to back away, slowly, slowly, toward the flowers. He didn’t even notice the sharp stones cutting into his paws.
“I’m—” hissed the cat. Sadie’s head was now between the cat and Fredle. The cat’s tail waved angrily. “I’m hunting, can’t you see?”
Fredle crept two more steps backward.
“But, Patches, you only hunt inside. Snake and Fox are the outside hunters.”
“Don’t you know that about cats, Sadie?” asked Angus. “Cats hunt wherever they are, all the time. It’s what cats do.”
“Oh,” Sadie said. She turned to Fredle, who halted in mid-creep. “Do you live under the back porch?” she asked him.
“That’s not me,” he said.
“Yes it is. I can smell it. But you don’t smell like a field mouse. A field mouse smells wilder, different, smells like grass and—” Her noise pointed into the rows of flowers. “There’s a field mouse hiding in there,” she told Fredle.
“So what if I am under the porch?” Fredle said, to distract her from Neldo.
“What’s your name?” asked Sadie, but before he could answer she told him, “I’m Sadie and that’s Angus and this is Patches. I know this mouse,” she said to the cat. “I wish you wouldn’t hunt him.”
“Dogs don’t know mice,” Patches answered, but the cat was no longer crouching. He sat up and curled his tail around himself, as if he couldn’t care less about anything and especially about any mouse who might happen to be nearby.
“Dogs don’t know cats, either,” Angus remarked. “I’ve