Young Fredle - Louise Yates [33]
“You eat my kibbles?”
“Not when they’re in the bowl,” Fredle assured her quickly, in case—like Patches—the dogs resented it if a mouse took the food from their bowls. “But sometimes you spill them.”
“I’m thirsty,” Sadie said, a little sadly. “I want a drink of water. I want to go get a drink from the stream and chase a frog. Have you ever smelled a frog? The stream isn’t far, just across the field, and I can run fast. I can run very fast,” she told Fredle, and sighed. “But I have a job.” Then, “I have a job!” she told Fredle, proudly.
Fredle was feeling a little thirsty, too, now that the subject had come up, and he thought that a juicy apple peel would refresh him.
“Are you going? Will you come back?”
“If I can,” Fredle said.
Bardo and Neldo were no longer at the compost, and he went quickly to the part of the pile where he’d noticed more apple peels—which he hadn’t mentioned to his two companions, although neither had he tried to hide it from them. On his way back to the lattice he stopped to talk with Sadie, but she had fallen asleep and was snoring gently. He was about to move on when Missus approached and Sadie leapt up with a short, happy bark.
“Sadie? Sit,” Missus said, in a stern voice. “I’m going to feed the chickens. You stay with the baby.”
Sadie lay down again beside the basket. Fredle had never eaten corn, so he started to follow Missus toward the chicken pen, coming cautiously out from behind the shelter of his fence post. Luckily for him, he hadn’t taken many steps before he looked up and sighted two cats ahead. He froze.
One of the cats was large and all white. The other was large, too, but black-and-white. The barn cats, he thought. They stalked through the sunlight in front of the open barn door. They were coming toward the garden.
The cats hadn’t seen him. Slowly, watching the cats, he backed up the short distance to the safety of the fence post near which Sadie slept beside the baby in its basket.
The cats stretched lazily in the sunlight and then strode side by side along by the woodshed. From this angle, Fredle could see into Neldo’s home. He noticed that only a few logs were piled up in it and that there might have been—but it might also have been only his fears taking a shape—something long and dark, darker even than the dark gray barn, hanging down from the ceiling. The cats paid no mind to any of that. They turned toward the chicken pen.
When they caught sight of the cats, the chickens squawked and darted up into the air with their wings outspread and flapping. Not being able to fly, the chickens ran away from the cats, who went right up to the fence and stared in at them, fat cat tails raised, backs arched, sharp teeth showing as they hissed.
“Shoo!” said Missus. “Get away, cats! Shoo!”
The cats yawned.
Missus dashed right at them, waving her bucket. “I mean it! Shoo!”
Slowly, to show Missus that they were doing it because they wanted to, not because she told them to, the cats moved off. They went in different directions. The white one came toward the garden while the black-and-white one went back to sit in the dirt and scratch itself, right in front of the woodshed.
From behind his post, Fredle now watched the white cat, which was moving slowly, lazily, silently, through the grass, its attention fixed on something in the garden. What something was it stalking? Fredle wondered.
When Fredle turned his head—just slightly because cats could perceive the smallest of movements, even the smallest movements of mice—he saw that it was Sadie toward whom the cat was heading, and that was a relief.
Sadie lay beside the basket with her nose on her paws and her eyes closed. Her ears were raised, but they were always raised, so that might not mean anything. Next to her, little noises came out of the basket and the light cloth that Missus had spread over the top of it rose and fell. It looked as if a giant mouse was running along upside down underneath that cloth. This was what the cat had seen and was curious to find out about.
The cat came up to the basket, and then circled around until