Continuing the
exciting saga of a kitten who is going to go wander in the woods for
a while!
Tailchaser wakes
up and immediately regrets his crazy oath. Fortunately for the story,
Thinbone arrives and wishes him luck and kind of shames him into
leaving, even though he really wants to go play Bob-Tag with the
other kittens! Thinbone says that he is jealous of Tailchaser but
totally isn't going to go with him. In a moment of obvious
foreshadowing, Thinbone asks if Pouncequick, the kitten who looked up
to Tailchaser, had come to see him yet. Tailchaser says no, but that
he must be off, and Thinbone walks with him to the edge of the field.
Tailchaser bids
Thinbone farewell and heads into the woods. All of 50 paces in he
feels like the loneliest cat in the world. Poor little guy! He
continues into the woods but is set upon by... rocks? He's pelted by
nuts! They strike his head and legs and back and he is off like a
shot, unable to see where his attackers are located. In a panic, he
rushes into a bramble patch only to discover there isn't any solid
ground! He sees the bottom of a dry riverbed “a fatal distance
below” and manages to hang onto the bramble bush. While holding on
for his life, his attackers make their appearance as squirrels, AKA
the Rikchikchik! They continue pelting him with rocks and nuts and he
asks why they are attacking him. The squirrels answer that he is a
murder cat like all cats and is there to hunt them! Fritti answers
that isn't the case at all and he's just traveling through their land
and won't bother any of them but they won't hear it! A large squirrel
comes forward and says that a cat has already taken Mistress Whir,
his mate, and they won't let another cat live while she is missing
and probably dead! Tailchaser realizes that he is completely boned
and thus we get our first side quest as he promises to find and
return Mistress Whir so he can travel through the woods!
The Rikchikchik believe him, let him up, and point him in the direction in
which the lady squirrel was taken. Fritti heads out and sure enough
soon smells another cat. Not wanting to spook him, he announces “Good
dancing, hunt-brother!” The other cat turns out to be Stretchslow!
With a terrified but alive squirrel under his paws! Stretchslow is
glad to see young Tailchaser and says he was looking for him. But
first, time to eat a squirrel! Fritti cries out for him to stop,
completely blowing Stretchslow's mind. Fritti tells him that he has
made a promise to save the squirrel for the squirrels. Stretchslow
cannot freaking believe it, but let's the lady squirrel go since
“Master Tailchaser” asked him to. She quickly runs off and
QUEST COMPLETE!
Stretchslow
remarks that it's really weird to let a fat tasty squirrel go, but he
has no time for talking about that! He then promptly goes into
cryptic Yoda mode and says that weird things are happening in the
woods, not least of all a cat making deals with some delicious
squirrels, and the he thinks Tailchaser has a role to play in all of
it. He asks Tailchaser if he has had his Initiation to the Hunt which
Fritti totally left before he was going to get his. So Stretchslow
gives him the short version in a really bad poem! He touches his paw
to Fritti's forehead, and bids him good hunting. THEN VANISHES no he
just wanders off, silly kitty.
Chapter 5
Fritti returns to
the squirrels and is taken up a tree by them. As he
climbs from branch to branch, he struggles to deal with his balance
as he gets higher and higher and the branches get thinner and
thinner. Seems he is going to meet Lord Snap, leader of this squirrel
band. Fritti eventually is at the top of a tree on a branch he can
barely stand on and then Lord Snap is in a nearby tree out of jumping
distance. Fritti then realizes this and clearly spells out what the
reader had already realized two pages earlier. GOOD WRITING
TECHNIQUE. Lord Snap thanks Fritti for saving Mistress Whir and says
it is a strange cat that helps a Rikchikchik. Fritti asks if they saw
the other cats who left to go find the Court of Harar and it turns
out they went through the woods. Tailchaser then learns something to
say to summon the help of any squirrel companions if he needs help
which is to yell “Mrikkarrikarek-Snap” which he can't really
pronounce but they get him to say it close enough eventually. Fritti
renews his promise not to eat any squirrels while he is in the woods
and leaves. As he leaves, he realizes he just needs to meet the King
of the Birds and the King of the Field Mice and then he can just
starve to death, which I admit made me chuckle.
The night,
Tailchaser is hungry but not at all blind since he's a cat and they
have sweet night vision. He then spends a great deal of time hunting
a shrew that I'm not going to go into nearly as much detail as the
book does. After 4 overly descriptive pages, he catches and eats one.
Good job, Tailchaser! He thinks back to Stretchslow's advice then
gets tired because he's just a little kitten. While asleep, he dreams
of seeing his mother, siblings, Hushpad, Stretchslow, and Thinbone,
but he's being chased by a monster! Before he can warn them, he wakes
up because of a high pitched barking. He recognizes it as a fox
barking and then hears the unhappy mewing of a kitten as well! He
finds the fox has trapped a kitten against a tree and that it is none
other than Pouncequick and that he's injured! He needs to do
something quick to save the kitten and oh the chapter is over.
CLIFFHANGER!
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