And softly Owl spread her great, gray wings, and silenty flew after James, her talons opening.
The Flying Tabbies had made their nest in a hole halfway up a big elm, above fox and coyote level and too small for raccoons to get into. Thelma and Harriet were washing each others necks and talking over the day’s adventures when they heard a pitiful crying at the foot of the tree.
“James!” cried Harriet.
He was crouching under the bushes, all scratched and bleeding, and one of his wings dragged on the ground.
“It was the Owl,” he said, when his sisters had helped him climb painfully up the tree trunk to their home hole. “I just escaped. She caught me, but I scratched her, and she let go for a moment.”
And just then Roger came scrambling into the nest with his eyes round and black and full of fear. “She’s after me!” he cried. “The Owl!”
They all washed James’s wounds till he fellsleep.
“Now we know how the little birds feel,” said Thelma, grimly.
“What will James do?” Harriet whispered. “Will he ever fly again?”
“He’d better not,” said a soft, large voice just outside their door. The Owl was sitting there.
The Tabbies looked at one another. They did not say another word till morining cane.
At sunrise Thelma peered cautiously out. The Owl was gone. “Until this evening,” said Thelma.
From then on they had to hunt in the daytime and hide in their nest all night; for the Owl thinks slowly, but the Owl thinks long.
James was ill for days and could not hunt at all. When he rtecovered, he was very thin and could not fly much, for his left wing soon grew stiff and lame. He never complained. He sat for hours by the creek, his wings folded, fishing. The fish did not complain either. They never do.
One night of the early summer the Tabbies were all curled in their home hole, rather tired and discouraged. A raccoon family was quarreling loudly in the next tree. Thelma had found nothing to eat all day but a shrew, which gave here indigestion. A coyote had chased Roger away from the woodrat he had been about to catch that afternoon. James fishing had been unsuccessful. The Owl kept on flying past on silent wings, saying nothing.
Two young male raccoons in the next tree started a fight, cursing and shouting insults. The other raccoons all joined in, screeching and scratching and swearing.
“It sounds just like the old alley,” James remarked.
“Do you remember Shoes?” Harriet asked dreamily. She was looking quite plump, perhaps because she was so small. Her sister and brothers had become thin and rather scruffy.
“Yes,” James said. “Some of them chased me once.”
“Do you remember the Hands?” Roger asked.
“Yes,” Thelma said. “Some of thempicked me up once. When I was just a kitten.”
“What did they do –- the Hands?” Harriet asked.
“They squeezed me. It hurt. And the hands person was shouting– ‘Wings! Wings! It has Wings! –that’s what it kept shouting in its silly voice. And squeezing me.”
“What did you do?”
“I bit it,” Thelma said, with modest pride. “I bit it, and it dropped me, and I ran back to Mother, under the dumpster. I didn’t know how to fly yet.”
“I saw one today,” said Harriet.
“What? A Hands? A Shoes?” said Thelma.
“A human bean?” said James.
“A human being?” Roger said.
“Yes,” said Harriet. “It saw me, too.”
“Did it chase you?”
“Did it kick you?”
“Did it throw things at you?”
“No. It just stood there and watched me flying. And it’s eyes got round, just like ours.”
“Mother always said,” Thelma remarked, thoughtfully, “that if you found the right kind of Hands, you’d never have to hunt again. But if you found the wrong kind, it would be worse than dogs, she said.”
“I think this is the right kind,” said Harriet.
“What makes you think so?” Roger asked, sounding like their mother.
“Because it ran off and came back with a pplate full of dinner,” Harriet said. “And it put the dinner down on that big stump at the edge of the field, the field where we scared the cows that day, you know. And then it went off quite a way, and sat down, and just watched me. So, I ate the dinner. It was an interesting dinner. Like what we used to get in the alley, but fresher. And,” said Harriet, sounding like their mother, “I’m going back there tomorrow and see what’s on that stump.”
“You just be careful, Harriet Tabby!” said Thelma, sounding even more like their mother.
4
The next day, when Harriet went to the big stump at the edge of the cow pasture, flying low and cautiously, she found a tin pie-plate of meat scraps and kibbled catfood waiting for here. The girl from Overhill Farm was also waiting for her, sitting about twenty feet away from the stump, andholding very still. Susan Brown was her name, and she was eight years old. She watched Harriet fly out of the woods and hover like a fat hummingbird over the stump, then settle down, fold her wings neatly, and eat. Susan Brown held her breath. Her eyes grew round.
The next day, when Harriet and Roger flew cautiously out of the woods and hovered over the stump, Susan was sitting about fifteen feet away, and beside her sat her twelve-year-old brother Hank. He had not believed a word she said about flying cats. Now his eyes were perfectly round, and he was holding his breath.
Harriet and Roger settled down to eat.
“You didn’t say there were two of them,” Hank whispered to his sister.
Harriet and Roger sat on the stump, licking their whiskers clean.
“You didn’t say there were two of them,” Roger whispered to his sister.
“I didn’t know!” both sisters whispered back. “There was only one, yesterday. But they look nice — don’t they?”
The next day, Hank and Susan put out two pie-tins of cat dinner on the stump, then went ten steps away, sat down in the grass, and waited.
Harriet flew boldly from the woods and alighted on the stump. Roger followed her. Then – “Oh, look!” Susan whispered – came Thelma, flying very slowly, with a disapproving expression on her face. And finally – “Oh, look, LOOK!” Susan whispered – James, flying low and lame, flapped over to the stump, landed on it, and began to eat. He ate, and ate, and ate. He even growled once at Thelma, who moved to the other pie-tin.
The two children watched the four winged cats.
Harriet, quite full, washed her face, and watched the children.
Thelma finished a last tasty kibble, washed her left front paw, and gazed at the children. Suddenly she flew up from the stump and straight at them. They ducked as she went over. She flew right around both of their heads and then back to the stump.
“Testing,” she said to Harriet, James, and Roger.
“If she does it again, don’t catch her,” Hank said to Susan. “It’d scare her off.”
“You think I’m stupid?” Susan hissed.
They sat still. The cats sat still. Cows ate grass nearby. The sun shone.
“Kitty,” Susan said in a soft, high voice. “Kitty kit-kit-kit-kit-kit-cat, kitty-cat, kittywings, kittywings, catwings!”
Harriet jumped off the stump into the air, performed a cartwheel, and flew loop-the-loop over to Susan. She landed on susan’s shoulder and sat there, holding on tight and purring in Susan’s ear.
“I will never never never ever catch you, or cage you, or do anything to you you don’t want me to do,” Susan said to Harriet. “I promise. Hank, you promise too.”
“Purr,” said Harriet.
“I promise. And we’ll never ever tell anybody else,” Hank said, rather fiercely. “Ever! Because – you know how people are. If people saw them –”
“I promise,” Susan said. She and Hank shook hands, promising.
Roger flew gracefully over and landed on Hank’s shoulder.
“Purr,” said Roger.
“They could live in the old barn,” Susan said. “Nobody ever goes there but us. There’s that old dovecote up in the loft, with all those holes in the wall where the doves flew in and out.”