Page 37 - Fables volume 3

A Familiar Tale

“Tell us a story, Grandcat!”
Old Grimalkin sighed. Babysitting her grandkits could get tedious.
But perhaps if she acquiesced they would stop climbing all over her
and testing skills they would need soon enough—but not yet. She
hoped their mother would bring something only half-dead for them
to play with.
“All right, kitties. Which one would you like to hear?”
Out of the ensuing cacophony she abstracted a consensus. “So,
you want to hear about a great feline hero. Not ‘Puss in Boots’ again,
I hope!”
“No, no!” her charges cried. “We want a new one.”
“All right. Once upon a time,” she began, as a half-dozen pairs of
tiny ears swiveled and locked in to her voice, “in the little town of
Hamböhn—”
“When is once upon a time, Grandcat?”
“More than fifty catlives ago, Furina. But you must keep still. As I
was saying, in this particular village—not very far away from here,
incidentally—lived many people and animals of all descriptions.
Some of them were cats, who made themselves useful by killing rats.
You yourselves,” she hastened to add, “will have your chance soon
enough.”
Cries of delight burst spontaneously from her audience. Leonid
took the opportunity to swat Meringue on the nose. Grimalkin
stopped her recitation long enough to cuff both of them into
submission.
“As I was saying,” she continued, “all these creatures were in
harmony for a long, long time. One tomcat, as was the custom in that
town, was king: Klugscheisser the Great, a big handsome brindle.
And he had many offspring, as befitted such a commanding figure.
But at heart he was a wanderer, and would disappear for weeks at a
time to no one knew where. When he came back, he always greeted
all his relatives, and let it be known he was ready to fight any
pretenders to his throne.”
“It happened that following one such voyage of his into the
hinterlands, he returned one night and found the entire village empty
of cats. He looked high and low, inside and out, until dawn. Not one
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