The Rigt Kinda Reskyoo

Mom Says:

This is another long one. Go to your, um, receptacle of choice before you embark on the journey with us….

Musashi Sez:

Ther I wuz, a sorree, pantin, mizrabul kittee, clingin to the tree fer deer lif, as I had ben fer hours an hours (at least 4, I figgrs). An suddinlee, I heerz 2 voisiz, 1 veree low an 1 veree hi. This wuz stranj, cuz I had jus ben heerin a vois callin mai naym a moment befor, but it had ben a diffrint vois callin mai othr naym.

“OcTAVyon! Arr yu steel up therr?” It wuz Ibrahim.

“Yh. Imprh! Zmssh—” I tryd to call, but mai vois fail!d me. I lippt anothr of Q’s tablits, swallrd the watr, and tryd agen. “Ibrahim! Iz me! Musashi! I meens Octavian!”

“(I theenk he eez feevrish, eef he doz not noe heez own naym!) OK! Octavyon! We are going to be getting yu down. Mon petit ami heer weel clym up an halp yu.”

I herd skramblin at the bays of the tree an then a thump! The noiziz reepeetd a few timz, an I thogt, “Huh. Too bad the kid gots no laddr, lik I got.” An then I wok up propr an yelld down to Ibrahim, “Hey, I jus remembrer: I gots a laddr he kin clym.”

So I pulld out Q’s laddr an lookd at it. It hads theez cool, meen, poyntee thins on one end, an littul ledd wayts on the othr. So I settd the poynteez into the tree and pattd them, an wen that din’t werk, I sittd on them, an then they goed in just fine. Huh.

Mom Sez:

The microfiber ladder unrolled itself down the tree’s long trunk, and ended a meter above the ground. Ibraham’s little friend, a boy of about nine, climbed up the ladder like a monkey and stuck his head into the palm leaves where Octavian clung, trembling and wide-eyed.

The boy, whose tousled black hair was in his eyes, just as the palm fronds were in Octavian’s eyes, said, “Sadiqi? Ami? Fr’en?”

Octavian murmured, “Amiiiiiii!”

The boy said many things then, in a soothing voice, as he gentled Octavian into letting go of his deep claw-hold on the tree, transferring his weight to the boy’s arms and closing his eyes completely as the boy made his—much more awkward—way down the ladder. When the boy let him go at the bottom, Octavian leaped! away and ran! but then turned around and ran back, eyes wide and black, jaw low and panting. Octavian sat, trembling, and whipped his tail around his front feet.

“Um. Shukran!” he said.

The boy laughed. “Afwan!”

“Um. Salaam alaikum?”

“Hah! Alaikum salaam! Aetanee b nafseek!”

Ibrahim gave the boy a few coins and the boy ran off laughing.

Octavian let Ibrahim pick him up and carry him. “What he sae to me?”

Ibraham’s rough low voice was reassuring, “He say to you, ‘Eez nothing. Tayk cayr of yourself!”

“Yu givs him monee?”

“A handfoool of dirham. He weel bee happee. Hee haz also the tayl of this dae to regale heez frendz, no?”

“Um, shur…”

Deep Reflekshuns

Musashi Sez:

This partiklr blog wuzn’t spos’d to tayk so long. Then it did. Sorree. Go to yer littrboks befor yu reeds it. Kthxbai. M/8

Mom Says:

For Agent Octavian, stuck in the green, long-leaved top of a Moroccan date palm, the heat seemed intense. Back in Boston, such temperatures only trouble the natives at the height of summer, in August. With a fan here and there, and ice cubes in the water bowl, one can withstand the furnace-like blast, knowing that it won’t last more than a week, two at most. But now here he was, wrapped up in leaves and roasting like a pig at a luau. And there was nothing he could do. Cats are very good at UP, when it comes to trees; DOWN is quite another matter. And that’s when you are talking about NORMAL trees with NORMAL branches stuck out every so often, as opposed to this, this telephone pole with a hat on it!!!

Octavian panted. Then he thought, “Did M noe that somthin lik this migt happin to me? Is that whut she was figtin about wift Mom? So wher ar them egstra resorsis she promist?” Then he remembered the neat pack that Q had attached to his collar. What had Q said to him?

“In this small case that can hook to your harness, you’ll find a micro-fiber rope ladder and MHDO tablets for emergencies.”

Oh! thought Octavian, so as long as I got spit, I got water, even if I can’t climb his ladder.

Q had also said, “The spikey-looking thing is a Spaw: part spike, part straw. If you stick it into something that contains a liquid, you can suck the liquid out through it. Since you’ll be near the desert, it helps to be prepared.”

And Musashi, er Octavian (it was hard to concentrate in such heat) thought, “Well, palm treez has coconuts, an them hav lotsa liqwid! So Q’s not such a Fail! gy afteral. I jus pul out the Spaw an stik it in a coconut.”

Octavian fumbled with the pack, then pulled out the Spaw, which had a string attached to ease the grabbing of it. Then he looked around his very small green sanctuary. He had an idea that coconuts were almost as big as him, or at least about as big as his head, and sort of brown and furry. But the only brown—or for that matter non-green—thing around him was much smaller, and sort of sticky looking, with no fur at all.

Still Octavian was game. He pushed the Spaw into the first of the little, shriveled brown things. And sipped. What he got from it was goo, not, he reminded himself hurriedly, entirely unlike the Petromalt® that his mom made him eat to keep him from hacking up hairballs. He quite liked Petromalt®. This other stuff was…semi-liquid. That would have to be enough. He moved, slowly, cautiously among the leaves, sucking out the sap of one of these strange brown things, waiting as long as he could, and then attacking the next.

The sun, far too slowly, moved past the place directly above him, to strike him instead at an angle. On the one hand he liked the heat; he was, after all, a solar-powered kittee, as all cats are. But on the other hand, his inability to drink was becoming a greater and greater burden. He faced the quandary of all those who wander in the wilderness: where is the line between squandering what you have too soon, and waiting so long that it cannot help you? He needed to still have some spit left for Q’s tablets to work for him.

Octavian waited. And waited.

Then he waited some more.

Finally, he thought that he had about as little spit as he had ever had in his life, so tremblingly he opened the first MHDO tablet and lipped it into his mouth. What happened next, he never described to anyone: not Jimbond or M, not even his mom, although we in the Narrator’s Guild must assume that he muttered in his sleep, or, presumably, we would not know about this at all. For Octavian had a vision, and his vision was this—

Musashi Sez:

Hey! I’m gettin the hang of this cliff-hangin thin! Huh!

Mai Unfortchoonatlee Brillyant Eskayp

Musashi Sez:

Ther ar timz to stand, an ther is tim to run.

I ran.

Throo streetz. Around hoomin peeples. Ovr froot stallz an between bildinz. Instinkt led me. I followd.

The raw myoozik of the bazaar, hoomin voisiz an aminal voisiz, roz togethr in a simfonee of urjensee. I ran lik I had nevr run befor. I leepd! bildins and slithrd between stallz. I yowld an hisst wen hoominz thretnd to get in mai wae. They springd asyd. Huh.

(Wudn’t yu? I bet eevn mai mom wud, if she sawd me lik that. Pertee amayzin whut terrir kin do fer a feller in a hurree. Thoz Lympic athleet fellerz shud trai it.)

Fynlee feelin mai strenkth runnin out, I srtchd mai surroundins fer a plays to go to groun, but no luk. Still, I is a resorsful kittee, as M alwaes sez. If I kin’t go to groun, kin I goes up?

An ther, rizin befor me wuz the stranjist tree I evr saw, all trunk curvin up wift a wig of leevs on top. I didn’t stop to thingk, I jus kept runnin and ran up that tree liks a skwirrul. I reetchd the top an was pantin an pantin an tremblin, remememberin how them bullets had hit the dirt jus nex to me! I still hadz the dirt in mai eyes from the sprayback.

But, thangks be to Ceiling Cat, I wus sayf!

I wuz, I gots to admit, sittin in a big ol nest of leevs 25 feet in the air, shur. But othr than that, I wuz sayf.