Completely losing her temper, Silversides smashed her head on the door. All she gained was a headache.
Suddenly her rage faded. In its place appeared misery and grief. She saw it all: The three mice she hated most had banded together. She had been locked out of her home, kept from her bed of seven years, for something she had never done. Her own children, her grandchildren, had abandoned her. Did they ever think about her, ever come by for a visit? Ever get in touch with her? Never! No one loved or cared for her. She was alone! It was all the fault of mice! It was a conspiracy!
Sobs grew within her chest. Tears came to her eyes, then rolled down her round, furry cheeks and fell to the earth. Miserable and forlorn, Silversides lifted her head and cried out a long, loud yowl of woe. “Nobody cares for me,” she wailed. “Nobody!”
A window in the house flew open. The girl looked out. “Go away, you nasty cat!” she shouted. “Find Blinker!”
As Silversides gazed at the girl, the cat’s mood shifted again. Her anger rekindled, she told herself she must put aside all weak emotions. To do otherwise was cowardly. Mouse-like. If there was one thing worth living for, it was to revenge herself upon those three mice: the golden one, the white one, and the green-headed one. Once she found a way to deal with them, she would leave Amperville forever.
So resolved, Silversides tore the Amperville cat license from around her neck, dropped it at the back door of the girl’s house, and marched away with her tail high.
CHAPTER 18
Ragweed’s Plan
THE THREE MICE—RAGWEED, Clutch, and Blinker—were sitting around Clutch’s nest, snacking on bread crumbs. Clutch was making a new skateboard from a Popsicle stick, shaping it with her teeth. Ragweed was doing most of the talking. A wide-eyed Blinker was listening intently.
“You see,” Ragweed said, “like, what we need to do is show those cats that they can’t go on terrorizing you guys. You have a right to live your own lives. Know what I’m saying?”
“Sure,” Clutch said, spitting out a few wood bits.
“Okay,” Ragweed continued. “So you have to stand up for yourselves. Like, from now on I’m making it a personal rule: No one is going to tell me what I can or can’t do. No one. Ever. Like, period.”
Blinker darted a look to Clutch to see what she thought before saying, “That’s a . . . a fine idea,” he said timidly. “But how could a mouse ever do such a thing? Aren’t we—as Clutch said—too small?”
“Hey, dude,” Ragweed returned boldly, “we may be little, but, like, there are lots of us.”
Clutch grinned. “Listen to this dude,” she said to Blinker. “Like, he’s a talking ice cream.” She laughed.
“Clutch,” Ragweed pressed, “are you going to keep running, hiding, losing forever? Don’t you want to be free to, like, play your own music?”
“You better believe it.”
“Okay. Then I say it’s time to do what you want to do.”
Clutch laughed. “You’re beginning to sound like my old mouse.”
“No offense,” Ragweed replied. “It’s not that Windy is wrong. It’s that he does nothing but talk and paint.”
“Look here, Ragweed,” Clutch said as she reached lazily for another crumb, popped it into her mouth, and chewed thoughtfully. “You aren’t so off the mark, but just a while ago, duh, you were heading out of town on the first train. What’s changed?”
Ragweed bristled. “I’d just like to show you what’s possible, that’s all.”
“Yeah, right,” Clutch said. “Show-and-tell time. But, hey, like, what are you going to do?”
Ragweed looked from Clutch to Blinker, then back at Clutch. Then he leaned forward. “It’s called a new club.”
Clutch put down her skateboard. “You serious, dude?”
“Check it out. A new club will be the best way to show those cats that you can’t be put down. A new club will cheer you city dudes up. Give you courage. It’ll be a place to chill out. To find your strength. Get all that working, and it’ll be like, fighting back. But it has to be big—big enough to hold enough mice to fight back if attacked.”
“Way cool,” Clutch agreed. “Can the Be-Flat Tires play there?”
“That’s the whole point.”
“I mean, like, are you really serious?” Clutch demanded. “Not just sucking crumbs?”
“Clutch,” Ragweed said earnestly, “in my whole life I’ve never been more serious. I mean, we’ll get your father to paint some pictures on the wall. Your mother can read from her epic. Be-Flat Tires can play. Know what I’m saying? It’ll be your club, dude.”
Clutch gazed at Ragweed with laughing eyes. “Mouse, you got the lingo down perfecto sweet.” Then she exclaimed, “But hey, mouse, killer idea! I love it. Put it there!” She held out a paw. Ragweed slapped it.
Blinker, though he wasn’t sure what was happening, grinned.
“Now, what we need to do,” Ragweed continued after the initial excitement had died down, “is find a place for the new club. That’s where you come in,” he said to Clutch.
“What do you mean?”
“Hey, like you said, I’m the new dude here. I wouldn’t even know where to start looking.”
“Oh, okay,” Clutch agreed.
“Got to be different from the Cheese Squeeze Club,” Ragweed went on. “A place cats can’t get into easily or break down. But big. That’s like, crucial. So there can be a lot of us. Know what I’m saying?”
“I hear you,” Clutch said. She thought hard. “Hey, I know a place. It might work. In the humans’ old downtown. You know, everything is deserted there. Including an abandoned bookstore. Used to have great-tasting books. But it has lots of space. Might work.”
“Can we go check it out?” Ragweed asked.
“Sure thing, dude. But we’ll bus out through the exhaust pipe just in case F.E.A.R. is
