Leaping forward, she gave the mouse a few hard smacks, which sent him reeling away. Then she cuffed her grand-kitten smartly across the nose.
“How dare you!” she howled.
Jasper, frightened as well as upset by Silversides’s actions, hardly knew what to say. “That was my best friend,” he mewed piteously.
“Friend!” Silversides screeched. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Aren’t there any decent cats in this neighborhood for you to play with? Don’t you know that the lowliest cat is vastly superior to the highest mouse? Where’s your mother? I intend to give her a piece of my paw!”
A cowering Jasper said, “My mother went out.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Business.”
“Business!” Silversides screeched. “A mother’s business is to stay home and make sure her children have proper friends! I cannot believe how far this town has fallen!”
With that she stalked away, tail erect, but not before she had given her grand-kitten a spank on his bottom.
This incident changed Silversides’s life. Her anger was so great she made up her mind to do something about the Amperville mouse problem.
That night she began to prowl the streets of the city in search of mice. It was not the act of a hungry cat seeking food. It was vengeance.
Sure enough, Silversides came upon two mice. The first was sent running for its life. The second did not run fast enough and met a grisly end. Silversides deposited the corpse outside the girl’s door. It was meant to be a declaration of war.
Silversides quickly realized she could not solve the city’s mouse problem all on her own. She created an organization. The organization was dedicated to keeping cats on top, people in the middle, mice on the bottom. Silversides called her group Felines Enraged About Rodents, or “F.E.A.R.” She even created a slogan for F.E.A.R.: “Felines First.”
Though Silversides invited other cats to join F.E.A.R., most could not be bothered. They would shrug or say things like “I don’t need to join a club to catch mice. I do just fine on my own.” Or “I like having more mice around. There’s that many more to chase.” And even “Rude, food, they taste the same.”
In the end, from the entire cat population of Amperville, Silversides was able to recruit only one other cat for her organization. The two formed the membership of Felines Enraged About Rodents. Silversides was president. Her vice president was a cat by the name of Graybar.
Graybar was a street cat. Scruffy gray in color, he was lean and covered with scars to prove his meanness. He had a jagged ear and a limp, the result of a battle about which he was particularly proud. It had been three against one, and he had been the one. And he had been the winner. He bore his injuries as proof of his toughness.
“Do you want to know what I think of mice?” Graybar asked Silversides when she first talked to him about joining F.E.A.R.
“Yes.”
“The only good mouse is a dead mouse.”
“You’re my kind of cat,” Silversides said.
Silversides had learned that country mice often came to town by train. These trains stopped near Mouse Town and mice got off. One of the first things Silversides and Graybar did was organize a patrol around the old railway depot. Mice new to town, timid and often scared, were easy prey for the organization.
When Silversides or Graybar caught such a mouse, they terrified it, warned it never to return, then threw it back onto the train. These were the lucky ones.
CHAPTER 4
To the City
ALL THAT NIGHT the freight train carrying Ragweed rumbled on. He was too excited to sleep. Instead, he remained by the open door and watched the passing scene. And pass it did. One rapid vision after another flashed before his eager eyes. No sooner did he see something of great interest—barely grasping what it was—than it vanished, to be replaced by something just as new, just as fascinating. The one constant was the moon, which remained in the night sky like an old friend.
At first there were many trees, but there were fewer as the train rushed on. There were also structures, large and dark, which fit the description the old vole had provided for human nests. Now and again they contained gleaming lights. Once the mouse thought he saw the silhouetted form of a human pacing before what looked like a window. It went by so quickly, however, that it was impossible to be sure.
Sometimes there were clusters of these human nests. Ragweed—again recalling the vole’s words—decided these clusters were towns.
It made him wonder where the train was heading. Not that there was any question about getting off while it was moving. That would have been foolish. But when the train stopped, should he jump off right away or wait for some other place?
Laughing at himself, Ragweed acknowledged the wonderful fact that it did not matter where he got off: Everything he saw and did would be new. It was just the life he desired. So he sat and watched and thirsted for more.
The train, clacking rhythmically over the rails, rushed on through the night. Now and again its whistle blew. Long, low, and melodic it was, the most powerful sound that Ragweed had ever heard. He decided it was the train’s song: the song of a wanderer, a song about a heroic search for adventures far from home. Humming along, he made it his own.
It was not until dawn that the train began to slow down. Ragweed had fallen asleep at last, but the moment the train reduced its speed he woke, alert and watching intently.
There were many human nests to see now. All in neat rows they were, with prim grassy areas before them, as well as an occasional tree. How orderly, Ragweed thought with puzzlement. He decided he must be coming to a city.
