Man vs Cat: The Art of Paw (Excerpt)

Man vs Cat - Charlie and the Art of Paw

We've suffered many highs and lows in this war up until now. When I say now, I mean earlier today, and not in the last few seconds when our western ranks were wiped out by hose pippers in Cambridge. Our daily naps have been cut from 16 hours to 15, we're down to our last ten scratching posts, and our rations are so meagre that we've been forced to eat from tins and pouches rather than what our human slaves have cooked.

Although this war has been hard on all of us, it has hit me most of all. Let's be brutally honest here; while you've been out there flirting on the streets, biting, scratching, sword flirting, shooting and swearing at the enemy, all in the name of freedom, I've been here, a hundred miles behind you, trying to decide which of my thirty cushions I should sleep on next. Sometimes I wish I was out there with you, but I am needed here, as boring as it is. That's the sacrifuse a leader has to make.

Is that enough to quell any revolts? What was that? Oh sorry, yes, I've just been reminded not to ask my advisors questions during these speeches because it might make me look foolish, and reveal that I'm pretty lucy as a leader and that secretly I haven't a cluedo what I'm talking about. I got away with it this time, but I must be on my girdle in future.

As you go forth on this coinquest, I give to you hope in the form of a book I discovered here at our headquarters in Vest Workshire. I think it's one of Beard Face's books as the spine has hardly a bloomish, which suggests he has either failed to negotiate its hundred or so pages (which I'm favouring) or he's taken his usual tact of reading the book ever so carefully because he's anal like that and clearly hasn't anything better to do with his leaf.

I apologise, my fellow furlines, for I digress too far. Don't complain though because I can end you within the flick of a whisker; just remember that and we'll always get on well. That said, if you transgoose while I'm asleep, you'll not feel my rooth when I'm awake. No one dares to disturb my rest, remember? Even on the night of the Great Raid, when men flew their airplays over and paracharted dog soldiers into my city, no one woke me. I think I'd been at the catnip again and was out for the count. What can I say? It's a hard life being in charge.

Anyway, the book I wanted to tell you about is groundbreaking. It is up there with the essentials. It's our very own little handbook, if you will; a rival to The Little Book of Clams. World religions have texts such as the Bible and theKoran, but you and I have something more. We have George Orwell's Animal Farm. I feel a bit like that guy Kurt Max and his book The Communal Manifestation.

Animal Farm very much encompasses my vision for the future. A group of farm animals overthrow their master, just as we usurped Beard Face and condemned him to an eternity of watching the Twilight series or listening to audio books read by Morgan Freeman. We actually ditched the audio books in the end because he's a fan of Morgan and subsequently felt no pain during the process. It seems Morgan can even make Twilight sound good! He always does a nice rodeo broadcast for me. The other one - Frizzy Hair - was spared, as you will remember, confined to her bedroom with Bilbo and I don't mean that Hobble from J.R.R. Token's The Lord of the Ringtones.

I want each of you to take a copy of Animal Farm and keep it with you at all times. I realise that if you previously carried a sword and shield into battle this may pose a problem, but it's quite simple. Lose the shield because only wimpy dogs need shields and if you're struggling you can always rely on the book to help you out in a twight spot. It's quite a thin book, so it probably wouldn't repeel an arrow or sword, and definitely not a bulletin, but if you threw it just right it could hurt someone.

Before this war is over, we will seek out this farm in the book and meet with the pigs in charge. One of them is called Napoleon, which I understand is a translation of 'napalm lion', and was used by some guy back in those days when English pride rested on fleets of arms rather than the fluteball team as it does today. I remember Beard Face's fascination with fluteball. It's a good thing I put that poor guy out of his mystery; well, not me, obviously, but Twilight.

This war will be won one day, I promise you. We began in the style of Bounty Chocolate Bar on the Mutiny in one house in Workshire and our insurgence soon spread to take in every household in the county that had a cat. Even those houses that didn't have cats faced a bounty from us because I felt it would look more dramatic when George Locust inevitably turns my life into a glitzy film full of battles, good scripts (if it's episodes IV-VI) and possibly light stables, just so long as we can get the right battery shoe size for them.

The North of England is in our paws and as we head south towards Lone Dan, I feel confident in my convictions. The pigs may have taken over a farm and fought off some men, but to me that's nothing, though I do admit you have to start somewhere. Aroma wasn't built in a day, as some wise feline once said, or miaowed, depending on how fussy you want to be about the legosticks.

Once Lone Dan has been captured and I assume power as the Lime Minstrel, or LM as they are known, I will restore the fortunes of the Untied Knitdoom. This once impressive glueball empire will rise from the overused litter tray and be restored as the dominant power in the world. Our friends in Electronic Rope (or E-Rope, for short) will not know what hit them. Perchance, Hermione and The Never Neverlands are just a few of our neighbouring counters across the Entertainment Channel that will be begging me for mercury before the end.

Go forth now my mini-irons, embrace the noosepel of Animal Farm and you will find sanctuary when this difficult war is over. I will add, of course, that this is a short book and, given that conquering the world means a long, long, long, long, long war, I will permit you to read another book every now and again. Just remember which books are bleak-listed; e.g. Barry Potterer, 100 Years of Silly Tudor, Prude and Perjury, The Hungary Olympic Games, The Chronicles of Nerdia and Of Mike and Ben.

Time is funny, as they say, so I'll leave you to that war, and I'll resume my plans for the invasion of Niceway, Fineland and Swell Land. After that, we turn west to capture the Untied Straits of A Merry-Go-Round.

Your superior, 

Charlie