Catland - a humorous fantasy

Chapter Thirty-Four: Harmony

Leopold was fighting fiercely and fearlessly when Millicent whistled at him from across the field of combat.  He batted his latest opponent away and looked up just in time to see her toss a brown satchel high into the air.

The satchel sailed towards him above the frenzy of the battle, and Leopold gave a great leap to catch it in mid-flight.  He had no idea why Millicent was throwing it to him, but he knew there must be a reason.  Millicent did nothing without a reason.

Sheltering himself in the lee of Graydon Heppingworth's huge body, Leopold opened the satchel and beheld, at last, the face of his greatest enemy—that enemy who had killed his father, stolen his throne, and driven him to such a madness of despair that he had briefly allowed himself to become someone's pet.  As he stared down at that black-hearted adversary, a slow, grim smile spread over his face.

"Eep!" said Squeem the Mouse-King.

"Eep indeed," said Leopold darkly.  "Eep indeed."

*          *          *

Greg caught a blur of movement out of the corner of his eye, and when he looked up he found himself gazing again at the lady in the bikini, who seemed less enormous now, but no less cheerful, although her cheerfulness had begun to irritate Greg, who found it difficult to trust people who didn't get surly at least occasionally.  At the moment, however, the lady in the bikini was not the primary object of Greg's interest—which was, even on a morning already chock-full of remarkable incidents, fairly remarkable in itself.

Leopold was running along the top of the electronic billboard, just above the lady's inanely-laughing head.  How he had gotten up there, Greg couldn't imagine.  He had something in his paws—a vague brown object—but Greg couldn't really tell what it was, or what it signified.  He supposed he would find out soon.

He did.

Leopold stopped in the center of the billboard, reached into the satchel, and drew out a tiny gray object.  "HEAR ME, YOU MICE OF THE CITY!" he called out, as loudly as he could.

No one paid him the slightest attention.  He was quite far away, and there was a lot of competing noise to deal with, and anyway they were all rather busy endeavoring to kill one another.

"HEAR ME!" Leopold shouted again.

Not a single head turned.

Greg could see that Leopold was going to need a little help with this one.  Luckily, Greg knew someone who was a giant, and who therefore could summon a giant's voice.

"Hey!" said Greg.

The cats and mice immediately stopped fighting and looked up at him with wide, terrified eyes.

"Leopold has something to say," Greg concluded, somewhat lamely.  And he gestured in the direction of the bikini billboard.

Satisfied that he now had his audience's full attention, Leopold held Squeem aloft in one paw for everyone to see.  The poor little mouse-king was struggling mightily, but Leopold held him fast.

"This is your king!" declared Leopold.  He hoped that the mice would recognize the truth of this statement.  Mice pretty much all looked the same to him.

"He would like to say a few words," continued Leopold.  And he turned and looked at his struggling prey.

Squeem cleared his throat and began to speak in a high, trembling voice.  It was a tiny voice, befitting its tiny owner, but its words rang out clearly along the concrete canyons, so deep was the hush that had fallen over the square.

"I think this has all been ... a misunderstanding," said Squeem hopefully.  "I pray that mice and cats can now put aside our differences and begin a new era of harmony and peace.  After all, we are not so different!  We all have fur.  We all have eyes and ears and paws and tails.  We all carry swords.  We all have utter contempt for humans.  Why, we are brothers underneath it all!  And I believe that if we begin by recognizing our similarities, we can then move forward in unity and create a better—"

Unfortunately, the rest of this undeniably moving speech was lost to history, because at this moment Leopold tilted back his head, dropped Squeem into his mouth, and ate him.