Jellicle Cats Come Out To Fight!

      Munkustrap shimmied backward into a wide stance, readying for a fight.  And God, was he ever ripe for a good throw-down with Macavity's wannabe Jellicle wish list.  Not three feet from his nose, Bombalurina sneered at him from a face twisted into an envious, condescending pucker.  Munkustrap only smirked.  Pressed against him back to back, Rum Tum Tugger rumbled, with the tactless gusto for which he was known by nearly every cat in the whole county, "To the
death, brother!"
      "To the death," Munkustrap said, and the words fell from his mouth like broken glass, seeming to shatter the sound conviction of Macavity's encroaching band of rotten disciples.  Bombalurina's lips went slightly slack, and her eyes widened just enough to reveal what looked like a sudden faltering of nerve.  She opened her mouth, perhaps planning a last ditch disengagement, but Munkustrap cut her off with a vicious snap.  "You brought this!" he bawled at her.  "You crashed the ball.  You dare call yourself Jellicle, but you're just a bleeding-heart turncoat for a demented, sorcerous pimp!"
      At this, Munkustrap swore he could literally see Bombalurina's amber-orange hackles stand on end as she spat, "You ornery, grey lecher!  We have you fatally outnumbered.   Where do you expect to go?"
     "She's not wrong," whispered Rum Tum Tugger.  "They most certainly have us at a disadvantage."
      Munkustrap couldn't argue.  It was him, Tugger and Victoria who, as far as he was aware— and he forgave himself the phrase— had no dog in a fight other than stupefying, girlish cuteness.  This might distract Macavity a healthy bit— and on a good day it might even distract Bombalurina— but this was not a good day.  Macavity's goons were still worming toward them, grinding inch by grinding inch.  Munkustrap silently yearned for sweat glands as the palpitating heat in his skull reached a migraine boil.  His eyes felt like watery stones and, for one disillusioned second, he actually allowed himself to entertain the possibility of fainting.  But, salvation struck.
      "Did someone say something about being outnumbered?  I don't see that's the case!  What about you?"
      "My, no, sixteen on four is perfectly even odds, if y'ask me!  And, even if y'don't, beggin' your pardon."
      Munkustrap looked around and saw, of all the cats in the entire hemiverse that could have come to their rescue, Mungojerrie and Rumpleteaser slinking toward the huddle from behind like two wayward assassins returning from vacation.  Both calicos flexed their paws and rolled their necks and shoulders until the joints cracked wickedly, as if they had an interrogation to attend.  Then, before anyone could get off another consonant, they whipped past Tugger and Munkustrap like bullets fired from a carbine and flung themselves on the flummoxed felines bringing up Bombalurina's rear flank.
      Renewed by this sudden outpouring of solidarity, Munkustrap and Tugger roared, "For the Layer!" and charged.

      "Not there, Macavity's never there!"
      Mister Mistoffelees was grumbling and growling to himself while he rummaged through his chest of... what?  Stage magician's knickknacks that would somehow rip Old Deuteronomy back from Macavity's lair or man-cave or mad hatter hovel or wherever he'd whisked her off to?  Which, by the way, where the metaphorical fuck was that, anyhow?  The only thing left after that grizzled trafficker had up and poofed away in his shitty little signature spiral of manure smoke, was what looked like a fur's-width trail of fairy dust.  The trail, if it could have passed for one, had clung to the chilly night all of three seconds before being tossed on the wind.
      Mistoffelees dug in the chest like a tunneling mole until he came up with something he had never seen.  It was a small loop of braided silver, barely large enough to fit over his middle finger.  Although tarnished to a neglected pewter and devoid of reflection, it was definitely silver.  The metal's tang filled his sinuses with a sweet nausea which he recognized as decayed, uncleaned polish.  Mistoffelees mentally chided his human family for having zero knowledge of how to maintain their silver, which was likely worth enough to run an orphanage for a century.
      He stared at the loop, perplexed and a trifle put off.  This particular oddity must have been of vast importance-- mostly due to the question of how it had come to be at the bottom of his magic chest without him having ever seen the damned thing.  He had the only key, and he was driven paranoid over checking the lock each morning and evening.  Hell, he had only to lay a paw over the keyhole to know if a single tumbler was even a milimeter removed from its proper position.  There was no evidence of tampering.
      This left him with a healthy dose of,  how in the actual crap did a piece of uncared for silver totaling more than his entire savings— which was what, exactly, for a cat?  But, whatever— find its way into his box of magical-gadgical-partytainment?  "Probably because fuckall," Mistoffelees murmured at the tiny braid, and slipped it over the tip of one index finger.  When nothing spectacular happened, he went about running his claws over it, opening himself to abnormal sensations that one might associate with a magickally imbued bauble.
      Eventually, he untucked one end of the braid and began tediously unfurling it into a strangely beautiful snarl.  Once this was done, he surveyed his work and found the snarl resembled more of a wand or perhaps a silver tree branch.  Also, it did nothing.  He had found approximately jack.  Wonderful.   Mistoffelees squeezed his eyes shut, drew in a long, wavering breath, and settled comfortably into the beginnings of a tidy mental meltdown.  Then, in a flash of the truly bizarre hysterics that generally accompany a complete loss of one's shit, he flicked the gnarled wand about and shouted, "Abracawhatthefuck!"
      Mistoffelees did not fall completely on his ass when the wand birthed a beam of glittering near-daylight from its tip.  He avoided a spill only by way of wild flailing which caused him to catch hold of... the beam!  He was half way into screaming, "What in the name of Sister Sekhmet?!" when reality evaporated.  His world melted and ran like rainbow tallow.  Colors flooded over and under him as he was crammed through a liquid candy vortex.  He had time to think, "Great, I've been catjacked by Willy Wonka and shot up with some sort of experimental feline MKUltra soup called Wonka-Nip or— oh, fuck me—!"
      And then he did fall completely on his ass.  Only, not in a place he expected.  The magical rainbow doom-tunnel dumped him flat on his teakettle right at the feet of Growltiger.