Listen Up! Storytime By Willie

 

            “Everybody loafed up and attending?” said Willie one night recently. “Alright. Alright. I see my sister here in the porch. There’s Buddy, sorry you can’t get on the desk there Bud! Toots, present for sure. Sammie, I see you too! Mr. Baby, Charley, I know you’re lurking, somewhere in that big RV!”
            “Tonight I’m going to tell you an old, old fable told to me by my Momcat. I was very young, but I think I remember it right,” he continued.
            “We’ll see about that,” murmured Suzy, aside, to no one in particular.
            “Once upon a time not long ago in a land near the sea there was a Momcat who had a young son. She called him Jackie. He was the last of his litter of six to remain with her because his tail was only a little stub, he wasn’t all that frisky or sharp, and so far no one had wanted to take him home to be their own cat. Jackie was grey and smudgie looking too.”
            “So what,” said Charley. “That’s not even fair. Just because he’s funny looking and not smart doesn’t mean he should be picked on!”
            “I know,” said Willie, “that’s part of the story. He’s a reject.”
            “I don’t remember that part,” said Suzy.
            “OK. To continue. One day Jackie’s Momcat told him to go to the yard sale two blocks over. There were cats there who liked to trade and bargain. Jackie was to lead the handsome big rat his Momcat had caught the night before and put on a leash over to the yard sale and trade with those mercenary cats. He was to try to get a couple of cans of tuna. Momcat provided Jackie with a small burlap bag to bring the tuna home in.”
            “There better not be a monster of some kind in this story!” said Suzy.
            “I won’t even listen if there isn’t at least a Sasquatch,” chortled Mr. Baby. “I want to be free like a Sasquatch, dangit!”
            “We all want to be free like a Sasquatch!” added Toots.
            “Yeah, yeah, they’ll never take our freedom. I get it. Do you guys want to hear this story?” said Willie.
            Everybody looked right and left, sighed and loafed up again.
            “There should be refreshments,” said Suzy, which started everybody looking around again.
            “Now, listen. So. Jackie led the big rat on the leash two blocks over to the yard sale to trade with the cats there. Two Siamese sharpies. Ping and Pong, or some such. I guess.
            “When he got there, he told Ping or Pong that his Momcat had sent him over with this great handsome rat to trade for some cans of tuna. Ping or Pong said they were out of tuna at the moment, but that they had something better to trade for the big rat on the leash. Now, Jackie was not swift in thinking. It didn’t occur to him that Momcat would have told him to bring the rat back home.
            Pong said, “Your Momcat will be thrilled with these. They are magic. Magic Pumpkin Seeds! The fruit of the vine will be anything you wish! No Momcat could object to that!”
            “As we’ve heard country cats say, he got took! And now, he had to face his Momcat with no tuna in cans, but Magic Pumpkin Seeds!” said Willie, grimly.
            “Jackie went back the two blocks to home and showed his Momcat the Magic Pumpkin Seeds. She whipped her tail for about fifteen minutes and then said, ‘Jackie. WTH? What were you thinking anyhow. We can’t eat those for dinner and now that big fat rat is gone and I can’t even cook him! Take those dang seeds out into the back yard and throw them away. Now, Jackie!’
            “So, Jackie sadly took the Magic Pumpkin Seeds out to the back yard and threw them away in a spot where some cats did things of an unsavory nature sometimes. Days passed. Weeks passed. Something started happening in that patch of dirt.
            “Willie, I need to go to the box,” said Suzy.
            “We’ll wait,” said Willie, rolling his eyes a little.
            “Ahem! Now, one morning Jackie went outside to check things out. He came upon an amazing sight. There was a great twisted rope twining around itself of pumpkin vines reaching up into the sky and disappearing into the PNW cloud cover. What was he to do? Jackie began to climb the great twisted rope of pumpkin vines! He climbed and he climbed for a long time. At least fifteen minutes. It went up and up!
            “There were pumpkin flowers all along it, and as he got higher and higher there were little green pumpkins too. Jackie thought to himself, ‘Ping and Pong were right!’ And he kept climbing. He knew that up at the top he would find anything he could wish for. Well, that’s what he was starting to believe anyhow.”
            “I don’t remember Momcat saying that stuff, Willie,” said Suzy.
            “I was born first, and I do remember,” said Willie.
            “Now, when Jackie got all the way to the very top, he could see Mt. Baker just fine and Port Gardner Bay too. But, sleeping at the very top of this mass of pumpkin vines was a great hairy fellow of gigantic proportions. His feet were huge! His hands were huge. He was as big as a Metro bus, if it had arms and legs and so on. In his big hand he held a pumpkin made of solid shining gold.
            “For the first time in his life, Jackie did a frisky thing! Quick as a wink, he seized the rather small golden pumpkin in his teeth and booked it back down the vines. The hairy guy woke up and started yelling like crazy in some weird language. He didn’t move fast enough to catch Jackie though because cats can really move when they want to. Right? Right.
            “When he got to the backyard, he set the pumpkin down, grabbed a saw some kid had left outside and sawed the vines off at the roots. ‘Fly away! Fly away!’ said Jackie and the vines and the hairy guy and the whole deal drifted in the wind clear up into the mountains before they settled down! There were pumpkins all over Darrington for a few days too.”
            “Willie…” said Suzy.
            “Hush, Suzy. Jackie took the little golden pumpkin to his Momcat who was very impressed but wondered where he had been all morning. He decided that the better course was to just say he found it in the alley and had been playing with it. Momcat got her human friend to take it to the gold and metal dealer in town and sell it. It was worth about $4000.00, which bought a heck of a lot of tuna!
            “They all lived happily ever after! The end! Momcat still didn’t let Jackie do anymore horse trading though,” said Willie.
            “Thanks, Willie. I feel like I’ve heard some of that before,” said Buddy.
            “Did your Momcat know that one too?” said Willie.
            “I think maybe all Momcats have their own take on things, you know?” said Buddy.
            With a lot of shuffling of paws, and yawning, the party broke up. It was night anyhow and they were all getting sleepy.
            “You made that all up yourself, didn’t you?” said Suzy from her spot by the window.
            “Some of it!” grinned Willie. “Some of it!”

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