Verwandte Artikel zu The Wild Road

The Wild Road - Softcover

Buch 1 von 4: Wild Road

King, Gabriel

 
9780099242529: The Wild Road
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0099242524 ISBN 13: 9780099242529
Verlag: Arrow Books Ltd, 1997

Inhaltsangabe

A novel about Tag, a naive young cat called upon to find the Queen of Cats from the Alchemist: if the Alchemist catches her first, the world will never be safe again. In the course of a great journey across a country and through the whole history of cats, Tag learns what it is to be a cat.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

A lifelong cat lover, Gabriel King has shared a home with every variety of feline, from stray to pedigree. He lives in London.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

        Among human beings a cat is merely a cat; among cats a cat is a
        prowling shadow in a jungle.
        --Karel Capek


They called the kitten Tag. They fed him, and he grew. They put a collar
around his neck. They entertained him, and the world began to take on
shape.

It was his world, full of novelty yet always reliable, exciting yet
secure. He was a small king; and by the time a week was out, he had
explored every inch of his new kingdom. He liked the kitchen best. It was
warm in there on a cold day, and from the windowsill he could see out into
the garden. In the kitchen they made food, which was easy to get off them.
He had bowls of his own to eat it from. He had a box of clean dirt to
scrat in. The kitchen wasn't entirely comfortable--especially in the
morning, when things went off or went around very loudly without
warning--but elsewhere they had given him a large sofa, covered in dark red
velvet, among the scattered cushions of which he scrabbled and burrowed
and slept. He had brass tubs with plants and some very interesting
fireplaces full of dried flowers, out of which flowed odors damp and sooty.

Up a flight of stairs and into every room, every cupboard and corner! It
was big up there, and full of unattended human things. At first he
wouldn't go on his own but always made one of them accompany him while he
inspected the shelves stuffed with clean linen and dusty books.

"Come on, come on!" he urged them. "Here now! Look, here!" They never
answered.

They were too dull.

A further flight up, and it was as if nobody had ever lived there--echoes
on the uncarpeted stairs, gray floorboards and open doors, pale bright
light pouring in through uncurtained windows. Up there, each bare floor
had a smell of its own; each ball of fluff had a personality. If he
listened, he could hear dead spiders contracting behind the woodwork. Left
to himself up there he danced, for reasons he barely understood. It was a
territorial dance, grave yet full of energy. Simply to occupy the space,
perhaps, he leapt and pounced and hurled himself about, then slept in a
pool of sunshine as if someone had switched him off. When he woke, the sun
had moved away, and they were calling him to come and eat more new things.

They called him Tag. He called them dull.

"Come on, dulls!" he urged them. "Come on!"

They had a room where they poured water on themselves. Every morning he
hid outside it and jumped out on the big dull bare feet that passed. Nice
but dull, they were never quick enough or nimble enough to avoid him. They
never learned. They remained shadowy to him--a large smell, cheerful if
meaningless goings-on, a caring face suspended over him like the moon
through the window if he woke afraid. They remained patient, amiable,
easily convinced, less focused than a tin of meat-and-liver dinner. The
dulls were for food or comfort or play. Especially for play. One of his
earliest memories was of chasing soap bubbles. The light of an autumn
evening shifted gently from blue to a deep orange. Up and down the room
rushed Tag, clapping his front paws in the air. He loved the movement. He
loved the heavy warmth of the air. Everything was exciting. Everything was
golden. The iridescence of each bubble was a brand-new world, a brand-new
opportunity. It was like waking up in the morning.

Bubble! Tag thought. Another bubble!

He thought, Chase the bubbles!

As leggy and unsteady, as easily surprised, as easy to tease, as full of
daft energy as every kitten, Tag pursued the bubbles, and the bubbles--each
with its tiny reflected picture of the room in strange, slippery
colors--evaded him smoothly and neatly and then hid among a sheaf of dried
flowers or floated slowly up the chimney or blundered without a care into
a piece of furniture and burst. He heard them burst, in a way a human
being never could, with a sound like tapped porcelain.

Evanescence and infinite renewal!

Any cat who wants to live forever should watch bubbles. Only kittens
should chase them.

Tag would chase anything. But the toy he enjoyed most was a small cloth
mouse with a very energetic odor. It had been bright red to start with.
Now it was rather dirty, and to its original smell had been added that of
floor polish. Tag whacked it around the shiny living room floor. Off it
skidded. Tag skidded after it, scrabbling to keep upright on the tighter
turns.

One day he found a real mouse hiding under the Welsh dresser.

A real mouse was a different thing.

Tag could see it, a little pointed black shape against the gray dimness.
He could smell it too, sharp and terrified against the customary smell of
fluff balls and seasoned pine. It knew he was there! It kept very still,
but there was a lick of light off one beady eye, and he could feel the
thoughts racing and racing through its tiny head. All the mouse's fear was
trapped there under the dresser, stretched taut between the two of them
like a wire. Tag vibrated with it. He wanted to chase and pounce. He
wanted to eat the mouse: he didn't want to eat it. He felt powerful and
predatory; he felt bigger than himself. At the same time he was anxious
and frightened--for himself and the mouse. Eating someone was such a big
step. He rather regretted his bravado with the pet shop finches.

He watched the mouse for some time. It watched him. Suddenly, Tag decided
not to change either of their lives. His old cloth mouse had a nicer smell
anyway. He reached in expertly, hooked it out, and walked away with it in
his jaws. "Got you!" he told it. He flung it in the air and caught it.
After a few minutes he had forgotten the real mouse, though it probably
never forgot him--and his dreams were never the same.


That afternoon he took the cloth mouse with him up to the third floor
where he could pat it about in a drench of cool light.

When he got bored with this he jumped up on the windowsill. From up there
he had a view of the gardens stretching away right and left between the
houses. However much he cajoled or bullied them, the dulls never seemed to
understand that he wanted to go out there. It fascinated him. His own
garden had a lawn full of moss and clover that sloped down toward the
house, where a steep rockery gave way to the lichen-stained tiles of the
checkerboard patio. Lime trees overhung the back fence, along which--almost
obscured by colonies of cotoneaster, monbretia, and fuchsia--ran a dark,
narrow path of crazy paving. Cool smells came up from the garden after
rain. Wood pigeons shifted furtively in the branches all endless sunny
afternoon, then burst into loud, aimless cooing. At twilight, the sleepy
liquid call of blackbird and thrush seemed to come from another world; and
the greens of the lawn looked mysterious and unreal. Dawn filled the trees
with squirrels, who chased one another from branch to branch, looting as
they went, while birds quartered the lawn or hopped in circles around the
mossy stone birdbath.

Transfixed with excitement, Tag watched them pull up worms.

That afternoon, a magpie was in blatant possession of the lawn, strutting
around the birdbath and every so often emitting loud and raucous cries. It
was a big, glossy bird, proud of its elegant black-and-white livery and
metallic blue flashes. Tag had seen it before. He hated its bobbing head
and powerful, ugly beak. He hated...

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Verlag
Arrow Books Ltd
Erscheinungsdatum
1997
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0099242524
ISBN 13 
9780099242529
Einband
Taschenbuch
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
464
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar