Moonlight on Whiskers
an excerpt

Nibblr was sleeping, a vaguely turnip-shaped ball of fur atop his carpeted scratching pedestal. His breathing was audible and snuffly. He dreamed of home, his first home.

As far as he knew he was not quite a year old yet. He could remember having experienced three different seasons now, and a new one had just started. He watched the changes from the window of the small vintage apartment that he shared with his two human caregivers, amazed at the way the leaves changed colours and hurled themselves from the trees, afraid that the flowers would stay asleep forever in their beds.

Occasionally, a bird would wing by to bring him news of things back home. “Your mother is well, and sends her love” or “The Squirrels are holding another election” and so forth. On this particular evening, the news was something much more exciting, something he'd been waiting for. “We need you, it's time to come back.”

He was to leave in a few hours. The bird, a Robin, had advised him to get some sleep in his comfy house and eat some of the lovely free food and to enjoy the comforts of his life with the humans while he could, for he would be away from them for a while. He took this advice, though it was hard to fall asleep while his little head was filled up with the helium of anticipation.

When it came time to leave, he couldn't help but feel a little sad. He'd become rather fond of these silly humans that fed him and scratched his ears and sometimes spoke to him in funny voices about how pretty he was, how they loved his stripes and his rosettes and the chocolate brown on the undersides of his downy paws. Perhaps he could choose to come back when the tasks before him were finished? He hoped so.

He took a last stroll around the apartment. It was night, and the male human was away at a place called “work” that he went to for twelve to sixteen hour stretches a few times a week. He crept into the bedroom where the female was fast asleep. He padded towards her face and uttered a soft “murrr” close to her ear by way of good-bye. She smiled, but did not wake, and he padded out again.

Now, “how to get outside?” he wondered. He hopped lightly up to the window sill and peered out into the darkness. The moon was high and full in the sky, and a mist lay over the river at the bottom of the hill. The window was open just a crack, and locked that way with a latch. He could smell the air, damp and fragrant and alive and earthy and inviting, but try as he might he could not find a way to undo the latch. He suspected it was quite simple, and it frustrated him to no end that he just could not work it out.

“Fret not brother cat!” A small voice from above and outside the window. “It is not for you to work out the transportation issues.”

For a moment he doubted his usually excellent night vision, for here was the Robin that had delivered his summons a few hours earlier. “I'm almost completely sure that you're NOT my brother. What are you doing flying around at this time of night anyway? Don't you Robins flee back to your nests when the sun sets?”

The Robin sniffed. “You have me confused with conventional every day Robins, I am no such animal!”

The Robin fluttered and flapped and finally settled himself on a branch of the tree just to the side of the window. Nibblr fought his impatience as he waited for the Robin to finish picking at an itch under his wing with his bright yellow beak, and promised himself he would eat him if he didn't say something useful, quite soonish.

The Robin, now finished his impromptu ablutions, went very still on his branch. It looked to Nibblr as if he was concentrating, if indeed Robins could concentrate.

“You might want to hop down to the floor there fella, I'm not used to doing magic in this form yet. You certainly don't want to fall out!”

Nibblr, suitably dubious, obliged. He stood a couple of feet back from the window as well for good measure. He wasn't sure what he expected to happen, but he was a bit disappointed when it finally did. The Robin closed his shiny black eyes just as tight as he could, raised his head skyward, and let out a long, high, warbling note. It was the G above middle C, Nibblr noted. He'd lived briefly with a piano instructor as a wee kitten and had learned the names of all the notes. He even had perfect pitch, but that's a tale for later. The note echoed off into the night. The Robin, sitting still and saying nothing, looked expectant. For many moments, nothing happened at all.

Just when Nibblr thought he could stand the suspense no longer, his ears were filled with the loud roaring of strong winds, and he found himself lifted bodily from the ground. All four paws had lost contact with the earth before his body realized what was happening, and began to object by twitching and twisting in mid-air.

“What...what is happening? Let me down!” He cried. The Robin didn't listen, but continued to sit on his branch with his eyes tight shut in intense concentration. Nibblr tried to pull himself together, a little embarrassed that he'd been so obviously fearful in front of this silly bird. He tried to cover his ears with his paws to dampen the cacophony, but it did little to quite the wind.

It had gone suddenly dark, and in his panic he hadn't even realized that his eyes were tightly shut. He forced them open now, only to make direct eye contact with the female human, staring in disbelief as Nibblr rose high in the air before her, and vanished.