Xena’s Story Part 2

If you missed Xena’s story, Part 1, please click here.

Lucy: Xena, as your most excellent editor, I must nudge you to write the second part of your story. Your fans are waiting, and you don’t want to disappoint them. As for me, I need a nap. Why don’t you do that while I sleep?

Xena: You’re right, Luce. Let me think. *5 minutes later, which in dog time is at least half an hour* OK, here’s what happened next…

Xena’s story: A Dog and her Cat Friends, still with no Plot Hounds, Part Two

Summer slid into fall, and fall into winter, and the Siamese cats Sho and Tye missed their new schnauzer friend named Xe. “I want to go find Xe in the great USA,” meowed Tye. “She’s my only schnauzer friend – my only doggie friend, really. And we’re like sisters now.”

Come spring, Tye was determined to jump a ship and sail to the great USA to visit Xe. Sho warned her about the dangers, and said it would be smarter to stay at home near their hut Canada, and let Xe come back and visit them. Tye argued that Xe had told her that the USA didn’t have any crocodiles or cobras, so it must be a safe place.

In the end, Tye did what she wanted. Sho stayed behind to protect Canada. While trying to figure out a way to get to the great USA, Tye met a young Siamese boy who became smitten with her beauty and promised to help her board the next ship heading that way. The boy, whose name was Buddy, got a job on the ship as a deck hand, and smuggled Tye on board in his duffel bag.

Eventually the Captain found out, and was about to throw her overboard when she cried out, “Wait! Have you seen any mice on this ship since we left port? NO! No you haven’t, because I have been earning my passage. Come down to my, er, Buddy’s cabin and you can see I’m telling the truth, and it would be disastrous to throw me – your mouser – overboard.”

So down to Buddy and Tye’s cabin they went, where the Captain, delighted and astounded that Tye was telling the truth, found the ship’s mice.

After that, the Captain and Tye spent a lot of time together, and became fast friends. He often tossed the fish he caught to Tye to eat. He even gave her some corn to share with her mice friends – on the condition that the mice stay in Tye’s cabin. The little mice had never lived so well, with a soft bed and a steady supply of food, so they were happy to remain where they were.

Time flew by, and soon the ship docked at a port in Texas, USA. As Tye stepped off the ship onto American soil, an ICY officer put her in pawcuffs and told her she was being detained as an illegal Siamese cat. She was frightened and bewildered! No one had ever treated her like this. The ICY person was cold to her pitiful cries and pleas and carted her off to a horrid detention center.

After a couple of weeks of eating nothing but rotten veggies, Tye made friends with one of the ICY people. The officer said she wasn’t really ICY, just a bit COOL, and that – please don’t tell anyone – she loved cats and would try to help her. The COOL person smuggled in her IPad. Tye used it to contact Xe, asking her to come and help her escape from this awful detention center in Texas. Tye explained that cats, especially Siamese cats, had been targeted as something called “undesirables,” and were being framed as murderers and liars and thieves and were even taking jobs from American cats. Every day, cats were taking the fall for the Americans who had actually committed these crimes (except the spoiled and lazy American people didn’t really want the American cats’ jobs because it was hard work).

Xe was confused as to why Tye had come to visit without emailing her first. Then she was sad at what had happened. Then she was mad – outraged, actually – at the injustice of it all, and at what poor, innocent Tye was going through. Now was not the time to assign blame – that might come later. Xe’s first priority was freeing Tye from the bondage. Or at least from the cat detention center. She would be a Freedom Rider. “It’s a good thing I have some experience riding,” she thought, as she remembered her one – and only – time on a horse.

“Mom,” declared Xe, “I have to go help my cat friend, Tye. She’s found herself in a pooping-outside-the-litter-box load of trouble, and none of it is her fault. I have to free her from the ICY people. I’ll think of a plan on my way to Texas.”

“I can’t find the horse, I’d better take a bus. Yes, a bus. This is a job for Xe Schnauzer Warrior Princess.

To be continued…