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The
Adventures of the Kingston Cats
Chapter 4
Follow the
adventures of a family of Jamaican housecats who
decide to see the world outside their Kingston
home.
Read Previous Chapters. |
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Chapter Four
Our heroines passed an uneventful
night travelling towards the main business district, New Kingston. There
was a pack of stray dogs but they easily avoided those by jumping into a
tree and, unfortunately, tossing the dogs some of the wonderful food
they had brought from Devon House. While they travelled Iris and Jonquil
told their mothers how New Kingston was created. As usual, they'd read
about it on the Internet.
"In the 1960s a
wealthy developer thought that Kingston was old fashioned and over
crowded so he bought Knutsford Park, which was a race track. He built
the main road, Knutsford Boulevard, which runs north to south. He
dreamed of his creation being the main centre of the English speaking
Caribbean so he named the secondary roads after all the smaller islands.
Then he sat in the huge skyscraper he had built and waited for people to
come and buy. And they did: banks, insurance companies, law firms, large
local and international companies, hotels and restaurants. Slowly at
first, then in droves so that now a broom closet in New Kingston is
worth as much as our house." |
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"Do you mean Jamaica
isn't the whole world?" asked Lily.
"Mother,
don't be an idiot!" responded Jonquil. "This is why I keep
telling you and Aunt Rose to search the internet like Iris and
me."
"And I"
corrected her mother. "Is the Caribbean the same as the whole
world then?"
"Auntie, please" moaned Iris.
Just as
the sun was rising they came upon a beautiful building all
silver and blue glass and shaped like a pyramid so they stopped
to take pictures and eat what was left in their basket.
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Lily & Jonquil n front of the
blue glass building. |
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The others wait while Lily goes to
the bank. |
"We need to go to the
bank," said Jonquil.
"To the bank?" asked her
mother. "We don't need money; and even if we had any no Human
would sell to a bunch of cats."
"You're
joking," replied her daughter. "Humans would sell to a mongoose
if it had enough money!"
"I have
My Girl's bank card," said Lily. "She left me all her things to
look after when she went to Far Away. There's a bank across the
road, let's go."
They each got $100 from the
bank for emergencies and decided to explore as much as they
could before all the cars and people came into the city. |
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| "I'm hungry" said Rose, "Let's go
find some food." "I thought
you were going on a diet Ma," replied Iris. "Anyway there are dozens of
restaurants all in a row. Let's go look for leftovers in their trash."
"We don't eat out of trash!" Rose
was horrified.
"Ma, you have no idea what
expensive restaurants throw out. Let's go." |
| They went
through a lane between two very fancy restaurants and could not
believe their eyes. Garbage cans overflowing with steak, lamb,
duck and lobster and all covered with hundreds of rats!
"Oh gracious!" Lily shuddered,
"Belisario was right. City rats are as big as us, let's get out
of here."
"Don't move! Where the
b****c**** you puss think you going. I am the Don here and no
dog or cat can come in here."
Behind them was a rat even
bigger than the others! And the others had left the garbage and
were slowly surrounding them!
"Ma, Auntie, quick, jump on
that SUV and don't come down. Cuz, are you ready?" |
Iris & Jonquil battle the Rat
King. |
"Let's go!" cried Jonquil. "Let's see if we learned anything at
that karate dojo at the bottom of our road."
With that they attacked the
Rat King from both sides using teeth and claws and some wicked
karate chops, and a few kung fu moves they had picked up
watching late night Bruce Lee movies.
The Rat King was so shocked
he couldn't move. For as long as he could remember cats had run
when they saw him and his enforcers had made sure that all the
cats and dogs for blocks around knew just how dangerous he was.
In fact, more than one homeless dog was now walking on three
legs because of the Rat King.
But these little Up-Town
cats actually attacked him! It was the element of surprise that
gave Lily and Jonquil the edge. The Rat King's crew was so
shocked that their boss was being attacked that they started to
scurry around in circles instead of going to his assistance so
our two heroines were able to concentrate on dealing with the
monster without distraction.
Rose and Lily meantime had
comedown from the SUV and started to take care of the stragglers
who left the horde, throwing their limp bodies one by one down a
nearby storm drain. |
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Iris & Rose trying to decide
which
hotel to have breakfast at. |
And so by the
time the thousands of Humans who work in the city every day came
to work, the restaurant strip had lost half of it's rat
population and a bruised and battered Rat King was limping off
to the cane fields where his mother had been born and hoping
never to see another cat for the rest of his life.
"Kits, Kits, are you OK?" the
two mothers were very worried once the rats had scampered off.
The younger cats were
scratched and bruised but had no serious injuries and they had
had all their shots so there was no fear of disease. After a
good wash and a careful examination by their mothers, who had
one or two scratches themselves, they were ready to continue
their adventure. No pleading from their mothers could convince
them to give up and go home. Besides, they had heard of a
fabulous breakfast buffet at one of the convention hotels nearby
and the battle had worked up quite an appetite! |
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Click
here to buy stuff with pictures of the Cats in New Kingston. |
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Keep reading to discover
where the Cats' adventures will lead them to next!
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