Sequel to Billy and Teddy’s Excellent Adventure
The two cats slept within a silent cuddle, their paws intertwined as sleep unwound their minds. A tiger entered their dreams, tall and majestic, purring like an engine and with eyes like gold coins. “We need you,” he whispered softly. “Our cousins need you.”
The sun shone on their shining fur, as if it could never set, an eternal sunbeam just for them. Billy meowed in his sleep, a secret conversation in another time.
“Ahem!” The strange declaration pounced in to their reverie and remorselessly caught their attention. Through their sleep-swept eyes they beheld Ambrose, the large ginger cat of their previous adventure, the one they had tried so hard to forget.
Billy stretched his legs. “Can we have another five minutes to sleep in the sun?”
“No!” roared Ambrose. “Scotland is depending on you, her future is at stake! Wake up you fools! I have another mission for you. It involves a trip to the future!”
Teddy looked curious. “Will there be plenty of mice to catch there?”
“There will be no time for fun!” scolded Ambrose. “Your mission is simple. My time capsule will transport you to the Scottish Highlands, where you need to locate a rare pregnant Highland wildcat, and convince her to enter the capsule with you and travel two hundred years to the future! Why you might ask? Highland wildcats will be extinct within two hundred years. Your mission is to repopulate the earth with Highland wildcats at this date. If you fail, the consequences will echo throughout eternity. Simply put, Scotland needs its wildcats. They have superhuman powers and keep the forces of dark from attacking Scotland. When they go extinct, Scotland will be unprotected!”
Billy yawned. “It all sounds a bit far fetched to me.”
“I assure you this is no joke,” roared Ambrose angrily. “I have chosen you two because you have a gentle nature and the wildcats will trust you. If you can find any pregnant female and take her to the future your mission is complete. After that, by all means return and relax in the sun.”
Ambrose began to purr and a small time capsule machine materialised behind him. “You can travel in this to the last known sighting of a female wildcat in the Highlands. Once you find her, you simply need to use all your feline powers of persuasion to travel to the future with her. Let me show you how to operate this machine. After your mission is complete, you will simply return here – this time, this place, and I will be just where you left me.” His eyes glistened.
Billy and Teddy sighed in resignation, a look of defeat in their feline eyes. “Well, we suppose we can give it a try,” Teddy said with no enthusiasm.
But the journey in the time capsule was fun, the kind of fun that was special to felines, the adventure of the hunt in their veins.
When they reached the Highlands, they took some time to play – after all, they had a time machine, there was no hurry! Having consumed some mice and climbed several trees (falling out of one and proving that cats can indeed land on their feet), they then turned serious in the hunt for a pregnant female wildcat.
It took them three days, constant searching by day and night. Finally they found a male wildcat and implored him to tell them where a pregnant female could be located. The wildcat sniffed them disdainfully. “You two could never survive for long in the wild!” he snorted. “But that’s not your fault, and we do share some of the same genes, so I will help you.”
He led them deep in to a forest, and finally to a glade of moss and grass. A female cat slept in a hollow log, her whiskers glowing in the twilight.
“This is Princess Leiana,” the male highland wildcat informed them.
Sleepy eyes opened and regarded them. Billy and Teddy were nervous in the face of such beauty.
“What can I do for you?” she drawled.
Teddy stuttered through the crazy request. Leiana stared at them, nonplussed.
Eventually she spoke.
“I am a Highland wildcat and we carry special powers. If the day will dawn when we are no more, then Scotland indeed will be in trouble. So I have no choice but to comply with your request, especially as I can see in to your souls so I know that you are trustworthy.”
Her piercing stare read both their faces, her serious eyes leaving no doubt as to her love of Scotland.
So the mission was successful. Princess Leiana entered the forest glade two hundred years in the future, sniffing its foliage, appreciating the changes that time had made. The same trees guarded the spot as they had done for hundreds of years, green souls that knew no tomorrow.
Her kittens would be born in to a future that would cradle its wildcats like the special treasure they were. They were the future, they were a better tomorrow.
Billy and Teddy returned home to find Ambrose waiting, as promised. “It’s been two minutes and what have you done in all that time?” he demanded.
“Mission accomplished!” gasped Billy. Ambrose’s eyes twinkled with happiness.
Billy and Teddy slept deeply that night, an adventure still in their brains. As they slumbered they dreamt of the children of tomorrow, the young souls in two hundred years time, sleeping tight in their beds. And as they slept they knew that somewhere out there, in the glens of the Highlands, there roamed a highland wildcat, keeping them safe forever.
A wind played with the branches of a Highland forest, a song of yesterday, as the past met the future and sung an ancient lullaby. Leiana and her kittens crept through the undergrowth, a glimpse out of the corner of your eye, a shadow that was there and then gone, a vision of a better future.
(c) Can Stock Photo / Veneratio
Of Felines and Fiction 