_Le_Guin_Ursula_K_Le_Guin_Ursula_K_-_Catwings_z-li

    The sun set. The city lights came on, long strings and chains of lights below them, stretching out towards dsarkness. Towards darkness they flew, and at last, when around them and under them everything was dark except for one light twinkling over the hill, they descended slowly from the air and landed on the ground.

    A soft ground – a strange ground! The only ground they knew was pavement, asphalt, cement. This was all new to them, dirt, earth, dead leaves, grass, twigs, mushrooms, worms. It all smelled extremely interesting. A little creek ran nearby. They heard the song of it and went to drink, for they were very thirsty. After drinking, Roger stayed crouching on the bank, his nose almost in the water, his eyes gazing.

    “What’s that in the water?” he whispered.

    The others came and gazed. They could just make out something moving in the water, in the starlight — a silvery flicker, a gleam. Roger’s paw shot out….

    “I think it’s dinner,” he said.

    After dinner, they curled up together again under a bush and fell asleep. But first Thelma, then Roger, then James, and then small Harriet, would lift their head, open an eye, listen a moment, on guard. They knew they had come to a much better place than the alley, but they also knew that every place is dangerous, whether you are a fish, or a cat, oir even a cat with wings.

3

    “It’s absolutley unfair,” the thrush cried.

    “Unjust!” the finch agreed.

    “Intolerable!” yelled the blue jay.

    “I don’t see why,” a mouse said. “You’ve always had wings. Now they do. What’s unfair about that?”

    The fish in the creek said nothing. Fish never do. Few people know what fish think about injustice, or anything else.

    “I was bringing a twig to the nest just this morning, and a CAT flew down, a cat FLEW down, from the top of the Home Oak, and GRINNED at me in mid-air!” the thrush said, and all the other songbirds cried, “Shocking! Unheard of! Not allowed!”

    “You could try tunnels,” said the mouse, and trotted off.

    The birds had to learn to get along with the Flying Tabbies. Most of the birds, in fact, were more fightened and outraged than really endangered, since they were far better flyers than Roger, Thelma, Harriet, and James. The birds never got their wings tngled up in pine branches and never absently-mindedly bumped into tree trunks, and when pursued they could escape by speeding up or taking evasive action. But they were alarmed, and with good cause about their fledglings. Many birds had eggs in the nest now; when the babies hatched, how could they be kept safe from a cat who could fly up and perch on the slenderest branch, among the thickest leaves?

    It took a while for the Owl to understand this. Owl is not a quick thinker. She is a long thinker. It was late in spring, one evening, when she was gazing fondly at her two new owlets, that she saw James flitting by, chasing bats. And she slowly thought, “This will never do….”

    And softly Owl spread her great, gray wings, and silenty flew after James, her talons opening.

    The Flying Tabbies had made their nest in a hole halfway up a big elm, above fox and coyote level and too small for raccoons to get into. Thelma and Harriet were washing each others necks and talking over the day’s adventures when they heard a pitiful crying at the foot of the tree.

    “James!” cried Harriet.

    He was crouching under the bushes, all scratched and bleeding, and one of his wings dragged on the ground.

    “It was the Owl,” he said, when his sisters had helped him climb painfully up the tree trunk to their home hole. “I just escaped. She caught me, but I scratched her, and she let go for a moment.”

    And just then Roger came scrambling into the nest with his eyes round and black and full of fear. “She’s after me!” he cried. “The Owl!”

    They all washed James’s wounds till he fellsleep.

    “Now we know how the little birds feel,” said Thelma, grimly.

    “What will James do?” Harriet whispered. “Will he ever fly again?”

    “He’d better not,” said a soft, large voice just outside their door. The Owl was sitting there.

    The Tabbies looked at one another. They did not say another word till morining cane.

    At sunrise Thelma peered cautiously out. The Owl was gone. “Until this evening,” said Thelma.

    From then on they had to hunt in the daytime and hide in their nest all night; for the Owl thinks slowly, but the Owl thinks long.

    James was ill for days and could not hunt at all. When he rtecovered, he was very thin and could not fly much, for his left wing soon grew stiff and lame. He never complained. He sat for hours by the creek, his wings folded, fishing. The fish did not complain either. They never do.