7: THE INVADER BUNNIES

 

   All the cats in Catsville were very proud of their parks and gardens. The main park alongside the river running through the centre of town was planted with beds of pansies and catmint, with areas of long grass and herbs - for cats to chew on when they were feeling out of sorts - and plenty of small trees with low branches for kittens keen on climbing. There were also smaller public  gardens in the main town square and close to the bus station, and of course all the cats' private gardens were very neat, with beautiful green lawns and shady bushes to lie under on hot summer days. The richer cats employed special sheep as lawnmowers and scattered crumbs on their paths for passing sparrows and pigeons, whilst more everyday cats borrowed sheep from the town hall.

   But one fine morning Catsville woke up to a terrible sight. Giant brown rabbits, the size of small dogs,  were busy burrowing untidy holes in their lawns, and eating their flowers. A park warden rang up the town hall in a panic. ‘I've got them everywhere, they're like an army.’ A second park warden called the cat police station, whilst a third rang Cat-tv.

   The Catsville council held a special emergency meeting, and voted for immediate action. A group of councillors, led by Salem's father, raced to the park. The councillors were shocked by what they found. The rabbits had already begun heaping earth in neat piles next to their holes, and the lawns looked as if they had savaged by giant moles.

   The rabbits looked up as the councillors arrived, and then ignored them. Abdenazir, Salem's father and a prize-winning Persian as well as a councillor, marched towards the nearest group, who had stopped burrowing and were lolling about on the grass munching pansy stalks.

   ‘Get out of here. Go back where you came from.’ He hissed his words, and it was plain that he was very angry indeed, so much so in fact that his whiskers curved downwards until they almost touched the ground.

   The rabbits paid no attention. Abdenazir prodded at the nearest rabbit. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

   The rabbit, who was rather larger than Abdenazir, grunted. ‘Push off, cat.’ He spoke with a very strong rabbit accent, and his whole attitude was really very rude.

   Abdenazir bared his claws. He was not really a fighting cat, but he was speaking in his official capacity as a cat councillor, and he expected all animals to treat him with respect.

   The next few seconds were an explosion of dark brown fur and boxing and kicking paws. Four, perhaps five, giant rabbits pounced on Abdenazir, thumping him unmercifully.

   For a moment the other cat councillors were too dumbfounded to do anything but watch. Then they rushed forward to drag Abdenazir to safety. The big rabbits meanwhile dusted off their paws and grinned at each other with big rabbitty grins, as if thumping cats were all part of a day's work.

   Meanwhile two cat police cars had arrived, sirens blaring. The rabbits sniffed, and turned their backs. One began to groom his fur.

   The cat police spread out in a circle.

   ‘Right, you.’ A cat police sergeant pointed at the nearest rabbit - the one who had spoken so rudely. ‘We're arresting you for breaking park regulations and striking a councillor.’

   The rude rabbit ignored him.

   The cat police sergeant pulled a truncheon out of his fur. But it was just the wrong thing to do, for a moment later he was lying spreadeagled on the ground, with a big brown rabbit sitting on each of his four paws.

   The rude rabbit looked down at him and prodded at his stomach. ‘This is the first and last time, cat. We've come to stay for a while, and we're going to turn this open space into a carrot and lettuce garden. We'll need some hard-working paws, so you cats will come in handy. But we don't want any bother. Bother us, and all you fat cats will be flat cats.’

   He flicked a pawful of dirt into the cat police sergeant's whiskers, and signed to the other rabbits to let him go.

   The next few days were a nightmare. More and more big brown rabbits arrived, and grubbed up every inch of spare space to make carrot and lettuce gardens. They forced boy kittens to to weed their gardens, and made girl kittens look after their baby bunnies. The baby bunnies were even ruder than their parents, and spent the whole of their time being as troublesome as they could.

   The cat police tried hiring some big, fierce brawny market cats, who were very tough and strong because they were used to carrying around cases of cat food and sardines, and set up a special cat commando unit. But the rabbits vanished into their holes when they saw these fierce cats coming.

   A couple of commando cats found an unguarded entrance, and crept in quietly. But the rabbits smelled them coming, set up an ambush at a tunnel crossroads, thumped them unmercifully until they were quite black and blue, and then dumped them outside on a pile of earth with placards tied around their necks.

   The placards were written in both rabbit and cat,  and said: 'flat cats today, dead cats tomorrow'.

   This frightened all the other cats quite out of their wits, and they held a demonstration in the Catsville town square, begging the council to leave the rabbits alone. The rabbits watched with great interest, and rubbed their paws together gleefully when the council voted to disband the special commando unit.

   However things then moved from bad to worse. Gangs of big bad rabbits began searching cat homes and taking all the best cushions and carpets and duvets for their warren. Some cats tried barring their doors, but the rabbits just tunnelled under their walls, making their homes lean over - and once, when two big bad rabbits tried tunnelling into the same cat home from different directions, the home just collapsed, burying the family inside in a pile of dust.

   Rabbits began washing their carrots and lettuces in cat kitchens and bathrooms. Carrot peel and rotten lettuce soon blocked most of the Catsville drains, and the smell was so dreadful that sensitive cats had to sleep in the open air and wash their whiskers in river water.

   Rabbits rooted out all the park catmint and herbs and long grass, and made driving quite impossible by tunnelling under the Catsville streets.

   The cat police were forced to abandon their cars and prowl round on bicycles, or else take to their paws, and the council had to send all its cat bus drivers home, making life very hard for all the old age pensioner cats who counted on the buses to take them shopping.

   Catsville began to fall apart at the seams, and even the lawnmower sheep went on strike. They had always been very placid animals, nibbling here, and nibbling there, taking their time and munching as they saw best. But the rabbits began bossing them about: chasing them away from patches of tender young grass into tatty stretches of nettles and weeds, and sending inspector bunnies after them to make sure they nibbled properly.

   The inspector bunnies grew bossier and bossier, and finally told the sheep they must have nibbling lessons to make sure they nibbled every last scrap of nettle and weed away.

   The sheep, headed by their chief ram, Mr. Elias Mutton, held a protest meeting, and marched to the Catsville town hall bleating: 'We want to nibble, not quibble' (Quibble being a sheep word for squabble) to the tune of Baa Baa Blacksheep. But the rabbits - who by now had taken over the Catsville town hall for bunny parties - refused to listen, and boxed their ears.

   None of the cats knew what to do. They walked round sadly, with their fur unbrushed and tails dragging in the dust, and lots of kittens cried themselves to sleep at night.

Salem and Roxanne found life particularly hard. The rabbits had thrown Salem's father out of the town hall, and he sat miserably on his doorstep making sad little mewing sounds all day long, whilst Roxanne's father only had a few tins of golden syrup left in his warehouse.

   The kittens tried to cheer them up, but what could they do? They were no match for big brown rabbits.

   Then one afternoon Roxanne was using her tail to rock a sleeping baby bunny absentmindedly in its cot as she licked at a small saucer of treacle, when the baby bunny woke up, pushed at the side of the cot, and fell straight into the treacle.

   Roxanne was horrified. She watched the baby bunny twisting and turning in the saucer, getting more and more treacle in its fur, until it was a screaming round brown ball, and began to cry her heart out. She knew the grown-up rabbits would box her ears very hard indeed.

   Her father and mother came running, full of concern. Then her father, a rather chubby blue Persian called Jamal,  stopped short. ‘Get that bunny cleaned up.’ He sounded strangely excited, and rushed out, tugging his mobile phone from his fur.

   Roxanne's mother managed to fill a bath with cold water, and she and Roxanne scrubbed and scrubbed. But it took them a long long time to wash all the treacle away, particularly as the baby bunny hated water and struggled and squirmed, and in fact they took so long that the bunny's mother and father came looking for their baby.

   The rabbits were both very angry. The mother rabbit screamed and screamed, and the father rabbit boxed Roxanne's ears until she was afraid she would go quite deaf.

   Supper time came, but Roxanne's father was nowhere to be seen. Roxanne's mother, a beautiful Persian called Minou, opened one of her last cans of tuna, poured a little into Roxanne's dish, and folded her paws sadly. ‘Soon we're going to have nothing to eat anymore,’ she miaouwed. She left her own dish empty, and sounded as though she was trying hard not to cry.

   Roxanne pushed her plate away, but her mother pushed it back. ‘You're a kitten, you must eat something. I can go without.’

   They were both sitting sadly, with their tails curled around their noses, when Roxanne's father came racing back. He was very excited, and waving his mobile phone like a sword. ‘Quick, quick, find the sharpest scissors you can.’

   Roxanne and her mother both stared at him. He began jumping up and down, still waving his mobile phone. ‘Scissors, I must have scissors. I've called Mr. Mutton, and he's bringing his flock straight here. We've no time to lose.’

   Ten minutes later Roxanne and Minou were hard at work, snipping at the sheep's fleeces for all they were worth. They snipped and snipped, and other mother cats and girl kittens came to help, whilst father cats and boy kittens busied themselves rolling wool into big fluffy balls.

   The sheep were not very comfortable, and baaed from time to time with pain, because the mother cats and girl kittens sometimes nicked when they should have snipped, but they were generally very brave, and soon there were lots and lots of balls of wool, stacked in a big pile. The father cats then began carrying big tins out of a shed, and stacking them next to the pile of wool.

   Jamal spent a good deal of time on his mobile phone, and the Catsville police arrived as the cats finished snipping. Some began loading wool onto their bicycles, whilst others filled their bicycle baskets with tins. Then they all pedalled off towards the rabbits' warren.

   A couple of rabbits on late night guard duty came out to look at them as they began to unpack. ‘What's going on?’ one asked in a grumpy voice - he had been asleep, dreaming of carrot pie, and wanted to get back into his nice warm bed.

   Roxanne's father beamed. ‘We've brought you some nice new mattresses.’ He pushed a big ball of wool into the rabbit's main entrance hole, and stepped back. A cat policeman had already begun opening a big tin with a a label on the side. The label read - 'Really sticky Treacle.'

   The tin was heavy, and it took both of them to lift it. But lift it they did, and soon the wool was drenched in treacle. The two rabbits tried to push it back out of their hole, but they only succeeded in drenching themselves as well, and of course whilst Roxanne's father and one cat policeman were blocking up one hole, other cat policemen were also busy blocking up all the rabbits's other holes as well.

   The rabbits were furious. They dug fresh tunnels to get out of their warren, and the chief rabbit, the one who spoke cat with a strong rabbit accent, began shouting at Roxanne's father and flexing his paws very fiercely. ‘We'll flatten you for this,’ he yelled.

   Jamal smiled, and took three smart steps back, just as a pigeon flew overhead, dropping a small ball of treacly wool straight between the chief rabbit's big floppy ears. (The pigeons disliked the rabbits because none ever scattered crumbs).

   ‘I've still got plenty of wool, and I've just ordered a fresh supply of treacle,’ he replied. His smile spread right across his whiskers. He had taken good care to spill a tin of treacle on the ground in front of him, and he knew he was well out of rabbit jumping reach.

   The chief rabbit eyed the sticky ground between them, and scrabbled at the ball of wool, but only succeeded in getting treacle all over his paws. He looked at a group of young rabbits still scrubbing away at the two guard rabbits, and he knew he was beaten.

   ‘All right, we'll go,’ he said. But he eyed the rabbit carrot and lettuce gardens sadly. The boy kittens had been good gardeners. However there are times when clean fur counts for a great deal more than a full tummy.

   Next morning the rabbit warren was empty. The rabbits took all the cats' best blankets and duvets and carpets with them, but there was still plenty of wool left over from blocking the rabbits' holes, and the cats without homes slept in the town hall whilst they were rebuilding.

   Catsville held a big party to celebrate. The cats all clubbed together, and paid for a sculptor cat to carve a statue of Jamal out of an old tree trunk. The statue showed him holding a ball of wool balanced nicely just above a tin of treacle, and the cats all thought it a very fine statue indeed.

   The Catsville council placed it in the middle of the Catsville town square, and held a special dedication ceremony, with the sheep singing a special bleat of celebration whilst the sparrows and the pigeons flew past in formation overhead, and all the cats miaouwed their applause.

   Then the council filled in the rabbit warren, and cleared away all the carrot and lettuce gardens, and rebuilt all the roads. It also paid for a rabbit-proof fence, all the way round Catsville, with special gates for coming and going. And of course the Catsville cats made very, very sure that rabbits never, ever, came to stay again.