12: POPPY

One day the four Mighty Mousers asked Roxanne to join them as a girl Mighty Mouser. Roxanne felt greatly honoured, but she was not sure she wanted to be the only girl kitten amongst them, particularly as she had a lot on her paws - she could now cook very tastily, and had begun learning making cat duvets, and her parents had given her a large corner of their garden to plant things on her own. So she asked the four whether they would count Fluffy in as well, to keep her company, and after some discussion the four Mighty Mousers agreed - though Jack, who was the most serious of the four, thought Fluffy a little flighty.

Roxanne celebrated by organising a big flower planting. All the Mighty Mousers, including the two girl kittens, brought interesting seeds and plants, and Roxanne arranged them so that they would look their very best when summertime came. Her father also lent her a lawnmower sheep, to trim her little lawn, and gave her a couple of kitten-sized garden benches.

The kittens took it in turns to weed the garden regularly, and watered it with kitten-sized watering cans, and all the plants began to grow very healthily.

There were some nice little groves of dwarf daffodils, sprinkled with snowdrops, for the beginning of spring, and then masses of pansies and violas and heartsease, along with a small army of petunias and lots of geraniums and different kinds of primulas and pelagonia, set around small groves of mallows and columbines and phlox, to keep the garden bright and cheerful as spring turned to summer. And of course there were lots of carnations and a great deal of catmint.

The kittens would garden when they came home from school, and then sit chatting on their benches. Sometimes they also played games of kitten hide and seek amongst the flowers, and it was quite a sight to see Fluffy, who was a tortoiseshell kitten, suddenly pop up holding a carnation between her teeth.

They also took it turns to keep an eye on the lawnmower sheep, who was rather an elderly ewe called Mrs. Belinda Mouton, because Belinda had a bad habit of popping into a flowerbed if nobody was watching to help herself to a tasty mouthful of pansies, and they made themselves kitten picnics at weekends.

One weekend the kittens were relaxing with some tasty salmon sandwiches after a hard afternoon's weeding when a very strange looking grey tom cat with matted fur and very droopy whiskers poked his head over the garden fence.

‘Ho there, kittens,’ he miaowed in a gruff voice.

The kittens stared at him curiously.

‘I'm a bit peckish,’ the strange cat went on, chewing on its whiskers. ‘Can you spare a sandwich?’

The four boy Mighty Mousers all shook their heads, because they thought the strange cat was being a bit greedy. But Roxanne and Fluffy opened the sandwich basket and laid a plate.

The strange cat leaped the fence and crouched down to wolf its sandwiches as if it had not been fed for simply ages. Then it looked up hungrily, and Roxanne gave it some more.

‘Bless you, miss, bless you,’ the strange cat purred, finishing a final crumb and licking his plate carefully, just in case he had left any scraps behind.

Then he took a small purse out of his fur. ‘One good deed deserves another, as they say.’ He took a tiny bag out of the purse. ‘Here is a seed, a very special seed. Look after her well, and she will talk to you.’ He looked all round, as though he feared being overheard, and lowered his voice. ‘But guard her carefully, because others want her for themselves.’

Then he stood up and stretched, arching his back, gathered himself in for a big leap, and a moment later he was gone.

The kittens all thought this visit most exciting. But there was more excitement to come, for a few minutes later a second grey cat looked over the garden fence.

‘Good afternoon, kittens,’ it purred politely. But the kittens all lowered their tails to lay them flat on the ground, because the second cat had a shifty look about him, as though he spent all his time purring things out of people.

‘You may have seen my friend Charles pass this way,’ the cat purred. ‘He's a bit mad, and he gives away deadly nightshade seeds. I have to run after him, collecting them again, because they are poisonous.’

Salem twitched the tip of his tail. It was a clear sign that he did not believe a word.

The cat frowned, and then scowled. ‘You'd better be careful, if you do have one of his seeds. I'll be back, and then I won't be so polite.’

A moment later he was gone, following the path that ran alongside the kittens' garden, with his nose very close to the ground.

Roxanne chose a very special spot for the new seed, in a well sheltered corner a safe way away from the garden fence. The seed was small and black, and looked pretty much like any other seed, but the kittens tended it with great care, and kept Belinda well away. Soon a small green spur poked up from the ground and fanned out into a bunch of little feathery fronds, and then a bud crept out to hang amongst the fronds like a little green bell.

Jack, who knew quite a lot about flowers, stared at it thoughtfully. ‘I think it's a poppy,’ he said.

The bell began to unfurl into a flame red flower as he spoke. ‘I'm Poppy, princess Poppy, gorgeous Poppy,’ it shrilled in a tiny and rather badtempered voice. ‘I'm the most special flower in the world, and you must all pay me hommage.’

The kittens stared at it in amazement.

‘Hommage, I said, you big furry beasts,’ the voice, growing increasingly tetchy. ‘Pay me respect.’

Salem lifted a paw as if he meant to slice the poppy flower off with a single blow. But Roxanne held him back.

‘Why, of course, your majesty,’ she purred in her most respectful voice, and then she crouched down on her stomach, and made signs to the five other kittens to do the same. ‘We all think you are quite the most glorious flower in the whole world.’

Salem crouched, but he did not look very pleased. ‘Whoever heard of a talking flower?’ he hissed.

‘Exactly,’ said Roxanne.

Poppy grew a little more gracious after that. She told the kittens that she came from a distant country a very long way away, where many more flowers were able to talk, and butterflies danced duets in the sun.

‘My family rule the flower world there,’ she said very grandly. ‘So you must call me 'your royal highness' whenever you talk to me. You must also water me most carefully, mixing in a little special poppy fertiliser, and you must make sure that nasty, horrid birds stay well away from me, because they want my seeds. A little shelter of sticks and cotton would suit me very well. You must also tell me how beautiful I am at least once every day, because it is good for my colour, and you must not disturb me when I am twitching my roots in conversation with other plants, because I find that most distracting.’

Roxanne wrinkled her nose. ‘How will we know?’

‘I will twitch the tips of my leaves as well, like so.’ Poppy's leaves curled in on themselves at their ends, for all the world like tiny paws, and then uncurled again. ‘I won't talk to you when my leaves are curled, so don't even bother to try.’

The kittens were all most impressed. They built Poppy a little castle of sticks threaded around with red cotton - Poppy insisted on red, and proved particularly fussy about having a shade that toned with her petals - and watered her most carefully, mixing in just the right amount of poppy fertiliser.

Poppy began to grow very rapidly on her special diet, and soon towered well above the kittens. She made them build a huge kind of stick and cotton fortress to replace their first little castle, and became increasingly vain and demanding, insisting that the kittens call her the most beautiful flower in the world, as well as royal highness. She also kept on asking for expensive new brands of fertiliser that other plants told her about.

The four boy Mighty Mousers found themselves paying out more and more of their pocket money for poppy fertiliser, and rapidly became fed up. They would happily have gone back to a garden with nothing grander than a pansy or a periwinkle.

But Roxanne and Fluffy were enormously proud of their new girlfriend, and knew they would never be able to do enough for her. They opened the garden to visitors, charging grown-up cats three sardines apiece, and kittens, unemployed cats and senior cats one sardine each, and also held interview sessions, when cats prepared to pay another fifteen sardines were allowed to talk to Poppy for quarter of an hour.

Fluffy also bought herself a bunch of ribbons to match Poppy's petals, and attracted so much admiration that she began selling them at the garden gate. Soon Poppy ribbons, and dinner bowls, and cat baskets were so fashionable in Catsville that the kittens found themselves with much more pocket money than ever before.

However they never quite forgot the smooth grey cat's threat, and always made sure that some of the Catsville sparrows and pigeons nested in the garden as alarm bells, even though Poppy complained bitterly at being guarded by birds.

One day, towards mid-summer, a sparrow started walking in little circles on the kittens' lawn, tapping its beak on the ground. After a moment two more sparrows and a couple of pigeons joined in. The kittens watched them curiously.

Then the birds all stood still in a circle, beaks to the ground, as though listening to something. They were silent for a moment, and then all took off together and flew off a little way, to circle again in the air, floating lower and lower until they were quite out of sight. The kittens formed a defensive circle around Poppy.

A few minutes later the birds returned, and all the sparrows began chattering at once. ‘Voles,’ said one. ‘Tunnels,’ said another. ‘Here,’ said a third.

One of the pigeons took a step forward. Pigeons were less excitable than sparrows, and able to talk in longer sentences. ‘Some voles have dug holes for themselves in the bank of the stream that runs through the rest of your father's garden, and are tunnelling this way,’ he explained.

The kittens shivered. They knew that voles tunnelled underground, looking for nice juicy flower bulbs and roots. They turned to see whether Poppy was alarmed as well, but she had furled all the tips to her leaves, and they knew they would get nothing out of her.

‘How close are they?’ miaowed Salem.

The pigeon touched its beak to the ground. ‘Somewhere very close,’ it replied.

At that moment Poppy unfurled her leaves and began to scream. ‘Something's chewing at my roots,’ she shrilled. ‘They're trying to drag me down.’

Her leaves began to wave desperately, as though fighting an unseen enemy.

Salem stared at the pigeon. ‘What do we do?’

But Roxanne had already begun digging on one side of Poppy with both her front paws, as fast as she could, and Fluffy quickly began digging on the other side.

‘We must dig a circle round her, and box them in,’ Roxanne panted.

The four boy Mighty Mousers began digging for all they were worth. Soon they had dug a ditch all round Poppy, and broken the roof of a small tunnel pointing towards her.

Nothing happened for a moment. Then a brown whiskery nose emerged from the broken tunnel, and shook off some loose earth, and two beady little eyes stared angrily up at the kittens. ‘Back off, cats. We've got her now.’

‘We've got you, you mean,’ hissed Roxanne. She looked very, very angry.

The vole twitched his nose. He had an evil expression, but he also seemed a little uncertain. ‘We'll eat her.’

‘We'll turn you into vole pie if you do,’ Roxanne hissed. She was not a fierce kitten, but she knew how to stand up for her friends.

The vole vanished back into his tunnel. Roxanne looked around the kittens hopefully. She knew they must do something, but she could only think of two beady little eyes, and Poppy in pain.

Suddenly Fluffy shot into the air - it was something she did when she became very excited - and took off at great speed, heading for the garden gate. The kittens watched her go, and waited. A few minutes later she returned, carrying a small bag.

‘Mothballs,’ she whispered, and took two small white balls out of the bag to drop them at the mouth of the voles' tunnel.

The kittens waited.

Nothing happened for a moment. Then there was a great sound of coughing and spluttering, and a vole came out of the tunnel looking very unhappy. Two more followed.

‘We're surrendering,’ the first vole coughed. ‘You can keep your poppy, we just want to go.’ He lurched off, followed by his two companions, and began digging into the ground a safe distance away.

The six kittens looked at each other, and then at Poppy.

‘I suppose I twitched my roots once too often,’ she said in a very small voice, quite unlike her usual bossy self.

‘We'll have to move you,’ Roxanne replied a little sadly.

Salem thought of the hothouse at the Catsville council plant nursey. ‘We'll take you to a special plant house, where no vole will ever be able to tunnel,’ he miaowed.

Poppy thought for a moment, and her leaves began to perk up brightly. ‘You mean I'll have a special palace all of my own,’ she said happily. ‘I'd like that, if I was treated with proper respect.’

Soon she was busy telling the kittens exactly how she should be dug up and moved to her new home, and how they must bandage the bite marks in her roots. But she never thanked them for rescuing her, and the Mighty Mousers agreed amongst themselves that talking plants were much too much bother and trouble, and that they all preferred their flowers to be pretty, and sweet-smelling, and quite, quite dumb.