Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Excerpts'Book2

The cats were completely exhausted and lay down lifeless.

"I can't move," complained Sofia.

"Neither can I," said Snow and Dandy together.
"I'm ready to sacrifice one of my nine lives," whispered Bunny, sadly. They began to nod off when suddenly Ras¬cal heard a voice. It sounded like the voice of his teacher, the Prehistoric Cat, Samuel. It was faint but clear in Rascal's head: "Find shade! Get out of the sun! Do it now! Otherwise all of you will soon be dead fried cats!"

Rascal was the first one to come to his senses, mumbling under his breath, "Uff, it's too hot here even for a cat like me... hot wind... ufff... blazing sunlight and ufff... the heat bouncing off the sand is killing me."
He went to Philosopher and nudged him with his nose. "Wake up, brother! We have two choices: go back to our country or stay here forever."

"You have to travel at night... at night... at night," Samuel’s advice echoed in Rascal’s head.

“What can we do? There’s nothing we can do,” said Sofia, hopelessly.
“Don’t give up, Sofia. Start thinking about what life is like back in civilization in our Catanada. If you can purr, do it now, please,” urged Rascal, but Sofia was too tired to purr, as were the rest of the cats.

“Never give up, never give up,” boomed Samuel’s voice in Rascal’s head.
Rascal knew that if he allowed the cats to sink into depression, it would drain all their energy and their will to survive, even from all of their nine lives.
“It’s all my fault,” Sofia moaned, starting to cry. “What if I had…”

“Stop crying right now!” snapped Rascal. “We have no water, but there are two things that we absolutely have to do to stay alive. We have to find a way to find water, and we have to get out of this heat before it saps whatever water we already have in our bodies.”

“But we don’t know how to find water,” said Philosopher, “or how to get out of this hot sun.”

“The best way to survive in the desert is to learn it from desert animals…but this desert is empty,” noticed Rascal, looking around and seeing absolutely nothing but the bleak, sand-filled landscape. “There’s nobody around to ask. Only sand, sand, and more sand.”
Philosopher looked up at the blue sky. “The best way to learn how to survive in the desert is to learn at home from books.”
“It’s too late to learn from books,” answered Rascal. “We have to learn from real life and we have to do it fast. It was our choice to come here and now we have to accept the situation. Don’t blame anybody and don’t waste time complaining,” he said and, not waiting for answers, he began looking for a place to hide from the sun.

Not too far away there was a huge rock and some strange dry plants that resembled bottle brushes in appearance and size.

“Wow! Those plants look like my tail when I’m happy,” said Lumby, jumping up and down. His energy came back fast once he saw something he could recognize. The cats slowly made their way over to the rock and hid behind it, away from the sun. There they marveled at the sight of desert ‘bottle cleaners’ and tilted their heads, trying their best to understand exactly what it was they were seeing. It was hard to believe this was real. Nevertheless, what they were seeing was having a positive effect on them.

“In our house in Catanada I only saw one bottle cleaner,” said Snow, her spirit also lighting up. She thought of her house and Hubert and Diana, the brother and sister who looked after her and whom she loved so much. “Now I know where their parents are getting their bottle cleaners from,” she remarked, cheerfully.

“We have to decide on a plan of what to do next to survive this trip, then we stick to it and carry it out the best we can, unless other conditions come along." said Rascal.

Philosopher nodded in agreement. "You mean like a flood or something, brother?" 


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