The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood by Susan Wittig Albert Read Free Book Online

Ridley—who valued his privacy more than anything else in the world—could scarcely manage a ten-minute nap in his favorite chair without having his slippered feet tread upon or his tail pulled by rowdy, ill-behaved rat children.
    “We would not have this problem,” Ridley grumbled to Rosabelle when they had a private moment in the kitchen, “if you were not so obliging.”
    “You are making too much of it, Ridley,” Rosabelle said mildly, rolling up her sleeves in preparation for the washing up. “You should be a little forgiving, and allow the children to have their play.”
    “I could tolerate the children during the daytime,” Ridley retorted, “if I could get my sleep at night. It’s the music and dancing and laughing and the crack of billiard balls —crack! crack! crack!— on and on until the wee hours. That’s what’s got me down, Rosabelle.”
    “You might speak to Rollo,” Rosabelle suggested, stacking the dirty dishes. “I’m sure he’d be willing to—”
    “I spoke to Rollo,” Ridley said glumly. “He offered to punch my nose.”
    Rosabelle gave him a sympathetic look. “I urge you to try again,” she said, ever the peacemaker. “I’m sure he—”
    “I invite you to allow Rollo to punch your nose.” And with that pained retort, Ridley stalked off to his private apartment, where he closed and locked the door and began to pace back and forth, feeling deeply injured.
    But the sense of injury was soon overtaken by a growing sense of . . . well, shame, that’s what it was. Rosabelle had been too kind to call him a coward, but she didn’t need to, for he knew himself all too well. He was a rat of no courage, a rat who was too meek and mousy to do what had to be done. He was a coward, and the knowledge cut like a sword to the heart.
    Ridley stopped pacing and stood very still, trembling, until finally the dark shame of his cowardice began to transform itself into something like resolve. What was needed in this situation was not brawn, but brains; not muscle, but mental acuity. Surely, if he put his mind to it, he could think of a way to rid the Hill Top attics of this infestation of uninvited, unwelcome, and unruly rats. He could think of a solution.
    Now, if you have ever been acquainted with rats (and most of us have, in one way or another), you know that they are astonishingly intelligent along practical lines: where to find the best cheese and bacon, how to be stealthy when stealth is required, and which is the quickest means of escape when danger threatens. But you may also know that rats are not among the most intellectual of animals. Disciplined thought is a challenge for the entire species. Their minds are apt to wander off into pleasant topics, having to do with crumbs in kitchen cupboards and corn in feed bins and bright trinkets lying in a dish on the bureau top—crumbs and corn and trinkets that might be put to better use by an enterprising rat. In fact, their rat brains are full of a great many things all tumbled about with no particular order or method, so finding anything specific in them is even more difficult than finding a needle in a pile of hay.
    Nevertheless, within the hour, and by dint of applying himself with rigorous and exhausting mental effort, Ridley Rattail had come upon the solution to his problem. He felt at once proud of having thought of it and foolish that he had not thought of it before.
    What was needed to rid the Hill Top attic of the plague of unwanted rats was, quite obviously and simply, a cat.
    A cat unlike Miss Felicia Frummety, who disdained to chase rats and spent her time either asleep on the hearth or admiring herself in the mirror.
    A fierce and stalwart cat who had an insatiable appetite for rats.
    A cat who had enough fortitude to face an army of rats if necessary.
    A cat who—
    And then, just as Ridley was getting well started on the list of important feline qualifications required to deal with this unfortunate situation, he heard a