Tj and the Rockets by Hazel Hutchins Read Free Book Online Page A

the news that some employees steal from their workplace. How much
had
he stolen?
    I didn’t tell Mom and Dad. If a kid is accused of shoplifting, everybody believes it. If an adult is accused of shoplifting, you have to have proof. I had to think of a way to prove to Mom and Dad that Mr. G. was taking things. I didn’t want to even hint at it beforehand. I didn’t want to tip-off Mr. G. before I proved Seymour was innocent.
    I still didn’t know if I should tell Seymour. For the next three days I hardly saw him, except at school. He’d actually come up with an idea and was spending a lot of time at it.
    I’d been busy too. Besides thinking about Mr. G., I’d been building another rocket. It was a larger one this time—three kitten lengths—and I was building it perfectly and painting it beautifully because I wasn’t going to fly it. It was going to sit safely in the middle of my science project, and I was going to put pictures of space around it. It would look great and nothing would go wrong.
    â€œEureka!”
    That was Seymour phoning on Tuesday night.
    â€œYou mean you’ve invented something?” I asked.
    He’d already hung up by the time I asked, but ten minutes later the doorbell rang.
    â€œWhere’s T-Rex, the mad attacker?” he asked.
    â€œHe’s in the kitchen. He only attacks when I first get home. After that he settles down.”
    â€œYou know what’s wrong, don’t you?” asked Seymour.
    I hadn’t really thought about anything being wrong. Seymour set a box and his backpack down in the middle of the living room and began to unload them.
    â€œWhat you’ve got is a very bored cat. You and your parents are away all day. T-Rex gets bored. When you come home, he attacks.”
    â€œCats don’t get bored. They sleep.”
    â€œThey sleep eighty percent of the time. That still leaves twenty percent of the time to be bored.”
    â€œHe eats for most of that, plus he’s got Alaska to play with,” I said.
    â€œI know, I know, but he still needs a little more entertainment, living indoors as he does.” Seymour grinned. “Besides,” he said, “wait until you see what I’ve built.”
    It was made of all those building sets parents give their kids at Christmasin order to turn them into architects. Seymour had also used some extra elastic bands, Epsicle sticks and duct tape.
    â€œI call it The Amuze-A-Kitty. I spelled it wrong on purpose to attract attention. That’s good advertising. It’s a self-entertaining cat toy,” said Seymour. “You know how T-Rex loves to chase things. Well—here is a dangly thing for him to bat around, right?”
    â€œSure,” I said. “But we’ve already got dangly toys at the store.”
    â€œThis is different,” said Seymour. “Hold this open.”
    I held open the door of a chute. Seymour loaded it with Ping-Pong balls.
    â€œI tried crumpled balls of paper at first, but they were too lumpy and jammed it,” he explained. “And I can’t use anything too heavy or it might hit him in the head and knock him out. Ping-Pong balls are perfect.”
    I began to try to figure out how it worked. A connected to B connected to C…? Seymour went in search of T-Rex.
    He didn’t have to look far. Both T-Rex and Alaska were watching from the kitchen doorway. Cats are snoopy. They wanted to know what was happening.
    â€œJiggle the string to get his attention, but not too hard,” said Seymour. “We want T-Rex to set it off himself.”
    I gently jiggled the string. In a flash, T-Rex was across the floor and watching the string with bright hunter’s eyes. He batted it once. It swung. He batted it twice. It bounced. He batted it a third time.
    SMACK SMACK SMACK SMACK SMACK SMACK…
    Forty million Ping-Pong balls exploded out of the chute and bounced around the room like crazed popcorn. Both