They weren't at the junkyard past the Russell Hotel. They weren't in the ruins of the burnt mansion off St. James Street, or hiding out in the Kingsway tram tunnel.

Following Rumpuscat to yet another possible location for Macavity's lair and the cata from the village, Munkustrap glared at his childhood friend.

"How many more places do we have to look?" he hissed, out of earshot of Mistoffeles and the Tugger. " I thought you never let him get away from you, that you always knew where he was!"

Rumpuscat paced under the rickety trestle bridge as the train rumbled above them, heading for the northern part of the Northern Hemisphere. The light and sound of the locomotive interrupted the black night, like the hijinx & wails of young toms on the prowl.

"He's moved around more lately," Rumpuscat defended himself. "I haven't seen Griddlebones or my other young contact in months."

The Munk threw himself onto the cool grass. He eyed a small, grey field mouse, who couldn't believe his deplorable luck, in being surrounded by not one, not two, but four cats. Munkustrap took out his frustrations on the mouse, batting it between his paws, imagining it to be that showboat, Macavity.

He'd always been a loose cannon. Why Griddlebones had chosen him as successor...

"I've got it!" Rumpuscat jumped up from the spot in the gravelly dust in which he'd chosen to sit, as if punishing himself for disappointing the cat he most admired.

"What?" Munkustrap asked, choking down the leathery skin and meat of the ill-fated rodent.

"The theater cat," Scat exclaimed, hurrying over to his friend, now that he could offer him renewed hope. "He and Mac were always friends, remember?"

"Gus?" the Munk asked in surprise. "He's still living?"

Scat nodded, his red eyes bobbing like fireflies. "Yep, and he lives not far from here. I'm sure he knows where we can find Mac."

Munkustrap spit out mouse bones and grinned. He looked across the shadowy field to where Misto and Tugger were taking turns walking on a wire, inexplicably stretched low between two trees. Was it possible that Misto somehow strung it? Munkustrap didn't know or care. "Hey, you two," he called. The duo turned their heads at the excitement they heard in his voice. "Let's go," he ordered.

Rumpuscat led the way as they all ran along the dark, rural road, back to the lights of the city. Munkustrap imagined Demeter, with her compact curves and languid golden eyes. I'll tell her I love her, then she'll want to come back with me to the vicarage and the garden and our family.

Jenny Anydots had wept and moped ever since Old Deuteronomy had told her about the flight of her surrogate daughter. All day she sat beneath the stairs or on the mat in bitter misery.

"She doesn't love me; she doesn't think of me as her mother. How could you leave without telling me?" The tawny Gumbie cat tortured herself and Deuteronomy with her thoughts and questions.

He did his best to comfort her in the dusty, overstuffed sitting room of the vicarage. "I'm sure that's not it," he said in his soothing, basso voice. He was using his teeth to unfetter the curtain cord that, in her distress, Jenny had tied into sailor knots. "You know she's always been under the influence of Bombalurina."

Jenny's tail went stick straight as she snorted in hostility for that brazen little flibbertigibbit.

"Don't worry," Deuteronomy said, heading out to return to his sunny spot on the wall. "Munkustrap will find her and bring her home." He took one last look back at his spinster sister, a tabby mound of unhappiness. "In the meantime," he suggested, "why don't you drill your mice?"

With a nod, she licked her fat, leopard-spotted paw, then used it to wipe her tear-swollen face.

The mice and cockroaches in the cluttered basement perked up when they heard Jenny's heavy tread on the stairs and scurried to assemble. "Sqaaad..."

The Old Gumbie Cat

watch?v=kW4UAy-Hfio