Miranda the Great (3 page)

"Mew, mew, mew!" Frantic little mew-mews from the doorway beside them. That was what they heard.

"Wait!" cried Miranda, her heart torn by the mew-mews. She looked into the doorway to see what was there.

Four! Four little, tiny, hardly-able-to-stand-up kittens. "Mew-mew! Help!" they cried.

Miranda looked at the four little kittens in dismay. There was no big person nor any big mother cat minding them. They were all alone in the fire and the sacking and the smoke. They would die! It was a wonder they had not already choked from the smoke, their little mouths were so wide open in their piteous cries for help.

"Mew, mew, mew," they cried more frantically than ever, now that they sensed help was near.

"Woe-woe," said Miranda gently. But there was no time for further tenderness. She picked up one of the kittens in her mouth by the nape of its neck, beckoned to Punka to grab another, and they dashed through the thick smoke and sparks into the alleyway. They laid down those first two kittens, tore back through the smoke, grabbed up the other two, and successfully made the dash back to safety.

Then Miranda and Punka each carried one of the little kittens in her mouth and shoved the other two ahead of them, as gently as possible, farther and farther from where the thick smoke hung and toward the high ancient wall at the other end of the alleyway.

Punka had a little trouble with her kittens. Although she had had some experience with tiny kittens, having helped her mother raise her second litter, minding them and teaching them to walk and to play games, still she had never carried a kitten in her mouth before and did not have the knack. Her kitten kept slipping out of her mouth. But Miranda encouraged her daughter, told her she was doing very nicely, for what she was doing was not easy ... to carry one kitten in her mouth and shove another along with her paws and be careful not to hurt it. Also, the loud mewing of the rolled-along kittens was very hard to endure. They kept proclaiming that they did not like this game of being rolled along like a fur ball and that they wanted their mother, their real right milk-giving mother, they were hungry. The kittens in the mouths of Miranda and Punka could not utter. But Miranda and Punka made them all take turns, now two in mouths and two rolled along, now the others. This was fair since it gave all a chance to mew and complain.

Sometimes they stopped to rest. The four little kittens would snuggle close to Miranda, and although Punka was helping to rescue them, she was jealous and tried to get between. Miranda understood her jealousy and washed Punka's face and told her that she was the best. She admonished her to set a good example and be brave, to try not to say "wah." Thus Miranda restored Punka's sense of security and also her own. So far she had successfully concealed any sense of anxiety from the others. She acted
bored instead, as though she had lived through many experiences as bad as, if not worse than, this. She made up some story, and the kittens grinned.

Finally they reached the ancient wall at the end of the alleyway, and there, while Miranda formulated a plan to get them all over it, they rested again.

In the past Miranda had frequently gone to the other side of the wall by way of the little tunnel that was supposed to carry off rainwater. Once the lizard cat and Miranda had met head on inside of it. Of course the lizard cat had had to back out, for Miranda would never retreat. Now, how to get the little kittens through the dark little tunnel and not lose any of them? That was what Miranda wondered.

Then Punka, who had never before made up a plan, made one now. She told it to her mother, and her mother purred. Punka's prowess as a leaper had not gone unnoticed by Miranda. Sometimes in the garden she would watch her daughter make the unexpected high leap straight up in the air and straight down again, and she would study the feat with cool detachment. Now she listened in approval to Punka's plan, which
was to leap up and over the ancient wall with a kitten in her mouth ... all four of the kittens, in fact, one by one.

"All right," said Miranda, and she purred. "Go ahead."

So Punka took one of the kittens in her mouth, got a firm grip on it, not to drop it, studied the wall a second (it was more than six feet high, it was seven!) and leaped! Straight up she leaped, and down she came on the other side of the alley wall.

Miranda put her ear to the wall. "Wah," said Punka.

"Woe-woe," answered Miranda. It sounded as though she said "
Io!
"—which means "Hurrah!" in Latin.

Punka repeated the feat three times. All the kittens were now on the safe other side of the wall. Miranda took her usual route through the little tunnel, for she was not a leaping cat. And now she and Punka and the four little kittens, their heads hobbling dizzily from the aerial escapade, were reunited.

There was not as much smoke on this side of the wall and no flames, no sparks at all. They were safe. However, Miranda felt that they must
find shelter soon, for night was coming. So on they pressed. The going was tedious and rough. To make matters worse, Miranda found another little abandoned baby kitten, and this one could not walk either. She and Punka now had five unable-to-walk kittens to save and to succor. Supposing the wind shifted and the fire returned to this side of the city?

"The first four must learn to walk," Miranda said to Punka. "Stand up!" she ordered them. "Stand!" she repeated when the little ones simply stared at her with their jaws hanging open stupidly. "Now!" commanded Miranda. "Like this. You walk like this."

Miranda paraded back and forth before the waifs with her head high and her tail stiff. The little ones tried, but they kept falling over. A little tiger cat who had silently and suddenly joined them laughed. Miranda cuffed him. "You may stay with us," she said, "if you are nice."

The kittens tried again and again. Pretty soon they could stand and they could walk from Miranda to Punka and from Punka to Miranda without tumbling. "Mew, mew!" they cried in exultation.

"What an achievement!" Miranda gave each one a swift little lick or two. However, now that
the kittens could walk, they were harder to manage than they had been before. Being babies, they had already forgotten the terrible danger from which Miranda and Punka had just rescued them. They began to frisk about, to play punch games with each other, and even to run away.

"Stop!" commanded Miranda. "You must save your strength. Stop that this minute!"

Grinning, the four kittens careened as fast as they could away from Miranda and safety. Though exhausted, Miranda and Punka rounded them up. And it was time to go. Miranda picked up the new little sooty-colored kitten that was really too young to walk, and she led the procession. Punka had to bring up the rear, carry whatever little kitten might tire and have to be carried for a ways, keep count, make sure that all were together, and not let any of the new walkers get lost.

Miranda was very proud of the way Punka was handling things and rubbed up against her lovingly for a moment. Pampered! That is what people used to say about Punka! Look at her now! A high leaper, an important rescuer of lost cats. A princess. The Princess Punka.

"Wah!" said Punka. She wished she could stop being brave and be pampered again, pampered, petted, and admired.

The little tiger cat turned out to be a fine assistant. He walked first on one side of the kittens and then on the other and kept the line straight. When extra kittens tried to come along, he did not say, "No. Go away!" He was an including cat, not an excluding one. Miranda purred.

Thus the procession of cats and kittens went up the street and past the Roman Forum. Some rather mean cats had taken refuge there, and they hissed menacingly at Miranda. Miranda had to put her little sooty baby down and fight off one bold cat who thought that she and her kittens had come to stay. He went and hid behind a fallen pillar because he could see that
Miranda was a miraculous, possibly dangerous cat. Shaking herself, Miranda picked up her sooty-paws again and led her group away. There were seventeen kittens now.

"We are nearly there," Miranda told them.

"Mew-mew," said the little ones, much comforted.

Where "there" was going to be, Miranda did not know herself. However, she knew she would recognize it when they reached it as the best of all possible places for herself, Punka, and all the tired, exhausted little kittens. Suddenly Miranda stopped short. They had come upon a broad and beautiful square. Miranda put down sooty-paws, and she said, "Woe-woe. Halt!"

All gladly halted. There, across the square, was a magnificent building, rounded in form, some of it battered away, but much of it still standing. It had been hurt before in other wars. Today's bombardment had hurt it still more.

This was the Colosseum! And this was where the colossal gold cat named Miranda and her colossal silver daughter cat named Punka had, by happenstance, led their troop of rescued kittens! For a moment all sat and studied this great and somewhat ruined building.

Then Miranda stood up. They all stood up.
"Woe-woe!" said Miranda. She picked up the baby kitten in her mouth, and she marched through the lofty archway where once proud chariots had rolled.

"Mew-mew," said the kittens, filing in one by one.

They knew what a triumphal procession they had made, for not a one had tumbled, and they grinned.

"There," said Miranda as she gathered her orphans into a safe and shadowy corner. "Now," she said, "we can wash ourselves." And they all did. "We are home," said Miranda. The word brought peace to the little ones and to Punka. "Take a nap," said Miranda.

But, just as they were all ready to do this, too, all curled up in tight little balls, from way down deep inside the Colosseum there came reverberating a great and awful roar.

"Urr-roorah! Urr-roorah!"

Miranda, Punka, and the kittens sat up straight. Their hair bristled; their tails puffed out. They stood on stiff legs, and then the kittens ran to Miranda in terror. What was that? That great and awful roar?

Miranda raised a paw to silence the kittens.
She glared into the gloom beyond, and she listened. There it went again..."Urr-rurruh-roo!"

Miranda turned to the kittens. "It is a lion," she announced calmly. "A king lion or a queen lion. Lions are always kings or queens."

"Wah," said Punka. And all the little ones opened their mouths to say "mew-mew." But no sound came out. They were hoarse from smoke, from past crying, and from present terror. These silent mews were very unsettling to Miranda, and she knew that she had to do something about the lion right away. But what?