Jack Llewellyn Hughes

Plantagenet sauntered across the wall that bordered his domain and peered over the edge into the shadowy alley. Many a skirmish between the common cats occurred there, he knew, and he ought to keep away, but the People who maintained his house had hardly left him alone since the operation.

The Big Ones were always badgering him about how good a boy he was (as if this was news!) and the Little Ones were constantly touching his fur with their dirty hands. They seemed to have forgotten that he had not lost his claws, which he used to keep them at bay on occasion, but they always returned.

“Does he miss chasing his tail?” one of them had asked. Plantagenet had rarely had the luxury of a gap in his schedule for something so infantile and, offended and not likely to be fed from the table, had stormed out the backdoor. It was not as dramatic an exit as he had hoped, his paws making only a faint pitter-patter sound on the cold kitchen tiles, but he felt he had made his point.

Without his tail to help him balance, a single gust of wind might send him over the edge into a world without those abominable People, where he could do what he liked completely unmolested by hands and smartphone cameras. The cats out there might be vulgar but, with his guile, Plantagenet could easily tame them. They could do his bidding and might one day even be capable of engaging in intelligent conversation, something the fawning People had never managed.

But what about food?

Minutes later, Plantagenet lay down on his velvet sofa, next to a Little One with a plate. He ought to stay indoors until he felt better, he thought. Liberty sounded like awfully hard work.