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Pounce Messages Home

ON APPROACH TO PLANET EARTH

Miles above Earth, Pounce zoomed through space in his cat-shaped ship, whisker antennae and viewports in both eyes, heading toward the shiny blue ball on the bad side of the galaxy.

Pounce was finally close enough to establish real-time communication, audio only, with the agent on-planet. Obi, he called himself—a strange name.

Pounce rested a paw on the control, stretched out a bean toe, and pressed a button.

“Agent O, can you hear me? This is Pounce de Leon, second-in-command and Major Meow-Domo of the Great Feline Empire.”

Amid the static, a faint voice replied, “Nice of you to get in touch, Pounce. I was beginning to wonder if the GFE had forgotten about me.”

“Such is the life of a Vanguard explorer,” Pounce replied.

“Feels more like exile, but clearly my feelings are not the reason you are calling.” Obi’s voice crackled.

“We received your message and I am on my way, with orders from the chairman himself to follow up and get this invention you say you’ve discovered. Can you give me any more information?”

“I first heard about it from a conversation between two neighbor two-leggers. You see, I am fast approaching the end of my lives, and the neighboring humans have become sentimental about it. They have become rather attached to me, if you can believe it, and mentioned something they call a ‘chip’ that could somehow extend my life. Indefinitely.”

“Remarkable,” Pounce replied.

“That’s not all. This chip thing can also be used as a power source. A type of battery that never needs recharging.” Obi paused, letting that bit sink in.

“We know how much trouble the Robots could cause if they never needed to recharge.”

Another pause. Pounce shuddered and licked his shoulder nervously.

“Astonishing. So much potential good—and evil—in one invention. And you say it is nearby?”

“I believe it is. The humans are almost always in the neighboring home, which is where this chip must be.”

Pounce nodded. “Understood.”

“Pounce, you should know I’ve seen bots inside the home. Primitive creatures, local variety, but not a good sign. I assume you brought help? Something like this is sure to draw the attention of those metal menaces.”

“Already?” Pounce shook his head. “This is bad. I have indeed received intelligence reports from our Binar spies of a large fleet headed in your direction.”

“And our fleet?” Obi asked hopefully.

Pounce almost couldn’t say it.

“Unfortunately, our fleet, well, disappeared a few weeks ago,” Pounce muttered, clearly annoyed. “Again. Obi, I know it sounds impossible, but we need to get the chip before the Robots do. The chairman desperately wants it, and we can’t afford to let the Robots have it.”

“Me and whose army?” Obi said, and Pounce didn’t have to answer.

“I’m sorry, Obi. I’m coming to help, but until then, you’re going to have to improvise. Be creative.”

Low static buzzed from the speakers as Obi thought.

“I’ll see what I can do to infiltrate. Unfortunately, due to my age, I can’t move so well. I’m going to need to find help.”

“That’s the spirit. We’re counting on you. Good luck, Obi. Pounce out.”

Pounce lifted his toe from the button and his mind began to wander.

It was his first trip to Earth, and he was more than a little interested to see if the place was really as horrid as everyone liked to say. He had so many questions.

Did the two-leggers really carry us around in bags? As if we were groceries? Lock us away during dinner parties, of all things—when everyone in the galaxy knows we make the most polite conversation and the most honorable of honored guests?

Can you imagine? He flicked his ears.

It wasn’t until Pounce edged his ship closer to the blue-tinted planet—in fact, through its orbit and all the way into the ball’s atmosphere—that he realized the true horror of the place.

The blue color on the ball was water.

Oceans and oceans of the stuff.

Hideous.

Aside from lapping at a pleasant, leisurely trickle directly from a faucet, water experiences were some of the most dangerous and panic-inducing of all.

Pounce instantly pictured uncomfortable bathing and unpleasant raining and un-survivable flooding . . .

Shuddering, Pounce turned to his aide. “I don’t understand. Why would anybody live on such a planet, Oscar?”

“Stupidity?” Oscar yawned, rolling over on the copilot’s catnap pillow and smashing his whiskers down into his favorite drool spot. The major’s intern still smelled like tuna; he’d just crawled up from the kitchen to the cockpit through one of the cat-sized hallways that went up and down the length of the ship.

Pounce looked from the round, blue planet to his intern again. “But do you really think an entire planet can be stupid, Oscar?”

“Of course, boss.” Oscar yawned. “What about the Binars—those dumbucket bots? That’s not just a planet, it’s a whole, big, stupid Galactic Robot Federation—or whatever!”

“Ah, well. There you go. So they’re just incredibly stupid, the two-leggers. That must be it,” the Major Meow-Domo said. “How sad for them.”

Pounce flicked on the autopilot and let it carry him to his preprogrammed coordinates. He had other matters at present paw to contend with.

With a small squawk, Pounce began to tap his message out slowly with his front left bean toe, repeatedly booping the keyboard on the ship’s communication device.

It was exhausting, and not very accurate, but the results were this:

Report to Chairman Meow:

Arrived at Earth safely.

Contacted Local Agent.

Formulating Plans to Acquire Chip.

First: the Plan to Nap.

Second: to be determined.

Will report back soon.

—Pounce

This took quite some time, as bean-toe typing was a rather laborious process. Pounce sighed afterward, stretching his stiff toe, wondering why he bothered.

Chairman Meow never read his reports.

Feeling tired, Pounce crawled up on the keyboard for a quick nap.

As he rested on the warm keys, he began sending a constant stream of messages back to the Feline Home World, including the following:

Ajoifsefjq9p084frjqoisdjfaslkndv;lasdll;fsj lkajsfopaijhfopai jseopifjaposiefal;nba hn jhhhhhhhdddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddaaaaaaaaaa

Nobody read those messages either.