Commissioned by Glen.
Chapter One
It was a dark and rainy night this one time in Greater Vancouver. The Greater Vancouver Regional District could be found in the south-west corner of British Columbia; a province of Canada that lived on the west coast beside the Pacific Ocean. On this night there was a crescent moon that was bravely trying to fight through the cloud cover but wouldn't have enough strength to succeed for at least another week. The story we are about to enjoy takes part in what is called a suburb by those in Vancouver and a city unto itself by those that live in it. The residents call it Coquitlam, a beautiful city with many delightful things. The Salish people have wandered the area for over nine thousand years but the silly white folk think the city's origins really began in the nineteenth century when French mill workers thought it was a good place to live. White folk are often wrong about a lot of things but the city named after a "red fish up the river" is where we find ourselves on this evening.
One particular location in one particular part of Coquitlam was a house built in the 1970s population boom. The region decided to build a highway and a great number of people decided to drive up and see what was at the end of it. This house was second in from the corner and was across from a twenty-four gas station and a regional park. During the days and evenings kids and not so kids could be heard playing in the lacrosse box. On this particular evening, it was quiet, the lights from the gas station blurred neon across the puddles in the street. The puddles were dancing from the raindrops splashing into them. Those puddles were shattered whenever a car drove through at speeds excessive of the posted limit. Many residents felt speed limit signs were guides on what the minimum speed should be, not the maximum. Community posts on Facebook always had rumblings about "a child is going to get hurt!" If Facebook had been around when the community was founded, there probably would have been posts about it then. Unfortunately, throughout the years many children had been hurt but the cars kept on speeding through.
The main source of sound on this evening was the trains rumbling and sounding their horns at the crossing. A lonely sound to many, but the trains were declaring that they were there. The trains reached out to remind people of their existence and their importance at bringing freight across the mighty country of Canada. Police sirens occasionally could be heard, unfortunately nowhere near the speeders of the street. But it was a quiet evening for the most part.
Out of the older house crept a small, cream coloured, rather fluffy, cat. She'd had to use a back window because the front door often squeaked. She had a furtive glance over her shoulder as she hopped up onto the fence that separated the front yard from the backyard and then hopped back down again, barely moving a blade of grass. There was a light breeze that ruffled her long fur as she paused, making sure her absence hadn't been noticed. She wasn't supposed to be out and about after all.
She crept across the yard to the neighbours where an old VW Microbus sat, seemingly forgotten. It was an orange and white vehicle with flat tires that had definitely seen better days. One headlight was missing, there was a dent in the roof, and the hatchback didn't close all the way. The body probably had more rust than original metal. It lay forgotten and unwanted in the corner of the front yard. Unwanted, that is, except by one cat who called it her nighttime home.
The cat wriggled in through the hatchback with practiced ease. The lights from the gas station provided more than enough light for her to see. The technician was standing behind the kiosk smoking the green leaves and happy in his own little world. Living in British Columbia the cat was more than used to the green leaf and its smell, but she didn't quite understand why the humans lit it on fire and breathed smoke. Happy feelings were found from rolling around in the bits of the green leaves to bruise them and get them to release their secrets. Any sensible cat knew that.
The vehicle's treasures were few but precious. There was an old laptop with a missing R key that her human had called 'antiquated' and had put in the pile for recycling. She'd, with great effort, managed to smuggle it out and into her hiding place. She'd had a great battle to get the table of the Microbus to cooperate and then she'd had to wrestle one of the old cat beds out. Her human had kept insisting it was old and ratty and had to go in the garbage but the cat thought this was very silly. Humans were often quite silly. She'd stolen the bed and let the human think he had finally done thrown it away. She was happy to use it for a place to curl up when she was using her laptop.
There was an even more ancient captioned telephone beside the laptop. The cat hadn't managed to get her hands on a cell phone for texting yet, so she had to pretend to be mute and deaf when she wanted to communicate directly with the humans outside of her home. She felt bad claiming disabilities she didn't have, but one had to make do when dealing with the human world.
As hiding places went, it was a comfortable one. It kept the rain out, it had bits to play with, lots of places to hide, and enough leaves and ground cover between the van and the house so no one saw her pirated electricity and phone lines. The pine trees overhead kept the sun out in the summer and helped keep some of the warmth in the winter.
It was the perfect place to get one's self a better dinner than kibble.
Chapter Two
The hero of our story is a simple cat with simple needs. Her pet human called her 'Captain Fluffnstuff' and variations thereof. It was surprisingly close to her cat name, so she humoured him and pretended it was her name. It was amazing how far wrong humans could go when it came to naming their furry companions. She once met a dog named Bob. Who called a dog Bob? The less said about human naming practices of fish the better. Even worse than calling a dog Bob was naming your dinner. Fish were food, not friends.
Captain Fluffnstuff, who will humour us even further and let us call her Fluff and variations thereof, was a young cat of slightly above intelligence. What made her unique is not just her long luxurious coat and fluffy tail but that she is far more ambitious and curious than the average cat. While other cats may lay across a laptop's keyboard for the dual purpose of comforting warmth and irritating their human, Fluff wanted to learn and study human technology. It hadn't taken her long to figure out the internet. It had taken her a bit longer to figure out what to do with the internet.
Now she could spend her evenings doing just about whatever she wanted. She had access to credit cards that may or may not have belonged to her human. She had access to delivery drivers who were too tired and too jaded to even blink at instructions like 'Just give it to the cat' or 'leave it on the step.' She'd learned rather quickly that if you tipped well, they'd do whatever you wanted. Getting daytime deliveries from Amazon had been trickier, but getting the VW its own address had solved things. She got UPS to stick things under the rear axle and she'd fish them out when she could. She'd even managed to get a tarp under there so she didn't have to deal with soggy boxes. There was little worse for napping than a soggy box.
Fluffnstuff wasn't a hunter by nature. She'd chase off the mice and other animals if they bothered her, but for the most part, she was willing to live and let live. After all, why would you need to go to all the trouble of hunting down a rodent if you could just order pizza from online and have it delivered? If worst came to worst, there was also kibble in the house. There were far more interesting things to do than stalk through the mud.
So, she placed an order for dinner and started reading Reddit. The humans had all sorts of funny ideas that she liked to dispute. Sometimes her logic was a bit fuzzy, but then, so was she.
Chapter Three
Captain Fluffnstuff awoke with a yawn, giving her front paws a quick clean. She wouldn't admit to sometimes drooling is her sleep as it was undignified. A queen never did anything undignified, at least, not where anyone else could possibly see her. With a yawn and a stretch, she checked her dinner order as 'delivered' She must have slept through the arrival on the delivery car unless it was that overly enthusiastic teenage human who liked to ride his bike all over the place. The silly human must bike kilometer after kilometer, although she supposed he didn't have to visit the gas station very often. Unless he liked to smoke green leaf with the attendants.
She wriggled out of the back of the VW Microbus and sauntered over to the front porch. There was a small bench there that was probably for sitting on but all it ever got used for was collecting the advertisements of grocery stores, the plethora of newspapers that Coquitlam seemed to produce and whatever had been ordered and left.
Something truly tragic was quickly discovered. There were no hot dogs. She had placed the order. The order had in fact been confirmed. There was the flat box that the bicycle delivery human liked to use. His preferred boxes were useless for naps since they were so shallow but she tried to humour him without much complaint. Captain Fluffnstuff didn't quite run back to her home away from home to look up the delivery status, but it would be reasonable enough to call it a sprint. The delivery was confirmed as left on the porch. She paced back and forth not quite sure what to do.
Coming to a decision she texted the bicycle delivery human and said she can't find the hot dogs is he sure he left them behind? That was polite and diplomatic and human, wasn't it? She wanted to howl and call him a thief, but she didn't think that would help her get her dinner. Someone was a thief and they'd enjoyed her hot dogs! She'd paid for it and everything with her pet human's money!
It seemed an eternity before she got a text back that assured her he'd left it in the usual place, dude. Fluff wasn't quite sure what a dude was but she was fairly certain she wasn't one. After all, if anyone knew what they were or weren't it was the person who it applied to and she certainly didn't recall being branded a dude. She even checked her collar tags to make sure. None of them said she was a dude.
With a rumbling growl, she turned on her tail, the faint scent of hot dogs all that was left of the dinner she'd been very much looking forward to. She looked around the yard and up at the trees and across the way. There were plenty of thief suspects to be found. It was unlikely that the gas station worker would cross the road for a hot dog or two when he had his own broiling away. However, the crows had been known to steal things and Raccoons were notorious thieves. Most people thought that the squirrels would be vegetarian and avoid such things as hot dogs but the little coffee addicts would probably eat just about anything that they thought had been left for them. The owl wasn't likely to swoop so low as to eat hot dogs but one never knew.
She sighed the sigh of the long-suffering. She would just have to investigate and find out who stole her hot dogs and then there would be trouble for the thief!
Chapter Four
Raccoons had lived in the yard since before there was a yard to live in. No one had remembered to tell the original family of raccoons that they were supposed to be territorial and kick the males far out of the nest and the girls were supposed to wander off and find mates. Mostly this family had found friends and mates from every which place and dragged them back to their own territory. This led to there being a somewhat raccoon mafia that had taken over acres of territory.
When the white humans came into the lands they caused some problems by cutting down trees and putting up houses. These problems, however, were balanced in the raccoon mind as the humans tended to leave all sorts of lovely garbage around and also have small furry creatures they could steal and eat. Chicken eggs were a particular favourite but a chicken itself would do in a pinch.
Raccoons became devious at figuring out how to get past the things humans like to call raccoon protection. It was very nice of the humans to give them puzzles to play with. Why they even tried the silly bear protections once in a while, but really, everyone knew raccoons were far smarter than bears. After all, when a bear showed up the raccoons cleared out, did you see a bear doing that for a raccoon? No, of course, you didn't. Bears just weren't that smart.
The raccoons had already been taught with fast claws and loud hisses that the furry creatures who currently lived in the houses were not to be messed with. Momma Raccoon's nose still had the marks all these years later. In the cold winter months, she liked to tell her great great great grandkits the stories of the horror of the flashing claw. Pappa raccoon, who hadn't gotten the memo that he was supposed to have moved out years ago, just rolled his eyes and counted his nuts.
It wasn't hard for Captain Fluffnstuff to corner the raccoons to ask them questions. Where had they been when the food had been delivered, she asked. They were very excited to chitter about the yummy smelling food coming from the human on the bike but they knew better than to steal the cats' food because then they would get in trouble with not only the human with the broom but the captain herself. They'd heard the rattle of the bike and the squeak after he'd put the food down and the rattle as he left again.
They said they'd thought about going and investigating because it did smell very yummy, but they had lots of potato peels to sort through. They were happy to hold up the peels as examples. They muttered that the broccoli was soggy and they didn't know why the humans ever bothered cooking it since no one ever ate it anyway. Fluffnstuff could sympathize, it didn't smell that good when it was being cooked either. The mammals all agreed that the humans should throw away more cheese.
Fluff wasn't convinced that the raccoons hadn't be involved, they were called nature's thieves for a reason but she decided she'd go on to talk to the grumpy old owl rather than pursue this particular string further.
Chapter Five
If someone had told the barren owl who lived in the old pine that she should be up on the side of a mountain somewhere rather than in the middle of a city, she'd have snapped her beak at them and hissed. She was a very good hisser. If a cat hissed at her, she would hiss right back, flex talons and beat her wings at them. The cats and she had come to an agreement that had been passed for the generations of mutually ignoring the other. She was an old and cranky owl now, but she knew she could still give any pesky cat a run for their money. She could still chomp a tail if she had to.
She lived in the old pine that had been struck by lightning twice. Fortunately, she'd been nowhere near the tree either time. It had recovered although after the second time it never again grew quite as tall as it's neighbours. Perhaps even stubborn old pine trees could learn their lessons.
The owl didn't much like the rain, it made her feathers soggy and flying much harder work. Her joints were always aching these days and it took a while to warm up before she could take a proper flight. She preferred to just take short hops and glides rather than go hunting all over. The raccoons often helped by leaving bits and drabs of garbage lying about after they'd had their own dinners. The mice they attracted were good for dinner. Sometimes the raccoons would complain about her pellets at the bottom of the tree. She was of the opinion that really if the pellets were such a problem, the raccoons could find a new set of trees to live in.
She ruffled her feathers as she watched the noisy cars and ignored the cat stalking about. The cats were always after something, but as long as they weren't trying to steal her dinner she wasn't about to pick a fight. Occasionally, the fluffy one would even leave her things. Of course, sometimes she had to take them because they forgot the pecking order of the yard! Really, was it so hard to be respectful of an owl who had been here since before the cat's mother had been a kitten?
Captain Fluffnstuff had to climb up the tree, which made her irritable. While pine trees weren't that hard to climb, it did mean she got bits of bark and pine needs in her fur. Sometimes the debris would get right wrapped up in her tail fur and it would take forever to work out. To make matters worse, if the owl was feeling particularly grumpy, she'd vomit up pellets to bounce off Fluff's head. Fluffnstuff was grumpy because someone had stolen her very yummy dinner and then made her climb a tree to find out who had stolen her very yummy dinner. Someone was going to get a snoot full of claws.
The owl saw her coming, the owl saw everything that could be seen. Perhaps she even knew who had stolen her dinner. When asked the owl rolled her eyes and fluffed her feathers and pointed out that she'd still have mustard on her if she'd stolen the food. The owl was far more articulate than a bunch of silly raccoons and had a reputation to uphold. Fluff couldn't remember if the raccoons had had any sauces on them, but knowing them they'd have licked it off each other anyway. T
Fuff wouldn't have seen or heard the owl if she'd gone after the food, but she would have heard the raccoons especially since they tended to fight over everything. So less likely it was the raccoons and more likely it was the owl. However, the owl denied anything to do with it and showed that her wings were still dry because the mice hadn't come out yet. Fluff was pretty sure that wings could be dried fairly quickly and the owl was a grouch, but she couldn't really prove either. After all, maybe feathers did dry faster than fur. The owl was old though, she wasn't up to preening and her feathers looked a bit ragged at the best of times. Fluffnstuff really didn't think the owl was her culprit.
With a sigh, she climbed back down the tree. It was time to wake up some crows.
Chapter Six
The Crows were busybodies that had hiding holes and perches everywhere. They were as likely to head to the rookery in Burnaby as they were to just sleep in the trees in the yard. It all depended on the whims of those around them. They were notorious thieves and they'd steal food, windshield wipers, coins, or just about anything that wasn't nailed down. They'd once managed to work together using a small hammer to even steal a bent, rusty, nail that was half sticking out of the windowsill. They'd been told they couldn't do it and crows love a challenge.
The crows of the yard, as a whole, objected to the term 'murder of crows' and called themselves a flock. When they were feeling fancy and a little bit silly, they'd refer to themselves as a congress and then caw merrily because congress just another word for a bunch of murders? Not that the crows were murderers, of course, it wasn't their fault if the carrion hadn't quite carried on when they arrived. Why it was only the civilized thing to help them carry on with their carrying on.
Captain Fluffnstuff wasn't particularly fond of the crows because they were silly, pranksters, and were entirely too fond of puns. However, they were the biggest thieves around to be found. The problem was, they didn't typically fly at night. When the did flap around at night, the owl was pretty likely to swoop down and rap them on the heads with a closed fist for bothering her. While a flock of crows probably could take on the average owl, a very cranky old owl wasn't worth the battle. However, the owl had been sulking in her tree and avoiding the rain so it's possibly a sneaky crow or two could have come in and stolen her dinner. It was all getting very complicated.
Fluff looked up at the tree and started another climb. She found four of the crows in the middle branches, fast asleep. Two had their heads tucked back over their shoulders while the other two were just looking like perched birds with their eyes closed. Fluff wasn't even going to begin to guess who was who, all the crows liked to look alike to confuse and it worked. She clung to the tree for a couple of minutes, tail lashing against the bark. Really, it was the least they could do to notice she was here.
With a swing and a pounce, she landed between two crows. They still didn't wake up. They did, however, wake up, when she shoved one off the branch. There was a ruckus as all the crows seemed to wake up at once and start flapping around madly, cawing and fussing and doing all sorts of silly crow things. Fluff wrapped her tail around her paws and waited patiently for them to come to their senses.
When she was started to doubt that crows actually had any senses to speak of, they finally settled back down on the tree and started to demand what she'd been up to and why she would ever push them off a tree. Her explanation of she needed them awake didn't seem good enough for the crows and they threatened to push her off the branch. This did offer a matter of some concern to Fluff since she didn't have wings. While she would easily land on her feet it was still a matter of landing with her weight on her joints and paws and it was less than pleasurable. She sighed and offered an apology that the crows seemed to believe.
Things improved for about fifteen seconds because right after the apology she asked them if they'd stolen her dinner. You'd think she'd asked them if they'd stolen the crown jewels of parliament or some such thing. They were offended and upset and caw'd and caw'd some more.
The door of the house opened with a squeak and a blonde head stuck out as it looked around the yard. Obviously, the human was trying to figure out what was upsetting the crows, but it's not like Fluff could explain to him. Humans didn't listen and she wasn't supposed to be out. This evening was turning into an unending supply of problems and she still hadn't found out who had stolen her dinner. The human muttered to himself and closed the door with a firm thud.
Giving up on the crows, she crawled down the side of the tree that the door couldn't see. It was time to face something even worse than crows, it was time to face.. The squirrels.
Chapter Seven
The squirrels of the yard were an unrelated gang who had formed around one particular squirrel. The leader squirrel had grown up in Algonquin Park in Ontario and had some very strange ideas on squirreling. The squirrel had decided that snow and mountains weren't for him and upon deciding that he decided that wherever the sunset would be warmer than where it rose. So, the squirrel found the first large truck heading west and got comfy in the back. He hopped out at rest stops to find food and water and then just found the next big truck going his way.
The squirrel had arrived at a port near the ocean filled with big trucks, cursing humans and many seagulls. It was then he discovered he really didn't like seagulls. Seagulls, it turned out, were loud, messy, and didn't much like squirrels who tried to steal their food. He had some strong thoughts about how seagulls didn't really need french fries, that they had an entire beach of shells they could crack open. Muttering about how it was a pain in the tail to find a new home the squirrel had made his way east until he found a locale that had more trees than seagulls and decided it was home. Of course, he'd had to evict the family of squirrels that thought it was their home, but it was a minor thing after he stole half their nuts and gave the nuts to the crows. The crows, having been quite successfully bribed, were happy to dive bomb the native squirrels at any given opportunity.
So, the eastern squirrel had set up shop in the tree with plenty of nuts to keep him company and bribe crows with. The downside was, he started to get lonely. Especially on the few days that Coquitlam got snow each year. Sometimes it was two feet of snow, sometimes it was two inches, but it was a very rare year that saw more than a grand total of eight days of snow. In the squirrel's opinion, one day of snow was too much. While snow did create the ice crusts over the mud puddles that were fun to slide on and crunch it wasn't really worth the overall price of cold. So, the squirrel had started to attract other not-so-usual squirrels into his family and soon they'd taken over a couple of trees and kept the local humans completely confused as to why their coffee grounds kept going missing.
The squirrels were addicted to coffee.
They'd bribed a cat to get them one of the press down coffee makers which had the advantage of not needing zappy lines, but the disadvantage of making cold coffee. Cold coffee from used grounds was less than ideal so when they could, they would follow a human into the gas station and steal the gas station's coffee. The easiest time to steal coffee was in the middle of the night, however, it was also the time of the worst coffee. The squirrels had taken to sleeping in shifts just in case an opportunity came along that would make a quick theft possible. If they happened to get a donut or chocolate bar in the process, even better. The raccoons were always happy to open a chocolate bar for them in exchange for half. The eastern squirrel didn't believe in fighting when bribing was much more efficient.
Captain Fluffnstuff wasn't surprised to find the Eastern Squirrel awake in his den when she arrived. Her fur was full of even more debris from the flora of the yard. There was even a small down feather stuck to her collar, probably from a crow since the owl would have been very grumpy if she thought Fluff was trying to steal a feather. Whenever she saw the squirrels the eastern squirrel was awake, he never seemed to sleep. When she had suggested that perhaps he'd had too much coffee he had become even grumpier than the owl.
Taking a deep breath hoping she wouldn't get squirrels as excitable as the crows had been, she explained about the theft and if they'd seen anything. It was fairly unlikely the squirrels of the yard had turned into omnivores but she wasn't willing to put anyone past anything at this point. After all, hot dogs were pretty tasty.
The squirrels conferred in a scrum, their bushy tails bouncing up and down as they chattered amongst themselves before turning back to the captain. They explained they had not seen her dinner nor had they seen any residents of the yard near it. But for a reasonable fee, they might be willing to investigate the tree residents more thoroughly as they could manner in the trees far better than she could.
She sighed and said she'd keep that as the backup plan. After all, the squirrels were devious and inventive, she wouldn't put it past them to get her to pay them to hide their own tracks. They could have stolen her dinner to sell to one of the other residents after all. The squirrels could be vicious little mercenaries.
Chapter Eight
Captain Fluffnstuff returned to her Microbus to contemplate the situation at paw. All she really knew was that her hot dogs had been delivered and then gone missing. All the potential food thieves denied knowledge of the theft. Even owl hadn't seen anything. They'd all heard the delivery human's bicycle so he hadn't been lying about delivering it and the food place was still warm. At some point between his delivery and her waking up from her nap, her hot dogs had been stolen from her.
To complicate matters her fur now had bits and sorts all throughout it and she would have to make sure she got them all out or the human would know she'd snuck out. They would then start a mission to find every single one of her escape routes to try and prevent further nocturnal freedoms. It wasn't as if the humans could prevent her from leaving when she wanted to leave but they could certainly make it more of a pain that it needed to be.
Captain Fluffnstuff had to be back inside by dawn when the male human would get up to leave the house. He got to use the front door, of course, because he had hands and only beings with hands got to use the door. That caused her to wonder if the raccoons would be allowed to use the door if they could reach the doorknob. She would save that as a suggestion for the next time the human irritated her. She was fairly certain the answer was no, raccoons were not allowed to use doors. She was very certain that the human would get very excited if there were raccoons in the house. It's not like raccoons knew to clean their paws before going inside after all.
Halfway through the night and she'd still not had dinner, had a thief to catch and fur to groom. She was short on clues and even shorter on inspiration. Obviously, it was time for a nap.
