Although they say I’m a cat, I was never sure, and I’m not entirely certain even now. You see, when I was a kitten, I wandered from home and forgot my way back.

Most cats don’t need much more than regular meals to care which blanket they knead their biscuits in. But I had the kind of itchy feet that roam from place to place, searching for where they first set down.

What I didn’t know then, was if my paws had walked the whole Earth ten times over, they never could have brought me back to where they started out. Which is the reason I’m writing this down, so you’ll know how I found out during the strange events that happened last July.

And with this, my story begins.

Mostly though, I’ve got a mouth on me that manages to make everything worse all on its own. So with the help of that mouth, before long those itchy feet were burning up the road at the wrong end of an angry mob, which was how I wound up on the mountain in the middle of this particular July night.

On my own again, my only regret was I hadn’t said goodbye to Rose. But there was no turning back, not after the things I said to Java and the other cats. Cool under my paws, the earth gave up a thousand scents left over from the day. Over the drone of crickets, I listened to a nightingale sing his parody of love, flattening in the dirt at some opossum’s shriek. An owl shot through the trees, beak clacking. Foxes yip-tyip-yipped down the ridge.

Behind me, I could hear leaves crunch. That clumsy cat was still following. A stick cracked. Couldn’t the clueless idiot scent coyotes or lynx that crossed this very path? The way she trundled after me on those short legs, making all that noise, the clumsy cat would get herself killed before the night was out, and me with her. I should have driven her away.

Whirling around in an angry huff, I shouted down the path.

“Go home, MeMe! Stop following me.”

She couldn’t jump, she couldn’t run much, she couldn’t climb anything higher than a chair; a worthless cat.

The owl flew out of the branches again with the rush of death. Flattening in the grass, I looked down the mountain through a break in the trees at the Susquehanna River meandered silvery in the moonlight. Headlights crawled along route fifteen across the valley. Tires to flatten a cat. The world’s a tough place if you’re small.

Nuts! How did she find me up here, the little fool. This was no place to be out at night and what did she think I was going to do? Go back?

She was yelling up the path at me, screaming something I couldn’t hear because there was noise in the air. Not loud noise, more like a weight of noise, sounding like a toy I saw a kid playing with — a spinning top singing rising musical chords as it spun faster and faster.

As still as a rock, with that certain fear cats have of things crossing over their heads, when I looked up, it was gone.

MeMe passed me, running toward the crest of the ridge. She called over her shoulder, “Come on! Let’s see where it went.”

What?

I knew this place from the distant rush of a waterfall roaring into a canyon on the other side of the ridge. I got chased up here before by some other cats — my same snarky mouth, as usual. That was the night I nearly fell over the cliff. You could step right off in the dark.

Clawing up the rocks along the crest, I could see MeMe trotting down the other side without a care in the world. Racing through thorns and clingy vines, a rock bruised my leg and I jammed my toe on a stick. But I caught the little fool, grabbing her tail between my teeth.

Of course, she was so surprised, when I snatched her back, she whirled around and whipped me over the edge, which was just about the end of everything as far as my life as a cat was concerned.

There’s a weightless panic when you’re desperately clawing for your life. Hooking a crack in the rock, I dangled for a second until my claw broke, dropping me onto the scraggly roots of a thin starving tree that saved me for a breathless moment until I could scratch my way up a cleft in the stone face. After a lot of clawing and grabbing at things, I lay panting at the top with MeMe peering at me through terrified eyes.

“Ridley!” she cried out. “I almost got you killed!”

“No one would miss me —” I mumbled.

“No, Ridley! Don’t talk that way. Life is precious.”

I pressed my face against the rock, unable to figure out why a cat who couldn’t hear right or see straight would think life was precious.

She peered at me, eye to eye.

I looked back, wishing she’d leave me alone.

“What now?”

“Ridley! You saved my life. No matter what happens, I promise forever and always to be your friend.”

I don’t need forever friends. But for once I kept my mouth shut. So we sat together at the edge of the cliff for a long time, not talking.

High above the valley, folded into my own dark thoughts, I could hear MeMe talking. She might have been telling me about the cats she knew, and the people who take care of them, but I wasn’t listening. The only thing real to me was the evening breeze rushing up canyon walls. The valley below us could have been a painting. Moonlight dusted the Susquehanna River like glitter on a greeting card. Twinkling lights floated down charcoal roads that wound around quilted crayon fields.

I didn’t know who I was, or what I was.

MeMe turned on her side next to me. “You’re so amazing, Ridley. I’ve seen you open doors and windows.”

“There’s nothing to that.”

“And you’re such an attractive girl. Exotic.”

“I’m a girl?” I thought I was a cat.

“I could fall in love with you, Ridley — if I were a boy — or maybe anyway, even — you’re such a gorgeous cat.”

Gorgeous what?

Nobody ever told me I was a girl cat. I like girls, I mean, at least they’re better than boys. As for gorgeous? Not even. I’d seen myself in the hall mirror back at the Matthews’ house — gone right inside and looked at my reflection — and I didn’t think much of the cat staring back.

If it had been the same looking-glass a girl named Alice once had, where everything on the other side was the other way around, then the cat in the mirror might have been someone else.

Rolling on my back, I thought about that day when I explored the house and met Rose. The beautiful cat was sitting all by herself, deep in the cushions of an overstuffed chair, listening to music from an old-fashioned radio. I fell in love with Rose the minute I saw her.

Reaching up with my paw, I stretched out toward the stars overhead.

“They seem so close.” MeMe whispered in my ear.

“You could reach up and pull one down.”

“Don’t do it. I’ve heard they’re very hot,” she warned.

“Do you ever wonder MeMe, if maybe you’re from somewhere else? Like from somewhere out there?”

“For you, I’d think it’d be more like up route 61, over in Centralia.”

“Centralia’s not there anymore. The coal mine swallowed it.”

“That’s what I mean, you’re better off with me.”

Before I could snap at her, she asked,

“Why couldn’t the space cat run away?” Without waiting, she answered herself. “Because he was kitty-cornered!” MeMe grinned archly.

Java’s sister Grace had warned me about how MeMe got a lot of her jokes from Dilby Dunkle’s bubble gum wrappers he threw over the fence by the barn — the ones she could get to before Dilby’s dog Drake buried them with his bones. Drake claimed he was saving them up for when he learned to read.

“What do you think space aliens look like?” I asked, because I knew MeMe liked to sit on Bill Matthews’ lap at night when he watched TV.

“I saw them in a movie,” she informed me wisely. “They’re these big-headed rubbery people with long arms and legs. They come out of a fog and scare you half to death waving their suction cup fingers.”

“So if they have pets, what would their cats look like?”

“Maybe they’re like those Sphynx cats without any fur—”

But this was as far as MeMe got because we both heard that same musical sound descending in pitch. Flattening on the rock, we watched a dark round shape glide over the trees. Reddish-colored in the moonlight, it floated down the canyon to a wide flat ledge at the bottom of the cliff.

Light spread out from underneath it, like a door opening. Shadows fanned across the flat stone. MeMe gripped my paw when three small creatures stepped from underneath its rim.

“What are they?” MeMe squinted down. “Do they look like cats to you? Look! Their collars glow in the dark! I’m going down to see.”

I made a grab to stop her, “No, MeMe. They might not be friendly.” But she was already stumbling down the curving trail around the edge of the rock face. A branch tripped her near the bottom and she tumbled the rest of the way down the steep path.

Rolling over and over, MeMe slid to a stop by the paws of a cat-like creature. It was delicately beautiful, with lustrous, almost phosphorescent turquoise-blue fur. Standing perfectly still, the creature fixed MeMe with cold green eyes.

Running down to help, I stood over MeMe, hissing with my ears back, trying to look fierce. When one of them came at us, I swatted it back with my razor claws.

Instant fire shot out from somewhere, the ground rushed up and hit me hard in the face.