Chapter 1 - The Other Side of the Mountain - Sunday night
I could hear MeMe following on her clumsy feet, so I shouted down the path at her, “Go home, MeMe! Stop following me.”
Chapter 2 - Space Time
We were in a round room about a dozen cat-lengths across. It was chilly and dark with a smooth floor like metal, colorless grey walls, no furniture, and no place to hide.
Chapter 3 - Java's Story
“They had me surrounded. Two more attacked. One from the right bit my foot. Another on the left jumped on my back and sunk his teeth in my shoulder.”
“I thought you said there were only three,” Grace inquired skeptically.
Chapter 4 - Cat Logic - Monday morning
MeMe whispered, “Maybe if you help Java, he’ll be nice to you.”
I didn’t want him to be nice to me. The old saying, ‘no good deed goes unpunished,’ floated through my mind like an epitaph on my tombstone.
Chapter 5 - Jeffery
Grace flicked her tail, twitched her fur, and impulsively ran thirty feet up a cedar tree as easy as you’d chase a rabbit across the yard.
Chapter 6 - Rose - Monday afternoon
Looking up the stairs, Java had the shock of his life.
Chapter 7 - Night Flight - Into the land of the Ancients
~ It was well past ten Monday night by the time the saucer streaked down the Chesapeake Bay.
Chapter 8 - The Hall of Departed Cats - Tuesday morning somewhere in Egypt
I wondered if this had anything to do with me, and when I should start running.
Grace was horrified to see how far it was to the floor as she helped MeMe climb down the forty-foot ladder. Sneezing, she almost slipped. “The air in here is really bad for my allergies,” she told MeMe, as they lowered themselves rung-by-rung.
“The air’s the least of our worries, Gracie. If this old ladder breaks apart we’ll be killed, and then how will we ever get out again?”
Chapter 9 - Tomb Raiders
~ Over the sand dune came a band of twelve men wearing white robes with colorful cloths around their faces. As they came closer Java had the shock of his life. "Those animals they’re riding aren’t horses!"
Chapter 10 - The Locked Door
~ Fresh claw marks around the bottom of the wood showed that Mau had been scratching at it. Now he was pushing his nose against the edge in that useless way some cats do with doors. He even meowed! But whoever might be in there on the other side had died a very long time ago and wouldn’t be able to open it for Mau or any other cat ever again.
Chapter 11 - Mummies Honey
~ MeMe patted one with her paw.
“What’s inside these things, Gracie?”
Grace shook her head sadly, “The mummies of the departed cats.”
“CATS?” MeMe was appalled. “You mean this room is full of CATS?”
“What’s left of them. Their bones and their ghosts”
Chapter 12 - Seeing in the Dark
“Wait Ridley, there’s more. Pawa said it was a lot farther back when cats like us came here, almost a hundred thousand years earlier. And there were many other visitors before that. But he said something else. The phantom cat told him that there are cats from other worlds who know how to make ripples in this fabric. She called them ‘the ones who come and go,’ because they travel through what he called light years in an instant to come out in some other world far away. And this still goes on, I mean these cats don’t come with people . . . they just jump in on their own and come out where they want . . . even now.”
Chapter 13 - Betrayed
“Are you sure of that, Khui? Do you think they could do that?”
Khui sharpened his claws on a block of wood. “I’m positive of it and I’m going to kill the first Earth cat I see.”
Chapter 14 - Abandoned
MeMe looked up with big thoughtful eyes. “Think he could tell us about the Land of Punt? . . . Or where Queen Nefertiti’s tomb is? . . . Or about that Dendera Light thing? . . . I’d really like to know more about that one!”
Chapter 15 - Java's Game
~ As Java reached out with his paw, everything started moving to the right. When he tried to touch the round objects, they swirled around his paw like angry bees.
Chapter 16 - Sandpaper Kisses
I was thinking, here is someone very special sitting right next to me, and it's still a total mystery how we’d met. So I gave him a kiss, yes I did. And was he surprised!
Chapter 17 - late Tuesday night
~ Java stretched and yawned wide.
Grace looked at him oddly and said, “I knew a cat once who yawned like that and his mouth got stuck.” Java’s jaw snapped shut with a clop.
Chapter 18 - Secrets of the Night
A bat swooped low through the shadowy moonlight, looping crazily before flying away over the trees. Mau had heard that these leathery birds drank the blood of young cats, condemning their souls to a twilight existence between life and death. He hoped he was too old to interest the creature.
Chapter 19 - The Green Cat's Eye
Khui was surprised that he could share his innermost thoughts so easily with a perfect stranger. A perfectly beautiful stranger.
Chapter 20 - A Fork in the Road
~ Mina was shocked, “We both have the same markings? How can that possibly be? We’re from different planets!”
Chapter 21 - Dr. Mina
~ Mina made up her mind. “I’m staying here Khui. We brought this on and it’s our duty to do everything we can to set things right.”
Chapter 22 - Tarred and Feathered
~ BILL ran his fingers through his hair. “Can’t imagine what could have caused this.” Was all he could say.
Chapter 23 - Area 51
Passing a row of glass crocks, Mau almost lost his fur at the sight of his old flying instructor Shreeng floating inside one of the ethanol-filled jars. Right next to Shreeng was his co-pilot Beej, stirring up memories of happier times together.
Chapter 24 - Waking the Goddess
~ A fragrant wave of strange scents floated out—licorice scented myrrh, thyme, lavender, almond, cedar wood.
Chapter 25 - Run Ridley Run
~ We all looked at each other the way cats do when they’re hoping someone will come up with an idea.
Chapter 26 - Run Ridley Run
A violet ray probed the windows like a cat’s paw feeling for a mouse.
Chapter 27 - Newton's Law
“Can they see us?”
“Like a spider waiting for the fly.”
Chapter 28 - Sunspots - Thursday morning
While our nearest star slowly rotated through it’s 609-hour day, several sunspots—those dark nuclear storms that rage across its face—had grown to more than ten times the diameter of Earth.
Chapter 29 - Cat Panic
~ Into the silent depths
Chapter 30 - Baker Island
~ Nowhere to run
Chapter 31 - Phantom Cat
~ Into the pool of death
