Beside the camper on Elm Street, everyone who should have been asleep unexpectedly woke in the middle of the night at the same time. They were even fully dressed, sitting around the folding table beneath the camper's awning.
For a moment, they exchanged bewildered looks. Skye was the first to notice something wrong, craning her neck to look around. "Huh? Where's Kitty? Is she in the camper?"
The Tabby Cat they had just mentioned emerged from the darkness beneath a streetlamp. She looked nothing like her usual lazy self. Her eyes were red, her teeth bared, revealing all the ferocity of the king of beasts.
With an earth-shaking roar, the crazed Kitty pounced like a tiger charging down a mountain. Then Henry knocked her flat with a massive slap.
The hard concrete of the parking lot caved in as though struck by a meteor, forming a crater threaded with spiderweb cracks. The tiger's head lay at its center. She tried to struggle, but had little strength left.
"Henry!" "You jerk! How could you bully Kitty!"
The old lady and Skye protested in unison. But Henry ignored them, his expression grave. Instead, he walked over to Kitty and brushed aside the fur on her lower belly. "This isn't Kitty. My Tabby Cat has a scar from a bear's claws on her lower belly. This one doesn't."
The two who had been about to continue protesting fell silent. Quicksilver came over to the "Tabby Cat" and examined the spot Henry had indicated. "No, look. Aren't these claw marks?"
At Quicksilver's words, Henry looked again at the spot he had already checked. There were three familiar claw marks side by side, battle honors Kitty had earned hunting bears with him in the ice and snow of Alaska. But—
"Heh. Trying to challenge my