SPACE
CAT AND THE FIRST TREES By: Dr Terrell
Adsit-Neuage
Written between 1990 and 1995 in Victor Harbor, South Australia, for Sacha and Leigh
110 Victoria Street Victor Harbor
South Australia
Sacha and Leigh were playing in the paddock furthest away from their
house* A stream wove lazily through the field in the warmth of a summer Saturday afternoons The boys,/lePA with their dogA,Lickyen were playing trains. They pretended that they were different engines and that there was a train line going through their paddock. Licky would take turns
following first one engine then the other° They had been playing trains for most of the morning and were just about ready to stop and park their make believe engines and go down the
hill for lunch. Driving trains can make a young engine driver quite hungry.
They knew that their father would have a real yummy lunch waiting for them when
they got
Suddenly
they heard a noise coming from between the row of apricot rhododendrons and the
yellow azaleaas. Licky began barking and ran over to the nearest rhododendron
bush. The children quickly followed. To their surprise, there was a large
strange looking animal looking straight at them. The animal looked like a cat,
like a regular alley, street, or anybody's at all neighborhood cat, cat. The
only part different was its size. The creature was larger than Licky. Licky was
a large dog, not huge, mind you — but large. The cat was shaggy a sort of
dirty sock, dark brown, with black streaks. It had a white circle in the middle
of its forehead. Its long bushy tail had a white tip, and its feet and toes
were all white. Its ears went straight up into a point, like rabbits ears do.
The cat like creature had a green box on a purple chain hanging around its
neck. The box looked like a small computer and was hung in front of its throat.
"What is that," questioned Leigh?
"I
don't know, but I hope its not thinking of us as its lunch," Sacha said
hesitantly.
Licky
didn't have anything to say, she wasn't even barking, but was just sniffing the
large animal or whatever it was.
"You can call me Space Cat," the large creature proclaimed. "Space, what, quizzed Sacha?
"Space Cat," it said.
*I can speak any
language in any universe, that is what this box in front of my throat is for.
It changes my voice into what ever anyone is speaking. Actually, I MEOW like
earth cats do, but unless you understand MEOW it's not much good speaking in
that mode." Just then the creature began to bark. Licky barked back. The
two of them barked back and forth for awhile*
"Your
dog is special, that is why I am here. If you push her nose she changes from
Licky to Lickity Split. When your dog is Lickity Split she can fly and
leave the earth, too. Not only that but if
you two hang onto her while she is flying, you can leave the earth,
without having to have a spacesuit on. I have been appearing to Licky in her
dreams for a long time, so she knew that I was coming. I just forgot to tell
her what I looked like. She always thought I was a dog, because I spoke to her
in dog talk, as she doesn't speak MEOW. Since I wasn't on earth when I came to
her in her dreams she didn't see me but made up her own pictures of what I look
like. She thought I looked like a Dalmatian - the kind of dog that rides on a
fire truck. It's really quite funny, but you won't understand."
Samba and Leigh were still bit
in shock. They wanted to know where
Space Gat was from' why he was here, and why in their paddock.
They even thougt at one point that it was their dad playing tricks on them, and
that he was dressed up in a cat suit that he had made or bought. Their dad was
ofteh being silly and playing tricks on them. They pulled on the cat's furl thinking that it was just cloths but they each ended up with a handful of fur.
Space Cat let out a very loud MEOW. The children reali7ad thattheir
father in a costume. They had a lot of questions. What they wanted to try out
first was whether or not it was true that Licky changed into Llcity Split when
they pushed his nose in.
Sure enough when they pushed in his nose he jumped into the air and flew to one end of the
paddock, turned and flew back. The children were amazed, but not scared, they
knew Licky a;xiid trusted that she wouldn't
do anything harmful to them. Then Space Gat explained a, little bit more
to them.
"Meow,
meow, meow, I mean I'm from the planet Dong. It's not near, and it's not far. It
is actually in another universe. The other universe has stars and galaxies like
this one does. Some of the stars are like your sun, and they have planets that
go' around them. One star, Mong, is where the planet Dong goes around. My
planet or where I come from is just like earth, the air is the same so humans
could breathe there. It rains, and our star or sun rises and sets, we even have
a moon — it's called Tong. On Dong the only ones — are cats,
on our moon Tong — there are only cats too. The cats on Tong sing
a long song that is different than the cats' song on the Planet Mong; we believe its the wrong song for a cat to
sing, so we call them 'rho cats with the wrong long song on Mong's Dong's Tonal
Of course I wouldn't expect anyone from earth to follow all that.'
"I
sure couldn't," Leigh butted tn..
"I think that I can follow that, but I'd rather
not," said Sacha
Space Cat continued, "the way to Dong
is simple. Well simple for me that is. You see cats on the planet Dong and on
the moon Tong never die, so we live forever. We don't know,
how long forever is because we've never
seen the end-to-forever. As long as our sun - Mong shines, Tong and Dong will
continue'. There's no-one living on the other planets in our solar system. MEOW
MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW, and MEOW: oh, I mean on Veng, None, Bong, Kong, and long."
"This
is nut " said Sacha,
"This has to be
some kind of a joke, maybe we're asleep and this is a dream," said Leigh.
"No it's not a dream, and I don't see what is sa strange
about it all. It's really quite simple. Oh, I forgot to tell you where the
planet Dong is and how to get there. It's, like I said really not too far away.
Actually it's in the same location as your planet and Mong is in the same place
as your Sun, and Tong is in the same place as your moon. I guess you'd
say it was just in. a different dimension. Just_ like when rou have a dream, you are still in the same
place as you were when you were awake but then again you are in a different
place. We have to go through a black hole to get to there. Scientists on earth
think black holes are all a long ways away. It doesn't matter, what they can't
see won't affect them. The black hole we go through was once a very large start but it fame to its end as a star and it all shrunk down to a very small size.
No light can get out' but we can go through it and go to my planet
Donge"
"What
do you mean by wet" asked Leigh?
"The
reason I came here was because I need your help', Come with me and I will show
you. We will travel there so fast that when
we come back, the time on earth will actually be hours: before we left.
So come on. Push in Licky's nose and we will go through the black hole and end
up on the planet Dong."
"We
can't go with yout our father has told us never to go anywhere with a stranger, though he's never said anything about
strange cats from the planet Dong but we can't leave our property unless he
says sot" said Sacha.
"Well , off with you o then, go ask your father," said the ultramontane - ( an ultramontane is one
who lives beyond the alps - and Space Cat surely was in that oategory)'
4Dad, can we go to the
planet Dona with Space Cat," asked Leigh?
"Oh, what? Oh, all right - the planet Dong with
Space Cat,, sure - why not? And how do you propose to get yourselves to
Hong? And how long will you be there, asked their dad?
"Deng,
dad, it's the planet Dong, and we get there by pushing in Licky's nose - she
then becomes Licity Split, and we travel through a black hole. We want to see
the Cats with the wrong long song on Mong's Dong's Tong," said Sacha .
"Sure,
just be back in time for dinner, you kids sure have a wild imaginations I guess
that is a healthy sign."
"I
don't think he believes us," said Leigh.
"Of course he didn't* Adults. are like that," said Sachas "When I grow up, I'm going to still think like a kid, if adults
think like that," said Leig
Space Cat
and Licky were waiting for the two boys when they arrived in the paddock. The
two animals were sitting in front of the apricot rhododendrons and yellow
azaleas. The children said that they could go but they had to be back before
dinner.
The children
pushed in Licky's nose and she instantly became Licity Split and as the two
children hung onto hers theyt along with Space Cat, went straight up* Up above the few puffy white clouds that sat high above their farm. Up above
the earth they went* They could see South Australia far below, then
they could see all of Australia surrounded by the ocean as they went further
and further into space. They could see more and more continents as they
traveled up, they went real close to a space shuttle that was orbiting the
earth.
An
astronaunt was taking a space walk. When she saw the two children,
Lickity-Split and Space Cat, she was so shocked that she almost fainted.
Several other a tronaunts were looking
out of the space---shuttle window. The space—bound group waved to them, the people in the space shuttle had the
most pecular and startled look upon their faces. Soon the planet
Dong bound group* could see the earth as a
round ball, they were close to the moon. As they
passed the moon Leigh said, "I don't see the man in the moon."
"That's
not a true statement," said Sacha. "It's just made up story, you have to learn to know the difference between what is truth and what isn't."
"Tan we stop and get some green cheeses" asked Licity Split? Everyone
laughed. "That's not real either, the moon isn't made of green
cheese," laughed Sa0ha
Suddenly
the group was pulled very quickly toward something they couldn't see. They went faster and faster.
"It's
the black hole," said Space Cat. "It's impossible to see, because a
black hole doesn't let out any light,
but it has a powerful gravitational pull to it, we won't see anything until we've gone through it, to the other sides" he
continued.
Sure enough' in no time flat, they were in another
universe, in the middle of another galaxy, flying past the moon of Dong
— Tong.. The moon Tongs looked like a desert. They could see the millions
of cats that lived there.
Donee;
Tong," said Space Cat. "We will visit them another
time,*
In
the distance they could see the star of Mongt the planet Dong and the moon Tong received all their
light and warmth from the star Meng
They
arrived on Dong at a quarter past six -
Dong time; it was still daytime. The planet Deng was really a lot different
than earth.. The land was all bare, the oceans, streams, and lakes, and rivers
were all filled with milk.
Millions of cats
ran up to the children and Space Cat and Licity Split. Space Cat explained the
problem. The cats on Dong didn't like their planet* they were
boared. They had their milk, and they caught fish - easily, in their lakes,
rivers, and seas, of course, all they ever caught wets milk-fish. It was always
warm, even at night. And since they lived forever they wanted more than what
they had. They were boared.
Sacha and Leigh saw immediately what was
needed to make the planet Dong more interesting. "This place needs
trees," the children both said at the same time.
Sacha and Leigh arrived home, hours before they left, just like
Space Cat had said they would. They agreed to meet Space Cat on the following
Saturday and they did, just that. They took a bag different kinds of tree seeds with them. There were pine tree seeds, oak seeds, palm seeds, and at least twelve other kinds of tree seeds. The
tree seeds were planted
and trees
began to sprout up the very next day. Sacha and Leigh didn't stay on Dong to watch the trees grow, but they received weekly reports from their dog, Licky, who
received the information from Space Cat while the dream state'.
Sacha
and Leigh had many adventures going back and forth to the
planet Dong, and we'll learn about these adventures as the children tell them
to me and I pass them on to your. For you'll see, that they
continued to meet Space Cat in the paddock where the apricot rhododendrons and
yellow azaleas grow. And they'd push in Lickyls nose and she would
change into Lickity Split and off they would go's
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