Hi, there! I’m Tipper Allen, and guess what? Mommy strikes from her blog on Fridays to support climate repair action, so she asked me to write a story yesterday and Chickie to write one today.

Here’s mine:

Little Cat Lost

by Tipper Allen

In the winter, Momma kept the door to the upstairs closed and locked, to keep the warm air downstairs. The weather got hot, and Momma opened the upstairs door.

The cats, Bipper and Bickie, were very happy. They loved having more room to romp, and they rumbled upstairs and downstairs, and made as much noise as they could.

After a while, they had a contest. Bickie went downstairs and Bipper jumped onto a table in Poppa’s office. Then he came down and Bickie said, “If one is no sound and five is knocking over one of the rocking chairs in the front room, that was, like, a five.”

Then Bickie went upstairs and pushed a binder full of photographs onto the floor.

When she came down, Bipper said, “That was a five, too.”

Bipper went up and bumped against a filing cabinet to make the drawers rattle.

“Maybe a three,” Bickie said. “I think we already did all the noisy stuff.”

“We can make more noise than that!” Bipper said.

They romped upstairs and rumbled around some more.

The only thing better than an re-opened rumble-space was re-found sleeping spots, and soon Bipper and Bickie picked out their old favorites and went to sleep.

After a while, Bipper woke up and got lonely. He didn’t see Bickie anywhere, so he went downstairs and curled up on Momma’s lap.

It got dark, and Momma said, “It’s cooled off. I’d better shut that door.” Bipper was downstairs, and Momma remembered seeing Bickie downstairs, so she shut the door and locked it.

When Bickie woke up, she felt a little cold. It was dark all around her, and there were asplosions and yelling from Momma’s picture box downstairs.

Bickie went downstairs, but the door was closed. She pushed and bumped, but the door was locked, and the asplosions and yelling were too loud for Momma to hear her.

Somebody on the picture box yelled, “It’s clobberin’ time!” and Momma laughed. Bickie didn’t think that was fair, because Momma always fussed when Bickie and Bipper clobbered each other.

Bickie meowed, but the picture box just kept on being noisy. It was even worse than a five!

There was a bunch of loud music, and then Momma turned the box off and it was very quiet.

Momma said, “Where’s Miss Bickie?” The first place she looked was in the closet under the stairs, because Bickie got shut in there once before. No Miss Bickie in the closet. Momma looked in Poppa’s bed, in the big bed, on the window seat, on the catbird seat, on the table … everywhere she could think of.

Finally, she unlocked the upstairs door and opened it, and Bickie ran out.

“Why didn’t you come down before she shut the door?” Bipper asked.

“Why didn’t you wake me up when you came down?” Bickie asked.

“It’s your own fault!”

“It’s your fault!”

Bipper had watched a lot of the noise picture box show with Momma, so he said a thing one of the shouty people had said: “Calm down, hothead!”

Bickie took a step backwards and said, “It’s clobberin’ time!”

They had a big chase and three yowly fights.

Momma said, “All right, you two, cut it out!”

So they stopped fighting and, just when Momma was almost asleep, had a good, friendly rumble all over the downstairs.

THE AUTHOR

The Cat Who Cried Boone

by Chickie Allen

Once upon a time, there was a white cat named Chipper who hated the cat next door. Whenever Chipper looked out the window and saw the next-door cat, his mommy would come to the window and pet him and say, “What is it? What’s out there? Is it Boone?” (Boone was the next door cat’s name.) She liked Boone, but he always went away if he saw her looking out of the window.

Chipper like getting his mommy to come to him and pet him, so he started meowing out the window when Boone wasn’t there. Chipper would trot with stiff legs from one window to another until he found one he could get his mommy to come to.

After weeks of coming to windows and not seeing anything, Chipper’s mommy stopped going wherever he was meowing and only went if she was on her way there already.

One day, Boone really came to the house. Chipper meowed and meowed, but his mommy didn’t come. Boone jumped onto the back porch. Chipper did a little yowl, but his mommy still didn’t come. Boone jumped onto the back porch swing. Chipper growled, but Boone didn’t care, and Chipper’s mommy just said, “Pipe down, you crazyhead.”

So Boone stood on the swing and made funny faces through the window, and there wasn’t anything Chipper could do about it.

MORAL: Don’t try to fool your mommy.

THE AUTHOR

OUR PROMPTS: Real life!

TA and CA