Chomps, Flea, and Gray Cat [That’s Me!] Read online

  “Hello.” He held the box by his ear and started talking to himself. “Yes, this is Owen Priddle. We need a wrecker four miles west of town. We’ve got a Range Rover stuck in a low-water crossing. It’s brand-new and it shouldn’t have stalled out. Okay, I’ll give you about twenty minutes, and then I’ll meet you there. No problem. Thanks.” Daddy put the little box back on the wall. Mama came in just as he hung it up. Daddy hugged her again and gave her a little kiss on the cheek.

  “I’ve got to go see what happened to the car. They said that they would be here in about thirty minutes. That thing shouldn’t have stalled out. It’s brand-new. I’ll be back.”

  Mama let Chomps out in the backyard to sleep in the sun. I went to the bedroom and told Callie what had happened. She moved so I could have her pillow for a catnap. Callie never gave me her pillow before. I guess she was very happy that we helped save Mama.

  • • •

  “Rats!”

  The word snapped my eyes opened. I sat straight up on the pillow and looked around. “Rats!” the voice said again. It came from the other room. I was instantly awake. I sprang from the bed and trotted to the living room.

  “The only thing we could see under the vehicle were some bare wires pulled down,” Daddy told Mama. “When they hit the water, it must have shorted out the whole electrical system. It had to be a mouse or a rat. Chomps doesn’t get out in the barn anymore. Gray wouldn’t pull down wires. It just had to be one of those barn rats.”

  My ears perked up. I knew who had chewed on those wires. I remembered when I had seen Nora in the barn messing around under Mama’s car. That was what she had been doing!

  It made me so mad, I couldn’t even see straight.

  • • •

  The next morning when Mama opened the front door, she let out a little scream and yelled for Daddy. “What in the world is it?” she asked when he got there. “Is it a gopher or an opossum?”

  Daddy frowned down at the trophy I had left on the doormat.

  “It’s a rat!” he gasped. “A big one, too!”

  I lay on the porch swing and smiled over at them.

  “It’s Nora,” I meowed softly. “What she did to Mama was wrong. It was bad. She’ll never hurt Mama again. The others won’t bother us, either. They all ran away. I’ll never let them come back.”

  • • •

  It was a good trophy. Mama didn’t even curl her nose or scold me when she picked the mat up and dumped the rat out in the field. She just hugged me in her arms and rubbed me. That night Daddy cooked steaks on the charcoaler.

  I could get used to steak. It was even better hot than out of the refrigerator.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  BILL WALLACE grew up in Chickasha, Oklahoma, a town of fourteen thousand people. He had lots of pets—dogs, cats, snakes, and lizards. He played baseball and football with his friends. His mother taught high school math.

  CAROL WALLACE grew up on a dairy farm. They had lots of barn cats and two cats that got to come inside. She played with her dog Pooch, swung from the rope in the hay barn, and had her own special place on the rock hill. She attended a small rural school through eighth grade and then went to Chickasha High School. Her math teacher just happened to be Mabel Wallace. The first time Carol saw Mrs. Wallace’s son, Bill, he was playing his trombone in front of the high school.

  Bill and Carol hold master’s degrees in elementary education from Southwestern Oklahoma State University. They are both authors and public speakers. This is their third book together.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or places or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  ALADDIN

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 2001 by Bill Wallace and Carol Wallace

  Illustrations copyright © 2001 by John Steven Gurney

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Aladdin is a registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].

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  ISBN: 978-0-671-03831-1

  ISBN: 978-1-4814-3141-5 (eBook)

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