Snookie Tracy

That's close enough! One step more towards me and I'll climb this thing you humans call a palm tree. And see if you can catch me then. Besides, I feel that hairball in my stomach could come blasting out any moment now and let me tell you my aim is perfect. Oh, and no photographs, absolutely no photographs! Don't you know who I live with?

Yes, I understand you're curious about me. But firstly, I don't trust most humans; clumsy beings who don't have a clue how to wash themselves properly and who are always stepping on my paws or tail. And your small humans – your kittens, I suppose – are even worse, poking their fingers in my eyes, pulling my tail… And when I defend myself a larger human will come along and kick me.

Secondly, I'm part of a secret organization that couldn't function without me. Yes, I'm fully aware that the human members of International Rescue don't realize that – however, that's how it is. No, I don't know what 'International Rescue' is, or what they do, but I'm sure it can't be very important. But as long as they are happy with it, and give me milk and tuna – I love milk and tuna, don't you? – I will help them. And without me, Mobile Rodent Exterminator Extraordinaire, the mice, rats and other rodents on Tracy Island will chew on whatever cable they can find.

I can't understand why they do that. If they were sharpening their claws on the cable, I could, but chewing? It doesn't smell like it would taste good. Anyway, that chewing can cause flames. Now, there are little flames that are nice and warm to curl up next to. And there are large flames that make a lot of noise. I don't like noise, do you? You can't hear dangerous things or your prey approach. I was in large flames once. It almost cost me my second life.

But I guess you want to know about my first life before I get into any others, don't you?

What's there to tell about myself? I'm what you humans call a tabby. A brown tabby with – if I say so myself – an unusually broad black stripe on my back. Humans have always admired that. I have yellow eyes and very long whiskers. I was born on a cold and snowy Easter Day.

My name… That's a tough one. There's my kitten name, given to me by my mom, but as I'm not a kitten any more, I can't answer to it. Then there's my Cat name, but as you're not cats I can't tell you that. Then there's the name my first human gave me, but that one is a bit embarrassing. Certainly not "me," if you know what I mean. For a human she was a great cat though, and although I'm not much of a lap sitter she had an ample and comfy lap. Not that she sat down a lot.

So… OK… If you don't expect me to answer to that name often, unless you have a can of tuna in your hand – I love tuna, don't you? – I will tell you my name. Snookie. It says so on my collar, in those funny squiggly thingies you humans call "letters." See?

Great Whiskers in the Sky, I knew this would happen! You're laughing. Now I have to wash my face with my paws to compose myself.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Living in a house with my first human, I learned to read those squiggly thingies a bit. It cost me the first of my nine lives. That and my fondness of boxes. You know those roaring rolling boxes you humans use to travel in? One day one stood silent in front of the house. On its side was written 'FedEx'.

Now, I was hungry, my human hadn't come home yet, and 'Fed' means food, doesn't it? As in 'I've fed the cat.' What that 'Ex' part meant I didn't know, but I was sure it couldn't have been very important.

Anyway, I hopped into that box and looked around. Lots of cardboard boxes, but no food. Bah! Now cardboard boxes can be nice too, don't you agree? But then you have to get into them – I can never resist trying getting into them – and these were all closed. Still, great to sharpen my claws on. So, I did that and then I wanted to get out.

I couldn't! The roaring box had closed up and I never saw lap lady again. I wish I could give one more headless (I love to eat heads, don't you?) rodent to her. Even if she always started to scream when she saw one. But I would have liked to do that, just so she would know I liked her and didn't go away on purpose.

I don't know how long I sat in that roaring box, but it seemed to last forever. And then the roaring box opened again and I raced out. Strange place, strange smells, strange sounds… I ran to find a hiding place and check things out.

It turned out it was a very large house where several potential lap ladies lived, but only during what they called 'opening hours'. I don't what that is, but it can't be important. They

got a lot of visitors, every day, who came to look at the box-like things containing lots of those squiggly "letters" that were all over the walls on shelves. Lots and lots of them. The things you humans find important! The visitors would take those box-shaped things off the shelves and sit on chairs and stare at the squiggles for hours. I was strictly forbidden to sharpen my claws on them – the box-like things, not the humans – so I didn't. Not during 'opening hours', that is.

Well, I lived there happily for a long time until the day I nearly lost my second life. For some time I'd heard the lap ladies and their visitors complain that something 'smelled really bad.' As if you humans have any clue what smells good.

You know what smells good? The cat food in those purple cans that says 'tuna and duck'. But you humans didn't like it and then I never got to taste it any more. It was taken of the shelves, they said. Funnily enough, though, I never saw it on the shelves at all. All I saw was the squiggly-thing boxes.

Anyway, then those scary large flames came. And a lot of noise, and a lot of shouting and screaming and flashing lights and more flames and more noise and I ran and I ran and I ran, until finally I found a place where it was quiet and dark, where I could hide.

The deserted pod bay was silent but for the echoing noises of generators automatically switching on and off, the humming of ventilators, the gurgling of pipes and the clanging of the tools Scott used. It also smelt of fuel, oil, chemicals; smells he did not notice any more as they were an integral part of the bay. Overpowering them all right now was the stink of fire that hung around the fire-fighting equipment, the Mole and the Firefly, offloaded and still waiting to be cleaned and put away after the Minneapolis fire.

A cracked gas main, a cracked sewage main and people in downtown Minneapolis complaining about a gas smell that hung everywhere. Of course, no one had done anything about it until a series of explosions almost ripped apart the city center. And International Rescue had to clear up the mess.

Then, an hour after Thunderbird Two had returned to the island – they'd just finished lunch – Lady Penelope had called from Monte Bianco. The solar generator's reflector dish, struck by lightning, had tumbled down a mountainside. It had come to rest with the disc pointing directly at the town so, when the sun rose, the inhabitants would have their solar energy. But a lot more of it than they'd bargained for. So, cleaning and checking of the equipment had to wait and they'd taken off again, this time with Brains. All Scott had had time for was to give Gordon an earful for disobeying orders and giving his oxygen mask to a victim, trapped under the remains of the Minneapolis main library. He suddenly grinned when he recalled the woman had survived only because of a whole shelf load of tax law books had covered her before a beam fell on top of it all.

And now Scott was back once again in the hangar, and it wasn't the first time that he was frustrated by TB2's slower speed compared to his own Thunderbird. Monte Bianco hadn't been a good rescue from his point of view. Just like Gordon in Minneapolis, Brains had disobeyed orders. Clinging precariously to the huge solar reflector, he had taken off first his harness and then his protective suit. It would take Scott a long time, maybe forever, to forget the sight of Brains – as they'd all thought at the time – tumbling down the mountain to be buried in a landslide of rock below.

Scott wasn't the kind of man to sit quietly around waiting, so as soon as he got home he'd gone down to the pod bay and started the cleaning up and checking of the equipment they'd used in Minneapolis. He needed to keep busy, have something for his hands to do.

He was also not the kind of man to imagining things. But he could've sworn there was something around that shouldn't be there. Furtive noises that shouldn't be there. And a feeling… Something or someone was watching him.

He shrugged it off. There were more alarm systems in this hangar bay than in the Pentagon, and he was probably just being jumpy. His mind turned back to Monte Bianco. Scott didn't have to like his father's decision to give Virgil the command of the mission – he had to agree that Virg's bird did have the most powerful radio equipment. Anyway, Scott's feelings about that were strictly between IR's commander and field commander.

But strictly between field commander and the 'ground pounders'… He hadn't liked what he regarded as the sloppy way it had all gone down. What was the point in using cameras, both remotes and handheld, if someone still insisted on eyeballing the situation anyway?

So, he was going to say a lot to Brains when he got back. And to Alan, who never should have let Brains winch down, even if it had meant sitting on him to keep him from doing so. And to Virgil, who never should have let Alan give way to Brains, even if it had meant sitting on both of them.

Scott walked to what he and his brothers called the toolshed. A walled-off corner in the hangar, where they had a couple of computers for consulting blueprints – even the real, old fashioned, paper blueprints that Virgil, and strangely enough Gordon, insisted on having. The toolshed also had a small fridge with bottled water and cans of pop. And most importantly a large cookie jar. And…

Cookies. Scott scratched his jaw. Maybe he shouldn't be too hard on Brains. After all, he had readily agreed to become Scott's partner in cookie "crime." Grandma had finally yielded to using an e-reader, if only for reading in bed. And then Scott, on a recent business trip to New York, had found in a secondhand bookstore, a whole series of cozy mysteries for her. What had drawn his attention was the same line on all the book covers: With Cookie Recipes. Quickly flipping through some of the books, the cookie descriptions had started to make him drool. Since the books were old enough to not have electronic versions available, he'd bought the series in paperback, and Brains was now scanning and converting to download them to Grandma's reader.

Scott looked forward to tasting the recipes from every single volume.

Wait…there it was again… that feeling that something, someone was watching him! He whirled around, wondering why the intruder alarm was silent, why his father hadn't sounded an alarm, why he'd left his weapon inside his Bird, why…

His eyes darted around the hangar and came to rest on a very scared looking cat, sitting between the caterpillar tracks of the Firefly.

Snookie Tracy

I was unceremoniously grabbed by the scruff of my neck and taken to a human – he didn't look like a vet, he didn't smell like a vet, but he sure as hell acted like one – who stuck a needle in my bottom. And then another in my neck. Well, I paid him back by shredding his shirt. And his cheek. And I bit his thumb. And knocked his, what you call it, those round shiny things, off his face.

After that they left me alone most of the time.

I must confess, though, that I'm glad I'm not all alone. I say this grudgingly, but there is a rare and unexplainable comfort in the not-too-close proximity of humans.

The milkman… I haven't told you about that human yet, have I? Well, Captain Scott's the one human I've met who's the closest to a cat. Strolls over the island at night a lot. And despite his bulk you can't hear him move about. Dark, like me. He hasn't got a tail though. A bit lacking in the whiskers department, too... Although, when I see him in the early morning he has what I can almost call whiskers on his face. But he does some strange human things with them. One morning when I sat warming myself in the sun on the balcony railing I saw him put cream on them. And then he scraped it from his face with an odd-looking metal object. And then his whiskers were gone. When he left the room I went in and tasted the cream. It wasn't cream at all, it tasted horrible. And the metal object bit my paw when I touched it.

Anyway, I'm almost sure I would like him to scratch me between my ears. But he never does. He talks to me quietly, though. And praises me when he collects the dead rodents I've placed on the lowest step on the stairs. As he should praise me! I have to see if he's quick enough to catch those varmints. Or if his jaws are strong enough to bite off their heads. Anyway, he's properly grateful for my generosity, and gives me a bowl of warm milk in return.

He does give up on things too easily sometimes, though. Not a proper cat at all. I mean, one night when it was raining, (I hate it when my fur gets wet, don't you?) I sneaked into his bedroom and hopped on his bed. Six times I hopped, six times he shooed me away. But when I hopped back on a seventh time, he sighed and said: "Oh, what the hell, have it your way."

And that's just what I had, my way! Nice bed, by the way – large and comfy.

A few hours ago I caught and ate something I'd never seen before. Don't know what it was. It had 4 legs and a tail and a mouth full of teeth and it struggled. I love it when my food struggles, don't you? It didn't have fur or feathers but a leathery, scaly skin. Very hard to get through. Great stuff to sharpen your claws on, though. It tasted good, a bit like that clucking bird you humans call chicken. And now I'm full. I think I'll go and have a nap. The way the humans on the island are acting now, milling around the garden and that big water bowl they love to sit near, I don't think any rodent will come close. So I don't have to be on guard.

I don't know what those humans are doing in the garden. Some sound angry, some amused. I'm curious though, does anyone know the meaning of the words 'pygmy alligator'?

"Mother," said Jeff, "I don't understand why you insist on making this into a five-alarm fire situation, it's not as if a real alligator is on the loose."

"Not a real alligator? Not a real alligator? What do you think Tin-Tin gave Alan as a present? A stuffed plush toy? It's a dangerous animal, Jeff, one that I never wanted inside the house. It could give one of us a really nasty bite. And what about the cat?"

"What cat… ouch." Jeff raised his hands to protect his face as a razor-sharp leaf from a patch of pampas grass lashed out. "That's it. I'm going inside. I've got a ton of company paperwork to do and I don't care if that overgrown lizard has turned itself into a pair of Tin-Tin's shoes or eaten the cat. I buy you a new one if that's the case."

"Paperwork, paperwork," muttered Margaret Tracy, watching her son stomp off. "Folding paper cranes, you mean. Or more likely in your case, paper planes."

"I've always wondered," said John to Gordon as the two men searched the shrubbery between the pool garden and the trail that lead, eventually, to the remains of the island's volcano crater. "Alligators don't live in South-America, so where did those creatures that you, Scott and Alan ran into during the Theramine mission come from?"

"Escapees from an alligator farm," answered Gordon. " If they'd been alligators."

"They weren't alligators?"

"No, Alligatorid Crocodylians. Caimans. Alan's pet is a caiman, too. Cuvier's dwarf caiman. Only grows to three feet long."

"Ah, a caiman. No wonder I can't find it. If it's a caiman and I'm looking for an alligator then I'll have to spend the rest of my life on this barren spot on the ground."

"Look for a fairly large lizard," advised Gordon.

They found the cat lying in the shade of the stairs that ran up to the Tracy Villa deck. Ever so carefully Scott nudged it with his foot. The animal opened one yellow eye and glared balefully at him. Then it closed the eye again, yawned, rolled over on its side and stretched to its full length.

"Definitely bulky around the midsection," said Virgil, bending over. "You know what I think?"

Scott nodded. "Yes. The kitteh will not be needing his warm-milk-over-rusks snack today."

"I wonder what it tastes like," said Virgil, straightening up. And catching his brother's look he added, "Alligator, I mean, not that…rusty milk stuff."

His brother shrugged, "Probably like chicken."

Author's Note: Chip your furry pets (something that is already legally required in some countries and states) then, if the animal goes missing, the various animal protection societies OR International Rescue can return it to you.