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A New Case. Chapter 11

Tags: erin esme duct

Firstly, it's Sunday Selfie time.... 



We are joining The Kitties Blue, from The Cat on My Head blog, for the weekly celebration of blogs and bloggers from across the world and across the species.


Please download the linky link from their site, and join the fun!




Here is this weeks selfie.....






Here I can be seen showing off my whisker alignment. It takes a steady paw and claw to get them like this, each needs to be measured and gently coerced into shape and position...... Or you can just have a nap and trust to nature. MOL

How do your whiskers line up???

To see what all my pals are up to this Sunday, please click the links below...

I hope you will have time to enjoy this weeks chapter, and to leave a comment below.....

And now, it's Story time!


(Chapter 10 can be found HERE.)








Once within the vent itself, Erin was surprised to find the space was actually large enough to stand up in. And rather than being completely dark, which even cats would not be able to cope with, there small patches of light filtering through the inlet vents on either side.

Esme moved carefully at first, smelling various side passages, as though remembering her way. She then picked up speed, tail up as high as the duct would allow, only to stop suddenly a short distance on at a bend in the duct. "Erin, this is where we get to go down a level. It's a bit steep but if you get down on your tummy, paws out, it is possible to gently slide down. Of course, for a bit of fun you can slide down on your back but it does mean landing with a bump on your bum!" Esme smiled when she said that, and it would have been clear to anyone that she had done that herself for fun more than once.

"If it's OK with you, Esme, I think I'll give that a miss for now. Don't want to ruffle the fur too much, or arouse the guards suspicions." Erin grimaced at the thought of sliding down anything. She'd experience at sliding down various things back home, including the banister and the stair lift. But things had usually ended up with someone, usually Mrs Hudson or her supper, or both being catapulted off the end. "Nope I think you best show the way it's down, forwards, and I'll follow."

Without further ado, and with a smile on her face, Esme, paws out forwards, slid from sight. Moments later, and with only the faintest sound as her paws made contact with the metal surface to act as a brake, Erin land gently at the bottom of the slope. She smiled broadly at Esme and the pair set off once more. They needed to travel along the duct to the far end of the eighth floor and then down another slope to the seventh. They would, Esme said, have to do repeat this zig-zag course until they reached the first floor. On route, Erin stole a glance out over the office space, and the empty desks and silent typewriters in the typing pool. An office workers life, crammed cheek by jowl, was not a good one it seemed and reminded her of being stuck in a cage in a pet rescue sanctuary.

By the time they had arrived at the first floor, Erin had become adept at sliding. She was even brave enough to lift her paws off the metal surface and into the air as she slid down. Esme had moved on to listen beside on of the vents further along into the store, and indicated to Erin to stay quiet. After a moment Esme crept back to where Erin awaited. "Looks like the coast is clear of the guard, there's no sound of his hobnail boots so he must be downstairs having his nap. But I can hear the puppies stirring over the other part of the store. It’s not too far and I think there is even a new vent put in over them to remove any trace of doggie odours." Erin smiled at the last remark. Dogs and odours seemed to go paw in paw as they loved to play in messes that cats wouldn't be seen near let alone in.

"OK, Esme, you lead the way, I'll take the left hand vents, and you the right. If we stop and sniff at each one we should get a good clue as to what is where." Esme nodded and without further ado the pair headed off, stopping every ten to fifteen feet to check the vents.

The store looked different, strange, from their elevated viewpoint in the dark. During the day, the glow from the security lights and the red and green exit signs was not perceptible. But at night they came alive. At night they cast a magic that created a set of bestial shapes, colours and even eyes in the polished marble floors. Eyes, and ears too, that seemed to follow your every move, and look back, coldly, into your soul.

Half way along, Esme froze. She sunk to her belly and slowly crawled to the next nearest vent. Once there she sniffed and then let out low short hiss. Not enough for any human to have heard, but enough to bring Erin back from a side duct she had been investigating.

Moments later the pair sat side by side, looking down onto part of the Companion Department. There was no mistaking the smells, or the occasional sounds of ruffling feathers. Somewhere close by a puppy yelped and then fell silent. No doubt, Erin mused, one of it’s litter mats had rolled onto it, or maybe nibbled it’s ear as it dreamt of a tasty bone or playing with a squeezy rubber toy. From somewhere else came an intermittent squeaking sound, like that of an old and small wheelbarrow. Erin looked perplexed as to what animal might sound like that? “Hamsters,” Esme said, with a broad smile on her petite face. “Meals IN wheels my mamma calls them, jokingly of course. I, we, would never harm such cute little fur balls. They have such a strange but happy life.

"Well we found the companions," Erin whispered. "What shall we do now as we can’t see too much from up here, and there is still the back part to look over."

"Let’s see whether we can get a better view from the next vent, Erin. There's supposed to be a new duct along here somewhere too, maybe that will help?" Esme got up, and strode panther-like along until she found the new section. She sniffed the bright new steel surface but recoiled from the smell of the glue used to join the new to the old.

Erin sniffed too, and her whiskered dropped and she felt quite nauseous. It was a smell similar to the putty a glazier had used on some of the palace windows after a particularly bad golf taster session for the FWI. Though it certainly wasn’t as bad as Mrs H’s boiled cabbage surprise, that she insisted would put hairs on Erin’s chest. After a brief discussion Mrs H had conceded that giving a cat a hairy chest wasn’t a good sales pitch for most cats. She also had to admit that the surprise element of the meal was given away by the aroma that preceded it.

Erin scrunched up her nose and folded down her whiskers and pushed past Esme, and the smell, and crawled into the new duct. The smell became a taste in her mouth, and clawed at her throat. She rushed forwards to the next vent, and plunged her nose and mouth up against the metal slots and drew in heavily from outside. How humans could live with this toxicity, she never knew. When they had work done around the palace, she usually went out for the weekend so the place could be aired properly before she returned. No such luxury here, she mused, best get on and see what we can and get out of it and head back to room thirteen.

Esme watched Erin's progress down the duct. She had moved off into the gloom, but then gradually reappeared as the light from the vent picked out her whiskers and the white fur on her chest and chin. But the smell of glue had became too much to carry on watching, so taking a final look, Esme retreated back into the old duct and fresher air. She was confident Erin would return to find her if she had news.

Neither had been able to see much from the vents in the walls of the Duct. But Erin soon discovered this new duct also had much bigger grills in its floor, made of a wire mesh that rested on a narrow lip along the inner edge. Whilst clearly intended to draw away from the visitors as many odours as possible, it had the added benefit of affording her a much better and wider view of the store below.

In order to progress further, she knew she had to get across. She tried to walk over, but the mesh seemed to buckle under her weight. Blooming cheek, she thought, I'm not that fat, the mesh must be sub-standard. She tried to get across by straddling the lip on each side. But this too was a non-starter as the duct was very wide and the edges of the mesh jabbed into her paws. She wasn't however going to give up and go back as that wasn't what Mrs H would have done or expected of her. But most of all, she wasn’t going to give up as she had made a promise to Esme, a promise she meant to keep.

She had to jump, there was no other option. Planting her paws as best she could onto the metal surface, she then lowered her haunches backwards over them. Then, in one deliberate and swift action, and after a quick waggle of her bum, she brought her fore legs back to her hind, lowered her head, and pushed forwards with all her might.

She cleared the mesh, but only just as the height, and lack of grip limited what she could manage. Still, she mused, enough was all she needed. Having slid to a halt, she laid down flat on the cool steel, and waited and listened, just in case anyone had heard. The duct had made a creaking sound as she landed, and wobbled in its mountings, and then fell silent and still. There was no sound of running boots, or calls of who goes there, so slowly, she moved on.

The glue smell diminished the further into the new duct and over the companion area she went. Each new mesh or grill brought a new set of smells, some nice, some not so.

Under one there were some aquarium with many types, sizes and colours of exotic fish. She watched them for a moment, their scales glistening as they swam lazily in the heated water.

Another vent revealed cages full of all manner of small furry creatures. Unaware of her presence, they slept on soundly, their position given away, to a cat’s eye at least, by their shallow breathing moving the bedding that lay over them. Some she naturally recognised as prey animals, mice, rats, gerbils, and guinea pigs. Erin’s tummy rumble at the thought, but this she told herself was not the time to be thinking of a late night snack.

Others, with names such as Possums, Chinchilla, and Sugar Gliders she had only ever seen in books. There was even a larger cage set out like a rough scrub dessert, with something called a Meerkat. From what she could see of the picture by the cage, it looked nothing like any cat she had ever seen.

There was nothing beyond the last vent so Erin stopped this side of it rather than waste the effort of jumping. She could see most of the area anyways and doubted she would find anything as there was no scent of felines. She peered down and saw a set of glass tanks containing snakes, and another large spiders. These spiders were way bigger and hairier than any that inhabited the far-flung corners of her own home. Any cat would think twice about having a game and trying to pull the legs off one of those, she thought. She was about to go back to Esme, when she thought she heard something, a meow, maybe. She looked again but there was nothing else in with the snakes, in fact there was only a storeroom beyond.

Another faint MEOW came to her ears, this time it sounded close. But the confines of the duct made pinpointing it difficult and it could have been an echo from elsewhere in the store or not have been a cat at all. She listened and waited, lowering her breathing so she could hear more. The silence drew out from seconds to minutes and still nothing. Erin stretched out and decided this was a folly, and she had heard nothing. Something caught her eye, a spider. Not a big spider but a standard house spider, its long legs feeling its way across the bright new surface, like a skater on ice for the first time.

Where had it come from, she mused. There was no way it had got past her, nor did it seem likely it had climbed up from the shop below as the cleaners seemed most thorough. She watched its progress, as only a cat can, and wondered if it was worth chasing, just for the fun of it.

The spider stopped walking, and raised its two front legs as though threatening or taunting Erin to try her luck! Then it doubled round and scurried back to the duct wall and vanished, seemingly into the metal itself.

Ever curious, this was too much for Erin and she leapt the mesh and went to check out the case of the vanishing spider. It wasn't until she got up and inspected then back of the duct that she realised what had happened. The back wasn't actually a solid sheet of metal, rather a series of slats that overlapped each other, like a venetian blind. She pawed repeatedly at the edge of one of the slats trying to get it to move so she could peer beyond. But try as she might, and even though her claw got under one edge, it just slipped off with a dull twanging sound.

And then the mewing came again, renewed as though awakened by her action. It was somewhere behind the slats. Erin sniffed the edges and could pick out the vaguest of cat smells amidst the aromas of soap and detergents. She tugged repeatedly at the edge of the metal slats, one after another until she got a purchase. Then, placing the claws of both paws on that one she tugged and tugged with all her might, using her hind paws to gain some sort of grip on the smooth surface.

Up on the ninth floor, the ventilation control room was dark, save for the glow of a row of small red bulbs. The only sound, such as it was, was the sweep of the second hand on a large dust covered clock that hung slightly lopsided from a nail in the wall. Its sole job was to allow the ventilation engineers to set the time on the rows of small time clocks that controlled the ventilation fans throughout the store.

One bulb, that on the end of the row, shone a bit bright than the others. The newly installed polished steel plate on which it sat spread the light just enough that a keen eyed observer could read the label stuck beneath. The small hand written paper label simply read “Fan 17. First Floor Pets & Storage Room’. Beneath the label was a small clock, the three pairs of hands didn’t indicate the actual time, only the hours the fan it served came on, and went off during the course of the day.

Maybe it was the heat or the silence and gloom, but there was a palpable air of expectation in that room, that was not liked by the engineers. It seemed a place where only mechanical sounds and a changing bulb marked the passage of time.

A small click heralded the designated hour for Fan 17 had arrived. The red light blinked out, and was replaced by another, flickering, in a pale green.

Downstairs, Erin sat panting beside the slatted metal surface. Her paws ached, and she had broken two of her claws so far,  to no avail. The mewing sound came again, and out of instinct she purred back at the caller. She reached once more for one of the slats and curled her claws around the edge and found the lip she was after. If this didn't work, she said to herself, then she'd have to go back to get Esme, and decide what to next. She squeezed the pads of her hind paws down onto the surface and pushed backwards with all her might... There was a sudden clicking sound, and the steel slats popped open and the fan, just behind, kicked into life.

Losing her grip, as much in shock and fright as the movement of the slats, Erin and the spider tumbled backwards, landing squarely onto the wire mesh. Before she could recover and move off, the wires bent and gave way, sending them both tumbling to the floor below.


To be continued.........





This post first appeared on Erin The Cat, Princess, please read the originial post: here

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A New Case. Chapter 11

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