With the ball clamped between my teeth, I ran up the stable steps. A cat climbs back upstairs from a place like that with all kinds of spider webs and dead bugs dangling from her whiskers and eyebrows. They call it cat jewelry, but it’s a specialty item Tiffany only carries in their basement.

The thing about cats seeing in the dark is not true. Sprinting across the yard, I slipped into the house through an unlocked basement window that I’d used before. The ball cracked when my chin hit the cement floor. A chorus of malevolent squeaking mocked me from the depths of the cluttered room as the toy rolled away in the dark. That seemed like the end of it, until the scent of myrrh floated faintly back to my nose, mixed with a hundred years of mildew, rust, rot, and rats.

Seriously, Ridley? You’re going to challenge a pack of rats in the dark? Why not look for another toy upstairs?

One of the rats hissed in the dark, “No cats allowed. Beat it.”

My nose told me the toy was on the edge of the cellar drain. Myrrh and who knows what else drifted across the concrete floor.

“We never saw that spotted cat again,” laughed a rat. “Now we’ll make an example out of you. This is our place, no cats allowed.”

What does Rose want with a toy ball, anyway? The rats can have it.

I flinched when one of the rats gave me a sharp nip in my flank.

The ball jingled. “You can leave this here,” squeaked another. “We’ll find out why you stupid cats chase these things.” The others laughed.

That was Rose’s ball. Now I was mad and I wanted it back.

“I’ll show you why we chase those things,” I screamed, slashing out blindly until I caught one with my claws. It let out a shriek until I bit down hard on the back of its neck and it went limp. I could hear the others scamper away to safety, so I grabbed the ball in my teeth.

Racing up the steps to the kitchen, I could hear the TV playing down the hall, where I hoped the cats were sitting around the sofa with Susan and Bill. Wary of encountering Java or that Siamese time bomb, I took the back way to the second floor, gliding along the wall to the door where I could hear Susan’s old radio playing soft music.

Like a sunny day, Rose called, “Ridley! I was just thinking about you!”

“That’s the way it is with cats.” I said, tossing the ball up to her. “We see each others’ thoughts. Did they tell you I’m going away tonight?”

“Oh Ridley. Those cats are so mean to you. Have something to eat and stay with me.”

Susan kept a treat dish in front of Rose’s chair, trying to encourage the thin cat to eat.

“I’ll miss you, Rose. There’s no other cat like you.”

“Except MeMe,” Rose shook her head sadly. “I guess she’s lost to us now.”

“They blame me.”

Eyes flashing in the moonlight, Rose gave the ball an angry swipe.

“You almost DIED trying to save MeMe!” she huffed breathlessly. “Dr. Mina told me what you did. You’re a hero, Ridley — and now look at yourself, your ear’s split, your fur’s torn. I know you’d fight — to the death for your friends. You don’t have to — tell me anything.”

The ball rolled in front of the radio cabinet. Pouncing on it, I could feel electricity pulling at my fur.

“That old radio won’t hurt you,” Rose said, tossing her head toward the cabinet with a mischievous grin. This time when I pitched the ball to her, she sent it flying against the wall to the left of it.

“Don’t stick your paws inside!” she warned with a laugh.

Energy from electricity inside the cabinet jingled my fur, making me wish I’d brought Rose a frog instead of a ball. The third time I tossed it to her, she gave the ball a good whack, sending the toy bouncing off one of the knobs. It was a lucky shot that hit me on the head.

“Two points!” she giggled. It was good to hear her laugh.

Braving the diabolical radio cabinet, I grabbed the ball in my teeth.

Rose cried out,“Ridley! It’s glowing.”

Dropping the ball on the carpet, I jumped over to defend Rose.

We watched in horror as something inside the toy ball pulsed, bright and dim, bright and dim. A cloud of mist rose from it, swirling up as high as the radio cabinet.

Rose tilted her head curiously. “Hope it doesn’t ruin Susan’s carpet.”

“Come on, Rose,” I urged. “Lets get out of here!” I tugged on her paw, but she held back, eyes transfixed on the vapor cloud.

“Does it look like a cat to you, Ridley?”

As pale as moonlight on a puff of smoke, a faint ghost image grew into a light blue nose, a set of long pale blue whiskers, two blue ears, and finally, a pair of hypnotic green eyes that locked onto mine.

By the time I’d shed enough fur to weave a winding sheet, we could clearly see the ghost image of an elegant blue cat glowing eerily. The phantom, if that’s what it was, gazed around in a hazy way it happens when you to step out through the veil of a dream. The ghost cat yawned wide and deep, displaying a set of long sharp feline teeth.

“How long have I been asleep?” she asked, licking a paw to groom her face. She spoke softly in the Common Cat Language, but her accent was foreign to us and hard to catch.

Bats wheeled back and forth outside the end window, feeding on mosquitoes. They looped fuzzy shadows in the wave of moonlight splashing over the carpet. The phantom flicked her eyes away from mine to watch their flight.

“I know those creatures But where am I?” She rippled in a current of air that breezed through the open window.

I was so edgy we could have been in Noodle Doosie down near Hinkletown, for all I knew. Searching for an answer, my dry tongue sounded like wrinkles in an empty cat food bag.

The floor creaked outside the door, making me jump.

“Something scares you, even more than I do?” the phantom cat purred softly.

“They don’t want me here,” I managed to say.

Rose whispered behind me. “I do, Ridley. I want you with me.”

The specter looked up sharply at Rose. I tensed, ready to fight a ghost if it came to that, but the phantom turned her eyes back to me, asking, “Why do they blame you for what happened?”

I didn’t like her reading my thoughts and tried to close my mind.

But Rose defended me, “It wasn’t her fault.”

“If you run, they’ll chase you,” the phantom warned me.

“They’ll chase me even if I don’t run . . . because I’m different.” I insisted, breaking my focus with a flood of memories.

“Of course you’re different. You’re not like them.” The cat tilted her head to one side studying me. “You’re one of the special cats.”

“Imagine that!” I sniffed. “A ghost telling me I’m special.”

“I’m not a ghost!” She drew herself up with her green eyes flashing. “I’ll bet you never saw a real ghost in your whole young life.”

“I’ve slept in cemeteries and old empty houses.”

“Have you now? A regular vagabond. Stray cat, are you?”

“I’m NOT a stray cat! I was lost!” I yowled defensively. “And anyway, if you’re not a ghost what are you all get-up to be? Because you look like a whole bunch of not much, and you wouldn’t even be that if you got too close to a light breeze!”

“Ridley!” Rose breathed uneasily.

Afraid I might have pushed her over the edge, I tucked my head down with my eyes squinted the way cats do, but she only laughed.

“Ooooh! She’s got a mouth on her, hasn’t she! Raya Tzer-Nik is my name. But I’m no ghost—It’s more like I’m the prisoner inside this Pearl you see below me.”

Dr. Mina shouted from the doorway, “RAYA!” and I almost lost it on the carpet.

The phantom pulled back in alarm as the doctor bounded into the room. But Dr. Mina had less interest in the phantom cat than she did in the plastic ball on the carpet.

Following her gaze down to the ball, I realized the rattle inside was glowing, looking like an electric-blue marble with tiny stars swirling inside. Stranger still, the carpet around it was covered with frost,

Raya looked down at Mina with surprised eyes. “You’re from Alna! Did you come here to rescue my crew?”

Always ready with an answer, I thoughtlessly blurted out, “It’s too late, Raya. You’ve been asleep for some 3440 years.”

We shrank back as Raya flared up, spreading ice across the ceiling. You couldn’t blame her for being upset. Think of all that history she’d slept through, the way Rip Van Winkle slept, only this was a lot longer than twenty years. Of course, any cat would be happy to have missed the entire Middle-Ages. In fact, as far as I was concerned, you could let me doze away my life until 1947 when Ed Lowe invented Kitty Litter and changed the world. They should raise a statue.

Looking off into the distance, as if searching for her ancient world, Raya explained, “Captain Brint panicked when their fur broke out in stripes. I tried to warn those at home about the atmosphere on Earth, but the captain was convinced no one else would travel to this planet if they knew the danger. When I insisted that others should be warned, Brint put something in my food to make me sleep. As I lay helpless, he fed me the Pearl, and that was the end of poor Raya’s life as a real cat.”

Raya flashed a rueful smile, “Pearls are dangerous. Don’t eat one, or you might wind up like me.”

It hadn’t crossed my mind.

Tilting her head toward me, Raya said, “You’re an exotic cat. Your ancestors were not of Earth. You are called Zarah in your own world. Orla cats like you travel millions of light years when they step into the Saah-Ray and are—”

“No! I’m not different!” I cut her off. “I’m a perfectly normal cat.”

But Rose insisted, “You are special, Ridley. You open all sorts of doors, you’re a genius at math, and a whole lot of other things. And once when you fell asleep right there—” Rose looked around the side of her chair with wondering eyes.

“—You disappeared!” she said softly.

Dr. Mina looked at me impatiently for a curious second.

“And we’re all glad she came back,” Mina said abruptly. “But right now we have a serious situation.” The doctor stepped boldly up to the phantom cat and asked, “Do you have medical records from before the time you visited Earth?”

“Of course,” Raya assured her. “Pearls are the repository of knowledge.”

Breathing a sigh, Dr. Mina appeared to relax a bit. “I have a patient here, our friend Rose.” She looked back almost tenderly at Rose.

Tossing her head toward the other end of the room, Dr. Mina said sharply, “See for yourself the chewed lamp cords, the teeth marks on the furniture and toys.” Mina held up her tablet, displaying the internal scan of Rose she’d made on Tuesday night. “What do you make of it? We’re already treating the symptoms with phytotherapy, herbal medicine, most of the plants grow nearby. But the true source of the evil invading her body —”

“— Is coming through a rend in the Saah-Ray.” Raya finished Mina’s thought. “Something has opened a Saah-trrit not far from here.”

I saw Dr. Mina arch her back with a ridge of fur bristling all the way to the tip of her tail.

“Yes, the Saah-Ray must have never closed,” she admitted. “The coordinates were wrong when our advance team arrived seventeen Earth months ago. We emerged from a Saah-trrit right above this house.”

“What on Earth is a sahtrit?” I asked.

Dr. Mina and Raya both turned to me like they’d never seen a cat before..

“I know.” Rose said from her armchair above us. “Dr. Mina explained that long ago people called it the Ether to describe something they couldn’t see which fills up empty space.”

Raya flared up, “A wormhole. Why didn’t you close it?”

“We don’t know how. I thought they closed themselves.”

“Fool,” fumed Raya. “When the Saah-Trrit was left open, you let in the trrik-yah sol.”

“Yes, the Chaos,” breathed the doctor, turning back to Rose.

“We did this to you. I’m so sorry, Rose.”

The four of us looked at each other the way cats do when they’re hoping someone will come up with an idea.

Raya said, “It may be possible to close the Saah-Trrit with sound waves, the same way it was opened. But the longer it has remained open, the more energy is needed to close it.” She pointed to the doctor’s tablet. “That device may be able to generate the right chords, but it doesn’t have the energy to break through the Saah-Ray’s subatomic layers.”

“What about that thing?” I asked, pointing to the radio behind her. “It knocked Java across the room and it tickles my fur whenever I get close.”

Raya floated a cat-length away from the wooden cabinet. studying it for a moment, she abruptly vanished inside. I waited for some kind of flash, or maybe a scream, but the radio only continued playing music, while the Pearl on the floor glowed its colorful electric swirls.

Hearing a noise out in the hall, I went to the door to investigate, hoping it was Eddy or one of Rose’s other friends come to cheer her up. As I poked my head out, a cat rushed out of the shadows, knocking me back into the room. We rolled in a clinch across the carpet next to Rose’s chair, kicking at each other with our back feet.

Rose cried out, “Stop! — Stop fighting right now, both of you!”

“I warned you to stay away from our house!” Java snarled, snapping at my paws.

I snapped at Java’s foot and he let out a yell, shoving me away with an anxious look at his right front paw. Java heaved himself up painfully on three feet favoring the paw he’d injured in his basement adventure. A new gauze bandage had been securely wrapped with adhesive tape so this time it wouldn’t come off.

By now I’d had enough of this annoying cat. I fake-lunged at him with my ears back and my best jungle demon glare on my face. With wide eyes, he backed away until he bumped into the radio cabinet. Feeling its powerful electricity pull at his fur, he angled back across the room toward Rose’s chair.

Under Rose’s piercing gaze, Java cast his penitent eyes down to the floor, holding his injured paw out for sympathy.

“Serves you right,” the doctor sniffed from the corner of the room. “You should take your differences outside where you can both do some real damage to each other.”

Rose’s dish lay upside down where we knocked it over in our fight. Java eyed the sea of delicious little treats scattered on the carpet. Keeping a sharp eye for his sister, Java nipped one up from the floor, crunching it in his powerful teeth.

Dr. Mina looked around anxiously for Raya, who been inside the radio for a good while. Rose’s favorite music drifted around the room, katydids buzzed outside the windows, punctuated by the crunch crunch of kibble cracking as Java pursued Rose’s treats across the carpet.

Starting to worry, the doctor demanded, “Raya was about to advise me on Rose’s treatment. Where’s her Pearl?”

The two of us searched the floor until we found the crumpled plastic cage Java and I had smashed when we were wrestling, but the Pearl was missing.

Poor Rose. None of us were much of a help to her.

“Help me look for it, Java,” I urged. “It’s a hard little ball, like a small marble with dark blue swirls and stars inside. It smells kind of like licorice.

Java nipped up another treat from the carpet with a crack. He jumped up, earnestly exploring the inside of his mouth with his tongue.

“It’s about the size of a cat treat.” I added, hoping that might get his attention.

Suddenly his eyes flew wide.

“Java, are you OK?” Rose asked

He might have said something, but I didn’t listen because a violet ray stabbed through the end window, probing around like a cat’s paw feeling for a mouse.