As Neko explained to MeMe, “Ridley and I are Orla cats, bound together by destiny to seek each other out when we’re in trouble.”

Still skeptical about all this, up to now, I didn’t think I’d been much help to anyone.

Neko said, “With the tablet Sona gave me, and the androids’ invaluable assistance — their names are Rrrrk, Gling, and Slee, by the way — we explored caverns under the buried city. Beneath the room where the doctor discovered Raya’s coffin, we opened sealed chambers containing scrolls, clay tablets, paintings — much of it apparently made by cats for their own use. Of course, it has only been since Tuesday that we met —”

It feels like a year to me, I thought.

“— So, I haven’t had much time to study the texts. The few I saw describe life on other worlds, something I know nothing about. I also found an entire book about Orla cats. What little I had time to translate with Sona’s tablet, seems to agree with Pawa’s story.”

“Still, there doesn’t seem to be any explanation for how I found myself swimming to you under water, except to say I’d been admiring the great statue of Bast in the Hall of Departed Cats and I heard MeMe calling.”

“Not me?” I asked.

“I’m positive it was our friend MeMe,” Neko affirmed.

Could it be she is also an Orla cat? I wondered to myself.

“Up on the mountain on Sunday night, MeMe came to rescue me.”

“But I have no special talents, like you two,” MeMe protested.

“Sure you do. For one thing, MeMe, you have the gift of true friendship.”

“And I have a super sensitive nose,” MeMe added with a playful grin.

“Maybe we should take another look at the cats on your farm,” Neko suggested.

“They’re all from the East Woods,” MeMe pointed out. “Except me, I’m from New York.”

“Ooh-wah, ooh-wah, come on kitty. Tell us about the cat from New York City,” I teased.

“Before I found you two,” Neko told us, “I had a vision of Java giving me swimming lessons.”

“Java? Swim?” MeMe and I both exclaimed.

“The only swimming Java ever did,” MeMe told us in a confidentially, “was when he fell off the dock at Cat Camp last summer. The water was so cold, he fell asleep warming himself in the sun and burned his feet.”

“Speaking of swimming,” I suddenly remembered. “We should find out what happened to Mau and his cats. Maybe they need help.”

The treeless coral atoll known as Baker had once been a busy airfield during the Second World War. Now the runway was overgrown with weeds. From the air, we could see a cemetery with the graves of 19th century sailors and guano miners. Discovered by whalers in 1818, from the middle of the 19th century the island was mined for nitrates used in fertilizer and explosives. Near the cemetery, we could see ruins of several buildings left from an unsuccessful attempt to colonize the tiny island dating from1935.

We landed near a small lighthouse where hermit crabs piled on top of one another to escape the relentless tropical sun. A weathered sign designated the island as a national wildlife refuge. Frigate birds, terns, noddies, boobies, plovers, curlews, and even a ruddy turnstone wheeled about overhead, displeased about a trio of cats who had moved into their private sanctuary.

Mau and his three officers were lounging in the shade outside the lighthouse. They would have liked to shelter inside it from the relentless tropical sun, since the lighthouse was the only structure on the treeless island, but none of the space cats had seen hermit crabs before and they were scared to death of them.

As soon as we parked, Mau, Krrip, and Aloo ran over to our ship to bask in the frigid exhaust of the Zarcleron engines. After a while, we heard angry shouting. Curiosity getting the better of us, we looked cautiously out into the bright sunlight to see what was going on.

“Nothing has been as you said it would be.” Aloo fumed. “Unpredictable solar flares, primitive weapons shot from the ground, human monsters! You said this planet was inhabited by cats like us, not giants walking on two legs. Why weren’t we warned?”

“I told you it wasn’t my fault,” protested Mau. “It was that Egyptian princess and those Earth cats.”

“Such formidable opponents,” spat Aloo sarcastically.

Krrip looked up impatiently at the sky. “When I get through telling what I know they’ll take you back to Alna wearing a muzzle.”

“You’re nothing but a crooked politician,” hissed Aloo, “a low appointee at that, which is why you only have the rank of major.”

“But I still outrank you within the PCC,” snarled Mau. “When we get back to headquarters, I’ll have your stripes!”

The three cats circled each other, heads down, ears back, waiting for the first one to make a move.

A tern swooped low overhead on her way to the beach. She coughed and something dropped on Mau. When he flinched, the two officers jumped him, scratching, biting, rolling on the ground like angry kittens. Their screams and yowls frightened the cormorants, boobies, and several varieties of petrels nesting nearby, who all took to the air, adding their cries to the general commotion.

As we watched in astonishment, MeMe cried out, “Look at their fur! They’re not blue anymore.”

The three cats stopped fighting and looked at MeMe.

“What d’you mean I’m not blue?” Mau demanded, examining his reflection in the polished gold-colored skin of the ship. “I look perfectly fine.”

“Except for your spots!” Laughed Aloo. “All over.”

MeMe floated one of Raya’s tablets out from the ship, turning it so Mau could see his reflection in mirror-mode.

Mau examined himself with growing panic. His light blue nose had turned two-toned, with brick red on one side and tan on the other. His face had light spots on the left side and dark ones on the right. Some of his whiskers had turned black, while others were white, and nothing about him was blue anymore. Cautiously glancing behind, he recoiled in horror at patches of yellow, orange, red and black scattered randomly all over his body from his cheeks to his tail.

Major Mau sat on the sand and cried. He was done.

Aloo and Krrip wrestled for the screen. Sick with fear, they studied their grayish-brown fur. Tan accents on their cheeks, the unmistakable M on their foreheads, stripes on their legs, rings along their tails, all marked them as classic tabby cats.

Aloo and Krrip stared blankly toward the horizon without speaking.

“At least now they’ll never lose their stripes.” MeMe whispered, giving me a nudge. Neko and I looked away trying not to laugh, but when we glanced back and caught the spark in MeMe’s eye, all three of us burst out in fits of giggles.

The tablet made a pleasant chime, dissolving from mirror mode to a video conference link. Emperor Haah of planet Alna and the Fleet Commander, Major General Chirrah, appeared on a split screen. Mau and the two officers bowed, touching their paws to their heads.

“The magnetic storm must be over,” MeMe whispered to Ridley.

Fleet Commander Chirrah said, “I have received some disturbing news about the way you’ve been handling our illustrious Emperor’s diplomatic mission to Earth.”

Mau and the two officers froze under Emperor Haah’s cold stare.

“I understand you disobeyed orders.” He informed them sternly.

“Charges have been brought against you.” Chirrah flicked his tail angrily. “Dereliction of duty, misrepresentation of conditions in the field. Although we were assured the Earth was populated mainly by domestic felines, you discovered that the planet was swarming with billions of humans. But you never issued a report.”

The three cats looked down uneasily.

“I want to know why essential information about the poisonous effects of the atmosphere on planet Earth was deliberately withheld from our military,” growled Chirrah. “Your negligence has placed our troops at grave risk. They might have been disfigured for life.” He peered intently at Mau and his officers, “as the three of you already have, I see.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” Mau protested. “If this Earth cat hadn’t made me chase her—”

“Silence!” Chirrah cut him off. “Don’t try to tell me one small Earth cat has wrecked our entire fleet?”

Overhead a copper-colored saucer descended to the island with a pleasant harmonic sound like a musical top winding down.

Emperor Haah broke in, “It was your duty to inform the fleet of unusual solar activity from Earth’s wild star. All of our satellites have been rendered inoperable after last night’s magnetic storm.”

“All of them?” Mau asked incredulously. “What about the troops?”

“Trashed! All 2,500,000 of our best military grade androids have burned out, useless. You couldn’t even play a game of Space Invaders with them.”

Chirrah cast a hard look at the officers. “If we had been warned, the transports would have taken measures to shield the androids and power them down. Instead, they were left waiting at the ready for your order to invade. Now we have 500 transport loads of scrap metal to take back for recycling. That is, if the solar plasma wave estimated to hit us later today doesn’t disable everything else.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Mau protested. “The blame lies solely in the two paws of this Earth cat named Ridley who—”

But the Major General wasn’t finished. “Due to an impulsive decision that directly disobeyed my directive,” his eyes bore into Mau, “You ordered the Earth satellites to be electrically grounded with lepton particles to disable their communications. Fortunately for them you did, because this morning every one of those Earth satellites remains in perfect operating condition, while all of ours burned out in the magnetic storm.”

Fleet Commander Chirrah added bitterly, “At least we can use theirs for navigation — when we can pack up and go home.”

The transmission ended.

“We’re through,” wailed Aloo.

“Disgrace and prison,” whispered Krrip, sitting down heavily on the sand.

“A life in exile with ordinary fur,” moaned Mau.

The tablet returned to its mirror state, leaving the three cats to reflect on their fate. They all wanted to hide, but the island was less than a mile wide, and since there weren’t any trees to climb, the only other place to go was inside the lighthouse with the hermit crabs.

MeMe turned to me with a look of wonder, “You’re a hero, Ridley. You defeated the entire Alna military all by yourself!”

“It wasn’t me,” I protested.

Neko gave me a bump. “With your own two paws as the cat said.”

An Alna Military saucer landed nearby. When the hatch flew up, a detail of four androids marched out. Mau started to run, but the metal cats easily chased him down. With each one grabbing a leg, they frog-marched Mau to the ship and tossed him inside with a hollow bang.

The four androids started toward Krrip and Aloo, but before they could take twenty steps in their little red boots, the hatch of their military ship whirred shut. The engines quickly revved. A moment later the military ship lifted off on a westerly course out across the ocean with Major Mau aboard. He disappearing into a bank of cumulus clouds standing far over the horizon and was lost from view.

The four androids stared after their ship in mute astonishment.

General Aloo helped Colonel Krrip to his feet. “Stroke of luck, that,” he told the other cat with a smile. “Mau may have given us a way out of this yet.”

Turning to the three of us, Aloo asked politely, “Do you mind if we use your phone?”

After he called his fleet for another ship to take them off the island, we touched paws all around like civilized cats.

MeMe said, “Lets go home and have a really good breakfast, I’m hungry.”