The Battle of the Rhubarb Bush

By Eureka Hamilton CEO of ZealAus Publishing

Greetings Valued Customers.

This is the House Lion speaking to you, so stop whatever you are doing and pay attention.

Last time I wrote to you, it was with the glorious news that I had found the most beautiful cat lady in the whole world.

Misty Tankelevich!

The bad news is that she lives in America.

The even worse news is that my Idiot Executive Assistant, Tweedle-Dum, refuses to introduce me to her.

One of the great challenges of being a CEO (Cat Executive Officer) is getting good staff. I can not pretend that I have managed this.

All my staff is useless, but my Idiot Executive Assistant is by far and away the worst.

Her faults are many and she is just the sort of liability I would wish upon the company of my most hated rival.

The problem is, I can’t decide which one of my rivals I hate the most.

Also, I have tried to give her away before and no cat will have her.

Gingers are very hard to rehome.

*I have tried advertising her as ‘free to a good home’ on the nearest lamp post, but there’s very little market for idiot gingers. Even free ones.*

This particular morning Tweedle-Dum had been especially dense. She had opened a tin of sardine-chicken casserole with real vegetable pieces.

I do not like vegetables.

“Oh bother,” said Tweedle-Dim, looking into the tin. “You hate this, Eureka. I thought we’d stopped buying it.”

THEN SHE FILLED MY PLATE UP WITH THE MUCK!

I sat up very straight and glared at her.

“Oh you’ll be fine,” muttered Tweedle-Dum, slouching towards the coffee plunger. “In any case, I’m not opening another tin. It’ll just stink up the fridge and Dad will complain about there being two open jelly meat tins in the fridge.”

I intensified my glare. I hate excuses and this was a very bad excuse, even from an idiot as big as Tweedle-Dum.

It was time to have a talk with my assistant.

I stalked over to her.

“Your performance has become more and more displeasing of late. You have started sleeping in to 6.30 every morning, which means I have to wait longer for my breakfast. I get up at 3 am and I think your life would be greatly enhanced by applying my work ethic to your life.

You often open the wrong sort of jelly meat for my breakfast, and you do not even attempt to rectify your awful blunder. As the CEO of ZealAus Publishing, mine is a lonely and heavy load and food is one of my few joys. Vegetable pieces are not joyful, and you should get it together.

I could go on all morning about how lousy I find your service. But I am a busy lion and I don’t have time. So, I will finish by saying that one of your tasks is to make my personal life run as smoothly as possible.

The fact that you refuse to introduce me to the most beautiful cat lady in the whole world, is not only unprofessional, it’s hurtful. I can only hope you will address these issues, or I will have to let you go. This is your verbal warning.”

Tweedle-Dum looked away from my stern blue eyes out into the garden. An intense look came onto her face.

It was obvious she was thinking about something deeply. I was pleased. Clearly, my stern approach had gotten through to her.

Any minute now, she would offer me a grovelling apology, open a vegetable-free tin of jelly meat, swear to start getting out of bed at 3 am every morning and, best of all, she would introduce me to the most beautiful lady cat in the whole world, Misty Tankelevich!

Tweedle-Dum’s gingery head swung back towards me. She opened her mouth. I waited for her very necessary apology to begin.

“I think I want some pie,” said Tweedle-Dum.

Excuse me?

Was this a time to be thinking about pie?

I growled a menacing growl at Tweedle-Dum. It was time for her to know that one does not cross lions with impunity.

It was time for her to start rattling with terror in her embroidered blue slippers.

“See?” Said Tweedle-Dum. “That’s what you get for overeating. It makes you cranky and then you throw up and now that I think of it…”

AND SHE PICKED ME UP AND CARRIED ME TO THE DOOR.

Overeating? I haven’t eaten anything, you nitwit! YOU opened the wrong sort of Jelly Meat!

She plonked me outside and shut the door.

I growled at the door.

I scratched at the door.

I howled at the door.

Inside Rose Bank House I could hear Tweedle-Dim.

“What’s he making all that racket for?”

“Oh, he overate again, Mum. I can’t handle him right now and I don’t want to clean up any more cat vomit!”

“Quite right!” Said Tweedle-Dim’s voice. “He’s so annoying.”

I heard the sound of the electric kettle being flicked on. That was that. Once Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dim hunkered down with a mug of tea, there was no moving them anywhere. I rolled my eyes towards the garden and stiffened.

An ugly, grey and black tail was floating through the lavender ring. I froze.

Pickwick!

I hate Pickwick.

He’s the Tabby brother of Jessie Bell and it’s possible that he’s even uglier than she is.

I’m not entirely sure on this point.

They’re both so aesthetically unappealing it’s impossible to pick the loser.

In any case, here was Pickwick IN MY GARDEN.

Up to this point, the most important items on my list had been the discipline of Tweedle-Dum and getting an introduction to the most beautiful lady cat in the whole world.

However, as a mighty leader of a publishing company, I am a well-read beast.

I have to be.

I certainly can’t expect my idiot staff to pick up anything of note.

Recently, I have been reading Mr Sun Glue.

I suppose you want to know why he was called Mr Sun Glue. There’s not a lot of information out there on this, but as a very deductive and logical House Lion, I am confident that his family worked out how to get the planets to stay in the sky.

Before the Sun Glues went into business, the planets were always smashing into earth, and this was very disruptive to the economy.

So, the Sun Glues came up with a way to make sure that the stars and the moon and the sun stayed put.

Hence the name.

Once the Sun Glue Family had finished creating an enormous fortune through the development of celestial adhesives, Mr Sun Glue wrote an excellent book on leadership, called The Art of War.

There’s lots of similarities between military and business strategy, and it’s not surprising that it was a best seller.

My literary musings were punctuated by the sight of Pickwick’s foul ringed tail gliding down into the lavender ring.

I remembered Mr Sun Glue’s advice about seizing victories.

Sun Glue said:

“Military tactics are like water. Water doesn’t waste effort trying to make a new road for itself. It avoids climbing hills and slithers down into valleys. The smart warrior plans his path based off what his foe is doing and changes his tactics according to the conditions before him.”

I don’t expect any of you lot will understand something as deep as Sun Glue, so let me explain.

I am a smart Warrior.

Pickwick is my enemy.

The path I would have liked to have taken that morning was to punish Tweedle-Dum and confiscate her phone to contact Misty.

But I was outside and that opportunity was not before me.

Pickwick, however, was before me.

Annoyance at my useless assistant was no reason to pass up on this heaven-sent opportunity to lavish a savage beating on Pickwick.

A beating he so richly deserved, and I was behind on delivering.

Also, the situation for warfare was superb. Sun Glue himself could not have advocated a more favourable battle ground.

In the centre of the lavender ring was a large concrete circle. It would be a puddle of sunlight by now. Pickwick would unfold himself in this puddle. Surrounded by the hedge of lavenders, he would become unwise.

He would roll on his back.

He would expose his tummy.

Delicious sleep would neutralize his weaponry.

And then, I would pounce. Right into the middle of his ugly, stripey tabby tummy.

It would be glorious.

Except, Sun Glue had said something else about winning battles.

“If you know yourself and you know your enemy (Pickwick), you don’t need to worry about the outcome of a hundred battles. But if you don’t know your enemy, that’s another story and you jolly well should worry.”

Was Pickwick ugly?

Yes.

Was he stupid?

Very.

Did I despise him?

Deeply.

But despite all his failings, Pickwick was still a cat. And no one should ever underestimate the brilliance of a cat.

Scientific research has shown that your average cat has 87 more IQ points than your average human. Of course, I have even more extra IQ points than that, but I am no mere cat.

I am a lion.

Pickwick would never surrender himself to the enticing heat of the sun-drenched concrete slab until he had investigated all the lavender bushes for enemies.

I would need another layer of camouflage.

I narrowed my eyes.

Beside the lavender ring grew a substantial rhubarb bush. The rhubarb had started flourishing since The Magnificent One had moved the water spike into the middle of it.

My blue eyes brightened.

Pickwick would never check the rhubarb. He feared the water spike. And unlike me, he didn’t know that Tweedle-Dum wouldn’t switch it on for another hour. It would take her that long to chug down all her morning cups of tea and coffee.

I switched my luxury velvety paws onto Silent Mode. Then I snuck expertly along the low little retaining wall that edges the garden where the lavender ring grows.

Pickwick (as I had so sagely predicted) was circling around inside the lavender ring, investigating the bushes.

The tricky bit was to get up the brick steps that would take me to my rhubarb camouflage without him spotting me.

It called for extreme cunning, a superb sense of timing and lightning quick speed.

I would have less than 30 seconds to secure the rhubarb bush.

The slightest miscalculation would be fatal.

Very few cats would have been able to pull off this manoeuvre.

But I am not a cat.

I am The House Lion.

So of course I managed it.

Applying my sniper sharp vision to a gap in the thick red stalks of my military grade rhubarb screen, I eyed a small hole in one of the lavender bushes.

It was as I had planned it.

Pickwick, assuming he had secured the premise (oh the fool), had surrendered himself to the warm concrete circle.

Any moment now, those delicious balmy rays of sunlight would draw him down into a deep delicious sleep.

I prepared to deploy Rocket Mode.

Rocket Mode is seriously impressive.

It enables me to convert a slight, almost non-existent shuffle backwards into a high-octane fuel that can propel me one and a half meters into the air.

Once in the air, I can pivot while simultaneously unleashing all my claws.

This ensures maximum impact when contact is made with my target.

Don’t bother trying to figure out all the laws of physics and the enormously complex mathematical calculations that go into Rocket Mode.

They can’t figure it out at Lockheed Martin, and you won’t be able to either.

Some things are beyond the intellectual reach of humans.

In fact, most things are.

That’s why any human who was ever alleged to do anything useful, lived with a cat.

Albert Einstein was managed by a cat.

Isaac Newton was managed by a cat.

Marie Curie was managed by a cat.

The list goes on.

I’m sure you grasp what this means.

Then again, maybe you don’t.

Ask a cat to explain it to you.

But to return to the realm of Pickwick and his impending doom, I had just assumed the crouching position from whence I would begin the high-octane fuel producing backwards shuffle.

Suddenly, the back door of Rose Bank House banged open.

I stiffened.

What was that awful sound coming towards the garden?

“I’m going to make a pie, I’m going to make a pie,” squawked the dreadful noise.

Oh no.

My idiot assistant, who on any other day, would still be curled up around a mug of coffee, babbling incoherently about art or some other such rubbish, had chosen this day to become precociously perky.

It wasn’t even nine O’clock!

“I’m going to make a pie, la la la, la,” continued the tuneless voice of my gingery idiot.

I pivoted my glittering blue eyes to the direction of the horrid sound.

Tweedle-Dum was prancing down the garden path, waving an enormous kitchen knife around, excitedly.

Sometimes I wonder if I should leave the business world for the political realm.

I really do not understand how my idiot assistant is legally allowed to carry enormous knives around.

A tin opener?

Fine.

She needs that for her job of serving me.

But a big kitchen knife?

You never know what a gingery idiot will do with a big kitchen knife.

Tweedle-Dum was nearing my rhubarb lair. “La la la,” said Tweedle-Dum. “I’m going to make a pie!”

You will not believe what happened next.

It’s just too horrible.

I don’t even want to write the words.

TWEEDLE-DUM CUT DOWN MY RHUBARB STOCKADE!

“Oh, what a big pie I’m going to make!” giggled Tweedle-Dum, gathering up the stalks of my camouflage. “Hello Eureka, what are you doing in the rhubarb?”

I sincerely wish she had not said that.

Deep within the lavender ring, Pickwick woke up.

He shuffled back, produced a blast of high-octane fuel and launched himself over the lavender ring, unsheathed his claws and came crashing down.

On me.

I put up a valiant fight.

But I did not have the momentum of Rocket Mode.

And Pickwick did.

He lavished a savage beating upon me and then he chased me over my own fence into my own forest and up my own gum tree.

Then he sat at the bottom of the gum tree and licked all his claws.

“Let that be a lesson to you, YouSmella, never try and creep up on a Garden Lion with World Class Loser Radar. We can sense a loser five miles away. You never had a chance.”

I glared down at him. “My name is Eureka, not YouSmella and—”

“Really?”

“Really what?”

“Your name’s not YouSmella?”

“No, it’s Eureka and as I was saying—”

“Same thing really, isn’t it?”

I growled. “It is not the same thing! Eureka is a name of heritage and history and Yousmella isn’t even a real word!”

“Oh yes it is! ‘Yousmella’ is Latin for “You Smell Awful” whereas ‘Eureka’ is Greek for “you reek worse than a sewer”. I assumed you went by both.”

He rolled over in the fallen gum leaves and grinned his horrid tabby grin up at me.

I leaned out as far as I dared on my gum tree branch and hissed “Pickwico delenda est”.

I figured he was only bluffing about knowing Latin and this would scare him.

“Ha ha ha,” said Pickwick. “So I need to be destroyed do I? That won’t be happening.”

And he smiled another offensive stripy tabby smile.

“I WILL destroy you!” I shouted. “When I get down there!”

“I hear you had a date with Cousin Patrica”, sneered Pickwick. “She said you were a cad and if I got the chance, would I mind pulling your nose off your face? I told her I’d be delighted. So anytime you’re ready to, ah, destroy me, just slide on down and we’ll find out what a cat without a nose looks like.”

I decided to stay put.

I stayed put until Pickwick heard the sound of a can opener three doors down, and his greed for sardines overcame his lust for violence.

I hastened into Rose Bank House.

Did I find an appropriately apologetic Tweedle-Dum?

No, I did not.

I found this.