Cat Kin by Nick Green Page A

seeing that Stuart had started it.
    Tiptoeing along the sycamore’s almost horizontal upper trunk, Tiffany began to see the treetops in a new way. The roadmap of branches really had become roads, winding in every direction,
including straight up and straight down. She could have taken any of them. To her left she saw a tiny yellow eye painted halfway up an oak. This looked tricky. Creeping along a thinner limb, she
focused hard on her fingertips before hopping across the gap. The bark clung to her hands like clay to a car tyre, giving her time to scramble onto a bough.
    Olly moaned, ‘You’re kidding!’
    ‘Tiffany,’ said Mrs Powell, ‘that was good, but do pay attention. There is a much easier way of reaching that tree. Not everyone has claws yet.’
    ‘Sorry, Mrs Powell.’ Tiffany tried not to smile.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Yusuf. ‘Nine out of ten for skill. Two out of ten for good thinking.’
    Tiffany stuck out her tongue at him. She’d never felt so chuffed. There was a twenty-foot drop below her and she cared nothing, absolutely nothing about it.
    She practised making scratch-marks on the wood while Mrs Powell led the others round the easy way. Yusuf was looking more confident and Susie was singing to herself. Then with a start she found
Ben right beside her, dusting off his T-shirt. He must have taken the same tricky route as her.
    ‘Hmm. Quite easy really,’ he mumbled, and stalked off after the others.
    Huh? She crouched still, her thoughts and feelings a mishmash. What had that been about? Was he trying to make some sort of point? Or just wind her up for spiteful reasons of his own? Taking a
short cut across a raft of thin branches she snatched back her place at the front of the group.
    ‘What
is
that you’re humming, Susie?’ she asked. The tune was getting stale.
    ‘Oh. Was I?’ Susie blushed. ‘Just something I’m playing with the school orchestra.
Peter and the Wolf.
It’s my clarinet part.’
    ‘I thought it sounded familiar,’ murmured Mrs Powell.
    Step by step they picked their way through the sturdier boughs. Thicker and thicker meshed the branches until it was hard to spot the eyes painted on them. Elderly moss-clad trees stretched at
strange angles, like giants roused from sleep.
    ‘Flow,’ Mrs Powell commanded, watching Daniel and Cecile wobble along a chestnut’s limb. ‘Think with your body not your brain. Use your Felasticon.’
    ‘Um.’ From the way Cecile licked her lips, Tiffany guessed that she had forgotten what Felasticon was. Impatiently Mrs Powell explained it again.
    Tiffany hadn’t forgotten, though the seventh rudiment was still new to her. Now was a good time to try it. Summoning her Ptep and Ailur catras, she stretched for a branch that should have
been out of reach, caught it and swung herself up. Felasticon. The reason cats moved like cats. Human spines, Mrs Powell said, were mere strings of beads, the bones linked by ligaments. But the
bones in a cat’s spine were joined by muscles. The whole thing could flex like living elastic, at once a powerhouse, shock-absorber and rubbery rudder. Human beings couldn’t, of course,
develop backbones like this, no matter how much pashki they did. But the Felasticon stretch produced a similar effect.
    One by one the Cat Kin dropped from branch to branch. Mrs Powell waited below on a massive log that bridged a ditch. Susie jumped onto Yusuf’s back.
    ‘I’m tired of all these stupid leaves and things. Carry me!’
    ‘Sure,’ said Yusuf. ‘Leopards can lift their own weight into a tree, can’t they?’
    ‘Are you suggesting I weigh as much as you do?’ demanded Susie.
    ‘With all the chips you eat, definitely.’
    ‘Put her down, Yusuf,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘You’re a cat, not a pony. We’ll take a breather here and then make our way back.’
    They found places to sprawl along the log. After several minutes (though it could have been longer; Tiffany thought she might even have dozed off) Mrs Powell