More Meerkat Madness

For several suntimes now, Uncle had been exercising furiously. He had taken to doing press-ups, and making energetic sprints to and from a nearby shepherd tree. He would come back all breathless and fluttery, running his paws over his face and arms to smooth them and looking down to see if his fat tummy had got any smaller. Now and then he would throw himself on his back and kick all his legs in the air, making strange yip-yip-wheeee! noises and shouting, “I’m all yours! Come and get me!” He did a lot of waggling his eyebrows and clacking his teeth. Skeema felt pretty sure that he was getting himself fit for a scrap!

On this particular early-suntime, Uncle was taking unusual care with his grooming. He suddenly seemed to notice a wayward tuft in his fur and nibbled at it furiously. “Lie down tidy, now!” he growled. “Disgrace! This’ll never do! Hmmm, nip nip! Must keep meself neat and handsome, what-what!”

“Aha! I get it!” said Skeema. He had suddenly thought of another possibility. “Are you making yourself look nice for the Chief of the Click-clicks, Uncle?” he asked.

The Click-clicks were a small tribe of Blah-blahs who lived fairly close to Far Burrow. They were strange, giant creatures who had accepted Uncle as their king. They were not unlike monkeys, but smoother and they usually stayed out of trees and walked on the ground. They often came up quietly and left gifts of food for the Really Mad Mob. They bowed down to the meerkats and let them climb up on to their heads. Being as tall as young thorn trees, they made excellent look-out posts.

To show how much he admired Uncle, the Chief of the Click-clicks had given him the special collar that he always wore with pride. Like all Blah-blahs, the Click-clicks talked in blah-blah-blah noises instead of squeaking and chattering to one another in the normal way. The only time they didn’t go blah-blah-blah was when they got excited. Then they sounded like hyenas… hee-hee-ha-ha-haaah!

The Click-clicks had plenty of strange and silly habits. For example, instead of building proper, safe burrows deep down under the sands, they made pointy white mounds above the ground! These were so flimsy that you could see them flapping whenever the wind blew. The Click-click tribe was so called because they were very shy and often hid their eyes behind special eye-protectors whenever they came to admire the meerkats up close – which was often. Sometimes they used their tongues to make click-click noises as a greeting.

“No, no. The Click-clicks have gone, I’m afraid,” said Uncle, staring outwards. “The rains will be here soon; I can smell ’em. And Blah-blahs get very nervous about storms, don’t you know. Those feeble pointy mounds of theirs won’t keep them safe from sky-crash and fizz-fire. That’s why they’ve all jumped into their Vroom-vrooms, d’you see? I expect they’ve gone to find a safer place to live.”

The Click-clicks were not clever enough to think of building lots of different escape-tunnels. Instead, they relied on enormous travelling burrows that moved on spinners. At the first sign of danger, they would jump into them and vroom-vroom! – off they would roar in a cloud of dust.

“Oh, dear! That means no more nuts and eggs for me-me, then,” sighed Mimi. “No more standing on their heads and having my tummy tickled.”

At the mention of the word tummy, Uncle slid his paws under his rather fat one and hoisted it up with a “One-two-three… HUP!” It was a habit of his. Skeema and Mimi giggled and did a “One-two-three… HUP!” immitation of him. He took no notice, and just kept on gazing into the distance, sighing. After a while he sang a little ditty to himself:

“Fleabites are red, my love.

Blue skinks are blue.

Lizards are yummy, love

And so, my fluff, are you.”

The kits stood and stared as Uncle fiddled with his helmet, tilting it across his good eye and saying quietly to himself in a strange, low voice, “Not too bad for an old soldier, eh? How do I look, my dainty Itchy-Kitchy?”

“You don’t think he’s going potty, do you, Skeema?” said Mimi.

“I hope not,” said Skeema. “Although, come to think of it, he has been doing some very peculiar things lately. He kept me awake for ages in the darktime, talking in his sleep, giving me hard squeezes and saying strange things to me in a soppy sort of voice.”

“What sort of things?” asked Mimi.

“Well… like: You’ll be quite safe with me, you fabulous creature.”

“What do you think he’s on about?” said Mimi.

At that moment, Mimi heard something behind her and, turning round quickly, saw something moving in the shadows. She let out such a dreadful shriek that Little Dream leaped up and gave a shriek himself.

“WUP! WUP! WUP! ACTION STATIONS!” cried Mimi.

“Wh-what?” growled Uncle. “Enemies, is it? TAKE COVER! DIVE-DIVE-DIVE!”

In one sweeping movement, Skeema grabbed his trusty lime-green Snap-snap – a powerful weapon he had acquired from the Click-click tribe – and held him at the ready.

Tails up, claws out, the kits braced themselves, ready to run to safety or fight for their lives.

For a moment they stood rooted to the spot, for there, behind them, something was making its way steadily towards them from the darkness of their very own burrow!

Chapter 2

What was it, struggling up out of the gloom? A honey badger? A cobra? Either could be deadly!

Suddenly Uncle let out his breath and relaxed. “Stand easy, the Really Mads!” he ordered. “No danger.”

He bustled past the kits, bowed deeply into the tunnel and offered a helping paw to the intruder. “Up we come,” he said.

The stranger was a fabulously fluffy female meerkat. She was tall and youthful, and when she turned, she showed very pretty, regularly-spaced dark patches down the sandy fur of her back. She had clearly lost weight and condition, but not her dignity. Her eyes were very deep and dark and her gaze was steady. When she saw how anxiously the kits looked at her, she almost turned and went back the way she had come. But then she seemed to check herself and stepped forward and spoke up boldly. “What ho, Fearless, old thing,” she said. She sounded very grand and hearty. “I hope this isn’t an awkward moment. But I really don’t think I can keep myself a secret for much longer. There! I’ve done it now, haven’t I?”

With that, she threw herself down on to her tummy in the still-cold sand in the way respectful meerkats have when they wish to be introduced.

“Now, now, m’dear! Get to your paws, please!” said Uncle, puffing his chest out, pulling in his tummy and straightening his safari scarf. “No need for ceremony! The kits are not going to bite you. You’re quite safe here with us. Come out and join our Warm-up.”

“What is she doing near me, Mimi, in my home?” exclaimed Mimi indignantly.

“Our home,” corrected Little Dream quietly, looking a little confused.

Skeema dashed over and peered down into the entrance tunnel, wagging his bottom from side to side as fiercely as he could, to show that he was ready for any sort of attack. “If there are any more of you down there – come out and fight!” he cried.

Mimi joined him, and began to make loud spit-calls to show how fierce she was. “Yes! Come out and fight me, me!” she challenged. “I’m special, you know! I’m the maddest kit of all the Really Mads!”

Little Dream was still looking rather dazed by the speed at which things were happening, but he was quick to stand shoulder to shoulder with his brother and sister. “Exactly,” he cried. It wasn’t very scary but it was the best he could manage on the spur of the moment.

“Steady! As you were, everyone!” growled Uncle Fearless. “Stand easy! There’s no-one else down there, you can take my word for it.”

“There could be, Uncle!” said Skeema. “After all, this female must have sneaked in through one of the escape-tunnels.” Skeema knew a trick or too himself so he was always quick to sniff out the cunning plans of others.

“I can assure you, Skeema,” said Uncle, licking his paw and briskly polishing the fur on his chest with it, “that I invited only one guest to use the spare chamber last night. And that was Miss – or to use her proper title, hem-hem – Princess – Radiant.”

At the word princess, Mimi bristled. She had always wanted to be a princess like her poor mother, Princess Fragrant who, tragically, had disappeared when Mimi and her brothers were no bigger than baby mole-rats. So when the Really Mad Mob had moved to Far Burrow, Uncle had promised Mimi she could be a princess. Thanks to Uncle Fearless, they had escaped from their old home where they had been bullied by cold Queen Heartless and her horrid, mean royal kits.

They had made their way, facing any number of dangers together, across the kingdom of the Sharpeyes, almost as far as the land of their arch-rivals, the fearsome Ruddertails. Mimi no longer had to bow and scrape to the cruel Princess Dangerous, who had reminded her constantly that she and her brothers were of no importance at all, being mere orphans.

Now the Really Mads had their own burrow and their own tribe, and she certainly didn’t want to have to go through that sort of thing again!

Skeema was still alarmed too, and he blurted out, “Is she a Ruddertail? She smells like one to me.”

“Enemies!” piped Little Dream, remembering the tremendous fight they had all had to keep the Ruddertails out of Far Burrow when they first arrived.

“Manners, everyone!” roared Uncle. “Silence, PLEASE!” Sulkily, the kits obeyed. He went on, “Princess Radiant is most certainly not a Ruddertail, Skeema. And she is not an enemy. She is… or rather she was… a member of the Truepatch tribe, who treated her as cruelly as the Sharpeyes treated us. And they threw her out. Sadly for her, she had no fellow meerkats with her, so had no choice for many a suntime and darktime but to be a tribeless Wanderer. When I came across her, worn-out and defenceless under a shrub on the border of Shepherd Tree Clump, I… well, I didn’t hesitate, did I, Princess?”

“Radiant, please, my dear! Let the kitties just call me Radiant!”

“Kitties!” spluttered Mimi. “Me? Me? A kitty?”

Uncle ignored Mimi and pressed on with his story. “I had no hesitation in offering the, hurrumph, very lovely Radiant, my protection. Our protection, I should say. Only…”