Cats Triumphant by Jody Lynn Nye

to paw at him, reminding him peevishly that cats had not yet been fed, and the world must cease until they were.
    “Oh, my pretty kitty! My sweetie baby! I am so sorry!” Daddy said, contritely. “Excuse me, officers. I was just taking care of them when we heard the guy in my bedroom. I’ve got to feed them. Come on, you two. It’s not the end of the world.”
    Yes, it is, Pretty Kitty thought, trotting after him into the territory. Daddy was not keeping things in perspective. The blue-clad people followed. The neighbors and companion cats went back to their own homes.
    In a few moments Pretty Kitty and Sweetie Baby were able to gulp down their much-delayed repast. Sweetie Baby, as usual, ate her food too fast and rejected much of it onto the hall floor. Instead of being upset, Daddy opened another can and gave them a second meal, along with a handful of their favorite shrimp-flavored treats, praising them all the while. When they had finished eating, Pretty Kitty sat upright on Daddy’s lap, crooning with delight as he played with her ears. Sweetie Baby snuggled up with the official male in blue who had the broadest lap.
    “This is going to be one funny report at the station, Mr. Miller,” the big person in blue was saying. “But it looks as though your cats helped avert a potentially serious crime.”
    Yes, Pretty Kitty wanted to say, even though she knew the people were too stupid to understand her. We could have been robbed of a meal. We almost didn’t get fed.

Dawna Keen-Eyed upended her water skin and drank the few last drops. Walking the rough horse track between villages was thirsty work, but she was happy. It was better to be breathing country air full of the smells of new-cut hay, wood smoke and pig poop than blood, rot, burning oil and the smell of corpses beginning to decay. The way the land sloped the river shouldn’t be far ahead, and by it the town where perhaps a decent meal and a clean bed waited. Her longsword, carefully cleaned from the last battle and wrapped in its oiled cloth, and her shield with its red stripe down the center bumped against the tall woman’s back with every step she took. The red pennant that indicate her status as a mercenary fluttered from the hilt and tickled the back of her neck under her long, brown braid. King Drealin III himself had handed the pennant back to her with a brief statement of gratitude, at the same time that the paymaster gave her her fee. The money wasn’t much, but it ought to last long enough for her to reach home. For the moment she longed to sit down. Her legs were tired, and she had finally worn through the thin place in the sole of her left boot.
    CABBAGE TOWN , the gold-lettered plaque read, as the track changed from mud to gravel at the edge of the village. Dawna glanced around with pleasure. Life was here, not death. It was market day. Hearty merchants wrangled with their customers, apple-cheeked women in kirtles and wimples, or tall men with colorful liripipe hoods. Farmers argued about the relative merits of this or that cow. Dogs slept in the sun.
    A plump gray puss slept tucked up on a window sill beside a scarlet flower in a pot. An orange-striped mother cat, her teats heavy with milk, wound about the legs of the tables on which the merchants’ goods were displayed.
    A group of shouting and laughing children ranging in age from five to ten or eleven years old raced up the hill along a lane that led up from the river that Dawna could now see from the village’s main street. They stopped to stare at the mercenary in armor with her pack and sword slung upon her back. She smiled at them.
    “Good day to you,” she said, shifting the heavy load to the other shoulder.
    Immediately the children went wide-eyed with distrust and curiosity.
    “Are you here to conquer us?” asked a little girl with long plaits tied with blue ribbon.
    Dawna laughed. “No, I’m just back from the wars.”
    “You were fighting?” asked the biggest boy, hair the