Rama the Gypsy Cat by Betsy Byars Page A

Again Rama covered it. He felt its movements beneath his paws and he pounced lightly. Shaking his head, he pounced again.
    Then, abruptly, as quickly as the game had begun, it was over. Rama turned, yawned, and walked slowly back through the woods. His tail was high, his gait even. Behind him, the beetle scurried through the weeds again.
    Rama joined the peddler, who was still lying contentedly before the fire. He sat beside him.
    “Still restless, Gypsy?” the peddler asked.
    “Miaow,” Rama answered, looking at the peddler with eyes that were pale gold in the firelight.
    “Sometimes I am restless, too, friend.” He laid his hand on Rama’s head and moved his thumb over Rama’s forehead. “When I was a young man, I worked two years in my uncle’s store. Two years, friend, and my restlessness was a thing to behold. Like an animal in a cage I was.” He withdrew his hand and began to clean his pipe carefully. “Now I go where I please.” He leaned on one elbow and put his pipe in his pocket. “And now I am not so restless.”
    Rama stretched out beside the man, his body curled toward the fire. He watched the flames grow smaller and then he closed his eyes. The rabbits and the night birds were safe, for Rama would not roam the woods. Tonight he felt the need of a human friend.
    In the morning the peddler was not surprised to find him gone. Just before dawn, when the cow across the river had begun to moo again, Rama had gone to stand on the riverbank. He had leaped on a fallen tree and crouched there as the first rays of the sun shone on the river.
    The peddler put out his fire and went about his usual routine before departing.
    “HI—OH, GYPSY,” he called as he hitched the horse to his wagon.
    Rama did not move.
    “Going west, Gyps!” the peddler called. He stepped up to his seat and took the reins in his hands. “You don’t want to miss that. HEY, GYPSY!”
    Rama jumped lightly from the tree and ran to the wagon. He leaped up on the wagon seat. The peddler waited for him to step back into the wagon and settle on the coat, but Rama sat looking straight ahead.
    “Too nice a morning for sleeping, friend?” the peddler asked.
    “Miaow,” said Rama.
    “You over your restlessness?”
    “Miaow.”
    “That’s good. Can I start up the wagon then?”
    Silence.
    “I said, Can I start up the wagon?”
    Silence. Rama blinked slowly, continued to look straight ahead, and waited.
    The peddler leaned down. “Now, Gypsy, we’re going to just sit here all day unless you give me the sign. Tell me, friend, can I start up the wagon?”
    “Miaow.”
    The peddler threw back his head and laughed. Then he jiggled his reins and set the little wagon in motion. Slowly at first, then gaining speed, the wagon moved away from the river and toward the west.
    “Too-rah-lie- oooooh !” he sang happily, and Rama licked his bib once, and then looked with alert eyes toward the horizon.

A Biography of Betsy Byars
    Betsy Byars (b. 1928) is an award-winning author of more than sixty books for children and young adults, including The Summer of the Swans (1970), which earned the prestigious Newbery Medal. Byars also received the National Book Award for The Night Swimmers (1980) and an Edgar Award for Wanted . . . Mud Blossom (1991), among many other accolades. Her books have been translated into nineteen languages and she has fans all over the world.
    Byars was born Betsy Cromer in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her father, George, was a manager at a cotton mill and her mother, Nan, was a homemaker. As a child, Betsy showed no strong interest in writing but had a deep love of animals and sense of adventure. She and her friends ran a backyard zoo that starred “trained cicadas,” box turtles, leeches, and other animals they found in nearby woods. She also claims to have ridden the world’s first skateboard, after neighborhood kids took the wheels off a roller skate and nailed them to a plank of wood.
    After high school, Byars began