Harvey and the Collection of Impossible Things, page 1
I only have two thoughts:
One is Run and one is Stay.
IF I STAY under the car, I could get squished when it moves. But if I leave, who knows what I’ll find out there?
And then I remember a city rule: Never stay anywhere if you can’t see.
So I run, which is smart. Only I run into the street, which is not.
A big truck speeds toward me. Someone screams and I run to the left, away from the truck. I run between two cars. I run through a pair of legs. I run right through an open door.
I run up stairs. So many stairs! I don’t count them. I just run and run and don’t stop until I have to.
And then I’m on a roof.
For Christine Marshall,
cat whisperer and bravest of souls.
Text copyright © 2022 by Garret Weyr.
Illustration copyright © 2022 by Minnie Phan.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.
ISBN 978-1-7972-0690-5 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-7972-0825-1 (epub)
Design by Jennifer Tolo Pierce.
Typeset in Begum and Blaue Brush.
Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94107
Chronicle Books—we see things differently. Become part of our community at www.chroniclekids.com.
Contents
Part One Out Here
1 Food, Glorious Food
2 City Hunting
3 Chester’s Paws
4 Stairs
Part Two Up Here
5 Impossibly Possible
6 The Favorite
7 Three, Three, Three
8 Small, Strange Things
9 Red
10 Kippy
11 Double Normal
12 Train Wreck
13 Mr. Boots
14 Fly Away Home
Part Three In Here
15 A Different Sky
16 Friends
17 Old Times
18 A Walk in the Park
19 Something to Lose
20 Sniffs and Wiggles
21 City Creatures
Acknowledgments
About the Author
1
FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD
IN THE CITY, hunger and danger chase you all day long. And you, if you are a city cat, chase food and safety. Every day, it’s a race.
I am a city cat. Today hunger is winning. It’s winning by a lot.
I’m very hungry.
I check all the usual spots for food starting with the garbage cans on 10th Street. There are already five big cats digging in them.
“No room for you,” the cats growl. They do not want to share, and I do not want to fight.
Next, I check the bakery, which isn’t far from these particular garbage cans. But I only catch food there when I’m lucky, so not today.
The train stations, busy, noisy, and stinky on most days, are so full of humans that I can’t get close enough to the places where they might drop food.
Behind the restaurants where there’s often food, all I see are shadows.
At every café table, there’s a human in a bad mood. A human who says, Go away, shoo, shoo.
I’ll have to find a dumpster. Dumpsters are where you can easily catch food, but where danger far more easily catches you if you are not prepared for a fight. I was born under a dumpster, in fact. A big one behind a restaurant.
In the city, that’s a good place to be born. If you’re a good fighter, it’s safe and there’s food nearby. Most city cats seek out dumpsters when they’re hungry. Not me and here’s why:
Dogs. Love. Dumpsters.
Most city cats make short work of dogs. Our nails are sharper and we’re faster than they are. Even the fiercest dog is no match for a fierce cat. My mother, who was famous for her city cat ways, chased two dogs and three rats away from our dumpster before I was born. She was one of the best fighters the city ever had.
I’m not brave and fierce like my mother, but I am hungry. And hungry cats do desperate things.
Today, my belly is so empty and angry with hunger that I walk all the way uptown to a dumpster on the city hospital’s north side. It is the least dangerous dumpster in the city. Partly because it’s far away from the city’s center, but mostly because the food you find there is terrible.
I smell it before I see it. Old coffee, Jell-O, and warm yogurt. Chipped, green, and uglier than ugly.
I take another smell, hoping there’s something in it that’s better than spoiled egg salad. Once, long ago, I ate the remains of an omelet with ham and cheese. It was from old Mrs. Gianni, who normally flicks a dish towel at me but sometimes gives me food.
The omelet made me picky about eggs. It was beyond magnificent.
I jump up on the dumpster and start to poke around for the spoiled egg salad. I move aside a crumpled coffee cup and some soggy fried potatoes. And, then suddenly, I get a small whiff of a turkey sandwich. It’s bliss and joy and, oh, glorious food! It’s not just any old turkey sandwich, either, but one with a bit of cheese still attached.
This is the blessing of being a city cat: Everything is terrible until, just like that, it isn’t.
But as I start to dig for the turkey, there’s a rustle down in all the tossed-away things. A huge rat pokes his head out of the trash and shows me his teeth.
I jump back in surprise, feeling annoyed and scared right down to my paws. Those are sharp teeth.
“Beat it, Stripy,” he says.
I have white lines that crisscross my gray fur. My brother, sister, and our mother sometimes called me Mr. Boots instead of Harvey because of the white fur on my paws. As nicknames go, I prefer Mr. Boots to Stripy.
“My name is Harvey,” I say.
I try to say it with the pride and dignity our mother insisted all cats in the city have.
“We are simply the best,” she’d tell my brother, sister, and me.
Maybe so, but it’s hard to be proud (or dignified) when sitting on the edge of a dumpster full of the city’s saddest garbage.
“I don’t care what your name is,” the rat says. “Get out.”
I try not to look at his big, sharp teeth. I’m so hungry that I can still smell the turkey with cheese underneath the smell of my own fear. Fear has a smell like vinegar. It’s sharp and demanding.
“That turkey is mine,” the rat says, as if he can read my mind.
I haven’t eaten anything in two days. That turkey is not his! A brave city cat would fight him for it. I think about my brother, whose nickname is The Terrific Thief. He’s even more famous than my mother. What would he say to this rat?
“I have as much right to be here as you,” I say.
But, of course, my brother wouldn’t speak to a rat. He would chase it away.
“If you take one step further, I will bite you,” the rat says.
He stares at me with his fiery eyes, big teeth, and twitchy nose.
My famous brother got his nickname because he stole an entire steak while the nearby humans were looking for matches. He jumped up on the rusty edge of the grill, sank his teeth into the meat, and took off.
I’m told he did not share it.
I’m not like my brother. I’m a city cat, yes. But not a brave one.
I do not take one step further. Instead, I jump off the dumpster and skitter back into the alley.
As I slink away, I try not to think about that turkey. I wish I were brave enough to fight a rat. My only defense is that he was really big.
Of course, I’m still hungry. And sad. Unlike turkey with cheese, hungry with sad is a terrible combination. I keep thinking about my empty belly and that huge rat until I remember to look up at the sky.
No matter how bad it gets, there’s always the sky.
It’s the best part of living in the city. During the day, the clouds say, Go find food, you can do it! And when it’s dark out and the big, mean creatures are in big, mean moods, the silver stars say, All is well, have no fear.
Plus, sparrows swoop and fly through the sky. Of all the city’s creatures, sparrows are the best. Unlike pigeons, who put humans in terrible moods, sparrows make everyone happy. And if you run into sparrows under a café table (and I almost always do), they only eat dropped bits of bread. They leave the real food for us.
I don’t know any sparrows personally, but I like them. Most city cats hunt and eat sparrows, but not me. Who would want to chew through all those feathers? I’m so hungry today that I guess I wouldn’t mind—but I’m never going to eat a sparrow. Even if they tasted like bacon, I wouldn’t eat one. Not when they’ve always been so friendly.
My brother (who certainly does eat sparrows when he can’t find other food), once said to me, Harvey, you’re not a real city cat. You’re just a cat who’s hungry most of the time and has no safe place of his own. It wasn’t very nice, but it’s true.
Still, at least I’m not like the sad, poor creatures who live indoors. They sleep on beds and eat from delicate dishes. Yes, they are safe and always have food. But they can only dream about life under the sky.
I do not dream that dream because the sky and I share a life. I don’t mind working hard to catch food and safety if it means I can live under the sky. But the sky, like the city, demands that you catch
You can’t live out here without catching luck. Without it, you won’t live at all.
2
CITY HUNTING
I CATCH MOST of my luck at a bakery near the garbage cans on 10th Street. It isn’t just its food that makes it lucky, but a woman in a blue shirt. Today, she comes out from the bakery’s kitchen. She puts a dish on the ground. Clink.
Today’s a lucky day.
The dish always has chicken and cheese. She always smells like vanilla and mint.
“Hello, Harvey.”
I don’t know how she knows my name, but she always says it. It’s not the kind of thing humans know about city cats. I wish I knew hers. It’s on my list of things to do:
1. Learn the name of the woman in blue shirt.
2. Save sister from jail.
3. Become a brave city cat.
4. Catch food.
5. Catch safety.
It’s not a to-do list so much as a collection of impossible things. But when I eat chicken and cheese and listen to her say Hello, Harvey, everything seems possible.
Most city cats refuse to go anywhere near humans because they drive these shiny things they call cars that kill lots of us. For example, my mother was run over by a bus, which is a really big car, a few hours after we’d all left the dumpster.
She’d told us it was time for us to go out into the world and find our own way. We think she must have been tired after looking after us for so long. Tired enough that she forgot to pay attention and SPLAT.
If they don’t yell at us or hit us with their shiny things, humans lock us up. My sister once looked for food in a restaurant instead of behind it. The chef caught her and sent her to the animal jail. Humans call it a shelter, but we all know better. Shelter keeps you dry and safe. Jail has cages and lots of animals locked up.
No one has seen my sister since she went in there. That’s why she’s on my list.
Humans will say Go away, shoo shoo but they will also give you food. I never know who is going to do which. Except with the woman in the blue shirt. If I find her, she always gives me food.
When I’m done eating, she takes the dish away.
“See you next time, Harvey,” she says. “You be safe.”
She says that as if I could just choose to be safe. Safety is harder to catch than food. But I can feel the rain coming (the air smells soft) so she’s right: I need to find my place to stay safe and dry during the storm. Otherwise, rain will make my fur heavy and cold.
With my full belly, I hunt safety. In the city, confusing humans, cranky cats, and crankier dogs hog all the best spots. Still, you have to look. Without safety you will wind up SPLAT on the street. And who wants that?
I don’t.
The places where I normally look are under park benches, behind museums, or in courtyards. On rainy or snowy days, benches are no good. And courtyards only work if you can sneak under a window box with no one noticing. Mrs. Gianni has the one window box in the city that no other cat has claimed. But she’s in a bad mood and flicks her towel at anyone before they even get close. Her window box has strong-smelling herbs and small red flowers. She doesn’t like a nasty cat near her plants. It’s why no one owns that spot. Her towel is dangerous.
I’m anxious about the rain and investigate my emergency places where I sometimes find shelter. The park behind the library has a small shop with a little porch that’s dry and quiet. Once or twice, I’ve hidden there during a bad storm.
But not today. Today, a skinny dog runs out from under the porch. Another skinny dog pokes his nose out and yells at him, “This is my place!”
I turn around and head over to the Mayor’s mansion by the East River. It’s forty streets away with lots of cars and buses to avoid, but it must be done. It takes a while, but I get there. I slip through the gate to search the spots in the garden that will keep you dry.
“Kitty!” It’s the mayor’s granddaughter. She runs toward me. “My kitty!”
She picks me up and tries to hug me. It’s awful. Human girls are either quietly pleasant or loudly full of hugs.
Cats. Do. Not. Like. Hugs.
I try to get away by squirming. I squirm carefully because she’s pulled my ears more than once. I could scratch her, but why scratch a silly girl?
“Kitty, my kitty!” she keeps saying.
The mayor’s guards with their heavy boots and big voices run toward us.
“Get out of here, fleabag,” one of them says.
“Go on, go,” says the other. “Go now.”
That is how guards say Go away, shoo shoo. The girl drops me and I run out the gate.
There’s one more place where I sometimes catch safety. I walk along the buildings on 84th Street until I get to the park. Right by the city’s biggest park is the city’s biggest museum. And behind that museum is the city’s biggest drainpipe. No one bothers you there and it’s dry. It’s my favorite place, but it’s not my place. It’s Chester’s place. And Chester is a dog.
3
CHESTER’S PAWS
NOT JUST ANY dog, but one of the fiercest dogs in the city. I’m not afraid of him because he’s the kind of fierce that doesn’t fight with small creatures. Dogs like this are rare. He’s actually the only one I know.
We first met right under his drainpipe on a snowy day. I was so happy I’d found a dry place that even though it smelled like a dog, I curled up and fell asleep. When Chester returned, he waited until I woke up and said, “Ahoy, there, my small friend. This is my place, but you’re always welcome to use it if I’m not here.”
Today I’m hoping that he might be out and about as he doesn’t mind the rain. Dogs are strange that way.
As I turn the corner toward the drainpipe, I see Chester’s big brown paws. And the profile of a mediumsized gray dog who’s listening to a stern lecture.
“If I hear from one more squirrel that you are chasing them for the fun of it, I am going to be very angry,” Chester says. “What have I told you about them?”
“Squirrels have as much right to the park as we do,” the gray dog says.
“What else?”
“To save my energy for food catching,” the dog says. “Sorry, Chester.”
He is hanging his head down and sounds embarrassed.
“That’s okay, I know it’s hard,” Chester says. “But before you go, one more thing: Your place behind the hotel is big enough for you to share with at least one other dog. I heard you made an old dog leave. You find her and invite her back.”
The other dog mumbles something. I realize I can’t hide from the rain here. Chester’s lectures can last a long time. I’d better go look in the nearest train station. They are the worst places in the city and smell like wet laundry and pee. Also, they’re full of light, noise, and busy people who hate cats. I only go in them when I’m desperate.
The rain starts sending down its drops. I cough through my nose. Ah-choo-ooo. Chester turns his head at the sound of my sneeze and thumps his tail when he sees me.
“Ahoy, my young friend,” he says. “Need shelter from the rain?”
“No, no,” I say, watching carefully as the gray dog walks past me, head still down and tail between his legs. “I’m just on my way to the 86th Street station.”
“You stay here,” Chester says. “I’ll move over a squidge so we can both sit.”
In truth, I like that better than being here alone. Chester is warm, and you’re always safe with him because he’s a good fighter. A year ago, I saw him defend his spot from another dog. That dog was stronger than strong and refused to move even when Chester growled and showed his teeth.
In the end, there was snarling and blood, but it wasn’t Chester’s, thank goodness. The other dog ran off and Chester got his place back. When he saw me hiding in the museum’s shadow, he laughed.
“Everything’s okay,” he said. “That dog just didn’t know how to share, and places should always be shared.”
“At least you have a place to share,” I told him. “And defend.”
“Harvey, you keep looking for a place,” Chester always tells me. “You’ll find one, I promise.”
I keep looking but nothing yet. Most places in the city have been taken by city creatures who are bigger or fiercer than I am. To get a place in the city, you have to fight for it. Chester thinks everyone should share their places, but even though he can order some creatures to do that, he can’t order them all.
