“Look! A kitty door!” Jake pointed.

This is all I can think about when I read that line.

So, the kids are all hiding in the bushes outside Chapman’s house and bantering about random subjects, and the banter doesn’t actually bother me.  They still bring it back to the matter at hand (find the cat, morph the cat, don’t get caught) in spite of all the tangents, and it could easily be read as nervous kids just talking to make noise and reassure themselves.  Nothing super-angsty, just normal nervous.  I like that.  (I mean, it’s one of those scenes that could be interpreted different ways, to say they’re either calm or nervous, but at least it doesn’t completely block out the nervousness option.)

Tobias finds the cat in a different yard.  Marco starts making too-mean jokes about how Tobias can’t start eating rats, and everyone jumps on him, because they recognize that Tobias is going through some pretty heavy shit and doesn’t need to be teased right now.  Honestly, I think Marco knows that, too, he just doesn’t think.  Anyway, to the point: look!  A character is allowed to be wrong and flawed and it doesn’t make him evil!  Have I mentioned I love these books?  YA is usually marked by a distinct lack of subtlety and nuance (it shouldn’t be, but it is) and these books consistently buck the trend and deliver complex characters.  Bad writing, bad pacing, but great characters.

Cassie and Rachel try to catch Fluffer the cat, and Cassie finally realizes he’s a male cat and points out that this is going to hurt.  Tomcats are not to be messed with.  And, indeed, he claws the shit out of Rachel and runs up a tree.

Rachel decides to morph into a mouse and play bait to get Fluffer out of the tree.  Well, she’ll become a shrew, not a mouse.

“Wait a minute,” Marco said, beginning to grin. “Rachel is going to become a shrew? How will we know when she’s changed? How do you become what you already are?”

Everyone was too nervous to find the joke very funny.

…so, along with “harpy,” “shrew” is one of those almost-innocuous sounding words that actually have a whole heap of bad connotations to them and should never be used to refer to women.  Unless you’re trying to be an ass, if course.

Rachel turns into the shrew, and I really hope they talked more about this plan off-page.  Coordinated for how to catch the cat before it kills her?  Maybe discussed the possibility of just visiting Melissa during the day and petting the damn cat?  They’re friends; even if she’s not buddy-buddy long-term-hang-out with the girl, she can’t swing a single visit?

When she’s done morphing the shrew, she freaks out and runs under a bush, not listening to anyone who tells her to calm down.  Finally Tobias has to catch her to keep her from running away, but of course that doesn’t exactly calm her down because a predator- oh, wait, it totally works.  Because he talked to her.  What?  He talked to her when she was relatively safe under a bush and she ignored him, but while trapped in the claws of something that usually eats shrews, then she overcomes the instincts?

So, now it’s time to get on with the actual plan that we were introduced to 15 stinkin pages ago.  Book, you are only 100 pages long.  Why so much filler?

“Uh-huh,” Marco said dryly. “Cat versus mouse. Who would you bet on?”

“Haven’t you ever seen Itchy and Scratchy?” Cassie asked. “Mouse, definitely. Besides, she’s not a mouse.”

Itchy and Scratchy?  Not Tom and Jerry?  I mean, no one sees Itchy and Scratchy, the see the Simpsons.

Rachel sets herself down under the tree, and Fluffer takes the bait.  Also, Marco’s got some killer reflexes, because he caught the cat mid-jump.  Not just caught the cat.  Ran up from the hiding place and then caught the cat.

Jake is psychic, Marco is spiderman, what superpowers are we going to discover next?

The kids manage to shove Fluffer into a carrier while the cat does his best to claw them all to ribbons.  Poor cat.  I mean, fine, they have to do this…but poor cat. On a more important note, I like that the authors had the cat react like this.  Very much a built in “don’t do this at home” message.

“I should have done it. I should have used my lizard morph to lure the cat down from the tree.”

I shook my head. “No. That freaked you out.”

“And now you’re the one who’s freaked out,” Jake said.

JAKE FEELS TIME!

They all sit around and go “oooooo, aaaaah” at the fact that Rachel now has four – count em, four – morphs.  I’m amused, even if it is only because I’ve read the whole series and know she’s gets like 30 more.

They do bring up a good point about wondering if there’s a limit to how much you acquire, but I don’t think it’s ever brought up again.  They mention it…and then go around merrily acquiring new morphs.  True, they only ever gets morphs right before they need them, but there’s no comment on how they can’t just nab the whole zoo at once because no one knows what’ll happen, and there’s also never any worry that maybe a morph won’t “take” because of some unknown limit.  They just go on from here, never thinking about limits again.  Maybe Ax tells them there’s no limit off-screen or something.

That night Rachel wakes up from a nightmare screaming and scares her little sister.

“I know I’m just your little sister by two years,

Ouch.  I’d really rather you just give a “tell” on that one, book.  That’s damn awkward.

I trusted Jordan. I knew in my heart that she was not a Controller.

Of course, that’s just what Jake had said about Tom.

*wibbles*

The issues in these books aren’t always consistent, the intensity tends to get reset at random, but if you take scenes like this individually, they’re just gold.

That morning, Rachel and Jake ride the school bus and talk about having nightmares from their morphs.  On the school bus.  Surrounded by kids.  On their way to a school that has (had) an evil-alien-hideout-entrance.  Come on, guys, at least use code words.

There’s some more random filler at school when she runs into Melissa and Melissa is still acting off.  I find I don’t much care.  We’re almost halfway through the book, and we’ve had all of like three pages talking about Melissa’s depression.  We spent longer on the shooting-at-birds-guy.  It’s not like there wasn’t space, most of this book so far has been filler.  If Melissa’s story was supposed to feature heavily in this book, it should have actually featured.  As is, it’s a footnote.  Yeah, what she’s going through is terrible, but there’s no attempt to make me worry about her as a character.  I don’t know her.  I don’t feel any more connection than I would for someone I saw on the news.  Heck, there isn’t even much time spent on Rachel’s emotional reaction to the change in their friendship. 

It almost feels like this scene was shoved in to remind us that Melissa exists and has a subplot, since it would be easy to have forgotten by this point.

Tobias sent me a private message.

Ahahaha, no.  Redtails can lift about 5lbs on a good day, and Fluffer is not a small kitty.  He’s a big fat tomcat.

Rachel morphs into Fluffer and has a pretty easy time getting used to his instincts.  These morphing and instincts sections take up large chunks of the book, but there’s not a whole lot for me to say about them.

So, now that she’s under control, Rachel heads into the house to do her spying.