Cattitude: Pulphouse

By Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Annie Reed and 4 more

From the pages of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine come eight delightful stories featuring cats—some who charm, some who connive, even some who simply demand attention.

In short, these stories have Cattitude.

From some of Pulphouse's best and most prolific writers, these stories embody the Pulphouse spirit: no genre limitations, no topic limitations, just attitude and top-quality writing.

Including:

"Queen of the Mouse Riders" by Annie Reed

"The Fur Tsunami" by Kent Patterson

"Bushtits Gone Wild" by Stephanie Writt

"The Goddess Particle" by Dæmon Crowe

"An Incursion of Mice" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

"Erwin or Ralph" by Ray Vukcevich

"The Mouth that Walked" by Dean Wesley Smith

"Life, with Cats" by Annie Reed

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Jun 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201876029

Dean Wesley Smith

Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA TODAY bestselling writer, Dean Wesley Smith published far over a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres. He currently produces novels in four major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the old west, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, and the superhero series staring Poker Boy. During his career he also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds.

Book preview

Cattitude

Cattitude

The Best Cat Stories from the First Three Years of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine

Edited by

Dean Wesley Smith

WMG Publishing, Inc.

Contents

Introduction

Queen of the Mouse Riders

Annie Reed

Introduction

Queen of the Mouse Riders

Annie Reed

The Fur Tsunami

Kent Patterson

Introduction

The Fur Tsunami

Kent Patterson

Bushtits Gone Wild

Stephanie Writt

Introduction

Bushtits Gone Wild

Stephanie Writt

The Goddess Particle

Dæmon Crowe

Introduction

The Goddess Particle

Dæmon Crowe

An Incursion of Mice

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Introduction

An Incursion of Mice

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Erwin or Ralph

Ray Vukcevich

Introduction

Erwin or Ralph

Ray Vukcevich

The Mouth that Walked

Dean Wesley Smith

Introduction

The Mouth that Walked

Dean Wesley Smith

Life, with Cats

Annie Reed

Introduction

Life with Cats

Annie Reed

About the Editor

Subscriptions

Introduction

I discovered one thing about cat stories besides them being fantastic fun. Not that many writers write them and even fewer write Pulphouse types of cat stories. And the few who do, write numbers of them.

For example, Annie Reed, one of the best writers working in the pages of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine wrote three cat stories in the first number of years.

I included two of them in here.

Also, by the time I planned on doing this book, I assumed I would have fourteen issues or so to pick stories from. Nope, I have eleven. Like the rest of the planet, we were slowed down by the pandemic. (We are up and running now and doing six issues a year instead of four.)

Kris and I spent the last year editing a series of 100 cat stories in twelve volumes. Those were fantastic fun, and a number of the stories I got for the cat books I also want to put into Pulphouse. Eventually.

Just haven’t gotten a chance to get to them yet. But I will for certain with one from Ray Vukcevich, one of the wildest writers working in Pulphouse. It is included here. I just couldn’t pass it up.

Plus a few years ago I edited a volume called Snot-Nosed Aliens that was a Pulphouse book of original stories. Two of those stories were cat stories, so they are in here.

And then I decided that since I am the editor of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, and this is a fun book, I would include a cat story of mine that I first published in Amazing Stories Magazine back in the late 1990s. It really, really shows cattitude.

So all-in-all, as with these stories, the editing process of this book was fun and challenging at the same time. But in the end, I hope you will enjoy cat stories with a Pulphouse twist as much as I do.

---

Dean Wesley Smith

Las Vegas, Nevada

Queen of the Mouse Riders

Annie Reed

cat

Introduction

Starlight, the cat in this really fun story, might be one of the best fictional cats I have read. Not much else I can say without spoiling the story.

Annie’s stories appear regularly in many varied professional markets and I am proud to say she is also a regular contributor to Fiction River and has been in every issue so far of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine.

Queen of the Mouse Riders

Annie Reed

Gurgling yowls echoed off the tiled floor in Sarah’s bathroom. Bounced off the ceiling, gaining strength, and intruded on what was turning out to be a very, very nice dream featuring the star of a movie she’d watched just before bed.

In the dream, the star turned his incredibly expressive eyes in Sarah’s direction, smiled his best enigmatic smile, and said, Pardon me, darling, but is that your cat?

(In the dream he’d turned British. She happened to know he’d been born and raised in the Bronx. Dreams were just plain weird sometimes.)

Yes, she said. She’s apparently caught a mouse.

Starlight the Cat had a battle cry like a two-note yodeler gargling mouthwash. She reserved that particular cry for whenever she caught a mouse. Or something that looked like a mouse. Or a mouse-shaped stuffed toy.

Most of the time she’d only caught one of her toys. Thank goodness. But on at least one memorable occasion she’d interrupted a visit from Sarah’s mother by presenting a live mouse as the third course for their lunch date.

Sarah’s mother was deathly afraid of mice.

So where did Starlight drop the mouse? Right at her mother’s feet, of course.

Sarah’s mother had screamed. Starlight had looked suitably insulted at having her contribution to the meal rejected. And the mouse? It had attempted a quick getaway, but Sarah had thrown a kitchen towel over the poor thing, taken it for an elevator ride—where she’d gotten a few odd looks from her neighbors—and released it into the wild in the bushes outside her apartment building.

She’d laid out traps after that, but no more mice appeared, living or dead.

The dream, complete with the suddenly British Bronx-born movie star, dissolved completely as Sarah sat up in bed. She groped for her cell, thumbed it on to read the time—two thirty-eight!—and squinted in the general direction of her bathroom.

The next to last thing in the world she wanted to do was get out of bed, but the very last thing she wanted to do was discover mouse guts in her bed anytime soon. Or feel a live mouse running over her face. Yuck!

The nightlight next to the bathroom sink threw a faint ghostly glow into Sarah’s bedroom. She slid out of bed and shivered as her feet hit the cold hardwood of her bedroom floor.

It’s a good thing I love you, kitty cat.

She tucked her feet inside her fuzzy pink slippers and pulled on the zippered hoodie she’d left on the other side of her bed.

She really needed to buy herself a robe one of these days. For late-night mouse rescuing, if nothing else. And there hadn’t been anything else in longer than she cared to remember, hence the promising dream.

Starlight did her gargle-yowl again, louder this time.

Coming, mousie, Sarah said. And don’t you dare eat it, baby girl, you hear me?

A second sound echoed off the bathroom tiles. Not a squeak—Sarah would have expected that—but an angry shout. A very high-pitched, tiny shout.

Sarah stopped short, blinked, and then pinched herself on the arm to make sure she was awake.

Ouch!

Yup. Definitely awake, and probably bruised to boot.

So what in the world was going on in her bathroom?

She crept to the bathroom door, turned the light on, and poked her head inside.

Starlight was crouched in her hunter-kitty pose. She held something in her mouth that was vaguely mouse-shaped with brownish-gray fur and a long, thin tail. Only the tail had a fuzzy puff of fur at its twitching tip.

Mice didn’t have fuzzy tails, did they?

And they certainly didn’t have something that looked like a tiny saddle on their backs or little bits of colorful string on their heads that looked like a bridle.

Sarah took all that in at a glance. What really caught her attention was the tiny figure standing right in front of Starlight shouting at her cat.

The figure was shaped like a man, but that’s where the resemblance ended. No more than three inches tall, it was covered in grayish fur—at least the parts that Sarah could see since it was wearing tiny little pants—and had a sharp snout where a person’s nose would be. It had big, mouse-like ears on the sides of its head, a raised row of darker fur that ran from the top of its head down the back of its spine, and held something long and sharp-looking in a hand that really looked like a rodent’s paw, only with an opposable thumb. It was shouting at Starlight in a language Sarah couldn’t understand.

She’d never seen anything like it. She wasn’t even sure anything like this could really exist in the world.

She pinched her wrist this time, which convinced her—yet again—that she really was awake.

Okaaay. Now what?

Practical Sarah took over. Whatever this thing was, it was threatening her cat. Maybe it had something to do with the mouse-thing Starlight had caught.

Hey, Starlight? Sarah kept her voice low. Maybe you should drop the mousie.

The little creature with the weapon turned his head toward her when she spoke, but it was little more than a glance. It (he?) was clearly more concerned with Starlight. She supposed she would be too if she was in its position.

Sarah crouched down next to her cat. Good kitty. She petted Starlight on her head and then grabbed the cat by the scruff of her neck before she could run away with the mouse.

Or whatever it was.

Starlight’s gurgling-yowl changed to an angry growl, but after a moment, she dropped the mouse.

Or whatever it was.

The little thing ran over to the tiny warrior person, and it (he) climbed