Victory in Wellingtons

A ripple of phuts was followed by a ground shaking kerump.   Josie was thinking that he should perhaps be following his nose in some other direction when the grass beneath his feet shook again. Leaves quivered on the hedge ahead and white smoke billowed above it.   Two large black and white birds fluttered into the air above an elegant wooden squeezer stile at a gap in the hawthorne barrier and then resettled on its posts.   Potkin thrust his head through the gap to see an open field falling away from his vantage point.   The smoke was just settling out in the hollow like an autumn mist, spreading layers of white and greys, when another crash made his ears ring.   A jet of orange fire and curls of smoke streamed from the confusion and some dry grass flared up.
There came another volley of pops and several cracks.   Beyond the smoke, on raised ground he could make out a small crowd of spectators. The children, who made up the majority, were crying bitterly.   With each new boom they jumped, quivering, and the weeping increased.   Mothers tutted and consoled.   Fathers in baseball caps and summer shorts sucked on their 99's, licking the ice cream before chomping on the flake.
“You are witnessing,” said one of the magpies, “or would be, if you could see anything but the fug of war, one of the great moments in British history; and it is happening right here in our Whitebottom Meadow,   An English general, haughty and beaky, inventor of the vulcanised rubber galosh, and the chip butty, over all commander of the British red coats and a small contingent of Prussians or Belgians or something like that, is about to defeat the diminutive emperor of France, along with his feared Vieille Guarde and the French Foreign Legion.   It will be forever known as the Battle of White Bottom. “
“I think we’ll give history a wide berth.” suggested Potkin.
The magpies looked a little crestfallen, but Josie was in full agreement. Passing quickly through the stile and keeping close beneath the hedge they skulked round the edge of the field, as far from the action as they could contrive.   Every time the smoke started to settle out into undulating sheets another explosion would send new clouds rolling outwards. Volleys of musket fire added to the noise and fog.   Cries and shouts and curses echoed across the field.   Someone knew some very rude expressions.   A small group of horsemen  emerged into the light, cuirassiers akin to the one they had met earlier and lancers with mortar board helmets like woefully inadequate bird tables balanced precariously on their heads.   They were followed by scarlet clad cavalry, with tall, black bear skins, riding heavy, matching greys; who charged in pursuit, line abreast, knee to knee.   Pursued and pursuer did a turn around the field and then wheeled back into the smog.   A roar went up, the musketry rattled once more and the wailing of  infants transended any morally acceptable norm.   Somewhere a shrill fife was piping out O'er the Hills and Far Away.
By the time our heroes reached the far side of the meadow they were shivering from terror and an excess of adrenalin.   Passing through a kissing gate, fiddly for a cat even at the best of times, they found themselves in a long straight grassy avenue lined with trees.   To left and right it stretched away as far as the two cats could see.   The noise of battle faded and was gone.   Heart rates settled to something close to normal.   Josie was the first to decide they had reached another nice spot.   It was, he felt, the ideal place for their second sandwich stop.

Eventually replete with shrimp paste sandwiches it was time for an afternoon nap.   Josie soon began to drift into sleep where he was pursued by an angry jay.   Joined by the two magpies, they dive-bombed his head while he careered down a grassy bank to lose his footing on the moss-covered wood of a narrow bridge.   He was looking helplessly up into the malevolent eyes of the birds as the mermaid caught him.
Meanwhile Potkin was barely disturbed by the twitching, mewing tabby bundle beside him.   He lay with his feet tidily tucked under his body and gazed meditatively along the length of the avenue. Quietly he composed a seascape with gulls, tan sailed fishing craft and a walrus.   The holiday sun warmed through his fur.   He had just made the walrus rise into the air and turn a long, slow, tail flapping summersault when Josie awoke.
“I’m exhausted, Potkin.   Do you want to hear about my dream?”
The walrus fell and Potkin’s creation dissolved.
“Time to go on.” He snapped.

YoYo Pond

They emerged from the thickest of  the threatening wild-wood where tortured dark oaks and chestnuts hemmed in on the narrowing track and cobwebs laced across their path, brushing their faces.   Part of the stream's steep bank had collapsed to provide a handy drinking place for the wild creatures of the forest.   They could make out the delicate prints of deer and fox in the soft mud, but also something larger.   It was a round, deep paw print with the clear indication of claws.
"The spoor of the Surrey Beast." explained Potkin.   "At dusk it can be heard stalking through these woods and the whisper of its breathing silences the birds."
"But only at dusk." asserted Josie, seeking reassurance.
"Mostly." replied Potkin casually.
 Josie spent much of the time looking over his shoulder as they moved onwards, and as a consequence twice walked into an inconveniently placed tree.   He was also listening intently for heavy breathing, but eventually realised that the eery muffled thumping was his own heart beat.    It was a relief when they came upon an aging plank bridge and a clearer path that led uphill away from the river and its menacing undergrowth.
“I think we’ll go this way.” said Potkin.
“So long as we’re still following our noses,” Josie felt it was the right decision, but wanted to be sure they were still following the only advice they had had so far.
As the ground levelled out they came upon a pond hidden amongst the blackberry thickets and long grass. It was round, still and very green with its carpet of duck weed.
“Like a billiard table,” said Josie, who had never seen one, “It looks as if you could walk on it.”
“Want to try?” Potkin countered.
“YoYo Pond,” a voice croaked.
Josie and Potkin looked round and the frog continued, “It’s called YoYo Pond or The Vanishing Pond, because it disappears as soon as you hop away and isn’t there when you hop back.”
“We met a girl like that,” said Josie, “Is it interdimensional?”
“We think she was a fairy,” added Potkin.
“Beats me,” said the frog, “but the people in the pond only age while its here. Some of them are hundreds of years old.”
“People in the pond, what people in the pond?”
“Just people.” Even for a frog he did not philosophise greatly. “If you look down into the water you will see them.”
“I want to see.” squealed Josie, tugging Potkin by the fur, “Come on lets have a look.”
Potkin held back, “I don’t do water, I’ll just stay here.”
Josie stepped up to the edge of the water, parted the cover of green weed with the tip of a paw and peered into the darkness. At first he could see only reflections on the surface, but slowly he began to discern movement below. The world down there was shadowy and indistinct. A mottle of light or dark specks drifted back and forth, plant like shapes wafted in slight, thermally driven currents, something animal darted and lurked. Then Josie noticed the perfectly circular, tiny patch of pale blue far down in the depths. He moved so close that his toes and nose were touching the pond. He stared as hard as he could. It was sky, a circle of sky. He could see clouds and the dot of a skylark. He could hear its song echoing faintly. Tiny, chubby fingers curled at the edge of the circle and a face looked in. A girl child, with curls and a strange form of bonnet was staring up at him with shining, emerald eyes. Her features rippled with excitement.
“Mummy! There’s a pussy cat down the well.”
Josie was tipping forwards. In drawn out slow motion he was plunging. His head swelled and began to spin. His tail twanged taught and he was jerked backwards. Twisting his neck round in amazement Josie could see Potkin tugging with all his might on the tufty, tabby end of his tail.
“OK, OK, I’m back, you’ve saved me.”
“We thought you were going in. What did you see in there?”
“I don’t know, nothing much. I think I came over a bit peculiar.”
“You’ve still got a strange look in your eye. Come away from the edge,” said Potkin in a concerned tone, “Perhaps we should continue on our journey.”
“What’s all the excitement?” asked the frog indifferently as he leaped towards the water.
He landed on his back in a tuft of grass as Potkin and Josie opened their eyes.
“It’s true then. It really does disappear when you’re not looking.”
“You looked away, didn’t you?” the frog croaked angrily, “Now I’ll have to sit here until the pond returns. I really fancied a gentle swim and a juicy larva snack.”
Our grinning and rather self-satisfied adventurers felt it was time to 'hop' off.   They were whistling a sea shanty in duet as they swaggered on their way.

Their path led up to a low ridge and then descended into an area of coppiced trees, shrubbery and hedges. A small blue-grey bird was flying just ahead of them chat-chattering in annoyance. A crack of breaking twig echoed loudly from a copse to their right and through the hedge crashed something very unexpected.
A huge black horse wheeled ahead of them, it’s long and equally black, crinkled mane streaming in every direction. Surmounting the horse and struggling to control it, was a towering, darkly uniformed man. A breastplate gleamed. A bright steely helmet topped with a massive, scarlet plume obscured the face.
"Le Blucher est-il arrivé encore?  Meard alors!   Êtes-vous avec les Allemands?"
“Wha…” said Potkin who had lost the use of all his limbs and the power of speech.
“Parlez vous Anglataire? Je ne compredre pas,” tried Josie in what he hoped was his best French.
The cuirassier threw up his shoulders in a Gallic shrug, uttered a, “Poof!” and regaining mastery of a steed that was now thrashing limbs and streaming horsehair in so many directions it seemed about to lose coherence and fly apart, wheeled it about and thundered back into the undergrowth. There was an inrush of air, and a flurry of leaves and twigs wafting to the ground behind him.
“Wha’ the?” managed Potkin.

Strange Encounter

Girding their loins, well, Josie girded what he hoped might be his loins, he and Potkin passed through the gateway and headed off into the wilderness.   They dropped down steeply into a small, wooded vale, eventually coming to a rustic spruce bridge across a splashing waterfall and clear, midge-speckled pool.
Potkin suddenly shot down a rough path that skirted the pool and tracked the sun-dappled stream that flowed from it.   Josie followed whilst formulating some very important questions to ask just as soon as he caught up.   Where were they going and was it really a good idea?
Tiny helicopters danced above the waters of the pool.   Josie was familiar with the Chinooks that flew over his cottage, bound for RAF Odiham, but these miniature craft shone with iridescent blues, sporting dark roundels on their transparent wings.   Meanwhile Potkin had come nose to nose with a very large dragonfly.   Josie was still absorbed with the flying jewels.
“Do you think they’re fairies?” he enquired.
“I don’t think so,” replied Potkin, “And this one looks bloody annoyed.”
Josie looked beyond Potkin and saw the large, winged creature with a billiard ball head and an angry, compound-eyed stare.   He sat down.   Then, rather unsteadily, he stood up again.
“Could we skirt round it and try not to look threatening?”
“I’m guessing that to him we don’t look at all threatening.”
They backed up gingerly and made a wide detour through the underbrush before rejoining their path. The dusty track was less used now and the trees grew closer together.   Blackberry bush and nettle tangles, tumbled onto the path.   Little sunlight penetrated the leaf cover, Josie and Potkin drew closer together as the shadows darkened and the boscage thickened.   There were some very strange noises coming from the undergrowth.
After a nerve wracking few minutes they rounded a gnarled and twisted old oak and found the river to be snaking in a lazy curve about a shingle beach.   Golden light dappled through the thinning foliage, leaves rustled and the water splashed in a friendly sort of way. The two cats became much more confident.
“This looks a nice spot,” said Josie, “Fancy a sandwich?”

- ~ -

Splot.   A dollop of water arrived on the tablecloth.   Potkin was peering upwards for signs of rain when the splot happened again.   Josie looked round and there in the river was a something.   Potkin could see it too, well almost.   It looked roughly humanoid, probably female and was possibly naked, but he could not properly focus on her.   It was as if she was not really where he was looking or he was not looking where she really was; and some of her bits were transforming.   She had been idly flicking water at them with a large fishy tail, but now she seemed to have developed legs, much too long and ending in slender feet, her peroxide sheep-shag of hair was morphing, to fall, blue-black and straight beyond her shoulders, and her skin was shimmering with milky, rainbow colours.
“What are you?” asked Potkin.
“Where are you?” asked Josie.
“I’m a water nymph,” she explained, “and I’m - er - between dimensions.”
Josie was getting his worried look. One more phrase he didn’t understand and he would have a panic attack.
“What’s dimensions?” from Potkin.
“Hmm…. you know what happens when cats walks through walls?”
“I do know it’s quite difficult,” said Potkin, “you have to concentrate very hard as you approach the wall and then at the last minute think of nothing; and whoosh, you’re on the other side.”
“Last time I tried that,” Josie joined in, “I bumped my nose”
“As you pass through the wall you are momentarily interdimensional; well, that’s where I am.   My friends and I are looking in on your world, sort of visiting.”
“Why?" asked Josie, "And what do you get up to while you’re here?”
“We observe, meditate, read poetry, indulge in frequent, uninhibited sex, grant wishes and splash passers by.”
“Would you like to expand on the, er, sex bit?” asked Potkin.
”And the wish granting,” chipped in Josie, optimistically, “Can you do anything about these? I’ve been saving them since I was very young.”   He took two small and very shrivelled objects from a threadbare velvet pouch and placed them in her outstretched, delicately elongated hand.
“I do tricks, not work miracles,” she said, casually tossing them over her shoulder into the water.   A snail, floating by on its upturned shell, slurped up one of the diminutive nuggets with a gulp and continued down stream.
Josie looked a little disappointed and sighed.
Potkin quickly changed the subject, “We’re on an adventure but at the moment it's all a bit random.   We don’t have a purpose.”
"Serendipity governs all." she replied with authority, "Embrace the chaos.   Your journey already is the purpose, follow your noses and your quest will be revealed.”
Apparently content with her reply, she rotated slowly in a non-dimensional sort of way and slid out of this reality.   A pair of dark, purple-blue beautiful demoiselles dog-fought above the spot where she had disappeared.   Just for a moment the recently vacated stream seemed to hold to her shape and then seeped back into place.
“Can we have our sandwiches now?” asked Josie.
“And the pop too,” added Potkin, “That was all a bit exhausting.”
They ate quickly, packed away the tablecloth and leftovers and resumed their journey down stream.
“I suppose she was quite nice really,” Josie mused.
“But what was she on about?   Was she being helpful?” said Potkin.
Josie was still being thoughtful, “She never claimed to be helpful.”

A Very English Odyssey

...Best we move quickly on to a proper story.   This is a tale of Potkin, who you have met before, and Posie (or Josie) who was as old as Catmethuselah when I knew him, but is much younger in this adventure.   It's a sort of coming of age road story kind of thing. 

Josephine was a sandy, longhaired tabby; not long haired like an over designed pedigree, but practically, tastefully and elegantly longhaired.   There had been a misunderstanding in his early youth and in fact he preferred to be called Jo when he was out with his pals.   Most people called him Josie, which was alright he supposed.   He lived in an Edwardian cottage in a very civilised part of England; and life was good.
Today though, he was bored.   He had eaten all his food, cleaned thoroughly between his toes, sculpted his litter into fanciful landscapes and explored behind the sofa.   He decided to wake Potkin.
Potkin, a solid, black and white London longhair had come to their new home with Richard on the same day that he and Joy had moved in.   He and Potkin were still a bit wary of each other, but when it came to mischief Potkin was definitely the expert.
“I’m bored,” said Josie.   Potkin pricked an ear and opened one amber eye.
“It just so happens I’ve been planning an adventure.
“Pack for a long journey,” advised Potkin.
Josie carefully buttered sixteen slices of bread and then layered them generously with shrimp paste.   He doubled them over, stacked them neatly corner to corner and placed them in an airtight box.   Next he looked out several tins of tuna, but they seemed inconveniently heavy and were discarded.   This left space in his box so he made more sandwiches filled with the smoked mackerel remnants left over from Richard's breakfast.   He shared out some biscuit snacks and after a little thought spread the last of the paste on them.   From the fridge he took two small bottles of pop, he folded a tablecloth and looked out their boonie sun hats and wellingtons.   The load was divided equally between two small but capacious rucksacks.
“What now?” he asked.
Through the cat flap, left down the close, across the lane and down a gentle slope to the corner, here at the busy main road they were at the limit of their territory.   They waited patiently for a gap in the traffic, crossed carefully and headed down Nutshell Lane.   It was a pretty lane, winding lazily between flint and brick cottages and lined with wild flowers and trees.    The sun was shining, a light breeze rustled the leaves, the air was fresh with country smells and they were both feeling pretty good about their adventure.   Ahead of them the lane dipped down, then climbed, twisted to left, then right.   Insects buzzed around their heads and bird twitter filled the air.   Josie chatted excitedly at Potkin until a gaudy tan bird with a crested head and black and white striped wings barred their way.   It was ramming acorns into the gaps between the cobblestones.
“Are you watching my nuts?” demanded the bird.
“We rarely concern ourselves with items so small..." (There was a short pause.) "...and vegetarian,” replied Potkin as he stalked past.   Josie scampered to catch up.   The bird watched them pass with obvious annoyance; then disinterred his stash and moved it to somewhere less public.
Further down the lane they came to a chocolate box, flint built cottage, its frontage festooned with pink dog roses.   'Rose Cottage' proclaimed a carved sign hanging in the porch where a kindly and rotund old lady in a wrap round pinny was standing before the door.
“Would you two little kitties like some milk?” she asked, popping briefly indoors and emerging with a bowl and jug.   Josie was about to decline on account of milk making him excessively regular, but Potkin plunged head first into the bowl the instant it was put down.   Fearful of being left out, or appearing rude, Josie joined in.   As they drank they were petted and cooed over.
“Very nice,” Potkin thanked her as a last drip of milk ran to the end of a whisker and fell off.   “We’ll be sure to call again on our way back.”
They departed, tails high, the lane ascending yet again.   On rounding a bend they came to a weathered and rickety wooden gate.   The duo stopped to take in the view.   Ahead, unkempt fields and blue-green woods fell away from them, stretching across a wide, sun drenched valley to a hilly horizon way in the misty distance.
“Where have the houses gone?” asked Josie
“There aren’t any.”
“I’ve never been anywhere were there weren’t houses.   What is it for?”
“It’s country,” explained Potkin.

Dark Fluff in the Vacuum

"Richard!   There's something wrong with the vacuum, it won't suck up."   Joy's cry from the dining room was agitated and strident.
Boz was curled on the living room sofa with a ginger and cream, banded tail draped across his nose.   He raised one eyebrow and half opened one eye.   "Good, perhaps, now, we can get some peace around here."
Richard was surprised, he had not considered that fawning subservience was required of a hoover.   However, armed with a Phillips screwdriver, a wire coat hanger and eternal hope he readied himself for an attempt at a repair.   The yellow Hoover télios class 1500 lay in the middle of the dining room floor whining pathetically.   Richard unplugged it from the wall socket, spread out a used copy of the Fernton Bugle to receive the contents of the distressed appliance and then removed an access cover from the machine.   The stout brown paper bag within was bulging and stretched close to the point of losing structural integrity.   He detached the bag and emptied it over the newspaper.   There was a puther of normal dust which spread out to hang in cloudy layers across the room and then a dark mass flopped out over a full colour photograph of the town crier, in full regalia, and a short article about inappropriate dealings in respect of a lucrative but unpopular proposal for a town centre shopping mall.   The heap settled gently, its lumps and folds resembling black mashed potato and wire-wool, tar black rivulets and pools seeping into crannies, its boundaries blurred as if it was not quite in this world, its hyper-black core sucking in colour from its surroundings.   The dust cloud, slowly at first, gravitated back into the primal entity.
"What on earth is that?"   Joy was standing in the doorway holding a wrought iron toasting fork out defensively in front of her body.   Boz peeped from behind her skirts.
Richard could not take his eyes off the hypnotic murk.   The intense blackness seemed to draw in everything around it, filled his field of vision, tugged at his mind, his soul.
As Joy watched in horror, writhing black fingers of fluff reached out towards her husband.
"Get away from him, you bitch!"   She thrust her toasting fork into the mass.   The iron chilled in an instant and was tugged from her grasp.   She jerked back screaming as the weapon was drawn into the slowly pulsing form.

Richard watched as the blackness clouded over, blackly.   He was tumbling towards the blacker than black core.   Faint pin pricks of light began to appear and multiply, pastel clouds hung in the void, vast clouds of fluff; fluff within the universe and a universe within the fluff.   The clouds towered above him, the points of fuzzy light grew into swirling galaxies.   An immense tilted catherine wheel spiral rushed towards him, around him.   Ahead was a single, boiling honey-gold star.   Orbiting gas giants spun past, billowing elemental clouds and storms thousands of miles deep, magnetic fields crackling from pole to pole - and now he was falling towards a sphere of vapour cloaked rock.   He was through the cloud in a heart beat and into drizzle, giant rime-heavy wings slowing his descent.   Below, the bleak junction between pallid grey land and a heaving black sea; a web of gunmetal highways and charcoal grey rooftops; a canyon-like street, a bustling sidewalk.

He is inside the saloon bar of a dockside ale house.   The grey-brown linoleum is cracked and sticky, the anaglypta wallpaper shades of tobacco, upholstery faded and threadbare.   Faded and threadbare locals at black iron, marble topped tables, too heavy to throw, stare into their flat pints, thin light from shabby wall lamps struggles to penetrate the pall of cigarette smoke; fall-down-drunk sailors grope their tattooed escorts, slop beer, leer and cheer at the pole dancer.   Her death-white body writhes around the chrome shaft - bored, unsexy, mechanically caricaturing the procreative act on a low stage.
Richard, out of body Richard, is at the step-high dais, drinking in the body odours, her blue-white flesh containing his view, every purple thumb and tooth imprint, each livid indented bra and knicker-elastic scar sharply detailed.   The blanched belly envelopes him.   He is dissolving into the bland, self absorbed, all absorbing eternal feminine...

There is a clatter at the cat flap as Phoebles bounds in from the yard.   Tail high he prances and somersaults into the dining room, certain as ever of the overwhelming joy his presence will provoke.   And then he stops, puzzled.   No one has looked up, no one has moved.   The little group before him stares, motionless at a lumpy black mass of...
"So that's where you've been all this time."   Peering into the fluff mound he has seen something treasured.   He leaps into the middle of the outspread newspaper, dust and fluff flying in all directions.   There is a collective gasp.   Boz sneezes.
Phoebles emerges clutching the limp, grey, filthy form of his favourite one eared catnip mouse, more furless, featureless and tailless than ever.   The company, fast recovering its equilibrium, regards him and sighs.
"...What?"

At a quantum level Dark Fluff is constantly and spontaneously flicking in and out of existence.    These transients are known scientifically as Quirks.  To the observer of one small area of space such events are barely detectable, but at any one moment in time, across the entire vastness of our universe the net mass of all the fleeting and tiny flufflets is significant.   Very occasionally a number of coincident creation events will occur in close proximity and sufficient mass will accrue for gravity to come into play.   As the conglomerate grows fluff enters our Newtonian World and that is when the true mystery of Dark Fluff becomes apparent.

Me and Phoebles' Hols in Dorset

At the weekend me an' Phoebles went on a trip to Dorset an' we met a mermaid!   Honest!
She'd got feet and clothes and things 'cos they do when they are ashore.   Well a bloomin' great tail would'na be very practical on land, would it.   Anyway she an' her mermaid mates is running a B&B an' a mermaid shop full of mermaid pictures an' stuff.   That's a snap of us outside the shop, but there's no mermaid 'cos she's inside.   An' the shop is very old and haunted by dead smugglers an' things - it's real exciting!
Anyway I got this idea they could turn a bit of it into yet another catnip franchise an' sell me dad's Old Tar Catnip Plug an' cut it with seaweed.   But we've not suggested it yet 'cos mermaids can turn a bit funny.

All Hands to the Pumps

Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité

A postwar cabinet was planned to be held at the site where the first sparks of Armageddon had been struck, Angel Alley.   An upstairs room above the Freedom Press was procured and all interested parties were invited.
All the -ists were there, the various anarchist and communist sub sects and every shade of socialist, they all wore different hats and button-hole badges shaped like flags and all the flags were different and it did not matter, and no-one got upset.   They were also all noticeably subdued after what they perceived as their poor performance during the incident in Cable Street.   There were ships' cats and dock cats and ratters and The Kittens of Chaos and sailors and stevedores and tagareen men and thespians and jugglers and a man who pretended to be a statue and an ex- Lord Mayor of London called Dick.   Billy Bragg came along to provided the musical entertainment.
Larry spoke, "Around us today we have a traumatised, demoralised nation and it is up to us to step up and restore its spiritual health.   Limehousesailortown, the Land of Green Ginger, all the sailortowns in all the ports in all the world will be a beacon of hope.   Spreading their concepts of freedom, equality and co-operation to all.   The people will see that whenever they are not giving orders or taking orders they are like the sailors and cats and entertainers and crimps of sailortown.   You do not have to be told what to do or have rules about doing what you want when you want.   You work together tirelessly and unconsciously for a society where everyone in sailortown, resident or visitor, consumer or supplier can have the time of their lives.   And we outsiders can have it too, by embracing co-operation and liberty, minimizing constraints, nurturing the vulnerable, setting  happiness and fun on the highest of pedestals and nailing the wizened hearts and brains of the bullies to the doors of their banks and institutions.   Now, let's go out and spread the word.   A new day has dawned."
For the hydrophobic townspeople Sailortown had always been dangerous and scary and perhaps it still was, a little bit.   But winkles were spreading into the suburbs and no-one had the will to stop them.   Limehousesailortown did not change, of course, but the world about did - and people were constantly surprised and pleased and sometimes amazed.   People cooked or hammered or painted or brewed because that was what they enjoyed and were good at and there was always someone who needed a cook or a hammerer.   And if someone did not pull his weight no one minded, much; though they were often much too busy when he wanted something and he had to get used to being introduced as, "This is Tom/Dick/Harry, he's neither use nor ornament."
Larry kept on the policeman at the door of Number 10; the tourists liked him and he could live at Number 11 with his wife and children, which was handy for work.
Phoebles was made editor in chief of the independent, Limehousesailortown based broadsheet 'International Catnip Times' which, drifting away only minimally  from it's 1960's underground roots, promoted the etiquette and socio-political efficacy of catnip consumption -  and, less popularly, the music of the sitar.
Bozzy's catnip franchise spread out of dockland and into a grateful and receptive world at large.
Ginsbergbear won the Man Booker Prize for his writing, because all the other nominees let him.
Ferdy took the Dragon Rapide home to Surrey and gave aerobatic displays at country fairs.
Googleberry got his ice-cream.
And everyone could have lived happily ever after.   Except that the Merovingian Lizard Kings were still in their mountain stronghold, Les Chats Souterrains still occupied the tunnel system that honeycombs the earth's crust and Mr Fluffy still harboured a plan.