Terracatta – The Land of Cats

On the planet Terracatta, in the city of Catterbury, someone is writing on the walls. The rhymes appear overnight in blue chalk, and they are getting ruder: the singer Miss Mewsette’s voice has gone sour, and the fattest cat in town is not fit to be Meowor. Meowor Catsimir puts Chief Inspector Cattani and Constable Catnip of Catland Yard on the case.

The two detectives follow a method – milk first, then motive, then the scene of the crime – and find two clues: the writing sits oddly low on the wall, and a piece of blue chalk is wedged beside the Town Hall. At a meeting of the city’s great and good, the theories grow wilder, until a kitten knocks at the door. Purrcy, Catnip’s grandson, confesses: he is the hooligan. His parents had forbidden poetry – everyone knows cats don’t write poems – so when they hid his paper and then his pencils, he took his rhymes to the walls.

Cattorney Clawdia Meowkovich defends him, and the city decides that the real problem is the rule. From now on every cat may write poetry. Catterbury fills with verse, the Cat-Queen awards Purrcy a medal as First Pawet of the Planet, and his rhyme returns to the Town Hall wall – rewritten, this time, in the Meowor’s favour.