Grasshopper Glitch Read Online Free Page A

Whiskers. A gust of meaty breath blew him over.
    Josh realized he was about to be eaten by a cat.

High above Josh, Danny clung to a springy twig. He stared down in horror at the enormous furry monster that was sniffing and biffing at his brother.
    â€œJOOOOOOOOOOSH!” he bellowed. He couldn’t hear anything except a scarily loud thrumming, wheezing noise. He realized it was the cat. The cat was purring! Poor Josh. He liked cats. So did Danny. Usually cats purred when they were getting some milk or being stroked. Not when they were about to bite you in half.
    Danny jumped down onto the cat’s head. He landed up to his armpits (or leg pits, depending on how you looked at it) in thick tabby fur. The cat’s right ear flicked once. But it was so fascinated by its prey it didn’t try to shake Danny off. Hanging on to the fur, Danny leaned out to see if Josh was OK.
    At least he couldn’t feel, hear, or—worse—smell the cat chewing on anything.
    Far below he could see Josh trying to crawl away from the cat’s paw, so he could jump away. But the cat kept following him along the top of the wall, keeping its paws or nose just above him, so he couldn’t escape.
    â€œJOSH!” yelled Danny, tilting his head back so he could hear better (his ears, it turned out, were on his belly). “Are you all right?”
    â€œYes—but I can’t jump away. It’s playing cat and mouse with me!” shouted back Josh.
    â€œMaybe it won’t eat you,” called Danny, trying not to squeak with fright. “Maybe it just wants to play.”

    â€œOh yes—that’ll be it,” squawked Josh, dodging a claw as it swiped past his feelers. “It only wants to be friends! In a “slash my head off” kind of way. That’s nice then.”
    Danny racked his brain, trying to figure out what he could do. How could he distract the cat? He edged over its brow and wondered about jumping into its eye. But a thicket of eyebrow hairs, almost as long as its whiskers, sprouted out above the nearest glinting green orb. He’d never get past that before he got a claw stuck through his innards.
    What about the ear though?
    He hopped across to a triangular tent of cat skin and peered around the edge of it. It was a bit like a teepee inside, with tufts of fine fur lightly covering soft pink and gray skin. It was quite cozy, really. It was waggling about a bit as the cat’s head switched from side to side, eagerly watching the tormented victim between its paws. There was even a pet in the ear tent. A surprised-looking flea was drinking what looked like juice through a straw poked somewhere down inside the tufty fur. The flea stared at Danny and paused, mid-slurp. There was a small pop and the straw snapped back into its brown shiny face. It burped. “Pardon!” it said. It waved a short, hairy, black foreleg in front of its mouthparts.
    â€œBetter out than in,” said Danny.
    â€œEEEAAARGH!” shrieked Josh below. The cat’s mouth was descending on him again. Its spiky pale pink tongue was scooping out to flip him back between its razor-sharp teeth. He could see the roof of its mouth, a dome of tough, wet, ribbed skin. He knew he would be mashed against it any second now.
    Danny lost no time. He jumped into the cat’s ear and started rubbing his legs and wings together in a frenzy. The noise, in the confined space, was deafening. The flea hopped out in an instant.
    â€œMEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAH!” yowled the cat. It flipped over like a furry tiddlywink, pounding both paws against its ear. Danny shot clear with just a millisecond to spare. Josh flipped up past him, looking very…well…green.
    â€œTh-that…was t-too…c-close,” he stuttered as they flew away. “I was just about to be cat chewing gum.”

    They both shuddered with relief as they flew down over the fence around the park.
    â€œWe’ve got to get to