The darker Naughty Twin sat back down and turned to look at my briefly before facing Mogsie, George and Doublay who were now sitting side by side. The lighter Naughty Twin was sitting next to his sister, their shoulders touching.
I've told Lil' some of what Troy Lamore told me. I met with him three times and each time he gave me a piece of information.
Lil', he turned to face me. I've told some to.
The first time I encountered Troy Lamore was a long time ago, when I was very young. Back then I wasn't so scared, I would play tricks on a lot of you and never really care about the consequences. Don't get me wrong I never meant to hurt or be malicious to anyone I just enjoyed having fun not really thinking of the outcome.
Anyway there I was one day up Squirrel Tree, booby trapping their nuts store when I heard a voice from below bellow up at me. It gave me quiet a start I can tell you and I jogged and knocked the peg, a part of my booby trap, to the floor and all the nuts went falling.
I was quiet miffed and stormed down to see this magnificent cat in front of my just smiling.
I wanted to have a right go but something told me to just see what his next move would be so I sat down just looking at him.
Want a nut he said? And with a single flick of his paws he tossed a monkey nut up into the air where it hit a branch, broke the shell and the little nut landed right in his paw, which he immediately threw into my open mouth.
Hitting the back of my tonsils I began to choke and splutter. I was trying to gasp for air at the same time wanting to lash out at him. That was horrible and all he could do was sit there and chuckle to himself. What a bully I remember thinking.
Eventually he tapped me on my back and dislodged the nut and I managed to regain my composure.
What did you do that for? I yelled.
He just laughed.
Well he wasn't being very kind to me, chucking that great chunk of nut right in the back of my throat. I can still remember exactly how it tasted now. Can't go anywhere near a nut.
I know now of course that he was trying to teach me a lesson that I should have listened too but I was young and thought I knew it all.
With that he got up, nodded and went on his way calling over his shoulder.
Always remember you do have a choice and it's going to be very important to you one day to make the right one!
I was so shocked I never even asked him his name and it wasn't until the second time that I met him that I understood that he was actually looking out for me.
It was about a month after our first meeting that he saved me.
Initially for a day or two I'd been quite angry at him and considered what I would do to him if we met again, maybe putting some glue on his feet as he slept that sort of thing, but he had faded from my mind and I was up to my usual tricks, up a tree down near the tunnel waiting for dogs to pass by so I could run really quickly down one tree, across the road right in front of them and up the side of another big tree on the other side of the road and wind them up.
I spotted a great big Doberman who lived a few doors down from us walking with his Dad and got ready to wait for the optimum moment when I would be able to get near enough to be able to run in front of him just at the length that his lead went. I was banking on my calculating begin correct as I knew he could outrun me but it was so much fun winding him up, when Troy suddenly appeared in front of my in the tree and said boo.
It made me jump I didn't think anyone was around and I fell a branch or two down before some leaves broke my fall.
The Doberman heard me and jumped up to get at me. Of course I was way high and there's no way unless he's learnt to climb trees that he would even get anywhere near me but as I steadied myself the Doberman gave a furious tug and his lead broke and he was free.
Jumping up and down the tree trunk he was furious, his teeth showing a red vein in his eye, the anger so great within him a blood vessel burst.
Bark, bark, scratch, grrr all over the place he was. It took him jumping up at one of the lower branches and catching his foot to calm him down. He never really recovered from that and had a limp and a bandage for months.
I was really shocked at everything that had happened. I turned to Troy;
Thank you. If you hadn't have done that I would have been down that tree and he would have gotten me.
He smiled and offered out his paw.
My pleasure, my choice! The names Troy Lamore by the way.
You're a very strange man, I said to him
Am I? Strange in what way?
First time I met you you nearly killed me, the second time you saved me. Who are you?
I think you are confused little one, the first time we met I saved you too.
You saved me? You threw a peanut into my throat and nearly killed me!
I saved you from yourself little one, I like if possible to be around for important moments in a persons life, like today.
That nut I threw into your throat was off and another day it would have been deadly and it could easily have been up there for another day before being discovered. I knew you couldn't swallow it and thought I'd teach you a little lesson, I had to learn that way. But Craig, ah now Craig he would have been able to have consummed that nut and I'm afraid it would have poisoned him and how do you think you would have felt about that?
Wow it was like someone had smacked me around the face with a, well a speeding monkey nut. Craig is our friend, he's friends to all of Catworld and to think of him being hurt in any way sent shivers down my body and to think it might have been me that had caused that to happen. Realisation hit me and I started to cry.
Things you see were not exactly as they first appeared, he said
I'm afraid I lost it and suddenly the shock of the near encounter with The Doberman and then thinking about what could have happened with Craig just opened the flood gates of my tears.
Oh what have I done, and buried my head in my hands and just started off-loading all the things I'd done and oh me's and oh my's about how things could have gone wrong and how sorry I was, I really don't know what was coming over me, I went from all testerone to oestrogen, my ying and yang felt all over the place.
Troy listened throughout at my self pitying tales of tricks and woes, half way through producing some rather lovely dried scented petals which I used to mop my tears.
Hours I must have talked and all the time his kindly face showed the greatest interest and concern, occasionally nodding but never really saying much. I didn't feel at all judged by him and when I finished it felt like a great big weight had been lifted off my shoulders.
Why do I feel this way? I asked him, the wind suddenly picked up died down all at once, like something washed over me.
What's happened to me?
It was the first time that I'd felt like this I'd never cared that much about my tricks and their consequences before and now I did. It was then that he said something to me that I now understand but I never really took in at the time. Something that makes perfect sense now because it was at that moment that I'd first stopped feeling totally like a boy, it must have been at that moment in my history that the curse took me and yet it was years before I'd even made the mistake that would make it happen all the way back then.
Life my friend, life can teach us lessons but sometimes we get scared and if you're not on watch out all the time that fear can leak out and that sometimes that can change things forever and before and you may never know.
We'd been together hours and I'd only known his name but something in my soul totally trusted this best friend stranger and when he got up to leave I asked him to stay.
He said he couldn't, he was off to visit an old professor friend of his over on Easter Island.
Easter Island I asked, WOW that sounds exciting what are you doing there?
Just bringing a parcel back for a friend an exciting new discovery and he smiled at me.
I must dash as I really should have got this delivered years ago now. Oh yes and remember don't be scared of the unknown and make sure you're twin doesn't tease that Doberman, one day she may live to regret it!
With that he laughed and dashed off down the tree.
I was still shaking when I got back home and told my sister here, everything that happened. He said he didn't believe me and that I was playing a big trick on him. I could sense then that something had changed in my sister but it wasn't until later on when I had my third visit with Troy Lamore that I understood what.
A couple of months had gone by and although I had toned down my trick playing, my sister was in it up to her neck. She'd carried on the campaign of tricks against The Doberman.
I know my sister very well and can tell when she see's a situation as an opportunity for a trick and seeing The Doberman coming down the road in his usual mood was too good an opportunity for her.
As she dashed off it was like everything started to happen in slow motion for me. I could see her running down the road, I caught a glimpse of Troy Lamore stepping forward and I saw the moment in The Dobermans eyes that he's spotted her, the millimeter his neck muscles tensed and he began to run, the lead slipping out of his Dad's hands.
I saw my sister running and catching sight of him, he was nearer than she thought and I saw the spread of panic across her face. I saw her dash in the road and I saw The Doberman notice the car that was coming and spray his legs out in front of him to slow him down. I saw my sister forgetting all about her road awareness and disappear under the car and I heard Twizzle who was being walked down the road by R scream out.
I saw the car slam the brakes on and my sisters body in the the road.
I then saw my sister just a meter in front of me and I leapt on her back, the biggest harderst jump I had ever done and we both fell into some bushes. Of course she got up and started screaming at me just as we heard a right noise coming from Twizzle who was now being attacked by the Doberman but luckily she had managed to jump into R's arms away from him and although R was getting scratched to pieces both my sister and Twizzle were safe.
I looked up and just for a brief moment I saw Troy Lamore peering at me from the space in the road where not long before I had seen my sister be knocked over.
I was trembling and I asked my sister if she was OK.
Ok I said, the lighter Naughty Twin piped up;
I can remember I was livid, as far as I was concerned he'd just ruined my game and poor old Twizzle and R had been attacked instead.
She didn't know until later on, her brother interjected, what had happened.
I was sitting on my own on my garage roof that evening when Troy Lamore turned up next to me. Every time he turned up someone got saved and this time it was my sister but I was so scared at what I had seen, it was all so confusing.
I sat and talked it out with Troy, who was he, what did he want for me?
He said he was just a passing friend.
I told him I knew he was more than that and he smiled.
Go on, he said, tell me what you see about me?
Well I don't know why but when I think of you I imagine you live in a word of fairytales, having adventures playing in lemon fields, grazing dragons nearby. You are an enigma but something about you Troy makes me trust you.
He suddenly looked at me really intently. Do you really mean that?
Yes I did, I knew it as much as I knew my twin just by his breath.
Good because I need you to believe in me. I need you to trust your instinct when it comes to me and a decision that is coming that will affect Catkind.
Well that got my attention I'd always been told never to mention Catkind out loud, we all know the history of The Queen of Catkind and even to mention Catkind is a whisper out to the curse that follows her around.
That's when he said that one would pass and come back and I would be able to makes contact with them but that I must not be scared. Even as he spoke I knew he was telling me the truth, he said each of us has a gift, everyone alive has a gift and that mine was my ability "to know" but every gift comes with it's own curse and mine was the curse of fear and that I must overcome it or suffer instead.
He said it was absolutely vital that THE DAY I heard an alliance with Foxy Lectar and Catworld was being made that I must give the one who had passed and returned a message to be on alert for LUM to start to speak and that the curse that followed that around was far greater than any before and if it was missed and the curse leaked out that things would change before and forever and that I may never know. Those words I'd heard from him before.
I was listening to him open mouthed, as he spoke it was as if I was reading my own mind, I knew he was telling me the truth and believed that Troy Lamore was some sort of angel come to help us.
He then looked at me and smiled and wiped a small tear from his eye;
Fight your fear my friend, for you are mighty, the past is still be to written but it's in your hands.
Troy then continued;
He said when LUM talks, the time is coming, the time that The Queen of Catkind awakes, the time that he and all of Catkind has been waiting for is coming.
This curse her travelling companion, must be faced for the possibility of it being conquered, but a choice must be made, a choice that will affect all of Catkind.
We were all sitting there in stunned silence.
I now understand, the darker Naughty Twin said, he'd warned me, warned me not to delay, not to let my fear get in the way but I was scared of facing what needed to be faced and now me and my sister and Emma are all cursed.
I've told Lil' some of what Troy Lamore told me. I met with him three times and each time he gave me a piece of information.
Lil', he turned to face me. I've told some to.
The first time I encountered Troy Lamore was a long time ago, when I was very young. Back then I wasn't so scared, I would play tricks on a lot of you and never really care about the consequences. Don't get me wrong I never meant to hurt or be malicious to anyone I just enjoyed having fun not really thinking of the outcome.
Anyway there I was one day up Squirrel Tree, booby trapping their nuts store when I heard a voice from below bellow up at me. It gave me quiet a start I can tell you and I jogged and knocked the peg, a part of my booby trap, to the floor and all the nuts went falling.
I was quiet miffed and stormed down to see this magnificent cat in front of my just smiling.
I wanted to have a right go but something told me to just see what his next move would be so I sat down just looking at him.
Want a nut he said? And with a single flick of his paws he tossed a monkey nut up into the air where it hit a branch, broke the shell and the little nut landed right in his paw, which he immediately threw into my open mouth.
Hitting the back of my tonsils I began to choke and splutter. I was trying to gasp for air at the same time wanting to lash out at him. That was horrible and all he could do was sit there and chuckle to himself. What a bully I remember thinking.
Eventually he tapped me on my back and dislodged the nut and I managed to regain my composure.
What did you do that for? I yelled.
He just laughed.
Well he wasn't being very kind to me, chucking that great chunk of nut right in the back of my throat. I can still remember exactly how it tasted now. Can't go anywhere near a nut.
I know now of course that he was trying to teach me a lesson that I should have listened too but I was young and thought I knew it all.
With that he got up, nodded and went on his way calling over his shoulder.
Always remember you do have a choice and it's going to be very important to you one day to make the right one!
I was so shocked I never even asked him his name and it wasn't until the second time that I met him that I understood that he was actually looking out for me.
It was about a month after our first meeting that he saved me.
Initially for a day or two I'd been quite angry at him and considered what I would do to him if we met again, maybe putting some glue on his feet as he slept that sort of thing, but he had faded from my mind and I was up to my usual tricks, up a tree down near the tunnel waiting for dogs to pass by so I could run really quickly down one tree, across the road right in front of them and up the side of another big tree on the other side of the road and wind them up.
I spotted a great big Doberman who lived a few doors down from us walking with his Dad and got ready to wait for the optimum moment when I would be able to get near enough to be able to run in front of him just at the length that his lead went. I was banking on my calculating begin correct as I knew he could outrun me but it was so much fun winding him up, when Troy suddenly appeared in front of my in the tree and said boo.
It made me jump I didn't think anyone was around and I fell a branch or two down before some leaves broke my fall.
The Doberman heard me and jumped up to get at me. Of course I was way high and there's no way unless he's learnt to climb trees that he would even get anywhere near me but as I steadied myself the Doberman gave a furious tug and his lead broke and he was free.
Jumping up and down the tree trunk he was furious, his teeth showing a red vein in his eye, the anger so great within him a blood vessel burst.
Bark, bark, scratch, grrr all over the place he was. It took him jumping up at one of the lower branches and catching his foot to calm him down. He never really recovered from that and had a limp and a bandage for months.
I was really shocked at everything that had happened. I turned to Troy;
Thank you. If you hadn't have done that I would have been down that tree and he would have gotten me.
He smiled and offered out his paw.
My pleasure, my choice! The names Troy Lamore by the way.
You're a very strange man, I said to him
Am I? Strange in what way?
First time I met you you nearly killed me, the second time you saved me. Who are you?
I think you are confused little one, the first time we met I saved you too.
You saved me? You threw a peanut into my throat and nearly killed me!
I saved you from yourself little one, I like if possible to be around for important moments in a persons life, like today.
That nut I threw into your throat was off and another day it would have been deadly and it could easily have been up there for another day before being discovered. I knew you couldn't swallow it and thought I'd teach you a little lesson, I had to learn that way. But Craig, ah now Craig he would have been able to have consummed that nut and I'm afraid it would have poisoned him and how do you think you would have felt about that?
Wow it was like someone had smacked me around the face with a, well a speeding monkey nut. Craig is our friend, he's friends to all of Catworld and to think of him being hurt in any way sent shivers down my body and to think it might have been me that had caused that to happen. Realisation hit me and I started to cry.
Things you see were not exactly as they first appeared, he said
I'm afraid I lost it and suddenly the shock of the near encounter with The Doberman and then thinking about what could have happened with Craig just opened the flood gates of my tears.
Oh what have I done, and buried my head in my hands and just started off-loading all the things I'd done and oh me's and oh my's about how things could have gone wrong and how sorry I was, I really don't know what was coming over me, I went from all testerone to oestrogen, my ying and yang felt all over the place.
Troy listened throughout at my self pitying tales of tricks and woes, half way through producing some rather lovely dried scented petals which I used to mop my tears.
Hours I must have talked and all the time his kindly face showed the greatest interest and concern, occasionally nodding but never really saying much. I didn't feel at all judged by him and when I finished it felt like a great big weight had been lifted off my shoulders.
Why do I feel this way? I asked him, the wind suddenly picked up died down all at once, like something washed over me.
What's happened to me?
It was the first time that I'd felt like this I'd never cared that much about my tricks and their consequences before and now I did. It was then that he said something to me that I now understand but I never really took in at the time. Something that makes perfect sense now because it was at that moment that I'd first stopped feeling totally like a boy, it must have been at that moment in my history that the curse took me and yet it was years before I'd even made the mistake that would make it happen all the way back then.
Life my friend, life can teach us lessons but sometimes we get scared and if you're not on watch out all the time that fear can leak out and that sometimes that can change things forever and before and you may never know.
We'd been together hours and I'd only known his name but something in my soul totally trusted this best friend stranger and when he got up to leave I asked him to stay.
He said he couldn't, he was off to visit an old professor friend of his over on Easter Island.
Easter Island I asked, WOW that sounds exciting what are you doing there?
Just bringing a parcel back for a friend an exciting new discovery and he smiled at me.
I must dash as I really should have got this delivered years ago now. Oh yes and remember don't be scared of the unknown and make sure you're twin doesn't tease that Doberman, one day she may live to regret it!
With that he laughed and dashed off down the tree.
I was still shaking when I got back home and told my sister here, everything that happened. He said he didn't believe me and that I was playing a big trick on him. I could sense then that something had changed in my sister but it wasn't until later on when I had my third visit with Troy Lamore that I understood what.
A couple of months had gone by and although I had toned down my trick playing, my sister was in it up to her neck. She'd carried on the campaign of tricks against The Doberman.
I know my sister very well and can tell when she see's a situation as an opportunity for a trick and seeing The Doberman coming down the road in his usual mood was too good an opportunity for her.
As she dashed off it was like everything started to happen in slow motion for me. I could see her running down the road, I caught a glimpse of Troy Lamore stepping forward and I saw the moment in The Dobermans eyes that he's spotted her, the millimeter his neck muscles tensed and he began to run, the lead slipping out of his Dad's hands.
I saw my sister running and catching sight of him, he was nearer than she thought and I saw the spread of panic across her face. I saw her dash in the road and I saw The Doberman notice the car that was coming and spray his legs out in front of him to slow him down. I saw my sister forgetting all about her road awareness and disappear under the car and I heard Twizzle who was being walked down the road by R scream out.
I saw the car slam the brakes on and my sisters body in the the road.
I then saw my sister just a meter in front of me and I leapt on her back, the biggest harderst jump I had ever done and we both fell into some bushes. Of course she got up and started screaming at me just as we heard a right noise coming from Twizzle who was now being attacked by the Doberman but luckily she had managed to jump into R's arms away from him and although R was getting scratched to pieces both my sister and Twizzle were safe.
I looked up and just for a brief moment I saw Troy Lamore peering at me from the space in the road where not long before I had seen my sister be knocked over.
I was trembling and I asked my sister if she was OK.
Ok I said, the lighter Naughty Twin piped up;
I can remember I was livid, as far as I was concerned he'd just ruined my game and poor old Twizzle and R had been attacked instead.
She didn't know until later on, her brother interjected, what had happened.
I was sitting on my own on my garage roof that evening when Troy Lamore turned up next to me. Every time he turned up someone got saved and this time it was my sister but I was so scared at what I had seen, it was all so confusing.
I sat and talked it out with Troy, who was he, what did he want for me?
He said he was just a passing friend.
I told him I knew he was more than that and he smiled.
Go on, he said, tell me what you see about me?
Well I don't know why but when I think of you I imagine you live in a word of fairytales, having adventures playing in lemon fields, grazing dragons nearby. You are an enigma but something about you Troy makes me trust you.
He suddenly looked at me really intently. Do you really mean that?
Yes I did, I knew it as much as I knew my twin just by his breath.
Good because I need you to believe in me. I need you to trust your instinct when it comes to me and a decision that is coming that will affect Catkind.
Well that got my attention I'd always been told never to mention Catkind out loud, we all know the history of The Queen of Catkind and even to mention Catkind is a whisper out to the curse that follows her around.
That's when he said that one would pass and come back and I would be able to makes contact with them but that I must not be scared. Even as he spoke I knew he was telling me the truth, he said each of us has a gift, everyone alive has a gift and that mine was my ability "to know" but every gift comes with it's own curse and mine was the curse of fear and that I must overcome it or suffer instead.
He said it was absolutely vital that THE DAY I heard an alliance with Foxy Lectar and Catworld was being made that I must give the one who had passed and returned a message to be on alert for LUM to start to speak and that the curse that followed that around was far greater than any before and if it was missed and the curse leaked out that things would change before and forever and that I may never know. Those words I'd heard from him before.
I was listening to him open mouthed, as he spoke it was as if I was reading my own mind, I knew he was telling me the truth and believed that Troy Lamore was some sort of angel come to help us.
He then looked at me and smiled and wiped a small tear from his eye;
Fight your fear my friend, for you are mighty, the past is still be to written but it's in your hands.
Troy then continued;
He said when LUM talks, the time is coming, the time that The Queen of Catkind awakes, the time that he and all of Catkind has been waiting for is coming.
This curse her travelling companion, must be faced for the possibility of it being conquered, but a choice must be made, a choice that will affect all of Catkind.
We were all sitting there in stunned silence.
I now understand, the darker Naughty Twin said, he'd warned me, warned me not to delay, not to let my fear get in the way but I was scared of facing what needed to be faced and now me and my sister and Emma are all cursed.
