Kids' book...

[doyle]

Passage from Terry Pratchett's The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, proving that I see Buffy (and particularly Spike and redemption) everywhere. The book's about a cat who's made intelligent via magic and joins up with a group of rats to scam humans. The cat, Maurice, starts out as a bastard who's using the rats, but begins to develop a conscience. About halfway through he admits he ate one of the rats' friends...

"All right! I ate him, OK? All of him! Except for the tail and the green wobbly bit and that nasty purple lump, no-one knows what it is! I was just a cat! I hadn't learned to think yet! I didn't know! I was hungry! Cats eat rats, that how it goes! It wasn't my fault! And he'd been eating the magic stuff and I ate him so then I got Changed too! Know how that feels, seeing the green wobbly bit like that? It doesn't feel good! Sometimes on dark nights I think I can hear him talking down there! All right? Satisfied? I didn't know he was anyone! I didn't know I was anyone! I ate him! I admit it! I ate him! It wasn't my faauulltt!"

And then there was silence. After a while Peaches said, "Yes, but that was a long time ago, wasn't it?"

"What? You mean have I eaten anyone lately? No!"

"Are you sorry for what you did?"

"Sorry? What do you think? Sometimes I have nightmares where I burp and he..."

"Then that's probably all right," said the little rat.

"All right?" said Maurice. "How can it be all right? And you know the worst part? I'm a cat! Cats don't go round feeling sorry! Or guilty! We never regret anything! Do you know what it feels like?"



Yes, I am officially insane.

Comments

[moonie]

Heh. I guess I'm a tiny bit insane too, then. Because yeah, I can see what you mean. *blinks*

Pouncing onto your blog to say...

[octopedingenue]

Dude, what're you talking about, 'insane'? That is TOTALLY Spike in cat form! :)

I have you beaten in the crazy department, anyway. I see Spike in The Velveteen Rabbit.

Re: Pouncing onto your blog to say...

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

Lol! Have to go reread TVR now. And the Terry Pratchett book just gets more Buffylike as it progresses, to the point where I'd recast all the characters (there's a girl who is a female Andrew and the rat leader has a speech that could have been Buffy rallying the potentials). The villain is totally the First, too. Maurice is a cat-Spike, including a great part near the end where the villain rips his conscience away from him: he rages about all this time when he hasn't been able to hurts rats and just goes crazy. But he pulls back in time to be selfless and heroic. Spike. I'm tellin' ya. :)