Figaro and Rumba and the Cool Cats Read online

  First published in 2013

  Copyright © Text, Anna Fienberg 2013

  Copyright © Illustrations, Stephen Michael King 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available

  from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 174331 349 7

  eISBN 978 174343 186 3

  Cover and text design by Sandra Nobes

  Typeset by Sandra Nobes

  Contents

  Chapter 1 Singing with the Cool Cats

  Chapter 2 The Catmobile

  Chapter 3 The Congas

  Chapter 4 The Monster Dream

  Chapter 5 Fiesta

  Chapter 1

  Singing with the Cool Cats

  When can the Cool Cats come fishing?’ said Figaro.

  ‘Not for a while yet,’ said Rumba.

  ‘How long is a while?’

  ‘Ssh,’ said Rumba.

  Figaro scratched behind his ear. ‘The Cool Cats like fishing. They told me so. I showed them how to fish from the rocks, remember? And we had that fabulous cook-up down on the sand.’

  ‘Yes, but now we’re all singing. You need to pay attention.’

  ‘And I showed them how to play Throw the Ball, too, and Chase the Seagulls. They can’t run fast like me but I don’t mind. When’s lunch then?’ said Figaro.

  ‘You’ve just had breakfast!’ said Rumba.

  Figaro sniffed. Roast chicken. The smell was coming from that fabulous place behind him, the kitchen of the Cool Cats Café.

  He started to drool. ‘Are we having those chicken empanadas? They’re the best!’

  Rumba nudged him and pointed to Marta, the Cool Cats’ top singer. Marta was frowning at them as she sang her solo. Be quiet! said her angry whiskers.

  Figaro’s tummy growled. These rehearsals for the new show took ages. Still, he tried to pay attention, as Rumba had told him, and listen all the way to the end of the solo. And he came in right on time with the chorus. So why did Marta shake her head at him and stop singing, just before the last note?

  ‘Oh, I cannot go on!’ she cried. ‘This dog Figaro does not sing. He howls and he barks!’

  ‘But Marta,’ Rumba said, ‘that’s what dogs do. And Fig’s barking is so musical – he gives us all our low notes!’

  Figaro barked as low as he could to show everyone. He couldn’t help wagging his tail, which made his notes tremble deliciously. Rumba liked his deep, barky voice. Marta doesn’t know everything, thought Figaro.

  Figaro and Rumba were old friends, ever since Figaro rescued Rumba from being sad and lost in a fish market in Cuba. Rumba had been looking for his family, who had been catnapped by a wicked, scheming crocodile.

  Marta rolled her eyes to the ceiling where there was a grand old chandelier. ‘No,’ she said loudly. ‘If Figaro is to be in our singing group, he must not bark. That is my final word.’

  The other Cool Cats from Cuba looked at the floor. They didn’t like all this arguing. Hadn’t there been enough trouble in their dark and dangerous past? Hadn’t they been catnapped by that same scheming crocodile, who planned to sell them to billionaires all over the world for their marvellous singing voices? And hadn’t it been Figaro who’d sprung them free?

  Why, the Cool Cats were now the proud owners of this café. Customers came from everywhere to try their chicken empanadas, to swoon beneath the spell of their singing and steel guitars. The café buzzed with talk, song and fierce flavours, day and night.

  Marta must have forgotten this, thought Rumba. She was their best singer, and must have been carried away with the wonderful sound of her own voice. Rumba sighed. He would have to handle this carefully. Maybe he should write another song for her.

  But before he could say anything, the heavy doors of the café crashed open like a crocodile’s jaws on a still and moonless night.

  ‘Oh, that noise just murders my ears!’ shrieked Marta. ‘For why you cannot come in quietly?’

  The cleaner didn’t look up. He made his slow and steady way across the floor. As he went, his buckets clanged against his mops and brooms. He came to a stop beside Marta, then yawned so widely and noisily that all the cats yawned too, even though they didn’t want to. The cleaner was always interrupting. Sometimes, when they were in the middle of rehearsing, the cats looked up to see him swinging from the chandelier, soaping and sponging, with water slopping out of his buckets right onto their heads.

  But what could they do? He too had been a slave of the wicked crocodile, who had put him to work as a cleaner. When he was only a very young sloth, he’d been stolen from his home, and now he had no other.

  Figaro bounded over to help him with his heavy bucket.

  ‘How’s it going, Rolando?’ asked Figaro.

  Figaro was fond of Rolando, who never criticised his singing. And he liked how Rolando’s dusty grey fur grew backwards, and how he went completely still when Figaro began telling him something, only asking ‘Is this going to take a while?’ before fetching his stool. ‘Might as well rest while I can,’ Rolando would explain as he flopped down. And it was Rolando who took the time to listen when Figaro told him about the strange and haunting creatures he’d been seeing lately.

  Now Figaro took the bucket as Rolando trudged, slow as dinner cooking, across the room. Only yesterday Rolando had sat on his stool while Figaro told him about the scary thing he’d seen in Marta’s car the evening before.

  ‘It’s mostly at night that I see it,’ Figaro had explained. ‘And always in her car. I see this monster, all grey and hairy, bent over the steering wheel. And it makes a noise like this –’ and Figaro tried to scream, aaeee! aaeee! but it was more of a howl.

  ‘Maybe the car is haunted,’ Rolando had suggested.

  ‘Well, one time I called out to it,’ Figaro said, ‘but the monster disappeared. And another time I crept towards it but nothing was there.’ Figaro didn’t mention that he’d also seen the thing, just once, in Ernie’s bus.

  He’d barked at it, and it had melted slowly away into the shadows. When he got there, there was nothing, only a ruffled grey rug on the driver’s seat. He’d told Ernie about it, but Ernie had just laughed at him.

  Rumba said it might be stress. After Figaro had rescued all the cats from the wicked crocodile, and nearly been kidnapped himself, anyone would be a little jumpy.

  But Figaro shook his head. ‘That was ages ago. I’ve forgotten about that.’

  Rumba shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t know then. It must be a dog thing.’

  While Figaro was pondering, the cats had taken up their song again. With a start, he joined in, barking his lovely low bass notes.

  ‘No no no!’ screamed Marta. ‘Señor Figaro, you are coming in too late! You cannot come in with your barking. You are B flat with my C major!’ Marta turned to Rumba and flung up her paws in d
espair.

  ‘You see? We musical cats from Cuba cannot live like this. Is a CATastrophe!’

  Rumba put up his own paw, like a traffic policeman, to stop Marta’s angry words. But her cries still rose and fell all around them.

  Figaro was suddenly tired. He decided to have a nap while Marta was scolding. Before he lay down, he padded round and around in a circle, following his tail. Funny, when he did this, his tail always seemed to be in front of his nose, which was a strange thing, as surely it was attached to the end of him. It seemed to have a mind of its own! Why, even when he didn’t like someone, take Marta for instance, his tail would wag at the first sight of her, as if it was hopeful that she might have changed overnight and become a friendly cat, even though the front end of him knew better.

  When he woke up, the cats weren’t singing anymore. But Marta was still talking.

  He looked around for Rolando, but there was no sign of him or his buckets and mops.

  ‘Oh beetle-bums,’ said Figaro, under his breath. He longed for the days when it was just him and Rumba making plans, riding the Very Fast Train, fishing the river near their home, visiting Nate and Nancy and Rat, their friends. Not one of them had ever said anything mean about his singing, even though Nancy knew a lot about music. She was even a dancer!

  ‘I’m going now,’ Figaro said.

  ‘No, wait for me,’ said Rumba. ‘We’re nearly finished anyway.’

  But Marta thumped the conga drum. ‘Señor Rumba, I must to insist! The Cool Cats are NOT nearly finished. We must to be perfect for our Opening Performance tomorrow. Oh, I feel one of my headaches coming on! Let this dog go, we do not need him.’

  Figaro wanted to give that drum a good thump himself. But he turned away without another word. This time his tail agreed with the rest of him. It hung behind, low and limp and sad, as he slunk towards the doors of The Cool Cats Café.

  Chapter 2

  The Catmobile

  As soon as he was outside, Figaro felt better. He could count fifteen different smells on the air and there was a barbecue, down near the beach. As he lifted his nose to the breeze, his heart lifted with it. Sausages cooking was his favourite smell of all.

  ‘Señor Figaro!’

  The little ginger Cool Cat, Dora, was running after him.

  Figaro stopped to wait for her.

  ‘I must to tell you,’ she puffed, ‘that I like your barking. Is very enthusiastic, with much daring, dash and droolery.’

  ‘What?’ said Figaro. ‘Are you being rude to me?’

  Dora shook her head. ‘I am practising my English words. Uff! I am tired of singing. What are you doing now?’

  Figaro shrugged. ‘I’m catching the Very Fast Train home. Then I’m having sausages for dinner, my favourite.’

  ‘Pleez, may I come with you? The Cool Cats will not miss me – I have only the tinsiest part. You know what I’d rather be doing? Exploring…Señor Figaro, I am mad about exploring! Back in Cuba, I am driving everywhere, in my little motor car. I turn up the radio, I zig and zag and zoom along, I am finding new places, meeting new friends…’

  They were strolling across the lawn, when Figaro stopped suddenly and said, ‘There, do you see that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There, behind the steering wheel of that car, a grey monster, look – oh!

  ’ Dora looked where Figaro was pointing. ‘That is just Marta’s car, no? You are seeing it many times, I think, the Catmobile of 1968? Is a classic car, very old, very magnificent. You want to take a good look, up close?’

  ‘But didn’t you see anything in it? There, at the…’ Figaro’s voice fell. ‘No, it’s only me who’s seeing things again.’

  He looked inside the car.

  He sniffed.

  Fish. Polish. Leather. On the back seat, only a dusty grey rug. No monsters.

  ‘Oh, how I miss my little car back in Cuba,’ sighed Dora. ‘I am never, how do you say, mean with my car. I am driving my friends to all their destinations. I am lending my car to those in need. But Marta, she is only letting me drive when she has the headache.’

  Figaro poked his nose under the dashboard on the passenger’s side. He was getting fond of the fishy smell. Maybe he would have fish for dinner, as well as sausages.

  Dora got in on the driver’s side, jingling her keys. ‘You know what, Señor Figaro? We are going for a little drive. Marta has the headache – she will never mind if we borrow her car. Well, only the tinsiest bit. But the Cool Cats will rehearse all day. Why don’t we explore the other road to –’

  ‘Go, go, go!’ Figaro leapt over the door and dived nose first into the passenger seat. His legs splayed out across the dashboard and onto the gear stick.

  Dora settled in neatly behind the wheel. From her handbag she took a pair of leather driving gloves, and slipped them on.

  Vroom, vroom, vroo-oo-ooom! said the car.

  The Catmobile roared off like a rocket. Figaro howled with excitement.

  Wind blasted Figaro’s nose and blew back his ears. The skin under his fur tingled. He hung out the door, gulping the tasty smells. The air was thick as a hamburger – you could take a bite out of it!

  ‘This is FABULOUS!’ he shouted to Dora, but the wind snatched his voice and threw it away.

  As they whipped along, trees looped like running writing and hills reared up and down. Over their shoulders the sea winked in the midday sun.

  Dora turned up the radio and they sang and jigged and swayed on the seats. When they stopped for a rest and a run, parking under a coconut palm, Figaro said, ‘This open-air driving is the best thing ever!’

  ‘You don’t have to shout,’ said Dora. ‘We have stopped now.’

  ‘I know that,’ shouted Figaro.

  Near the coconut groves, they found a fish-and-chip shop.

  ‘Hey, Dora,’ Figaro said as they unwrapped their lunch. ‘I’ve got a fabulous idea. Let’s drop in on Nate – he’s a mechanic. He’ll LOVE this car.’

  ‘Nate who?’ said Dora.

  ‘Nate the mechanic,’ Figaro said. ‘I told you. He’s a friend of ours. He lives near us with his cousin Nancy, who’s a very good dancer.’

  ‘But is not this Nate a bit of a villain?’ She fiddled with her whiskers. ‘Isn’t he a rascal, a ruffian, a rogue and a reptile?’

  ‘No,’ said Figaro. ‘He’s a possum. Rumba says he does things without thinking, that’s all. He makes promises he can’t keep – telling people what they want to hear, just because he wants to please them. But see, as I tell Rumba, it’s only because he’s got such a big heart.’

  Dora started the engine. ‘Well, I just do not know. Nothing bad must happen to Marta’s car. Back in Cuba, she is saving up for it for many years. She is singing in doubtful nightspots for very low pay. This car is meaning mucho to her.’

  ‘Don’t worry, nothing will happen! Didn’t you say you love finding new places, meeting new friends? Having adventures?’

  ‘I did not mention adventures,’ said Dora, looking nervous.

  ‘Well, anyway, we’ll just show Nate the fabulous Catmobile of 1968, but we won’t let him drive it.’

  Dora crossed her paws over the steering wheel.

  Chapter 3

  The Congas

  ‘Señor Fig, do you know what?’ said Dora as they drove into the next town. ‘I am dying for an ice-cream – and look, here is just the place to be getting it.’

  Waiting in the queue, they met a friendly traveller who told them they simply must see the shining lake under the waterfall on the other side of the mountain.

  So by the time Figaro and Dora pulled up outside Nate’s house, it was late afternoon.

  Figaro leaned over Dora and tooted the horn.

  ‘Hey, Nate!’ he called. ‘Guess who!’

  They peered up at Nate’s tree house. Dance music was wafting out over the air.

  Figaro tooted in time to the music. Dum di dum da dum dum dummmmm!

  ‘Bravo! You have very good rhythm,’ said D
ora.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Figaro. And he did it again.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Nate called back. ‘Nancy, turn off the stereo for a sec! Can’t hear a blasted thing with all that dratted noise!’

  ‘It’s not noise,’ they heard Nancy say. ‘It’s salsa. I’m working on some new steps for tomorrow night. And I’m very busy and cannot be disturbed.’

  While they were waiting for Nate, Figaro climbed out to have a stretch. He was looking down at the river when he spied a movement in the bushes. Just the wind, he thought. But why would the wind move in only one spot? He peered closer. There! Something fuzzy-grey, slipping between those bushes.

  He ran back to Dora.

  ‘What?’ said Dora.

  ‘The monster!’ said Figaro. ‘It followed us here!’

  But now Nate was hurrying down the ladder. In a blink he was inspecting the best open-air vehicle ever.

  ‘A 1968 Catmobile,’ said Nate, breathing out.

  ‘How did you know that?’ said Figaro, forgetting the monster.

  ‘My grandfather had one of these. See, I used to help him in his car yard when I was young. But one day, there he was, right in the middle of teaching me everything he knew about fixing engines, when bang! he was struck by lightning.’ Nate sighed. ‘What a tragedy. I never got over it, really.’

  ‘That is muy sad,’ said Dora, patting Nate’s arm.

  Nate nodded. ‘Well anyway, let’s not waste this little beauty, let’s go for a drive!’

  Dora jumped with alarm. ‘Oh no, Señor, we are very weary and also exhausted after our journey. For example, Figaro is so tired he is seeing monsters!’