It's two days and one night until the senate hearing. Tryggtass hasn't decided on whether to speak for herself or if she will give Kattmyntetunga the task of speaking for her. They have decided though to try to find out so much as possible about other cats and how Skarpöra behaves towards them. During discussions an idea comes up how to put Skarpöra i bad light. Her tactics to conquer only roads could be said to be a way to get larger territory without taking responsibility for any burdens. It's not that it's strictly wrong but it could still be ethically wrong and therefore something to lead against Skarpöra. As evening closes in Grå and Svansglidaren join Tryggtass as she leaves to meet with Kattmyntetunga.
Gast is at home but as much as possible keeping a distance to the humans since he's not that popular after the accident with the ornamented box.
They meet Kattmyntetunga at her burdens house and leave for the space in the park Kattmyntetunga seems to trust for delicate talks. Tryggtass and the others tell about how they found out that Skarpöra seems to be dominating and scaring cats away by discrete threats (e g of unfair fights) but still keeping at the right side of the line between right and wrong. Most cats are very withdrawn except some cats who speaks about how "tough but fair" Skarpöra is. It sounds very cliche and just another way of not telling that she's threatening cats into submission. It is decided that Grå and Svansglidaren should testify regarding earlier mentioned points and that they should ask Gast as well since they all four as been present when different things has happened. Tryggtass decides and ask Kattmyntetunga to speak for her. Its also stated that it's not to Skarpöra's advantage that at least one human dislikes her so much as to throw money after her.
After thinking a little Kattmyntetunga says that she thinks that they should call for a formal trial the first thing they do. As they look at her with great surprise she explains that if there's a hearing it will lead to a debate and finally in the end The Cat Senate will make a statement which of course bears weight and good cats follow that but it doesn't have any actual jurisdiction and probably wouldn't stop Skarpöra. If they on the other hand open a trial and accuses Skarpöra for something there will be an outcome that would have effects if contradicted by any of the involved cats. They decide that the prosecute Skarpöra for trying to threaten her way to parts of Tryggtass' territory - unlawful appropriation of territory. Kattmyntetunga is totally confident that they will win this with the gathered information and all the witnesses.
As they return to their homes Tryggtass take the opportunity to ask Gast if he can testify as well and of course he does that for his friend.
It's Tryggtass turn to sleep with the baby (one of Tryggtass burdens) that almost gets sick because the family lives in an apartment at the top floor directly under the roof where the nights get cool and damp, especially since parts of the roof tiles fell down from the roof (and almost hit Tryggtass and actually did hit Skarpöra). Svansglidaren joins in since he has an idea that he should be able to dreamwalk with one of the parents and convince him or her to cuddle more with their weak baby, at least until she's better again. They sneak into the apartment between the almost shut shutters and as Tryggtass cuddles the baby Svansglidaren lays down close to the mother, starts to inhale her breath and tune himself to her. He soon enters her quite empty dreams or maybe there are no dreams at all. He starts to introduce thoughts of baby. He continues to introduce a dripping roof with the water dripping on on the child, cold winds and generally harsh inside climate. She takes good care of the child but in the end he puts the baby to bed not close to any of the grownups and even when Svansglidaren lets the child in the dream wiggle closer to the mother she moves away from the child. Svansglidaren is very frustrated over this, for cats, very obvious thing to do with babies.
Suddenly the whole surroundings in the dream become a big surreal swirling rapidly changing mess and a fear manifests very strongly and hits Svansglidaren hard. As he recover he's sucked into the mother's fear and nightmare of rolling over her baby and crushing it and hurting it bad and slowly painfully killing it. Svansglidaren is very overwhelmed and withdraw from the dream and with the nightmare echoing in his head he leaves the apartment. Svansglidaren stays a little while laying on the other side of the baby together with Tryggtass but then leaves to ponder this and right now he's to uncertain and shaken up to do anything tonight.
Svansglidaren returns home to check in on his burden and his territory. He has a short talk with the neighbour cat who tells him that there was a brusque cat straying in the area, especially around Svansglidaren's territory. From the description it very much seems to be Skarpöra. Svansglidaren gives his neighbour a quite angled description of Skarpöra and they greet each other and return inside each other's territories.
Tryggtass tries to introduce the thought of laying close to a small being to the father by crawling close to him. He soon notice this in an half-awake state and rolls away from Tryggtass. Tryggtass gets very frustrated and tries it with the mother as well but with the same result, maybe even slightly desperatly. When Tryggtass leaves the child it's sort of OK but still on the boundary to getting sick.
When Svansglidaren in the morning checks his territory he finds that when Skarpöra was here earlier she took the opportunity to pee and mark her presence with her scent on several, probably just out of spite. Svansglidaren covers all tracks of Skarpöra in his own scent and then meets up with the others at the usual street roof.
Grå has been around asking cats in more territories bordering to Skarpöra's territory but doesn't manage to get any info out of them regarding Skarpöra. Almost slightly suspiciously uninterested in talking with Grå but not impolite. Tryggtass and Svansglidaren appears first and indulge in some mouse tennis. Mouse tennis is a game where two cats face each other at a comfortable distance and then hits a mouse back and forth between each other. The cat to either miss to hit the mouse so it escapes or happens to kill it loses one turn and the other one gets to eat the mouse in case it didn't escape (or the .
During the morning, besides some mouse tennis, they discuss Kattmyntetunga's latest ideas and Svansglidaren's experiences during the dream walk. Svansglidaren decides to seek out a more experienced Seeker that can learn him more about dream walking but they also need to get hold of a hemina (about a quarter of a kilo) of catnip to pay Kattmyntetunga. Although they have heard about catnip growing free for fetching outside the city but they are city cats and are definitely more tempted by either do a lot of small deals to get hold of catnip or steal from one of these weird humans who have a lot of catnip and then do away with. No wonder they sometimes look very sad. They decide to do a heist during the late night when the humans do all their freighting into the city. Grå also tells them about Skarpöra's manoeuvres around his territory.
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