PROLOGUE

The cats mostly kept to themselves.

It was probably just as well. They had their island and their own way of doing things. It had been a pretty good run, domestication, but just about everyone agreed it was time to go our separate ways.

The island was actually a turtle the size of New Jersey, but there's no sense being pedantic. It was big, it was in the water, it was wholly disconnected from other landmasses. There were plants and birds and rocks and things on top, so much that you couldn't even tell it was a shell without a good imagination. Lately there seemed to be skyscrapers on top, too, but nobody was really sure what that was all about.

It had surfaced in the Arabian Sea one July, completely unannounced, and had roamed the oceans ever since, moving at an impressive clip for something so tremendous. It stayed mostly within sight of the coasts, sailing just slowly enough not to cause catastrophic flooding. Even so, the billions of tons of saltwater it displaced created a localized swell that came to be known as the cat tide.

When the cat tide came, the cats went. It was that simple.

The cat tide happened mostly on land. This was because every last feline, housebound or stray or wild, surged for the shore as a hissing, shedding, meowling wave and padded resolutely into the sea. Whole flotillas formed between island and coast. Cats rode rafts that were really just thick shoals of other cats, paddling with furious intent. Cats crossed cat bridges without a single calico hair touching water.

The coast guards and news people watched all this from a respectful distance. They'd learned early on not to get in the way. Whole fishing fleets and aircraft carriers had vanished beneath the tide. On land, cats who had spent their entire lives inside a single one-bedroom apartment stepped boldly out into the world beyond the wall-to-wall carpet and never looked back. Windows were found opened just a crack, screens clawed through, gates slightly ajar. Zookeepers arrived at their shifts to discover huge plastic pet doors embedded in the cages, swinging gently in the breeze.

The cats were leaving. People didn't have any say in the matter.

Not everyone gave up so easily. The more devoted (some would say "unbalanced") tried to follow. They tracked their beloved pets through the swarm and went with them across the churning surf and were never heard from again. No one who set foot on the island ever returned - no human, anyway. Eventually perimeters were established to limit the losses. The cats had requested it. They "didn't like having to do it," they'd said. They hadn't said what.

The cats had changed, the news people said. They were talking now, which was new. They had their own language, but seemed to know most of the others too. Not that many had a chance to hear them. A few ambassadors came and went, but they were closely guarded and only met with the people in charge. They arrived singly or in pairs on barges that looked for all the world like baby tortoises. They walked daintily on hind legs (this was new) and shook leaders' hands with tiny opposable thumbs (this was also new). Their size was the same as ever, but they were sleeker, smarter, shapelier. More anatomical. They were just like little people now, a news man had famously blustered. Fluffy little people.

The ambassadors brought offers and suggestions. No one was willing to call them demands, not in public. Most were reasonable enough. They wanted grains, produce, livestock--things the island couldn't grow. They wanted them in huge amounts. Whole swaths of heartland were replanted with catnip and valerian root. More surprisingly, the cats wanted clothes. They had discovered shame, they said. Textiles were hard for them to work with, one had explained, batting bashfully at a loose thread on his little trousers. A whole industry specializing in quarter-scale designer apparel had arisen overnight. But the cats only seemed interested in the undergarments. They said too much fabric chafed their coats.

Most of all, they wanted to be left alone.

In return, the cats had given wonders. They ended the flu pandemic and the strange famine that had blighted the landscape since the new war. Cancer disappeared soon after. Free energy reactors, like vast metallic balls of yarn, were offered to every nation. They said it was the least they could do.

One of the madder tyrants had sent a "landing force" to the island ahead of the tide to assert his sovereignty. When they'd vanished like all the rest, he declared it an act of war. The missiles had exploded high above the shell in a rain of fireworks and confetti. Admirals the world over raced to their silos and found warheads replaced with bits of shredded newspaper and Fresh Step. Their surrender was the measured, sober concession of those who have been disarmed by absurdism.

That was 9 years ago. Now the island made lazy circles in the north Pacific, its beaked snout rising from the waves every week or so for another cloud-swallowing gulp. All the cats had gone. No one knew what they were up to. The best intelligence from the few remaining satellites revealed only what most had already guessed: the cats were preparing.

They were getting prepared.