Natalie Kitty raced toward home on four paws, her bookbag bouncing on her back. From a distance, she heard her best friend calling her. "Tally! Wait up! Where are you going?"

She was torn between wanting to get home faster, and not wanting to abandon her friend, so she waited. Panting, Arthur Boy, a Dog with a yellow-beige coat and dark floppy ears, caught up to her. He was walking on his hind paws, like normal, so he was slower. "You ran out of school like you were being chased by ghosts or something," he said. "Why are you running so fast? And won't your mom get mad at you for running on four paws?"

"I can't help it!" Natalie stood on her hind legs and bounced a little. She had too much restless energy to stay still. "Today's my 10^th birthday! I want to get home as fast as I can so I can see what kind of cake Mom made!"

Her sister, also on hind paws, caught up to them both. "It's my birthday too and I'm not running down the street like a crazy kitten," Lara Kitty said. "Besides, Mom probably made cherry vanilla cake. She made cherry vanilla cake for our 7^th birthday and our 8^th and our 9^th and scientifically, I think I can detect a pattern there."

Natalie scowled a little at Lara. She didn't know why Lara wasn't as excited as she was, except that Lara was always calmer about everything. And smarter � she was a straight A student in everything but gym class, while Natalie got B's in everything but gym and literature. And prettier, too. Lara had Siamese markings, golden fur with dark ears and tail, and was very tall and slender. She looked exotic and beautiful, while Natalie was just a gray tabby like a zillion other gray tabbies. Natalie couldn't help but be jealous of her sister sometimes. But today, on the birthday they shared, she was determined not to get mad at Lara.

"Okay, but I'm just excited! And I want to get my presents! Don't you want presents?"

"We're not going to get presents or cake until after dinner and Dad isn't going to make dinner any faster just because you ran home. And you'll get your forepaws all dirty�"

"I can wash them!"

"As long as you do it in the sink and not with your tongue, because that's gross. Anyway you look silly running on four paws. People are going to think you're a small-cat."

Natalie rolled her eyes. "No, they won't."

Arthur said earnestly, "Why would anyone think Tally is a small-cat? She's wearing clothes, and a bookbag, and she's as big as a Human child, just like us. Small-cats are little, that's why they're small-cats. You can hold them in your arms."

"I was joking," Lara said, sighing. "Anyway�"

"Anyway, I really want to get home fast! See you tomorrow, Arthur! See you at the house, Lara!"

"Wait, Natalie�"

Natalie didn't hear whatever Lara was going to say, because she was off and zooming on four paws again. She couldn't help it. Being excited filled her with energy, and being full of energy made her want to run, fast, and she could go faster on four paws. Even if the way her bookbag bounced on her back was annoying.

It felt like she had to wait forever for the best parts of her birthday. First, Mom made her wash her paws in the sink, and that felt weird so then she had to tongue-bathe them and groom them back to normal before she felt right. Then they had to eat the salmon dinner Dad made. Natalie loved salmon, but today, she wanted to hurry up and get cake. Her little brother TJ didn't want to eat his salmon, and that slowed everything down too, because Mom had to argue with TJ to try to get him to eat salmon, and he wouldn't do it, and finally Mom had to give him a bowl of cold cereal, which wasn't a good dinner for a Cat at all but no one was as stubborn as TJ when he didn't like food.

Finally, dinner was over, the dishes had been cleaned and put away, and it was time for cake and presents. Natalie bounced in her seat. "What do you think we got?" she asked Lara. "Do you think we got that dollhouse we asked for?"

"I'm not the one who went snooping," Lara said. "You'd know better than me."

"But I never did find where they hid them!"

"Girls," Dad said, in a serious voice. Both Natalie and Lara turned to look at him. "This isn't an ordinary birthday. After cake and presents, Mom and I have a special announcement, and something to discuss with the both of you."

"Mom's having another kitten?" Natalie squealed.

Dad smiled, but it wasn't a happy smile. "Nope. But you'll find out soon enough, so don't try to pester me to find out what it is."

This year, the cake was vanilla cherry... with cheesecake in the center between the layers. "Haha!" Natalie said to Lara. "She mixed it up!"

"It's still a vanilla cherry cake."

"No, it's a vanilla cherry cheesecake cake!"

Mom and Dad didn't eat any of the cake, though Mom licked a little of the cheesecake filling; grownup Cats didn't usually like sweet things. On Dad's birthday, for instance, they had fish cake, and on Mom's they had crab cake. Natalie felt sorry for them, but she was determined to never grow out of eating sweets. How could anyone not like vanilla cake?

Their present turned out to be a shiny, glittery disco ball � a ball made of mirrors that hung from the ceiling, and when you turned out the main light in the dining room and turned on the track lights, they glittered off the spinning ball and made spots of light dance all over the walls. Natalie and TJ had great fun pouncing on the bright spots of light and chasing them all over the room. Lara also got a book, which she tried to read, but it was too dark. She gave up and joined in with Natalie and TJ in playing with the disco ball.

Then Mom turned the light back on. "Settle down, kittens. It's time for Dad and I to make our announcement."

"First of all, Natalie, I'm sure you noticed that you didn't get an extra present and Lara did," Dad said. "That isn't because we left you out. You'll be getting an extra present soon."

"How soon?" Natalie asked. "Like, tonight soon?"

"Yes, tonight soon. Now sit down, please."

Natalie sat down after one last attempt to bat at TJ's tail.

"Have you kittens learned anything in school about Kittyland?" Dad asked.

"Um... not really," Natalie said. They had had a unit on it in social studies, but she had been too fidgety to pay attention.

"I did!" Lara said, and cleared her throat importantly. "Kittyland is the ancestral home of Cats. Although many Cats live in Kookalariland, like us, and places like Gogo and the Isle of Piri, we all originally came from Kittyland. Almost ten years ago, Kittyland was conquered by the Dogyans, and nobody has heard very much about what's been happening there since then."

Dad nodded. "It's the Dogs. The nasty beasts won't let any Cats escape Kittyland to tell the rest of us what's happening, and they won't let journalists from other countries in."

Natalie glared at her dad. "Don't call Dogs nasty beasts! My best friend Arthur is a Dog, and he's the sweetest, nicest person in the whole school! Just because some Dogs from Dogyard did bad things in Kittyland, that doesn't mean Dogs are bad!"

Dad sighed. "I'm sorry, Natalie. You're right, of course, but sometimes it's hard for me to remember that. You wouldn't remember this, but... Mom and I escaped Kittyland right as the Dogyans were conquering it. You and Lara didn't even have your eyes open yet, and TJ wasn't yet born."

Natalie was shocked. It looked like Lara was too. "Wow," Lara said, her eyes wide. "You never said anything! We did a whole unit on Kittyland and I had no idea you and Mom came from there!"

"We didn't just come from there," Mom said. She looked at Dad. "Frank, do you want to tell them, or should I?"

"Right," Dad said. He ran a paw through the orange fur on the top of his head. "What Mom and I wanted to tell you, now that you're ten and now that Natalie is definitely showing the markings, is... well..."

"I am the Queen of Kittyland," Mom said. "In exile."

Natalie stared at her mother. "What?"

"You're joking, right?" Lara said.

"No, it's not a joke. Most of the Royal Family � my parents, my brothers and sisters � fought the Dogs. I had just had kittens � you two girls � so I couldn't fight. Your father was the Royal Science Advisor. He built an escape pod for two adult Cats and two infant kittens that would evade the Dogyans, and the four of us fled to Kookalariland. I know that my mother, the Queen, died a year after she was forced to surrender to the Dogs. I don't know what happened to the rest of my family."

"Oh, no," Natalie said. She got up and gave her mother a hug. "I'm so sorry, Mom! You lost your whole family!"

Mom hugged her back. "No, I didn't, Natalie. I had you girls, and your father. And later I had TJ. You all mean the world to me."

"Oh!" Lara said. "Is that why our last name is Kitty? I remember reading that the royal family of Kittyland had Kitty for a last name, and I thought that was cool, but that it was just a coincidence because there must be thousands of cats named Kitty."

"That's right," Dad said. "I used to be Frank Seize, but of course when I married the Princess I changed my name to hers."

"Let's tell them about the markings," Mom said.

"Right. You'll notice, four of us here have tabby markings. TJ and I are orange tabbies, Natalie's a gray tabby, and Mom is a tabby-point Siamese," Dad said. "Most tabbies have a marking on their forehead that's shaped kind of like an M." He pointed at his own. "But Mom's is a little more complicated."

Mom's forehead marking looked just like Natalie's. Instead of an M, it had three pointed humps � two on the outside, about the size of Dad's and TJ's M, and then one in the center that rose up to a higher point. "Do you see how it looks like a crown?" Dad said. "The Queen of Kittyland � or occasionally a King � always has that crown shape on her forehead. The markings don't always come in right away � lots of kittens have gotten to be 8 or 9 years old before the crown marking appeared. So traditionally, the Crown Princess is identified and coronated as the heir on her 10^th birthday." He sighed. "Once we learned that your grandmother had died, we knew then that Mom is actually the Queen, in exile. She doesn't rule anything, aside from this household, but someday, if Kittyland ever overthrows the Dogs, she'll be able to return to rule over Kittyland. And today, we're acknowledging that Natalie has the crown marking, and therefore is the Crown Princess of Kittyland."

Natalie's jaw dropped. "But � but � I can't be a princess!" she said. "I'm just a plain tabby and my grades aren't great and Lara's smarter than me and prettier! She should be the princess!"

"Lara doesn't have the crown marking," Dad said. "The Crown Princess always has the crown marking."

"Anyway, I don't want to be a queen," Lara said. "I want to be a scientist like Dad!"

Mom put a small box on the table. "My mother was never able to pass to me the crown of the Queen. But I can pass on to you the Crown Princess' tiara, Natalie." She pushed the box toward Natalie.

Natalie opened the box. Inside there was a silver tiara, in a beautiful lace filigree pattern. "It's beautiful," she said, and took it out with her paws, carefully. It looked very delicate.

"Go ahead and put it on," Mom said. "You're the Crown Princess now."

"I don't think I should," Natalie said uneasily. "Mom... if the Dogyans rule Kittyland then you're not really the Queen of anything, so how can I really be a Princess? And I don't even know anything about how to be a Princess!"

"Well, hopefully, if the Cats of Kittyland ever overthrow the Dogyans, I'll have time to teach you how to be a Princess," Mom said. "But honestly... you're right. We have no kingdom. I'm not really the Queen of anything. The important thing is that we remember who we are, and that we need to be ready to move back to Kittyland and help our people if the Dogs are ever defeated."

"Why don't we go back to Kittyland and fight?" Natalie asked. "If it's been almost ten years, I'll bet they won't be expecting anyone to come fight them!"

Dad sighed. "You're very enthusiastic, Natalie," he said. "But think about it. You're a 10 year old kitten. So is Lara. TJ is only 7. And Mom and I are only two Cats. How could our family possibly take on an entire conquering army?"

He had a good point. Natalie deflated. "But if I'm supposed to be the Princess, I want to do something to earn it," she said. "A Princess should fight for her people. I've never fought anybody."

"That's not true," Lara said. "You fought the bullies that were picking on Arthur because of his asthma. You fought the bullies that were picking on me, when we were in kittengarden. You fought the bullies who were picking on Rosemary the Human because Humans don't have any claws or fur to protect them. You fought the bullies who picked on TJ. There's a definite statistical pattern here."

Natalie didn't want to admit that she didn't know the word "statistical." It was probably a science thing. "Okay, so I don't like bullies picking on people littler than me."

"You fought the bullies that were picking on Karen Persian and she's four years older than us."

"You're very passionate about fighting to protect anyone and to try to see justice," Dad said. "That's an important thing for a Princess to have. But you're still young, Natalie. Maybe someday you'll have a chance to fight to save Kittyland, but that day is a long way off."

"I still don't want to wear the tiara until I feel like I'm a good Princess," Natalie said. "I think I'd make a pretty terrible Princess right now."

"That's your right," Mom said. "But keep it safe. Someday, I'm sure, you'll wear it in Kittyland, and our fellow Kittylanders will be free."

Knowledge was power. Dad always said that, and Lara, and even Arthur. So at school the next day, in library period, Natalie got out all the books about Dogyard that she could find.

A lot of the books were very, very old. They surprised her, because they said the Dogyans were peaceful. They were supposed to be ruled by a group called the Council of Canines, and all the Dogs in Dogyard were supposed to be able to vote for the Councildog for the area they lived in, just like in Kookalariland. But in one of the few newer books, it said that Dogyard's Council of Canines had been disbanded, and that now the ruler of Dogyard was someone called the Alpha Dog. The Alpha Dog was warlike and talked a lot about how other countries weren't as good as Dogyard and how Dogyans deserved to have more room for their puppies and how other countries insulted Dogyans. After that, Natalie couldn't find any more recent books.

She had been going to ask Lara for help, but then she remembered Lara stayed home sick this morning. Well, Arthur was good at library. Even better than Lara, actually, because Lara mostly just cared about science books. "Hey, Arthur? Can you help me look something up?" she asked him.

"Sure, what do you want to find out?"

"I'm trying to find out about the Dogyans. But the only books in the library are old. I want to know what they are like now."

Arthur frowned. "What do you want to know about them?"

"I learned from my parents yesterday that we came from Kittyland," Natalie said. Arthur was her best friend, but she didn't want to tell him that she was a Princess. That would make her sound stuck up, she thought. "And Kittyland got taken over by the Dogyans, so I wanted to know what the Dogyans are like."

"My parents used to live in Dogyard," Arthur said. "But when the Alpha Dog started taking over, Dogs who thought that war was bad and who thought we should still have a Council started disappearing. So they came here to Kookalariland."

"That's kind of the same thing as my parents, except that they ran away from Kittyland when the Dogyans took over."

Arthur nodded. "Lots of Dogs and Cats in Kookalariland are displaced persons because of the Alpha Dog. He's awful."

"What's a displaced person?" Natalie asked.

"A person who can't live in their home anymore because there was a natural disaster, like an earthquake, or because of a war or a bad ruler taking over their country."

Natalie nodded. So her entire family were displaced persons. "Why doesn't anyone go fight the Alpha Dog?"

"I think anyone who tried would really be the underdogs in that fight," Arthur said. "He rules two entire countries. All the Dogs that are left in Dogyard are either loyal to him, or they're too scared to say anything bad about him... or else they're in secret jails and no one knows what happened to them. The Cats in Kittyland are slaves."

"But someone should still fight him!" Natalie said. "Why didn't Kookalariland send our army to protect Kittyland?"

Arthur sighed. "You want to go to war with Dogyard, Tally?"

"I... guess?"

"War kills people." Arthur's long ears drooped. "What can we do? Send bombs to Dogyard? That would kill a lot of innocent Dogs. Send bombs to Kittyland? That would kill even more innocent Cats who had even less to do with the Alpha Dog taking over. Send soldiers? Then innocent Dogs and Cats in those countries would die, and also, our soldiers would die too. War isn't a good thing."

Natalie sighed in frustration. "You're right, but... I just wish there was something we could do! I wish there was something I could do, and I didn't have to wait to grow up first!"

"We're just kids, Natalie," Arthur said. "I wish there was something we could do, too, but if adults haven't been able to do anything for our whole lives, what can we do?"

"I don't know," Natalie said, her tail curling under her legs and her whiskers drooping.

Later, when she got home, she told Lara what she found out about Dogyard. "And if someone could just defeat the Alpha Dog and all his henchdogs, the Dogyans could have their peaceful government back again, and Kittyland would be free, and the world would be a better place!" she said. "See, I knew Dogs aren't bad people! It's just that their country got taken over by a bad leader!"

"I don't think it's that simple," Lara said. She was laying in bed in her pajamas, but she wasn't coughing or anything.

"Well, maybe not, but it would still solve a lot of problems if we could defeat the Alpha Dog." Natalie sighed. "But Arthur's right. It's not like Kookalariland can send soldiers over there, or bombs, because then innocent Cats and Dogs would get killed."

"Plus, there would need to be new rulers for Dogyard who would be good Dogs," Lara said. "But from what Arthur said, most of the good Dogs are either in prison, or they ran away like Arthur's parents and ours did, or they're too scared to do anything. So all the Dogs who are ready to take over as leaders would probably be bad Dogs, but if you got rid of the Alpha Dog and you didn't have a leader to replace him at all, then the country would fall into anarchy."

"What's anarchy?"

"Anarchy is when nobody runs anything and a country is in chaos," Lara said. "So criminals can do whatever they want and then some of the criminals get people to follow them by promising to protect them from other criminals, so you end up with a society where there's nothing but criminals in charge."

Natalie shuddered. "That sounds pretty awful."

"At least that wouldn't happen to Kittyland," Lara said. "Because Mom would take over as the new ruler if we defeated the Dogyans and drove them out of Kittyland."

"That's true!" Natalie said. "And if we did that, we could make a safe place for Dogyans in Dogyard to come to if they don't like the Alpha Dog, and then we could help them take over their own country again!" She sighed. "But there's no way we can ever do anything like that."

"Well, maybe someday," Lara said.

"Not for years and years and years."

"Maybe not. Let me show you what I've been working on."

Natalie's ears perked up, and her tail swished with excitement. "You have an idea?"

Lara got up and padded quickly to her laboratory. Eagerly Natalie followed her. "I've been working on this thing for a while," Lara said. She walked over to a table where she had a bunch of what looked like half-assembled devices and a whole lot of parts. She lifted something that looked sort of like a tiara except that it had two pieces that went over the top of the head as well as the part that went around. "I'm working on a way to give Cats superpowers."

Natalie's eyes went wide. "You what?"

"Shh! I don't want Mom and Dad to know!" Lara put the device down. "It's not done yet. I started working on it about a year ago, but I didn't do very much. Then last night I remembered what you said about wanting to be able to fight the Dogs that took over Kittyland, and I thought, but what if Cats did have superpowers? Then we could fight the Dogs! So I stayed up all night trying to finish it, but I don't think I'm going to get it good enough to use on a Cat any time real soon." She frowned. "This stuff is hard. I think maybe I'll have it perfect by the time we're teenagers, though."

"But that's a long way off!"

"Yeah, but it's important for the device to be safe before we try it on Cats. I don't even want to test it on smallcats until I know it's safe for living creatures."

"How does it work?"

Immediately Natalie regretted asking the question, as Lara eagerly started holding forth with all kinds of technical details. Finally Natalie put a paw on her sister's mouth. "Can you just give me the simple version?"

Lara sighed. "Well, the simple version is, all the mammals in Kookalariland � probably in the entire world, though I haven't read that anyone's tested that � have what we call 'latent' superpowers, meaning that they have genes for superpowers but those genes aren't expressed. Meaning that they don't have superpowers, just the genes for them. Well, if we activate those genes, then boom! The person � or animal, it works on mammals that don't talk too � has superpowers!"

"So you could give superpowers to pets? Can you make a pet mouse that's indestructible?" It was cruel to chase real mice because they might get hurt, so Natalie had only ever had a chance to chase toy mice, like radio-controlled remotes. But an indestructible mouse could be chased over and over and never get hurt! It would be awesome!

"It doesn't work like that. Nobody's done an analysis of the genes for superpowers, so there's no way to know what power anyone, or any animal, would get if I used the device. I'm hoping that by the time I have it perfected enough scientists will have studied that problem that I can get the data to analyze what power a mammal will get before we use the device."

"What kind of power do you think I would get?"

"Natalie, I just told you I don't know�"

"No, I know, but if you had to guess!"

"Superspeed, because you're totally hyper," Lara said, grinning. "Anyway. I know you wanted something that could help you fight the Dogs in Kittyland today, and that's not going to happen, but maybe in three or four years I'll have something we can use to give our whole family superpowers and then we can go fight the Dogs!"

"Could you maybe work on it faster?" Natalie asked.

"No. Science has to take time," Lara said. "Besides, if I didn't do anything but work on this project, what would happen to my grades? And I don't think I have all the data yet, anyway, and I'm not even sure anyone is doing the studies yet to get the data."

Natalie sighed. It was frustrating that Lara was so strict about doing everything perfectly. Lots of times, they never got to do something fun together because Lara took too much time to make sure whatever it was she was doing was perfect � whether it was hand-washing all of the dishes after they came out of the dishwasher to make sure there weren't any tiny specks or spots, or taking two whole days to clean her half of their bedroom because she had to dust the ceiling and wash the windowsills and even organize all of her socks, or taking all night to do her homework because she wanted to check it three times to make sure it was all right... when Lara did finish a project, it was always done right, but she never finished anything because she took too long to make sure every last little bit of it was done, and done the exact right way. She got her homework done, so she was a straight A student, but she never had time to play with Natalie anymore because she was spending all her time when they got home from school on her homework... and on projects like this, most of which never got finished.

If she waited for Lara to get done with the superpowers activator and decide that it was safe and okay to use... it would be years. Not like three or four. More like ten or twenty. If it ever happened at all.

Later that night, after she and Lara were both supposed to be in bed, Natalie snuck out of bed. It was hard, because she and Lara shared a room and Lara always took a long time to get to sleep, and Natalie usually had no trouble, but the thought of all the poor Dogyans who hated what the Alpha Dog had done to their country, but who hadn't been able to get out like Arthur's parents, and all the poor Kittylanders living under the rule of the Alpha Dog and his minions, kept her awake. So when she heard Lara breathing deeply and evenly and knew her sister was finally asleep, she got out and padded down the hall to Lara's lab.

The girls used to have their own rooms, but a few years ago Lara had asked if she could convert her bedroom to a lab for her experiments and inventions. Their parents didn't think it was safe for her to sleep in the same room where she was doing her experiments, but Natalie had volunteered that Lara could move into her room, so she'd have a safe place to sleep and still be able to use her room as a lab. Natalie had even already had twin beds because she liked to have sleepovers with her friends. When Lara moved in, Natalie picked the twin bed closer to the door because Lara was usually a more restless sleeper and was bothered by the noises of their parents walking in the hallway (well, specifically, Dad � Mom moved like a normal Cat, padding quietly on her paws, but somehow Dad managed to make loud galumphing noises in the hallway, a lot. He liked to run instead of walking and jump instead of running. In that way, Natalie was more like him.) It was very convenient now that she wanted to sneak into Lara's lab without Lara waking up.

Natalie liked to run and jump, like her dad, but tonight she walked as silently as she could, and tried to keep her tail from swishing with excitement.� She didn't know if her parents were even still awake or not, and she certainly didn't want them to hear her. When she reached the lab, she leaned against the doorknob, pressing it in the direction of the hinges, to keep it from squeaking as she turned it.

And then she was inside.

She went straight to the worktable that had the superpowers activator on it. What kind of powers would she get?

It took her a few minutes of fidgeting with the device, turning it this way and that, before she figured out where the "on" button was. When she turned it on it glowed, and felt warm when she touched it, but it didn't seem to do anything at all when she put it on her head. Disappointed, she turned it off, and then tried turning it on again.

What happened next was like the biggest static shock she'd ever gotten. Her body went stiff, her fur stood on end, her tail shot out rigidly, and she couldn't move or even yowl. Every muscle was rigid. It didn't hurt, exactly, but it felt really really weird, like there were ants crawling all over her fur except they were on the inside of her skin, not on her fur, and she felt weirdly numb and also weak, even though all her muscles were pulling or pushing harder than she'd ever felt them do before. Natalie was scared; Lara had warned her this wasn't safe, and she hadn't listened, because she was impatient! What if she could never move or talk again? What if she was stuck like this until Lara woke up and found her? What if she even died?

And then the feelings stopped. Natalie stumbled, her knees going out from under her. She went down to four feet, but still felt too dizzy to stay there, so she folded her paws under her and lay on the floor but with her head up, smallcat-style. She tipped her head down and the heavy apparatus fell off of it, clinking as it hit the floor.

After a few moments the dizziness had passed enough that she could stand up. First she went back up to four legs. When the dizziness didn't come back, she tried two, and then zero. That seemed to be working just fine. She wasn't dizzy anymore; in fact she felt great. Tall, and floaty, and�

--Wait, what?

Natalie looked down at her lower paws, which were floating above the floor like she was walking on an invisible balloon, and yowled in surprise. Immediately she fell to the floor, like one of those cartoons where someone runs out over a cliff and doesn't fall until they look down. But when she hit the floor, it was like throwing herself onto her bed. It wasn't springy and soft, but it didn't hurt even a little bit.

She realized what this meant. "It worked! Woohoo! I have superpowers!"

Natalie ran to the window in the lab. There was a pile of cardboard boxes in front of it, but she jumped over them easily and onto the windowsill. Then she opened the window and jumped out.

Cats were good at jumping; Natalie had jumped out her own window and into the nearby tree many times. But the tree was in front of her and Lara's bedroom window, not Lara's lab. There was no tree for her to jump to. It didn't matter. She floated to the ground like a leaf, spinning slightly as she did.

Natalie laughed. It was the middle of the night and she was going to get in big trouble if her parents found her outside, even if tomorrow was a weekend. But she didn't care; she was too full of energy. She could float! She could fly!

Actual flying, as opposed to floating, took some effort. She could float just by lifting her lower paws off the ground, and if she jumped, she stayed up for a whole minute. But flying took effort. It felt like she was pushing against the ground, but it got easier the higher she went.

She found out by crashing into a tree that she couldn't get hurt � well, at least, she couldn't get hurt from crashing into a tree. When she crashed into a fence and knocked part of it over, she discovered that she was superfelinely strong by trying to put back the fence she'd knocked over, and actually succeeding. (It wasn't exactly planted in the ground anymore, but at least it was standing up in roughly the right place.) Out on the street, she experimented and found that she could lift parked cars far enough to tip them over, but her paws were still too small to get enough of a grip to let her carry them up into the air. It didn't feel like they were too heavy, just too awkward and bulky to carry.

When she returned home, she was still restless. Part of her felt tired, but the rest of her had too much energy. There were dishes in the dishwasher and pots left to soak in the sink. She put the dishes away and washed the pots. Then she cleaned out and scrubbed and reorganized the refrigerator, swept and mopped the kitchen, folded the laundry that Dad and Mom hadn't gotten around to, and was in the process of vacuuming the living room when Mom appeared, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. "Natalie, what on earth are you doing? It's 4 am!"

"I couldn't sleep," Natalie said, "so I thought I'd do some chores. I'm sorry if I woke you up."

Mom looked back at the kitchen. "Well, it does look very nice," she said. "But you should be trying to get to sleep."

"But I can't! I have too much energy!" Natalie said, spinning around in place. "It's all squirmy inside me and if I try to sit still it makes me twitch and jerk and finally I just have to get up and move! I can't lay down for more than five minutes or something!"

"Maybe what you need is some warm milk."

Mom heated up the milk for her and poured it into a mug. It smelled nice, but when Natalie tried to drink it, the milk just poured out of her mouth.

"Natalie! What are you doing?"

"I don't know!" Natalie wailed. She tried to lap the milk, but her tongue couldn't even feel it; it was like it was skating on the surface. She stuck her finger in it and tried to stick the finger in her mouth... but it wouldn't go in. It was like there was something there, blocking it, even though Natalie couldn't feel anything inside her mouth. "I can't put anything in my mouth!"

"Well, that's nonsense." Mom got a spoon, came over to Natalie and tried to put a spoonful of milk in her mouth... only to stop short. "You're right. It's like there's something there."

"But there isn't! I can't feel anything in my mouth but I can feel it with my finger if I try to put my finger in!"