Have you ever seen a parrot in a panic? In this Astropup adventure, the Parrot Major is flapping and flustering when he learns that a team of Ninja Cat Commandos are plotting to kill him. He suspects the whole world is out to get him. He is not even sure if he can trust his friend, Astropup.

And don’t forget, you can now get three Katie Stories on Kindle.

Read by Richard Scott. Story by Bertie. Pictures by Nick Hayes.

Astropup and the Day of the Cat

Hello, This is Richard, and I’m here with our latest yarn from our dog who travels in space. But before I hand you over to the capable paws of Astropup, I’d just like to clarify a bit of linguistic difficulty. Some of you have been asking us what a “mog” is. You may not be able to find that word in the dictionary, but it is in fact, a “cat.” So I hope that helps. Now, let’s hear from Astropup.

I  have always been loyal to the humans, even though they have more than a few strange habits, not least, keeping cats. It beats me why they spend their money feeding those treacherous mogs with foul smelling fishy chunks. They even let those evil balls of fatuous fluff sit on their laps, and they try not to wince when pussy-kins digs her claws into their thighs.

The scientists who worked at the space centre were more than normally intelligent humans, and yet they too kept cats. Yes, there were shameless mogs who prowled around the corridors of Space Central looking like they owned the place.

But stroking earthly catlings is one thing, and dealing with extra-terrestrial felines is a fiendishly different kettle of fishy chunks.    I know that the humans have huge dishes on the tops of hills, like giant electronic ears,  that pick up the constant mewing of the Cat People in outer space.  Some especially clever boffins had cracked the Cat People’s codes. They understood the meaning of every meow. And one of the messages that the humans picked up held some particularly terrifying news – for my friend, the parrot.

It happened when I was on shore leave.  I was living at home in blissful comfort with my owner, Jennie.  I did not lack for biscuits, blankets or cuddles.  One morning, I was chewing on my favourite rubber bone, when I heard a tap-tapping at the French doors.  With a woof and a wag I trotted over to see if it was friend or foe.  I saw a  flustered pale green bird whom I did not recognise right away.   I should mention that my friend the parrot had an uncanny ability to change colour.  I don’t mean that he went from deep blue to bright orange, but he certainly had several shades of green. Today he was so pale that he was almost yellow.  I barked to him that the kitchen window was open and, after a little confusion, he fluttered in.  His little eyes darted from side to side.

“They’re out to get me,” he rasped.  

“No need to flap,” I said, trying to sound soothing. “Find a perch, settle down, peck a peanut,  and  explain exactly who is out to get you.”

“The cats,” he said looking wilder than ever.  “The humans..  Perhaps… even you.”

“Oh come now,” I woofed, “Why would I want to harm you?”

“It’s a conspiracy!” he squawked. “You’re man’s best friend.  You’re all in it together.  I know !”

“Well if you don’t trust me,” I said, “then, I can’t help you.”

“Hmm,” said the parrot, and at last he began to explain. He had a friend,  a budgerigar, who worked in the Intelligence Corps. This smart little fellow was a code cracker who specialised in cat meows.   His work was Top Secret, and he had  risked his job by telling the parrot major about a short meow message that he had decoded.  It read:

“Stupid humans don’t suspect a thing.”

The point was, the message came from somewhere inside the Space Centre. The Cat People had a secret agent working among the humans.  It got worse. The answer came back from outer space:

“Bravo.  Top target is pesky parrot.”

The budgie told his boss about this threat to the life of our friend.  And the boss told the important people at the space centre  that they must clear out all the cats immediately – and the Top People answered that  there was nothing that could be done without more proof. They couldn’t have one species throwing out another, just because some bird brain overheard a meow.

“So you see,” said the Parrot Major, “The humans don’t mind if an alien cat sinks his claws into me.   They’ve never cared for a smart bird.  My brilliant brain makes them feel less clever.  In fact, they want me dead.  They might even be working with the cats for all I know.”  

It was clear that all the parrot could do was to panic.  That left it  up to me to think on my four feet and come up with a clever plan.  Being smart is not part of my job description, but when needs must…

“So,” I said, “we have a traitor inside the space centre.  We know that he or she is one of the cats. That narrows the suspects down to about a 100 or so   fiendish  moggies.  All we have to do is find out which one is the betrayer.”

My feathered friend stopped flapping and put his head on one side: “Well dear dog,” he said, “that’s elementary then.”  Since I did not know what “elementary” meant, I did not reply, but I did notice that he was settling down into a brighter shade of green. His plumage was all in a mess.  He reminded me of someone or something. I knew it was important, but I could not quite catch that thought.  Like most of my best ideas, it escaped me,  like – like  a squirrel up a tree.  

And so I consulted the one creature whom I knew would always give me good advice.  My mum.  She lived with Jenny’s aunty in a far away country called England, but we sometime woofed to each other over Skype. As luck would have it, Jenny’s mum was talking to her sister that evening.  I jumped on her lap, and woofed at the computer screen.  I could see my mum sitting on the bed behind Aunty Catherine.  

“Hey mum,” I woofed, “how do you set a trap for a cat?”

“With another cat, of course,” woofed back my mum. “Cats call to each other in spring.”

Yes, of course, I thought to myself. The cats’ chorus.  Cats make that awful caterwauling and think it is music.  It drives everyone else insane, but it’s what brings cats together in the tender season.  Now, how could we find a cat we could trust to put out the call sign?”  That was a question I put to the parrot.

“A trustworthy cat!” he scoffed. “You’d be more likely to find a ballet-dancing rhinoceros.”

And so I went back to being stumped, which is my normal state.  I was still stumped the next morning, when I followed Jenny into the toy room, hoping that she would take me for a walk.  I watched her tidy up her cupboard, and low and behold, there was the thought that had escaped me.  It was a big fluffy glove puppet in the shape of a parrot. He had messy plumage and beady eyes.  In the dark, he could pass as our own parrot.  

The next day I set out on the trail of the traitor.  I began by speaking to the code-cracking budgie. We met outside the space centre in the middle of the park where nobody could overhear us.  

“I want to set up a cat trap,” I told him, “And I need your help.
“It’s normally cats who catch budgies,” peeped the little bird,” I knew from his sly smile that I could rely on him.

That night, he fluttered into the radio room and broadcast a message in cat-speak.  It was the most appalling din, like chalk on a blackboard, or the sound of a cat’s chorus.  In translation, this is what it said.  “Catch parrot alone. Car park, south east corner, 7.30, Wednesday night.”

He perched up all night and waited for reply from the Cat People’s space command ship.  It duly came at 6 in the morning.

“Confirm rendezvous. 2 Ninja cat commandos, car park, south east corner, 7.30 Wednesday night.”

The cat trap was set. On Wednesday evening, our friend the parrot was due to give a talk in the operations room on the subject of the “The threat posed by alien birds”.  He was considered an expert on the subject, following our trip to the Ship of Birds which you might have heard about in a previous episode.  There were flyers posted up on all the noticeboards advertising his talk.  In the tea room,  I saw a trio of cats studying one of the flyers particularly closely. There was a grey cat with a black patch over his eye, a dirty white feline who looked a bit like an overgrown rat, and a common tabby.  I wondered if one of them could be the traitor.  Or perhaps even, all three?

Whoever the traitor was, he wasn’t much good at time keeping.  The orange sun was setting over the car park, when two ninja cat commandos climbed over the wall.  I could see them from where I was hidden between two parked cars.  They carried guns and backpacks.   They were sure scary enough to make a bull dog shudder.  But there was no cat there to meet and greet them in the car park. They hopped around nervously, clearly wondering if their plan had hit a snag. Then I saw a slinky, pointed eared figured jump up onto the bonnet of a car. Instantly the ninja cats trained their guns on the new arrival.

“Don’t shoot!” mewed the figure. I could see him clearly now.  He was the dirty white rat-cat – the Traitor! “This way,” he hissed. “The parrot’s giving a talk in the ops room. I’ll show you the way up onto the roof, and you can drop down onto the window cill and get a clear shot at him.  And the scoundrels bounded off, sneaking between the cars, and heading for the side of the space centre where some builder’s scaffolding gave them an easy way up onto the roof.

Fortunately,  I was not the only one who was witness to this act of treachery. A border collie from the security service had been watching it all too, from a truck.  The cat traitor had given himself away.

We both ran as fast as we could to the entrance of the space centre, and toward the lifts.  As you probably know, there is never a free elevator when you are in a hurry, and so we had to take the stares.   We both barked as we ran down the corridor to the ops room, and people and animals had to scramble out of our way.

“Hey you dogs, look where you are going,” shouted a scientist type  as I ran through his legs.  I could hear the parrot’s voice now:

“Birds rank among the most intelligent life forms in the universe.  They have the capacity to out-think humans by a factor of five to one…”

As we came through the door I could see a cat commando crouching at the window sill.

“Get down everybody!” I barked … but most of those present were humans and could not understand me. Just then a laser shot through the window and knocked the parrot off his perch.   He lay on the ground, a heap of singed feathers, smoke coming out of his head. One of the humans grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and covered him in foam.  The cat assassin sprang out of sight. Perhaps I was the only one who had spotted him.

But of course the burnt bird was not our friend.  He was only Jenny’s glove puppet.  The real parrot major was perched in the projector room, giving his lecture through a microphone.  The cats had missed their target.  By now alarms and sirens were going off, and security guards were running willy-nilly all over the place.   The fire brigade was on its way.  But all the chaos and confusion only gave cover to the ninja cat commandos.  They slipped away to their space ship, no doubt convinced that they had taken out their target.  It was a pity they had got away – but it was more important that we had the evidence we needed to convict the traitor.

Well thank you Astropup for another action-packed episode. And by the way, we have original illustrations by Nick Hayes for this story, so do drop by at Storynory.com and see them. Also, Bertie’s asked me to mention that we have three Katie stories bundled up on Kindle – the ebook’s called Katie the Witch Who Lost Her sells, and you can buy it from Amazon.

For now, from me, Richard Scott

Goode Bye !

Click Pictures to Enlarge

On a routine mission to the moon, Astropup finds the Moon Dog who hands him the Key to the Universe. Our hero’s first instinct is to share the key with his human masters. His commander, the Parrot Major, says that the secret is far too important and powerful to be given to such an untrustworthy species as people. The situation presents a dilema for Astropup.

In this story we will here a slightly unusual version of Pandora’s Box.

With four original pictures for Storynory by Nick Hayes. Nick’s book, The Rime of the Modern Mariner, is reviewed here by the Guardian.

Read by Richard. Story by Bertie. Duration 27 Min.

This is Richard, and I am here to introduce the latest instalment in our canine space adventure, Astropup. If you have heard the earlier stories, you will know that Astropup tells them in his own words. So, if you will just hang on for a moment, let me adjust the microphone stand down to dog level.

Thank you Richard. This story is about a moral dilemma. A moral dilemma is when an animal, or a bird, or a person… or perhaps even a fish… and I suppose we should not entirely dismiss insects and creepy crawlies… has to look deep into his or her soul and ask is it more right to do this – or is it more right to do that? This or that? Left or Right? Up or Down ? Sometimes both ways are a bit wrong… and a bit right… so which way do you go?

I had this moral dilemma while on a routine mission to the moon. As you know, by the standards of the universe, it’s little more than a skip and a jump to the moon – a mere 240,000 miles. The humans gave me a special probe to take there. It was a gizmo that measured moisture, and temperature, and ultra-sonic thingies, and solar whatnots, and all sorts of clever stuff. Some smart-Alec scientist made it in the shape of a bone to encourage me to bury it. My comrade the parrot, who came along with me, thought that was very funny.

Our Lunar Module touched down on the moon nice and soft-like. After two days cooped up in that tin can, I was desperate to go space walkies, and I wasn’t going to hang around while the parrot put me on a lead. I bounded out of the hatch and out onto the moon. Soon I found myself bouncing around like a rubber ball. On the moon, you take a little leap and you fly forward about twelve feet. It’s great fun.

“RRRRWOOF ! ” I barked with glee.

“Haven’t you forgotten something?” squawked the Parrot Major, adding, “Dunderhead.” He was never the politest of birds. And yes, I realised that I had. Of course, I had left the bone-shaped space probe behind in the ship. I used my tail as a rudder to try and steer myself round and back to our craft, but it had no effect, and I just kept bouncing in the wrong direction.

“Help!!! I can’t stop!” I called out. The parrot came hopping after me, but not nearly fast enough to catch me up.

I must have bounced uncontrollably for about a mile or so before I finally came to an abrupt halt in a shallow crater. It was most disconcerting, and I wondered if I would ever find my way back. I looked around and every direction looked a bit the same – all covered in dusty old rocks – and I wasn’t even sure which way I had come.

“Oh dear”, I said. “Oh dear oh dear!” I am doomed to die on this forsaken moon! Awe, Awe, Awe AWEOOOOOOOOOO!!”"

The strangest thing was, I heard my voice echoing back.

“AWEOOOOOOOOOO!!”

Only, I wasn’t quite sure that it was my voice, because I think I know what I sound like, and that wasn’t quite it. And then I heard a “Woof Woof Woof ! ” and I knew that wasn’t me, because I hadn’t woofed at all.

That was a moment of great excitement, when I realised that I was not the only dog on the moon. I peered over in the direction of a hill and I saw the unmistakable silhouette of one of my own kind. He was pointing his muzzle in the air and baying at the the planet Earth. Soon I was taking giant lunar leaps in the direction of the dog. I could hear the parrot squawking over the radio.

“Wrong Way! Come back here you dumb pootch!”

But I took not a jot of notice. I was heading for a close encounter with my own kind. It was no trouble to climb a hill on the moon. I just bounded up. Now I was close to the moon dog, I could see he had grey hairs around his nose. He was an indistinct breed – just a dog sort of dog. But the strangest thing was that he was breathing the thin air of the moon without an oxygen mask. Later on, the parrot explained how that was impossible, and said that I must have dreamed that part of the story – but I swear to you now on my master’s grave that it was true. He greeted me in the traditional way, with the quick sniff around the hind quarters: I was unable to return the courtesy as I had a glass helmet wrapped around my face. We both wagged our tails. So far so good. But would I understand his woof? I was pleasantly surprised when he said clearly, and without an accent.

“I have been waiting for you these past 2000 years.”

“Oh,” I said, “I’m sorry if I’m late.”

“No,” said he, “You are right on time. I must give you this.” And so saying he scratched at the moon dust with his paw and revealed a small golden object.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It is,” said he, “the key to the universe.”

There was much more that I wanted to ask, but I was unable to do so, for they were his last words. He curled around, tucked his nose under his paw, and settled into eternal sleep.

Needless to say, I was deeply moved. … Here I had found proof of a higher canine intelligence, only to see him pass away to the great park from which no dog returns. Moments like those are the tears of the universe.

I think if I had not brought the key back in my mouth, the parrot would have assumed that I had made the whole story up. But there it was. I dropped it on the floor of the Lunar Module – the golden proof that I was neither doggy-dreaming nor fibbing.

“What’s that?” he squawked

“It is”, I said gravely, “They Key to the Universe.”

“Ohh,” said the Major, “I see. Well if you’re not as dumb as you look, you’ll keep that strictly to yourself and not tell the humans.”

“And Why should I do that?” I asked.

“Because,” he said, “It’s way too valuable to entrust to mankind.” I have to say that these words jarred in my ears somewhat. The heart of every dog beats to the drum of loyalty to his or her master. I had one master, my dear Jenny, who looked after me when I was at home on shore leave. But I had another when I was working for the Space Force. Yes, I had to admit that even up there on the moon, I felt that I was still mankind’s best friend. I tried to explain my moral dilemma to the parrot as best as I could, and he retorted:

“Don’t give me ManKind’s Best Friend. You’re Mankind’s Best Slave more like.” I could see that he was still angry with the humans for court marshalling him, a sorry story which you no doubt have heard in the episode entitled “The Parrot Who Betrayed the World”.

“Well anyway,” I said, “It’s just a key – what’s all the fuss about?”

“Ah,” said the Parrot, “It’s not just any old key. This key will open Pandora’s Box.”

“Panda’s Box?” I gruffed quizzically.

“Pandora’s Box, cloth ears,” said the Parrot. Now the parrot of course, was the brainiest bird I have ever known, apart from of course, the wise old owl who commanded the Ship of Birds, but that’s another story which perhaps you’ve heard. My friend the Parrot Major spent every spare moment stuffing knowledge and learning into every cell of his bird brain. And so it was not entirely surprising that he knew the story of the key to the Universe.

“It’s an ancient legend. Long ago, on the slopes of Mount Olympus in Greece, a shepherd dog found a metal box. Like the slave he was, he took it up in his mouth and tail wagging he brought it to his master as a present. On the box was written the name, Pandora, which means, gift of God. The shepherd tried to open the box, but it was locked firmly shut. He took it to his friend the blacksmith, who put it on his anvil and bashed it with all his might with his heaviest hammer, but still the box would not break or open or even dent. The box was indestructible. So next, the too friends took the box to a famous Oracle who could communicate with the gods. She told them that the box contained the secrets of the Universe, but to open it, they would need the golden key, which, she said, was buried on the moon, and guarded by the Moon Dog. She predicted that one day, the key could come back to Earth, the box would be opened, and the secrets of the universe would be revealed to the opener. As the moon was rather a long way off, they sold the box for a few drachma in the market. Last year, according to the newspapers, it turned up in an auction and was sold to the British Museum for £1 million. The museum asked the help of the best locksmiths in London, and yet not one of them could prise the box open. They even hired an ace safe cracker, who had robbed several banks, but even he failed. Right now, it is on display in the museum. All we have to do is, when we get back to earth, is to break into the British Museum, steal the box, and open it – and then we will be in possession of great knowledge that will make us rich and powerful beyond the wildest dreams.”

“Well that doesn’t sound too difficult,” I said.

And the parrot replied, “Well not for a master brain like mine.”

On the way back down to Earth, the parrot faked a malfunction in the computer of the our spacecraft. Instead of bringing us down in the Gulf of Mexico, was per our orders, he plopped us in the English Channel where we were picked up by the Royal Navy. From there, we were taken to London where the Space Agency paid for us to stay in a plush hotel on Park Lane. It was the first time I have ever slept in a four poster bed. The pillows were the softest I have ever rested my chin on. It was just a shame that the Parrot was perched on the bed rail, because at 1am he squawked:

“Oi Pooch, Time to Wake Up.”

15 minutes later we were in the middle of Hyde Park. “This is a strange time to go walkies,” I moaned.

“You stupid mutt,” said the `Parrot Major. His manners always did leave something to be desired. “We’re not here to go walkies. We are here to hide the key. Now get digging.” And so I dug. And then he told me to dig some more, and some more, until the hole was deep enough to satisfy him. Finally he dropped the key in, and I covered it up with earth using my hind legs.

Next stop was Russell Square, which we reached by night bus. We found ourselves outside the firmly closed gates of the famous British Museum.

“What next” I asked the master planner.

“Wait and see,” he said.

And we waited. And we Waited. And I tucked my muzzle under my paws. And I closed one eye. And then = Woooooosh ! I was up on my four feet. A streak of light shot out of the sky and straight through the dome of the Museum.

“What was in the Solar System was that?” I asked.

And the Parrot replied with the two words that rouse my heckles and my anger more than any other pair of words in the universe.

“Cat People.”

“GRRRRRRRR” I said. And then for good measure I added ‘Woof Woof Woof !” The din I was creating enhanced the general sense of confusion. There were alarms and sirens going off all over the place.

“It’s no good barking you stupid head off,” snapped the Parrot. “Calm down and stop all that silly noise. The Cat People have been following us ever since we left the orbit of the moon. They’re after Pandora’s Box the same as we are.”

“And are we just going to let them take it? ” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, because it’s no good to anyone without the key. And only we know where the key is hidden. Now wait here while I have a quick parley with the enemy. ” So saying, he flapped off up to the roof of the Museum where two hideous forms were already climbing out of the hole that they had made with their in-coming vessel. From a distance you might have thought they were a couple of ninja humans – more flexible and better balanced than most – but pretty much like people. But the arching of their spines, the backward bending of their knees, not to mention the curling of their tails – were all give-aways to an experienced space dog. There was no doubt about it. They were cat people alright. Ugggg!

I could see that the parrot was fluttering about their heads – just out of claw distance – and speaking to them – but not for long – because soon the sky filled with the juddering noise of a police helicopter. In an instant, they were off into the shadows of the London Skyline. The parrot flew back to me.

‘We’ll meet them in Hyde Park just before dawn,” he said.

“Oh Yuk,” I replied.

I found it hard to contain a growl when we came face to face with the hideous cat people. Quite frankly I was most furious with myself, for if I had stayed true to my instincts, and loyal to the humans, I would not now be dealing with the most treacherous species in the universe – a horrific form of cat. This was what came of putting my trust in a parrot with a grudge the size of infinity.

They had what some deluded humans might consider to be pretty kitty-cat features. Neat purse-like lips, pink little noses, and pointy velvety ears. Their eyes were sly little slits that shone in the dark. It makes my stomach turn to think of them. Compared to an earth cat they were huge – but by the standards of cat people, they were on the small side. They were the most dreaded and dangerous sort of feline. They were siamese cat commandos, from an elite regiment that prowled deep behind enemy lines leaving chaos, mayhem and confusion in their wake.

“Grrrrrrrrrrr” I said. I couldn’t help myself. And both the cat people raised the laser guns that were strapped across their chest.

“Steady on,” Squawked the parrot, “We’re meeting in a spriit of inter-galactic-cross-species trust and cooperation.”

“Well I’m watching their every move,” I said.

“Likewise,” hissed the nastiest looking of the cat commandos.

The parrot turned to me and said in a haughty voice: “Your job is to shut up and dig.” And so turning my hind-quarters on the cat people I started to dig, and in doing so, kicked earth in their faces. I could hear them hissing, sneezing and spitting out dirt. That made my work rather more pleasant.

Finally I found the key and held it firmly between my front teeth. There was no way that I was letting it go before they produced the box. One of the cat people placed it on the ground and stood back covering it with a laser gun.

“Put the guns on the ground over by that tree,” said the Parrot, “Or the deal’s off.” And after some mewing and complaining the pair did as he said.

The Parrot took they key from me and turned it with his beak in the lock of Pandora’s Box. The lid sprung open. One of the cat people pounced and tried to grab the box, but I met him with barred teeth and he backed off.

“Okay everyone, calm down,” said the Parrot. “It appears that there is a scroll inside this box and on it are written the 3 secrets of the universe. They are in Ancient Greek of course, but fortunately I have made a study of the language. Those of you who are interested should stay still and listen while I translate.”

And this is what he read:

“I, Bonzotes, the greatest of the dog philosophers, hereby summarise for all posterity the secrets of the universe which I have discovered through a lifetime of contemplation on . ”

1) The Theory of Relativity
Time passes seven times faster for dogs than for human beings. Therefore one year of a dog’s life is equal to seven of a person’s. In that time a dog enjoys life seven times more forcefully than a person. The smell of horse manure or a dead rabbit is seven times as enjoyable for a dog as for a human..

2)The Big Bone Theory
The universe starts with a whimper and ends with a woof. It expands and contracts like the chest of a panting dog. It will expand and contract nine times in all. On each contraction, cats will lose one of their nine lives and become less of a menace to other creatures.

3)The Survival of the stupidest.
Superior intelligence will be the downfall of birds, bees, cats, humans and other smarty-pants know-it-all animals. Brains will tempt them to tamper with life itself, and will lead to their own destruction. The dumber animals who concentrate on food, water, sleep and running around the park will prevail. I therefore urge dogs to act as if they were stupid. Stupidity is the most intelligent course to take.

I could see from their spiky fur and arched backs that the cat people did not appreciate these secrets.

“You’re making it up,” hissed one.

“Hand over the scroll,” hissed the other showing his claws. And in the dawn light I could see that that parrot’s green feathers were turning a shade paler than usual. I started to growl and one of the cat people lashed at my face scratching me dreadfully. I bit his ankle as hard as I could but the other cat person was clawing my backside. The pain was searing. I can chase any number of Earth cats up the nearest tree, but this pair were far bigger and stronger than the worldly sort. It was a fight that I could not win, though the parrot was taking advantage of it to pop the scroll back into Pandora’s box and fly off with it. My comrade was deserting me – leaving me to be torn to shreds by the dreaded cat people until I heard the sound of music to my ears. A great cacophony of woofs and barks. Two Alsatian dogs and a Doberman Pincher came racing down the hill to where we were fighting. The stench of cat must have filled the morning air of the park. They went crazy for it and were reading to shred the catty alien intruders. The cat commandos saw that their number was up and turned and fled. They would have liked to have grabbed their guns but by now some bull dogs were standing between them and the tree. The cat people headed for straight for their space ship which was just then collecting an early morning parking ticket on Park Lane. I saw them shoot up into the sky and outer orbit.

“Good Riddance” I growled, as the park dogs gave them a send off with a chorus of barks. I saw some early morning human strollers staring up at the sky. So the cat people now shared the Secrets of the Universe with the parrot and me. And a fat lot of good it would do them. I thought of Bonzotes the brainiest dog of them all – and then looked at my new park friends as they woofed and howled – and I thought – yes – dog-kind is safe. We have followed the advice of the great one.

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Astropup promised us a follow-up to the previous story and here it is. It’s his most spectacular adventure yet. Listen and learn how the Major Parrot saved the world from a brainwave attack by a fleet of alien birds.

This story is sponsored by MeeGenius – with thanks for their support.

Read by Richard Scott. Story by Bertie.

Hello, This is Richard, and I’m here to introduce the latest space adventure featuring Astropup and his comrade, the Parrot, who is a Major in the Space Force. If you heard the most recent story, you’ll know that the Parrot has stood trial for Disobeying Orders. The Court Martial cleared him of all charges on the grounds that he was not a rational or responsible being. He was so insulted that he resigned his commission and retired to a bird sanctuary in England. But as you will hear in this story, destiny called on the parrot to save the world.

But before the story, I’d just like to tell you about this week’s sponsor, The MeeGenius app. MeGenius costs $1.99 from the Apple store, and with it you receive 12 enhanced audio books for free. All you have to do is download the MeeGenius app to your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad and you can enjoy their enhanced audio stories with illustrations and word highlighting. That’s the MeeGenius app from the Apple store or MeeGenius.com.

And now I will bow out, and let Astropup take up our story.

Almost everything I have described so far in this memoir, I have witnessed with my own eyes, or smelt with my own nose. This chapter is different. Most of these events took place in a place called England, and as I might have mentioned, I’m currently stationed in the Middle East. I heard what I’m about to tell you from the parrot major. But you can trust every word of it, because he’s a most particular and precise bird in my experience, and not at all prone to exaggeration.

Now somewhere up there, in the outer reaches of darkest space, there is a giant ship shaped like a bird. I’ve described it before. It has an enormous beak that snaffles up any space ship that is unlucky enough to wonder across its path. This story begins with that Ship of Birds swallowing a stray space craft.

Inside the belly of the ship, the zillions of birds who flocked around the captured capsule were in luck. When they pecked it open, they found that it was full of rubbish – I mean the sort of stuff that humans don’t want to eat – like cold baked beans, moldy sliced bread, bacon rind, and nuclear waste. It was mixed in with more useless stuff, like plastic bags, tin cans, and glass bottles, but there was enough nutritious garbage in there to feed a flock of gulls for half a year. In other words, it was a better catch than you usually find floating around the cosmos.

I don’t want to baffle you with science, but it’s worth reminding you that this inter-galactic aviary is powered by electrical impulses generated by bird brains. The commander-in-chief is a wise old owl who sits at the top of ship’s tree, and whose mighty mind is plugged directly into the navigation and life support systems. When the rubbish capsule came to his attention, he wanted to know which planet was rich, fertile, and free from hunger enough, to jettison such rich pickings of food into outer-space. He applied his intelligence to the problem, and traced its origin back to earth.

He found that our beautiful blue planet has so much more to offer than garbage. It’s full of delicious seeds and fresh water. The gardens are teaming with worms. There is no shortage of mice and other lovely vermin that the birds with long talons like to snack on. The trees provide wonderful branches for nesting. He saw that there was a native bird population, but that they were inferior in brain power, backward in technology, and could easily be enslaved. As for the humans, he assessed that they were a bit more advanced , but primitive none the less. The only negative that he could discover were the cats, but they were as yet to develop any advanced weaponry beyond their teeth and claws. After years of wondering in space, the owl had found the perfect bird colony. That must have been when he took the decision to invade our world.

First in were an advance party of elite sparrow hawks. They began to take out the pigeons who are famous for hopping around Trafalgar Square in the centre of London. Eagles struck stray cats in the city of Milan in Northern Italy. Owls came in under the cover of darkness and began to take over barns in mid west of the United States.

The humans noted some of these strange occurrences, and reports appeared in the news, but nobody was much bothered. For who on Earth speaks up for the rights of pigeons or stray cats? Animals and birds do not have a voice in the parliaments of the humans. We are treated like, well, animals. ..anyway, I digress…

These early victories were all too easy. They fuelled the confidence of invading flocks. More space shuttles landed with more and more birds. They began to muster their forces unseen in the woods. The greatest concentration of them was on the rainy island known as Great Britain. This is also where the parrot happened to be living at the time, and he was able to describe the events there in detail.

The skies of Southern England were filled with the silhouettes of the invading bird fleet. They blocked out the sunlight as they passed overhead. The tweeting and twittering was deafening. They landed to feed, and soon the crops in the fields were devastated, and the famous rose gardens of England were laid to waste. Those greedy birds were a giant eating machine. It was a bad time to be a worm or a caterpillar. Anything small that showed its head was gobbled up.

The invaders were following the course of the River Thames. The Prime Minister decided he must take action before they reached the capital city, London. He picked up his red phone and called the commander of the Royal Air force, otherwise known as The Few, because they have so few aircraft. The entire force – half a dozen fighter jets in all – scrambled to intercept the bothersome birds. But what could they do? Their missiles just flew straight through the flocks, and in between the feathered-bodies.

There were some impressive whiz-bang explosions in the sky, singed feathers and angry birds. Instead of flying away, the invaders wheeled round and flew towards the jets. The pilots found that their vision was blackened on all sides. Some of the birds quite suicidally flew into the engines. The finely tuned machines chocked and spluttered, and the jets spiralled through the skies and crashed in flames in the fields.

An hour later, the birds descended on the landmarks of London – Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, and Tower Bridge to name a few. Things were looking grim. There is a legend that when the black ravens who guard the Tower of London leave their posts, that will be when the moment the city will fall to invaders. Well a rumour started to spread that they had flown away in terror from the strange in-coming birds.

They were all over the city. You couldn’t walk down the street without getting a face full of feathers, or your nose pecked, or your head pooped on. The queen cancelled her garden party. The MCC called off the cricket match at Lords. The Kennel Club postponed Crufts ! All the cafes, pubs, and restaurants closed, because as soon as you put food on the table, it was gone as soon as you could say “tweet tweet.”

The people of London, who include more or less every nationality of the world. resisted the bird blitz with brollies, walking sticks, and bits of scaffolding. The fire brigade turned their hoses on the winged attackers. Builders and window-cleaners struggled with dive-bombing gulls at the tops of high buildings. Policemen took out their notebooks and filed lengthy reports. And though I’m no fan of cats, I must say that the feline population fought bravely too. Dogs, of course, lack the stealth and the sharp claws to deal effectively with feathered pests, but I’m told that the brigade of dogs valiantly woofed their vocal support and chased the birds out of the garden squares.

Finally, after three dark days, the flock of birds moved on. They had pecked every last crisp crumb off the pavements of London. They headed for Epping Forrest, and then for the midlands, and the farmers’ fields.

Now what I’m about to tell you is a state secret, but as we now know that dumb animals are immune from persecution, I’m going to tell you anyway. The War Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, had decided that crop sprayers would fly over the invaders and cover them with poison. The countryside would be littered with the bodies of diseased birds, and pretty much any other living thing that was unfortunate enough to be sprinkled with the deadly spray. It was a ghastly scenario, but there were no other viable weapons at the humans’ disposal.

What the people did not understand, and failed to calculate, was that way out in space, a Wise Old Owl was monitoring the humans’ communications and knew all about their panic and plots. The humans had no idea where the birds had hatched out so suddenly and in such numbers, and although many theories were floated, nobody seemed to have suggested that they could have came from another world altogether. That is why what happened next was so unexpected.

The birds’ commander -in-chief gathered his flock of top thinkers – some of the most high-powered parrots and parakeets in the universe – and told them to focus their brain waves on the earths’ communication systems. The effect was instant and devastating. Mobile phones went dead. The fiber optic cables clogged up. The satellites switched off. There was no TV, no radio, no Internet. Ordinary people suddenly found themselves back in the age of the typewriter. The only communications coming in and out of Government were either on paper, or in Morse code tapped along copper telegraph wires. You might think all this would have negligible effect on the animal population, but you would think wrong. The shops did not know how to order their pet food. Dogs went without their meaty chunks. Birds missed out on their seed.

And that was when our friend the Parrot – formally a major in the Space Force – could hold his beak no longer. Hitherto he had been monitoring events from from his bird sanctuary in the South-West of England. He had followed it all on Twitter, and he admitted to me later that had a feeling of satisfaction at the humans’ problems – he used some long learned Germanic word for it which I forget. Shardan-fraden-WUFF! or something like that. He wasn’t exactly gloating, but he thought to himself that only he knew who was behind these avian attacks, and if they hadn’t hounded him out of the Space Force, how useful he would be to the humans now ! At last he could watch on no more. He resolved that the time had come to intervene.

And so the Parrot discharged himself from the sanctuary and flew down to the British navel base in the port of Plymouth.

Imagine a Rear Admiral of the Royal Navy, sitting around with his officers, unable to communicate with his frigates and submarines and what-have-you out on the Ocean Wave. There was absolutely nothing for them to do – so in the time-honoured tradition of all salty sea-worthy types they were playing cards and drinking rum. In flies a parrot – like something that belongs on the shoulder of a pirate – and says :

“I must get a message to the Prime Minister. “

Well I don’t have to tell you that they weren’t at all persuaded by this avian utterance. In those dark days, anyone wearing a coat of feathers fell under immediate suspicion. In fact, if you were a bird, you were lucky if they didn’t shoot you on sight. And so it was entirely in the spirit of the times that the Rear Admiral drew his pistol from a drawer and pointed it straight between our bird’s beady eyes.

The parrot said:

“Go ahead and shoot. But if you do you’ll destroy the world’s last chance of survival.”

Well a line like that was enough to give even a drunken sailor pause for thought.

“If you don’t mind sir, “ said one of the more clear-headed junior officers, “Before you pull the trigger, I’d just like to ask that bird where he learned to speak English like that. “

“Good idea,” said the Rear Admiral, “I was curious about that too. Better interrogate the prisoner.”

The junior officer stood up, steadied himself, and walked over to the window sill where the parrot was perching.

“Well bird. You heard. Speak.”

Now our parrot is a cool-headed customer, and just to show that he wasn’t going to be pushed around that easily, he casually scratched the back of his head with his claw. After a longish silence he said: “Say the magic word and I might help you.”

The sailor looked around the room hoping for some advice. When none was forth coming he sighed and said: “Alight. Pretty please.”

“That’s better,” replied the Parrot. “For your information, I taught myself English, and I’m currently studying Egyptian Hieroglyphics, but that’s by the by. I’m a former Major in The Space Force, and while on a Top Secret Mission to the out-reaches of the galaxy, I made contact with the commander in chief of the birds who are currently attacking this planet. Gentlemen, we are dealing with an alien intelligence that is far more formidable than any force previously encountered. I’m pretty sure that I know how we can counter this attack before it is too late for the World. I must speak to the Prime Minister urgently.”

Now if the Rear Admiral had heard this speech from a human being, he would probably have considered him to be certifiably stark raving mad. But he was so struck by this parrot’s ability to speak fluent English that he saw that this was matter that could only be decided at the highest levels. He immediately made his car available to whisk the parrot to London.

Four hours later, the Parrot addressed an emergency meeting of the War Cabinet at Number 10 Downing Street. The Prime Minister introduced him to the assembled ministers, generals and scientists with the words:

“What you are about to hear will completely change your understanding of the universe and everything for ever.”

The parrot hopped onto the PM’s shoulder and made a sound like this – SQUAAAARK ! The faces around the room looked at the Prime Minister with somewhat puzzled expressions. What were they to make of a man who brought a pet to work at a time like this? And then, after a painful silence, the parrot said : “just kidding, in actual fact I can talk just like you.”

And that got their attention. They were, as the saying goes, gob-smacked.

“And if you think I’m smart, ” continued the parrot, “Think again. The birds who are currently attacking our world are a 100 times smarter than I am. They have shut down the your telecommunication systems. That was but a trivial matter for them. They achieved it by the power of thought alone. Yes, that’s right ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing a brain wave attack by some of the most powerful minds in the universe. But fear not, for I have the solution. We must deploy a thought field to protect the world against the mind-attack.”

Again, I tell you, if they had heard these words from one of their own, they would have called in the men in white coats to cart him off to the luny bin. But when you meet a parrot who has the power to talk, it’s pretty impressive. It changes everything. Still, there were those around the table who thought that it was madness to do as the bird said. Some said that he was a circus trick. Others that he was an enemy agent. They would have checked him out on the Internet – only it wasn’t working. In the end, they had no choice but to believe him, because the food of the world was being gobbled up so fast that soon there would be nothing left to eat.

It took 48 hours to fully mobilise the army. Convoys of trucks headed west to Wales and North to Scotland. The soldiers slung kit bags over their shoulders and began to trek up the tracks to the tops of the mountains. On the way up they were harassed by hawks and falcons, but they fought off the air born attackers. All in all 15,000 men camped at or near the gusty peaks of the Cairngorms and the Grampian mountain range. Their heads were quite literally in the clouds. Some of the platoon sergeants hung wind-chimes on tent-poles, and they swung too and thro, in ringing out at random. Then the order came for the troops to lay down their weapons and sit cross-legged on the ground. This and the following maneuver was all according to the precise instructions laid down by the parrot. It was an entirely new form of warfare – defence through tantric meditation. The men and women of the British armed forces closed their eyes and began to breath in the mountain air slowly and deeply. As they did so, they counted each breath backwards, 100 – 99 – 98 -97 and so forth. When eventually they reached zero they began to chant:

Ommmmmmmmmmmm

The unit commanders timed the chant – at the end of half an hour they banged gongs and tinkled little triangles. The soldiers changed their chant:

MEEEEEEEEEE__OWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW !

I think by now you may have gathered an appreciation of the true genius of the parrot. He had devised the perfect counter-attack to fend off the feathered offensive. If there’s one sound that’s bound to break a bird’s brain wave it’s mee-ooww. The deep collective meditation of the armed forces reached out far and wide – even into outer space – for there is nothing so powerful as thought. And if the truth be known, the power of human soul is one of the strongest forces in the universe – and when it is correctly channeled it can easily overcome an alien invasion. It’s just that on a normal day, people waste so much of their thinking capacity on trivial pursuits like face-book, or computer games, or Saturday morning cartoons. When human thought is correctly channelled and concentrated there is no force that can match it.

And so the mass forces of the alien birds were utterly rowted and flew off in terror. The in-coming brain waves generated by the owl and his deep thinking birds bounced back off the human mind shield. The world was saved. And it was all thanks to my friend, the parrot.

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from our space-travelling canine character, Astropup. He returns in this two part adventure in which we discover what happened to his comrade, the Parrot Major when he was put on trial for disobeying orders.

And some news. Natasha is holding a Storynory workshop in the English city of Warwick on Saturday 11 September. For more details email natasha@storynory.com or download the flyer. Natasha’s Workshop Flyer

We would like to thank our sponsor, the Center for Guided Montessori Studies.

Read by Richard. Text by Bertie. Duration 15.25.

There have been many times in my space-career when I’ve been only too glad to be classified as a Dumb Animal. Well now, having made that opening statement, I can see that some of the brighter sparks among you are wanting to know how it is that I, a dog who can not speak your language, landed this jammy job as a narrator of stories. All I will say for now are two words: “Alien Technology”…. there, that’s got you panting to know more, but you’ll have to wait to hear the details, because today, I’m here to talk not about myself, but about a bird. His brain’s the size of medium sized nut, but don’t let that fool you, because he’s a super-smart fellow.

I think you are already pretty familiar him: he’s a parrot and he’s a Major in the Space Force, and boy, can he talk, -and talk and talk and talk, far better than he can squawk even. If you’ve been cramped up in a space capsule with a long-winded bird as long as I have, then I think you will understand the meaning of the phrase, “silence is golden.”

Now, let’s imagine for a moment that he couldn’t talk, or that all he could say was, “Who’s a pretty Polly” or some other such nonsense that amuses the human folk. If that had been the case, then I don’t suppose that they would have Court Marshaled him. For if you heard our last adventure, you’ll know that as soon we got back to Earth, the Space Force put the parrot on charges of Disobeying Orders and Deliberately Jeopardising a Critical Mission.

Let me take you back to our last adventure in the out-reaches of cold, dark, space. As soon as we had escaped from that twittering and tweeting abomination, the Ship of Birds, we high-tailed it across the galaxy, back to the gorgeous blue planet that we call home. Our capsule splashed down in the ocean, and after long, long wait, the humans came to fish us out. They hauled us up on board a navel ship, and it was straight into quarantine for the bird and the dog. The scientists were curious to know if we we had picked up any novel or interesting infections , like space-pox, or Martian flue, or alien super-fleas. I didn’t mind the inconvenience too much because I got a bag of squirrel flavoured dog biscuits as a reward. The poor parrot though, nearly went out of his mind until they gave him an Internet connection and and book of cryptic crossword puzzles.

You’d think that after months of space-travel and quarantine, it would be hard to throw anymore punishment at a parrot. But I almost felt guilty when at last I was set free, and able to enjoy my canine rights, and chase cats and rats around the park, and lick the face of my owner, Jenny. You see, as soon as the doctors had finished with us, the Military Police took the poor old parrot away in a cage like a common criminal. His beak was even pictured in the newspapers. They had a headline that dubbed him:

“The Parrot Who Betrayed the World”

I know this, because Jenny’s Dad read it out to the family at the Sunday Breakfast table. He patted my head and said:

“They won’t be sending our Bonzo out on any more missions with that treacherous bird.”

Looking back, I understand now what the humans were driving at. They were hinting that the parrot was more than a hothead who wouldn’t listen to instructions. They suspected him of colluding with alien birds, and conspiring with them to take over the world. But as they didn’t have any hard evidence, they were aiming to nail him on lesser charges.

I felt bad enough for the poor major, but then a letter came with even worse news. I never trust postmen myself, and I don’t know why humans open those letters – they only ever seem to make Jennie’s Dad furious. He shouts things like, “What? That idiot plumber was only here half an hour and he wants me to pay him the price of a decent holiday!”

And true to form, this letter was a right stinker. Apparently the prosecution department had cast me as the star witness at the trial of the Parrot. It was tricky situation: I’d either have to fib on oath, or spill out the the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and land my feathered friend right in the doggy-doo. I didn’t fancy either way. But fortunately, my lawyer got me off the hook. He showed the Judge my “Dumb Animal” certificate, and it was agreed that I was too stupid to give evidence at the trial. Well I didn’t care what they said about me, so long as I didn’t have to be cross-examined in court.

And so I’m glad to say that I watched the parrot’s Court Marshal from the public bench along side Jenny. I wanted to be there, to give my friend moral support. He can be quite an annoying bird, as nobody knows better than myself, but there comes a time when fur and feather should stick together.

Because it was a court martial, the legal bigwigs wore military uniforms. The parrot proudly sported his medals and his insignia, which showed that he was a major, on his wings. He tried to sit up as straight and as solider-like as possible. There was a grim seriousness that hung over the whole proceedings. It was as tense as a vet’s waiting room.

Even without my help, the prosecution lawyer thought he had the parrot as good as sent down. He had all the transcripts of the radio conversations with Mission Control, in which you could hear him telling our human superiors where they could get off, so to speak.

When the prosecution finished the opening remarks and sat down, the major’s feathers were looking even more yellow than usual, and his little beady eyes were red with fury. At this rate, he would be getting a ten year stretch in the bird coop.

But that was before we heard what the defence had to say. As soon as the lady-lawyer who was on the parrot’s side stood up, I began to feel hope in my heart. She gave the impression of being immensely clever – like the dog trainer I went to when I was a pup. She asked the defendant to take the perch on the witness stand. She looked at him over her spectacles and said:

“Now Major, will you kindly tell the court when you first realised that you had the power of human speech?”

“It was in my first year at university,” said the Parrot. “I used to fly into the lecture hall and I would listen to the philosophy lecturer. Later on, when I was back in my tree, I would repeat all that I had heard back to myself.”

“And how did you enroll into the university?”

“Well, I didn’t. I was sort of an unofficial student.”

“So do you have any formal education?”

“Not exactly.”

“Thank you. That will be all.”

The parrot looked puzzled as he fluttered back to his place on the bench. You could see he was thinking the same as me: “Is that it?”

But his lawyer was a smart lady, and she had a top-notch expert witness up her sleeve. She called a zoology professor who had written some learned papers on avian communication and thought. This professor was famous for having taught a parakeet to say things like: “Pass me a nut please” and “Tidy up this cage, it’s a disgrace. ” For a while, the parakeet had his own TV show on Tuesday afternoons on Channel 97, but that celebrity bird-brain couldn’t actually hold his own in a dinner-party conversation, let alone fly a space-ship like the Major.

The defense asked the witness if a parrot could be held responsible for his actions: The Zoology professor laughed and wanted to know if it was a serious question.

“Deadly serious,” said the lady lawyer sternly, “The reputation and freedom of a distinguished officer in the Space Force is at stake”, and the judge leaned over and reminded the professor that he was on oath.

“Well no,” said the professor, “By nature parrots are the most irresponsible birds you could imagine, and no matter how chatty they are, only a fool would put them in charge of anything.”

“And because a parrot can speak, does that mean that he can understand?”

“Of course not,” said the professor looking quite puzzled that anyone could ask such a dim question.

At that, the parrot screeched “Rubbish ! I can understand everything” and the judge banged his hammer on the desk and gave him a stern talking to, saying that he would have him taken down to the bird cages if he went on that way.

“This is an insult. I want to plead guilty!” the Major squawked. I barked to tell him to pipe down, and all at once the court was filled with the sound of chatter and gossip.

“Silence ! Silence in court !” called the judge, as he hammered away with his gavel.

The defense lawyer stood up and spoke over the uproar: “My Lord. The Parrot can’t change his plea because he lacks the power of reasonable thought, and as we have heard, he isn’t responsible for what he says or does. The case for the defence is that a bird cannot be put on trial because he isn’t a rational, intelligent or responsible being.”

“ That’s it. Your fired!” called out the parrot.

When the noisy prisoner had been dragged down to the cells, and all was quiet in the court room once again, the judge said. “Well that’s better. It’s time to call this farce to an end. Case dismissed.”

There were gasps of astonishment around the room and I woofed with delight. The guards were sent down to the cages to release the prisoner. But do you think the parrot was pleased with his freedom? Not a bit of it. I’ve never known such and ungrateful bird. Out side the court, he perched himself on a statue of justice with her weighing scales, while his lawyer read out a statement to the scribbling reporters, fast snapping photographers, and smart-suited television crews:

“This is a case that should never have come before the court martial. My client has served in the Space Force with great distinction for a number of years, and he is deeply hurt that his employers could have treated him so shoddily. He will be seeking damages from those in the media who have dragged his good name through the dirt. In the meantime, he wishes it to be known that he has resigned from the Space Force with immediate effect.“

I could see that my friend, the ex-Major, was hopping up and down with fury, while bird-pooping on the head of Lady Justice. He was a proud parrot, and I think he would actually have preferred to be found guilty, than to be let off on the grounds that he was not a rational, intelligent or responsible being. That was the last I saw or heard of him for quite some time. I learned on the grapevine that he had retired to a bird sanctuary in England.

But way out in space, a chain of events had begun, that would lead inextricably to the parrot’s restoration as an inter-galactic hero. The first signs that the very existence of humanity and all intelligent life on earth was under threat were…. well, that’ll have to wait for another story, because I’ve only been paid to rattle on for twelve minutes or so. If they give me another bag of dog biscuits, I’ll tell you what happened next in a story called “Astropup and the invasion of the bird-brains.”

Text Copyright Hugh Fraser 2010

When we last left Astropup, he was flying into the mouth of a giant space ship shaped like a bird (see Astropup for Freedom). At the centre of the space ship is a giant tree holding up the nests and families of thousands upon thousands of highly intelligent birds. Astropup’s commanding officer, the major (who is a parrot) wants to stay. So will our Space Dog hero be stranded on the Ship of Birds?

Read by Richard Scott. Story by Bertie. Duration 16.59.

Astropup here again. Last time I left the story at an exciting moment, and I could hear some of you howling at the moon saying : Tell me, do please tell me, Astropup, What happened next? Well here we go again, back to the weird and wonderful ship of birds.

I’ve given you some idea of how many different types of birds there were inside that space ship. What I haven’t described yet is the noise they made. As we opened the hatch of our craft, the sound of all that twittering and tweeting, not to mention squawking, was as deafening as it was confusing. It was like you could hear every creature who had ever lived or died all talking at once. I wanted to howl, only I knew that nobody would hear me over all that din. But it was surprising how soon I got used to it. My brain just stopped listening.

We had landed somewhere near the foot of the great tree. It was at the centre of the ship of birds. Its branches supported their nests and families. I began to sniff its roots, and the parrot said:

“Whatever you do, don’t lift your leg at that trunk.”

“I wouldn’t dream of such a thing,” I protested.

A flock of doves came to great us, carrying worms and nuts in their beaks as offerings to make us welcome. The parrot politely took a nut. I hoped nobody would be offended if I didn’t eat the wiggling worm that was dropped at my feet.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to follow the feathery ones to wherever it was that they wanted to take us, because that would involve flying. The Major went off with them. I was content to dip my tongue into a cool stream that was flowing not far away, to sniff the scent of ducks on the water, to chase a pretty butterfly, and then to fall asleep in the long grass that covered the floor of the giant space bird. This was the way to travel, I thought, once you get used to the noise. The problem with our own space craft was that it was designed by humans. They would never think of including anything so pleasant as a blade of grass let alone a single duck in one of their vehicles.

I learned what the Major had been up to when he fluttered back and hour or two later. He had been granted an audience with a most remarkable bird. He was an ancient owl – at least 250 years old – and his brain served as the ship’s computer. That’s right, they just plugged him in, and he controlled the whole caboodle. Now that’s what I call smart. He lived right at the top of the tree – as you would expect – and he was surrounded by exotic birds who tended to his every need.

“They’re the most gorgeous creatures you ever did see!” Squawked the parrot, and I could see that their plumage had impressed him. Fortunately, he had picked up a bit of interesting info too. The birds came from a planet that had been invaded by the cat people. At the time of this calamity, the owl had been leading a project to build the giant bird ship. As the computer was not yet complete, he simply plugged his brain in to the control panel, and took off with as many of his feathered friends, friends of feathered friends, and friends of friends of feathered friends, as he could gather. There were about a 1000 of them to begin with, but since then they had multiplied many times over. I asked the parrot:

“How many birds are there now?”

“I would say that there’s at least a myriad,” he replied.

I didn’t know how many a myriad was, but I had never learned to count anyhow.

Next I asked if these clever feather brains could fix our space craft.

“They already have,” he replied. And I thumped my tale on the ground with glee.

“We’ll be on our way back home then,” I said hopefully, But something told me that salvation was not going to be as simple as that. And I was right. The Major shook his head.

“Nawww,” he said, “I like it here. And besides, If I go back to Earth, the humans will court marshal me for disobeying orders. But you go back if you like. I’m not stopping you.”

That remark made me growl. He knew perfectly well that I didn’t know how to fly the ship. That was his job. Without the Major, I was going nowhere. It was all very well for him to hang out here. There were enough nuts and fancy-feathered friends to set up a parrot for life. But it’s beneath the dignity of a dog to eat worms – unless he’s really hungry that is. I could have murdered a pheasant or a wood pigeon, but even my dodgy doggy brain realised that such a diet might be bad form in a place like this.

And so I chewed on a few sticks, because there wasn’t anything better to do. I was impressed that our parrot had picked up the language of these alien birds so soon, but then he let slip that he hadn’t. They had deciphered his Earthly squawks in a matter of minutes. He was only just beginning to puzzle out their lingo. I began to realise that there is smart, and there is smarter still.

Now, I’m not normally one to be envious of cats who, as you know, are the most despicable creatures in the universe. But I began to wish that I knew how to climb trees, because I was longing to see more of this incredible bird world. I don’t know if those birds were so clever that they could read my thoughts, but they soon sent a giant swan who offered to pick me up on his back and take me for a site seeing flight around the ship.

It was quite scary up there, clinging onto the swan’s neck with my front legs but it was a flight that I shall never forget. We swooped in and out of the branches of that giant tree and saw every coloured feather from gray sparrows to electric blue kingfishers, and many others besides. I saw flocks of quick thinking birds, all plugged into the ship’s power system, and the Wise Old Owl himself, thinking deep thoughts while birds of paradise groomed his feathers. But just as I was getting used to this form of transport, the swan swooped sharply around the top of the tree and turned upside down. And then, oh dear, I was falling to the ground, and it was a long long way: …OWWWWWWWWW! MURDERRRRRRR!

As you can imagine, I thought that my number was up, but that sneaky swan assassin had miscalculated. I ended up in a huge nest of feathers that had been collected from all over the ground by worker sparrows. It was the softest landing I could have hoped for, but one that made me sneeze. Now I was under no illusions. These birds might look pretty and harmless, but they were deadly when they wanted to be. The major recked that perhaps they were frightened of me – thought I might be tempted to eat a duck or something.

“I’d lie low for a while, if I were you,” he said.

“Well thanks very much,” I woofed, and crawled off into some bushes to sleep. The food had run out, and I was pretty hungry by now. In fact I was quite tempted to try my luck at a duck.

Meanwhile, the Major applied to the senior birds for a job as a space engineer, but they wouldn’t have him. Apparently they weren’t too impressed with his efforts with soldering iron on board our own ship. They said a dog could have fixed wires together better. Now I’m the first to admit that that’s not strictly true, but the drift was that if a the Major is a brainy bird in our world, among this flock of fellows, he was just averagely smart, if not a downright a dunderhead. And when I turned this over in my canine brain, I had one of my occasional but big thoughts.

Everything is relative, you see.

Ok, now I have travelled around the universe, I admit that there are things that are absolutely true always and everywhere. Like, where ever you go, cats are mad and can’t be trusted. The only other universal I know of is that Might is Right – like whoever is in charge, they make up the rules and say what’s ok and what’s not, according to what suits them. All the rest – well it’s just different where ever you go. When you are in another world, you can’t be sure what’s wrong and what’s right. Sometimes I ask, is it always wrong to bite a postman? Probably, but GRRRR I just can’t help myself!

I don’t mean to get too deep. The fact is, our parrot was out classed by these bird brains, but he wasn’t so dim that he didn’t know it.

Both he and I were unemployed. He hopped over to my hideout in the bushes. I could see his head was hanging low. I asked him what most of the birds did for a living in this ship, and he said.

“Transcendental mathematics,”

Apparently these birds plugged their brains together and thought about circles. They had calculated the ratio of a circumference to a diameter to fifteen billion decimal points.

I haven’t a clue what that means by the way, and if you do, well you’re smarter than this old space dog, and you’re not the only one. But to put it simply: the ship of birds was powered by thoughts. All that fiendishly clever feathered thinking generated enough renewable energy to take them where ever they wanted to go, which by and large was nowhere in particular. The only job our friend the parrot could get on board this ship was as a common thinker. He would have to sit plugged into the the ship’s power system contemplating circles all day. It was what thousands of birds did around this place. And do you know what the major said when they offered him the job.

Well perhaps you can guess.

“No thank you.”

He was used to being someone rather more special you see.

And that’s why, after two week’s on board the Ship of Birds, our friend the Parrot, a Major in the Space force, finally decided to fly us back home to earth, even though he knew he would have to face a court marshal for disobeying orders.

I can’t say the birds on board were too sorry to see us go. Some kind blue tits brought us a big supply of nuts and berries to see us home. By the time we reached earth I was a much slimmed down space dog.

As the Parrot had predicted, the humans put him in a cage soon after we touched down. He was charged with disobeying orders on a critical mission, and ordered to stand trial before a court marshal of the Space Force. One day I’ll tell you what happened to him.
But I’m glad to say that the Major told the humans that I was innocent.

“Don’t bother to arrest him,” he squawked. “He’s too stupid to disobey orders.”

Well not the most flattering remark, but I wasn’t complaining, because I was off home to see my jenny.

That that was the story of Astropup and the Ship of Birds.

I do hope that you’ve enjoyed Astropup’s recently adventures – and are glad that he’s come back to us after a gap of some years. Bertie says it’s one of the biggest comebacks in the history of Storynory. Talking of which, we are still looking forward to Natasha’s return, but unfortunately can’t quite say when that will be.

Bye the way, if you are listening on our iPhone app, look out for the bonus audio that Bertie’s going to be publishing there. He’ll be bringing you a quick guide to the planets.

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Since Astropup last went into space, he has started to think big thoughts about the universe. Now he is torn between the love of his owner, Jenny, and his thirst for space exploration. He returns to the launchpad for another mission with his companion the Major (who is a parrot in the Space Force). But this time the Major takes matters into his own beak.

Sponsored by Sweetpea3 (thank you !)

Read by Richard Scott. Story by Bertie. Duration 17 minutes.

Hello, my name’s Astropup, and if you are one of the pack that heard my earlier adventures, you’ll know that I have seen wonders and abominations in all four corners of the Universe. But in between my voyages through space, I lead a normal family life. I live with a little girl called Jenny who looks after me. You may recall that Jenny and her family moved to a sunny part of the world called Kuwait. Their home was in a compound surrounded by a high fence. There were other houses for the families called “expats”, and we all shared a big garden with shady palm trees and cooling fountains. Some might have called it Paradise.

Every now and then, I would come across a cat creeping through the flower beds on its fat belly. I found that I had lost the urge to chase such pathetic creatures. When you have seen all infinity, you have bigger thoughts on your mind than pesky felines. Yes, thoughts, they were what ailed me. I hadn’t had many of them before, but seeing other worlds and meeting alien life forms expands a dog’s mind. I started to wonder if pampering and love might be a sort of slavery. I had an itch for freedom, and you couldn’t scratch it. I had seen the Planet of the Cats. I longed to discover the Planet of the Dogs.

Sometimes I would put my paw in Jenny’s hand and she would gaze at me with loving eyes and say:

“Don’t worry darling Bonzo. I’m never ever going to let them shoot you up into space again. If they come to get you, I’ll hang on to you and I won’t let go. They’ll have to send me with you to the other side of the heavens, and Daddy will never let them do that.”

“Bonzo” was what she called me by the way. It was an affectionate name, but it didn’t seem to fit me anymore. By then I thought of myself as Astropup, the space explorer. My exterior was same fluffy, waggy friend that Jenny had known since puppyhood. But on the inside, I had changed.

The cruelest, most gut wrenching moment of my life took place one day in the garden of our compound. I was lying under an orange tree, when I heard an unhappy voice from within the house. It was jenny crying and saying, “No no. I won’t let them take him. He’s my dog and he belongs here down on Earth, with me, for ever.”

Jenny ran out into the garden and flung her arms around me. I licked her face to tell her that I loved her, but I felt another force tugging at my heart. I saw a man with a Parrot sitting on his shoulder. He was my old friend and comrade – the parrot I mean – and he squawked, “Hurry up old boy. The rocket’s on the launch pad”. And with a woof I bounded over and joined him.

As we drove off, I pressed my nose against the back window of the van, and I saw Jenny standing in the doorway of the house with tears in her eyes. My heart was wrenched into two.

Well I had chosen adventure over the cushy life, and boy I got it. I’ve told you before how take-off is a nasty experience, well this was a blast to remember, because as we were going up, and the g-force was pulling our stomachs down, I saw a piece of metal fly past our window. The Major – that was the parrot – saw it too. “Uh-oh,” he said, And oh, how I wished I was back in the arms of Jenny.

But eight minutes later we reached orbit safely, and all systems seemed to be A-ok. It’s so tranquil up there that it’s hard to worry. I gazed back down at the world. and thought how life goes round in circles like a pup chasing its tail. Even space travel becomes routine after you’ve done it a few times. Well the mechanics of it do, but I’ll always feel a sharp thrill at the start of an adventure: It’s more exciting than even the waft of rabbit scent on the wind. Our mission was only a small one. A quick trip to Mars. My role was to dig in an ancient river bed and bring back samples of Marsian mud. The humans thought they might contain microscopic life forms.

The Major’s job was to set the coordinates, and fire us off in the direction of the Red Planet. He was a cool -headed bird, and normally he worked calmly and methodically at the control panel. It beats me how he remembered which buttons to press, but he did. This time I noticed that his head was nodding more frantically than usual. That worried me. My worst fears were confirmed when he squawked into the microphone;

“Houston, we have a problem”.

The human chatter from the speakers grew quite intense, but the voice of the controller remained calm. He said.

“Ark 3” – that was our ship – “Remain in orbit. A rescue shuttle is standing by.”

I was pleasantly surprised. I had assumed that the humans would leave us hanging up there, rather than go to the trouble of rescuing a bird and a dog. Perhaps the ship was too expensive to dump. But the Major replied:

“Hold on. I can fix it.”

He was grasping an electric screw driver between his claws and undoing a panel. I had never seen him do anything like that. The human controller was saying.

“Major. Your orders are to stay in orbit and await assistance. Do not attempt maintenance. Repeat, do not attempt maintenance”

I added my bark to that, but something seemed to snap inside the Major’s feather breast. He jutted his beak at me:

“Shut your snout and that’s an order.” It was unusual for the parrot to be so petulant. I don’t think he liked being told what to do, even by the humans.

After he had been working for half an hour with a soldering iron, he said “Houston. I’ve patched in the emergency booster.” The human controller was saying: “Do not engage the booster. Remain in orbit and await assistance.”

I gruffed, “Better do what the humans say. It’s their show.”

But the Major replied: “Yeah, yeah yeah, I know what I’m doing. I’m not just a pretty polly you know.”

He pecked on the controls and a few seconds later we were rushing across the galaxy at four times the speed of light. The Major looked like a very pleased parrot. He had wanted to prove something to the humans, and he had done it – or so he thought. We had only been going a few hours when a red light started to flash on the control panel. I noticed it through my half closed eyelid.

“Wake up,” said the Major. “We’re almost there.” But I felt in my tail that something was wrong. I looked up at the space chart on the ceiling. Mars was marked with a red circle. Our position was marked with a green light. The two were nowhere near each other. In fact, even to a simple minded hound such as myself, it was obvious that we were heading in wrong direction. I sat staring it.

“What’s up?” asked the Major.

“We’re lost. That’s what’s up,” I said.

“Naaa!” he replied. But then he saw what I was looking at, and his face turned from yellow to bright yellow.

I couldn’t help myself. I howled and bayed:

“Aw-aw-awwwwwwwww! I should never have left my Jenny!”

The Major started to work at the computer, but I could tell that he didn’t really have a clue how to get us out of this pickle. He was a brainy bird alright, but on this occasion, too smart for his own good, and mine, unfortunately.

I curled up in my kennel and tried to sleep. Our oxygen and water could be recycled indefinitely. If were were careful not to woof our grub down all at once we could keep going for two, maybe three months : but the end result would be the same: starvation in space. I wondered if, when it came to it, I would eat the parrot. I hoped not, because he had been my friend, as well as my doom.

We didn’t hear anything from the humans. Either we were too far away, or they were fed up with us. The parrot worked continuously at the computer for a week, but we kept on heading in entirely the wrong direction. Eventually he said.

“Alright. I’m sorry. You were right. I should have obeyed orders. “

“Don’t fret your feathers” , I said. “I forgive you. At least we will go out gloriously, as creatures of freedom.” 

But how I wished I hadn’t left home. I began to think that if pampering and three meals a day is slavery, then perhaps freedom is overrated. And if it was our destiny to die in space, I would rather have gone down fighting the cat people than wasting away slowly of hunger.

The Major set the computer to beam out a Mayday signal. Actually, we broadcast “Help, Save our Skins” in all the languages that the Major knew, which included parrot, general bird language, animal speak, English, Japanese, and a bit of German. He couldn’t bark, but he could understand dog language. He spoke to me in English and I woofed back. He asked me to record an “SOS”, and added my own “OW-OW-OWWWWW! to the tape.

I can’t say either of us expected to meet anyone up there, but the Universe is so much smaller than you think, or at least that’s what I always find. After about a month of helpless wandering, the Parrot started to squawk excitedly.

“Dog. Dog. Wake up ! We’re saved. Either that or death will come quickly. In any case, our suffering is at an end.”

I rushed over to the window, and could not help letting out a series of excited yaps. A space craft was approaching us, and the nearer it came, the bigger it got. It was huge. I mean the size of an oil tanker or two – and I’ve barked at some out in the gulf off Kuwait so I know what I’m talking about. It was not shaped at all like our own ship. It was more like a bird, with great wings out of the side. It was painted all sorts of bright colours. In fact, it look liked a giant Parrot.

“Oh no. Oh no. It’s alive!” I yelped.

The beak of this ginormous bird opened and it was clear that was going to swallow us up. This was to be our end. A snack for a space monster. There was nothing we could do. Our course was set straight into its mouth. I said goodbye to the stars and saw my life flash before me. I thought of my mother, my six brothers and sisters, the first squirrel that I caught (and then let go), of the day that Jenny chose me and took me home, and of our two trips to the Planet of the Cats.

But as all but the dimmest among you will have gathered, since I am here to tell this tale, this was not the end. It was not a bird that swallowed us up, but a space craft.

When I opened my eyes I saw that the inside of the ship was filled with branches, like a giant tree. We were surrounded by thousands of birds. Some were sitting, some were flying, some were pecking, and still others were doing one of those things and pooping at the same time.

The Parrot stared in amazement through the window. Eventually he said one word.

“Civilisation!”

Quite a while ago, we heard from a dog called Astropup who told us about his adventures in space with clever parrot and a treasonous cat. The years have gone by, and Astropup has been continuing to have adventures. Now he returns to recount some of them.

Natasha is taking a break for a few weeks. We know that you will miss her. We are already – and she’s hardly been away yet ! But we do think that you will enjoy the voice of Richard Scott who is standing in for her.

That’s not the only news. We have a new sponsor Sweatpea3 who make an MP3 player that is specially designed for kids. It’s durable and easy to use, and it’s also cute. We think you will love it. Audible continue to back us too and we are grateful to both our sponsors.

Read by Richard. Story by Bertie. Duration 16.38.

Hello My name’s Astropup, which fitted me quite well way back when I was a young scalawag, but these days I’m more of an old space dog. If you’ve got a good memory, you might recall my first yarn on Storynory.com quite a while ago. That was when I travelled with a brainy parrot and a treasonous cat to a distant planet where cat people were the top dogs, so to speak. I’ve zoomed around the galaxy quite a bit since then, been there, done that, and thought you might like hear about some of my adventures. Well here goes.

After I got back from the abysmal Planet of the Cats, the people at the space centre hung a medal from my collar. For a short happy while, I returned to Jenny, the little girl who cares for me, but it wasn’t long before my other master – duty – was calling me again. As I had so successfully completed one mission, the humans wanted me for the next one. Better the dog you know, so to speak. They had picked up a signal from outer space. The voice sounded like a bark, and the scientists took it as evidence of an intelligent canine species from another world – one perhaps even smarter than sheep dogs.

Once again my traveling companion was the Parrot, who was a Major in the Space Force. His real name is a top secret, and although I do in fact know it, I can’t tell it to you. In any case, I always called him The Major. The Major wasn’t very talkative, or even very squarkative, for a parrot, but when he did speak, he always made good sense, like the time when he told me:

“Cats aren’t clever, you know, they’re cunning, and there’s a big difference.”

I won’t tell you all about lift off, and what a scary horrid feeling it is when you leave this world. I described all that terrible clattering and juddering in my first story. It was more bearable this time because we knew what to expect, and because we didn’t have to endure that cowardly cat screeching “We’re all going to die” every five seconds.

I’m sure that if our spacecraft had been made for humans, there would have been every convenience, like sofas to lie on, carpets to chew on, and gourmet meals out of the freezer. But we animals and birds are second class citizens, even when we are saving the world. You’ve seen the boot of an estate car. Well that’s what our living quarters were like. You couldn’t even open the window. The parrot had a perch. I had a rubber bone. That was our lot for luxuries.

The Major is a brainy bird, and he understood a lot more scientific stuff than I ever will. He said the humans had found a way to bend space, so that we hurtled along at four times the the speed of light without actually going forward in time. Look, if you don’t understand that last sentence, neither do I, so don’t let it bother you. All you have to know is that this form of travel was too new, too untried, and too dicy for humans.

Once we had said goodbye to Earth, it was basically just us and the universe. I can’t tell you how quiet it is out there. And of course there’s no gravity to drag you down. As for that floating around business, it was alright for the bird, he was used to it, but us dogs prefer to keep our paws on the ground. If I wanted to sleep, which was most of the time, I had a kennel, and the walls and roof stopped me drifting off too far.

The parrot had brought along plenty to keep his clever feather brain occupied. He spent his time learning German, to add to his other languages, and solving cryptic crosswords on his computer.

After we had been bending space for about four weeks, we finally picked up a signal. I could clearly hear it through the speakers. It was three long woofs, followed by three short ones: Like this:

Woof woof woof
Wuf wuf wuf.

Intelligent life ! This is what we had come all this way to find. We had been trained in the procedure. The Major started to peck on some buttons on the wall. Our course locked onto the signal and we headed straight for its source. In the meantime, I returned some friendly barks into the microphone, but the major said that we would get there before the sound of my barks – figure that one out if you can.

Before too long, we sighted the distressed space craft through the big window. You could see it was in a bad way, because panels were missing off the roof, and bits and pieces of debris were trailing behind it.

“Best be careful,” said the Major, “We don’t know if these aliens have friendly intentions.”

I couldn’t agree enough, but our orders were to make contact and, if possible, to bring any evidence of their life back to earth. I gruffed into the microphone,

“Hello canine friends. We come in peace. Would you like a tow to anywhere in the Universe?” But they just repeated the woofing exactly as before. It was just like a blooming recording.

“They don’t seem all that smart to me,” I said. The Major looked like he was about to say something clever, but he didn’t have a chance because seconds later there was a loud crash and we were both juddered and thrown all over the place. Fortunately the walls of our quarters were padded with cushions, or one of us might have broken a paw or a wing.

When we had recovered our senses, we saw that the idiots in the other craft had crashed into us. I mean, you’d think with all infinity to drive through, they could have found their own space. But at least our window was now next to there’s. We could see in – and just as I had suspected – their ship was crewed by three fellow pouches.

I can’t tell you what this moment meant to me. You travel millions of miles, you meet beings from another world, and it turns out that they are dogs who are smart enough to build and fly their own space craft, all be it badly.

While pride for my species was swelling in my heart, the Major squawked:

“You stay here. I’m going out for a space walk.”

His space suit was suspended from the ceiling. It was a clever design with a self fastening zip. He was dressed in about a minute, and not much later he was waving a wing at me from the other side of the window. I was glad it was him out there, not me. Fortunately he didn’t find much more damage to our ship than a couple of dents. He hooked up a towing rope to the other ship, and popped back inside via the air lock.

We were almost set to go. I said into the microphone: “Right, where to boys?” and they beamed over a map. The Parrot spent some time studying our own star charts, and comparing theirs to ours. At last he squawked “Got it !” and pecked some coordinates into our ship’s computer. The star map on the ceiling of our quarters lit up, and “Zoom” we were on our way.

As we went, I tried to speak to the dogs in the other ship, but their woofs made little or no sense to me, and I gave up trying to communicate. They seemed to prefer snoozing to talking, and I thought to myself, “Well we will see soon enough what the planet of the dogs is like.”

And sure enough, after only a couple of days we were already in orbit around their world. As I looked down into the swirling seas and sprawling land masses, it all seemed strangely familiar. It was as if I had seen it all before in a dream. I started to think big thoughts, like perhaps the spirits of dogs come from this world when we are born, and return here when we die. Perhaps somewhere else there is a planet of the parrots, and perhaps each and every species has its own home in one corner of the universe, where they are lords and masters and all is perfect for them, just like the humans rule our Earth.

The dogs in the other ship sent over another map with instructions about where to land. If anything, entering a world is worse than leaving it. The ship grows horribly hot with friction against the atmosphere, and you are going so fast you can’t help wondering if you’re going to crash and that will be it, but when the parachute opens and you are drifting down through a clear sky, all is bliss. I wondered what our welcoming party would be like. No doubt they would be as amazed to meet dogs from another planet as we were. My only worry was that they might think me stupid, because it seemed to me that their canine civilisation was as advanced as the humans’ on our own planet.

We landed, as you generally do, with a bone shuddering thud, and after weeks of weightlessness, I had trouble standing up. It’s like learning to to walk all over again. The parrot was flying before I was walking. He was fluttering at the window.

“Core !! “ he said, which was his own parrot language and I didn’t understand it. Then he switched into English, which is what Jenny spoke and which I understand perfectly.

“You’re not going to like this,” he said. I staggered over to the window and pressed my nose against it. A cart was coming towards us along a track through the field. It was pulled by a set of four dogs in harnesses. Seated above in the vehicle were two hideous creatures. It wasn’t the first time we had seen such abominations. They were cat people !

It breaks my heart to recount what happened next. The ship that we had towed was lying on its side. I wondered if the poor dogs had suffered broken bones in the landing, but they were unhurt. The hatch flew open, and they climbed out, and jumped down onto the ground. They ran across the field, their tales wagging, towards the cart. They were glad to be home – back to where dogs were slaves – back to the Planet of the Cats !

“I’ve seen enough,” I said. “Let’s get out of here,” and the Parrot started to apply his beak to the computer. A few pecks fired the rockets and we were lifting off. I hope that our exhaust singed some cat whiskers down below, and if it burned some dog fur, so be it: they were cowards and traitors to their own kind.

For a long while I was silent. I could not take it in. Eventually, when we were well on our way, I said to the Major:

“Why? Why did they want to go back? They were free dogs. We could have taken them back to Earth where they could hold their tails high? Ours might not be the planet of the dogs, but at least, the humans treat us, well, humanely, and not like slaves.”

“Why?” said the parrot. “Some creatures find freedom frightening.”

And I thought to myself, that however much I loved Jenny and my family life, I also loved the freedom of space travel. Yes it was a scary business, but when you are out there in the universe, nobody can tell you what to do. I made a promise to myself that I would never be afraid of freedom, and one day I would find the corner of the universe which dogs can call their own home.

The Planet of the Cats. The second and concluding part of our venture into outer space (see part one here). To recap – Bonzo the dog – better known as Astropup – was an ordinary pet dog belonging to Jenny. When his family moved to Kuwait, Pa gave him to the Space Centre. From there he was sent on a journey to another planet in the company of a cat and a parrot. This was unfortunate, as Bonzo hates cats more than anything in the universe.

The new planet looks like Earth by the sea-side. But what sort of creatures live there ? Will they be nice or scary ? And will Astropup ever return home to see Jenny again? Listen and find out.

Voices by Natasha. Duration 20.33.

The cat said that if we stayed on the beach, we would die of hunger. But I said that wasn’t strictly true. We would die of thirst before we died of hunger. We argued about that point for a little while, but eventually we agreed to go in-land. We climbed up the dunes, and nosed our way through some long grass. The parrot flew over-head, and it was then that I saw that she had a something strapped to her foot. When I pointed this out to the cat she said,

“Haven’t you noticed that before? It’s a camera. She’s filming us, so that the humans can see what we are doing. They were too afraid to come here themselves, so they’ve sent us to explore and the parrot to film us.”

By that stage, I really didn’t know whether or not to believe a word that cat said. I was still looking out of the the house of Jenny’s grandma.

We came to a wood and a stream, and lapped up pure cold water. The cat said that proved she was right. We weren’t going to die of thirst, but we were going to die of hunger. I was too tiered to argue any more. We went to sleep, and in the morning continued on our journey. I chased a few rabbits and squirrels, but didn’t catch anything. The cat said that was because I yapped and made too much noise. If only I would leave the hunting to her, she would have a chance. And I told her that if only she would learn to keep her mouth shut, she would be much improved as a traveling companion.

At long last we saw a house. It wasn’t the house that belonged to Jenny’s grandma, but I thought that the people who lived there would know how to help us. I told the cat to fluff up her fur and look cute, if that was possible for a cat to do. I practiced waggling my ears. That usually does the trick.

We went up to the door and I woofed politely. Nobody came out, so I woofed a little louder. The parrot sat up in a tree and watched us, still pointing that camera thing on his foot at us. Then from inside I heard something like a mee-ow. Uh-oh, I thought . Some people like cats, and other people like dogs, and this time it looks like Mog’s in luck, not me.

The door opened a crack, and I prepared to waggle my ears and role my eyes with all might might. My little tail was thumping on the ground of its own accord. But my hopes were not high, for my nostrils were filling up with the strongest smell of cat I had ever experienced. Oh, no, I thought. They must have hundreds of cats in there. What a dump !

The door opened more and somebody stepped out. I looked up and saw the strangest, weirdest, most horrific face I had ever seen. It was like a human face, but then it was also like a cat face. It had lips like a human, but long pointed teeth like a cat. It had a human nose, but a cat’s whiskers. It’s eyes were diamond shaped, and a scary green color, and its ears were pointed.

I am proud to say that I didn’t whimper, and I didn’t whine. In my heart I was terrified, but outwardly I was up for a fight to the death. I snarled at that dreadful cat person, and showed my teeth and all my gums. He or she or it, backed off behind the door, and I slowly withdrew down the path. By the time I reached the gate, I saw that the thing had come out again, and was cradling the cat, my former traveling companion, in its arms like a baby. And the Earth Mog had a big cheesy grin all over her smarmy face. That was the last I saw of her.

I continued down the road, full of trepidation. I saw a bicycle up ahead, and for safety’s sake, dived into the ditch and hid. When it got closer, I saw that its rider was cat-person. Half of me wanted to chase it down the road, but I resisted the temptation. Next an even stranger contraption came along. It was truly a sight that no self-respecting dog would ever want to see, and I tremble to tell you of it. It was a carriage, of the sort that I’ve seen in the park back on Earth. The driver and passengers were both cat people, but that wasn’t the worst of it. For it was pulled along, not by horses as you would expect back home, but by two great shaggy sheep dogs. Ahow Ahow Ahow ! The shame of it ! Dogs working like slaves for Cats !

By night fall, I was more hungry than terrified, and I began to wonder if the cat’s prediction of death by starvation would come true. I was so hungry I could have eaten fish, and normally I hate fish more than anything.

I came to another house, and from a distance I saw two dogs – little Jack Russell’s – tied up to a kennel. They were both eating from a bowl, and I went up and whispered, “Hey boys, could you spare a few morsels for a starving canine cousin.”

They both looked at me like they didn’t understand animal speak. So I repeated my request, and still they were dumb. Cautiously, I came forward and took a bite from their bowl. They didn’t stop me, but they didn’t need to. It tasted quite disgusting, and I spat it out. Only then did I see what it was. A dead mouse !

Another horror to add to my long list of horrors ! Dogs forced to eat mice ! If you’ve ever wondered what a world rule by cats would be like – and why in the universe should you have had such a dreadful thought – this is what it would be like. Disgusting and degrading from start to finish.

The next morning, I was sleeping in a ditch, and I was so hungry that I was starting to regret not eating that mouse. That Mog’s prediction was coming closer to fulfillment. Aw Awooooo ! What a way to go to the next world ! On an empty stomach ! Oh, I forgot, I already was in a different world. Silly me. That was the hunger getting to my brain.

When the dog catchers came, I was already too weak to run away. Two cat people wearing masks over their moggy features, scooped me up on a spade and shoveled me into a the back of a cart. I was only just aware of bumping along the road. When we arrived at the end of our journey, I saw that the cart was pulled by a couple of German Shepherd Dog Slaves. A cat person dragged me, half dead, into a building. At least it was filled with canine sounds, but they were far from comforting. This was a giant prison-kennel, full of dogs barking and howling. I could not understand the local language on this planet, but I could tell you for sure that those weren’t happy doggies. I would say they were close to going crazy.

I was shown into a prison cell inside of which were ten other dogs, but at least there was a trough of water. My fellow couped up pouches weren’t a bad lot. Although we had no words in common, I could tell they were making the best of things . It seemed to me that they were making jokes at the expense of the cat people. It was a pity I could not have joined in, but then again, even if I could have told them that I had dropped in from another world – a world were all dogs looked down on cats and chased them up trees – a world where dogs were respected and called “man’s best friend” – they would hardly have believed me. In fact, they would have called me nuts.

I managed to get some light sleep, but some time in the middle of the night, I was awoken by a light tap on the nose. I half opened one eye, so that anybody looking couldn’t really tell whether I was awake or not, and I made out the shape of a bird flapping around our kennel. It took me a while to realise who it was .

“Hello Parrot,” I said, “Did they lock you up here too?”

“No, you stupid mutt,” said the Parrot. “I’ve come to rescue you. Hang on a mo!” and with that he flew through out the bars and started work on the bolt that kept the door shut. It was clearly a lot of effort for a parrot to slide that bolt, but he was stronger than he looked, and somehow he managed it. The door creaked open, and I got to my feet.

“Hurry up” said the bird, but I couldn’t leave without the others, and so I woofed to my cell mates to wake the up. They did indeed wake, but so did the guard, a great brute of a cat person. He came at us, waving a big stick, but one of the mongrels in our cage rushed at him a bit his ankle. The cat person was meeowing with surprise and rage. I don’t suppose any dog had dared do that to him before – but it was too late for him to raise the alarm, because we were on the way out. A sheep dog knocked over another guard on final exit, and we were free and running down the road at full tilt. The parrot flapped in front squawking, “Follow me” and we kept on running till I could smell the sea air once again, and soon we were on the moon-lit beach. Two of the dogs from the prison had kept up with us – a speedy little whippet and the mongrel who had bit the guard by the ankle. The others had scattered into the woods.

The parrot led the way back to the space ship. “Those two can’t come in. There’s no room,” he said. But I insisted. I wasn’t going to leave my own kind behind in this dog-forsaken cat world. So in they came, and the door closed behind us. We waited an awfully long time, and some cat people must have found the rocket, because we could hear them clawing on the side of the space ship, but then it began to rumble and roar. I hope we singed a few cat whiskers on take-off.

On the long journey home the parrot explained quite a bit too me. He was the most highly qualified bird working at the space center. He could speak several languages including bird language, animal language, and was totally fluent in human language too. He had passed all the space center’s trickiest tests and exams with flying parrot colors. As a result he had been selected for this incredibly important mission. You see, a deep space probe had discovered a new planet. The evidence suggested that the planet was chiefly inhabited by cats and dogs. The top scientists decided to send a cat and a dog from earth as ambassadors, but as none could be found who spoke human language, it had been decided to send this most extraordinary parrot to go with us and report back. The scientists wanted us back on earth so they could watch the film and see what the planet and its inhibitions looked like. Oh boy. They were in for a surprise.

We were happy though, for we knew we were traveling to a world where we would be respected and fed nice food out of tins. The other two dogs started to learn some of our language, and I was able to tell them that and next time they set eyes on a mog, they could chase scoundrel up a tree.

We landed once again with a nasty bump. They really ought to design a space ship with a soft landing. It just goes to show that the people who make those things never travel in them. When the door opened, we slid down the slide onto hot sand. It was so hot that it made our paws want to dance. But soon enough people arrived in buggies traveling over the sand dunes, and some of them were pointing cameras at us. We were taken back to a big house where more people were waiting and clapping.

We were led in side and watered and fed to our hearts’ and stomachs’ content. Some nasty vets did take a look at us, but a short sharp jab in the behind was a small price to pay for returning back to a decent world where cats know their place. It was certainly a hot and sunny country though. I asked the parrot where we were, and he said it was called Kuwait.

Kuwait. That sounded familiar, but after all my adventures, I couldn’t quite say where I had heard that name before. It was only later that evening when I heard a lovely voice calling “Bonzo ! Do you remember me? ” when I twigged it. Yes, this was where my family had come to live, and now Jenny had come to meet me.

How lovely it was to see my best friend. She was cuddling me and kissing me, and telling me that I was her hero. She had seen me on the television news, and they had dubbed me Astropup.

I wasn’t allowed home for a week or two while the space center did tests on me, but now I’m back with Jenny in her new house in Kuwait. Sometimes I see the other two dogs from the cat planet. They’ve found good homes too, and are spoiled rotten. There’s a cat who lives in a house nearby, but I can’t even be bothered to chase him. He’s beneath my contempt.

Occasionally I’m invited onto a television or radio show, and they show the pictures the parrot took of me as I snarled at that evil cat person. Pa likes to boast about me, as if he was the one who had trained up his dog to be a famous explorer and pioneer in space.
Just yesterday, Pa said that soon we will be going back to live in our to our usual country. We’ll be going by plane I’m glad to say. No more space ships for me. Not ever again.

Storynory journeys into outer-space. This out-of-the way travelogue is told in two parts by Bonzo the dog, otherwise known to the world as Astropup. (Both parts collected here).

Bonzo is an ordinary pet, until one day his family moves to Kuwait. Pa (Dad) says that Bonzo can’t come with them, and he donates Bonzo to the Space Centre. There he meets a cat and a parrot, and from the first the three animals do nothing but quarrel. Unfortunately, they have to put up with each other’s company because they have been chosen to travel together on a mission to another planet .

You will be able to catch the second and final part next week

Read by Natasha. Sponsored by Audible books. Duration 15.29.

Hello. My real name is Bonzo, which is quite a boring name for a dog. But nowadays, most people know me by my nickname, which is much more exciting. They call me, Astropup.

I used to live an ordinary sort of life, chewing slippers, chasing cats and birds, and generally amusing the family I lived with. They were all kind of cute, especially the little girl whose name was Jenny. Jenny used to cuddle me and take me for walks. But I always suspected that Pa didn’t like me much. He never really forgave me for the time I had an accident in his new car. I was only a very small puppy at the time, and hadn’t learned that you have to go outside under a tree, but after that little mishap he always looked at me in a suspicious sort of way. One evening, after Jenny had gone to bed, I heard him say to Ma: “Of course we’ll have to get rid of the dog. Jenny will be upset, but she’ll soon get over it when she makes lots of new friends in Kuwait.”

I didn’t know where Kuwait was. It might as well as be a different planet as far as I was concerned. But I got the message that the whole family was moving there and Bonzo the dog wasn’t going with them.

I tried to explain all this to Jenny in the morning. I looked at her pleadingly with my big brown eyes while she was eating her breakfast. She sneaked me a bit of toast under the table, which was very kind of her, but it wasn’t what I meant. Just then Pa came into the kitchen and shooed me out into the garden. Nasty man.

Normally, after Pa has dropped Jenny off at School, we don’t see him until evening, and we can all get on with our business without being shooed and ordered about, but this time he came back home straight away. I knew that something was up. Soon he was pulling me by the lead to the back of his car. I dug my heals in as best I could, but he was much bigger than me. If you are a dog, you soon learn that it’s best to trot along on the lead, rather than to sit down and be dragged. You end up at the same place, but with fewer bumps on your behind. I hopped into the car, but without any enthusiasm. Somehow I didn’t think that were were going walkies in the park. Pa drove out of the town and onto the big road. I got bored and thirsty and went to sleep on the back seat, but I didn’t have any nice dreams. Eventually I realised that Pa was parking the car, and I pressed my nose against the window to see where we were. It was a strange place, rather desperately in need of some grass and few nice trees. It was all hot tarmac, gleaming glass, and concrete.

Pa led me inside a huge building. After a long wait, a woman dressed in a white coat came to collect me. Ah-oh, I thought. This is one of those vets. I know what that means. Kind, weezily words like, “Nice doggy, this won’t hurt you” that nobody but a fool would believe. Then all of a sudden, a sharp jab in the behind. The treachery !

Pa left me there without so much as a curt pat on the head. AW! AW! if only Jenny knew that I was here. The woman put me – would you believe it, into A CAGE ! The humiliation of it ! Me, a loved family pet, dumped in the animal prison. For I wasn’t the only creature there. I was sharing this gaol with a cat, a monkey and a parrot, each in its own cage. I couldn’t even be bothered to snarl at the cat. What was the point? We were all suffering together.

AooooW ! AoooooW !

After a while, the cat said to me.

“Stop moaning pooch features. You won’t be here long. They only need intelligent animals in this place.’

“What for?” I asked.

“Why, haven’t you read the poster on the wall?” asked the cat. “Oh, pardon me. I forgot for a moment. You’re a dog so you’re too stupid to read. Well I’ll tell you. That’s a picture of a rocket, and the writing says that this is a space center. This is where they pick animals to be astronauts and to go to places in the sky. But as I said, you needn’t worry. Only intelligent animals can pass all the tests.”

Of course I didn’t believe her. Cats talk the most utter nonsense – you know.

The cat hissed, “Stupid Pooch!” And I snarled through the bars of my cage. She wouldn’t have dared be so rude if I could have got anywhere near her. The parrot started repeating “Stupid Pooch, Stupid Pooch” And I barked and the cat screamed, and soon the woman in the white coat was in to see what all the fuss was about.

“Now, now you three,’ She said. “ They can probably hear this racket on the other side of the galaxy” She looked cross, but she did open my cage and let me out. I felt very superior as we left the others behind. But the place she led me to smelt of disinfectant mixed with pee. That was where they gave me the soft talk followed by sharp jab in the behind. I knew it ! The traitors ! Soon my eyes felt heavy and I wanted to take a nap. I curled round, tucked my nose under my paw, and I was out.

I woke up in a strange room. It was a bit like Pa’s car, only bigger and without any windows. The cat and the parrot were there too. The cat was eyeing up the parrot as if she wanted to eat him, but the parrot was safe behind a glass wall. The cat and I were free to roam around, so at least she had to show me a bit of respect, in case I might nip her. That was good. Things had been arranged so that I was in charge. Then some lights started to flash, and there was a rumbling noise for a long time. The cat looked as sick as a parrot and the parrot looked as sick as well, a parrot, and I Iooked – probably much the same.

A voice squarked “10, 9, 8….” I looked up and saw it was the parrot speaking.

“Oh do shut up you stupid bird,” said the cat. And it was then that the whole caboodle started to roar and shake. At first it felt like my tummy was dropping down into my paws, and then, after quite a while, things seemed to go back to normal. It was quite dark, apart from some strange greenish lights. . I wanted to go to back sleep, but the cowardly meowing of the cat kept me awake.

“Listen Mog, “ I said. “If we are all going to die, let’s die quietly. And that’s an order.” But she didn’t shut up until much later.

Eventually, I fell asleep, and when I woke up I saw that some breakfast had arrived in two bowls, one for me, and one for that cat. And the cat had eaten both of them. This was too much. I decided to kill the cat and eat her instead. That would be the end of my troubles. But when I pounced on her with my teeth bared, I found that instead of shooting towards her, I was sort of floating in mid air. My paws were paddling all over the place, but it made no difference. Even the parrot was impressed by my flying. The cat leapt out of my way, and she too was flying around like a fat balloon. This was all very strange.

After we had both settled back down on the floor, I decided to show my leadership qualities.

“Hey,” I said. “Those humans are probably watching us and think this is all hilarious. Let’s learn to be friends, at least while we are cooped up in here – and when we get out, then we can kill each other.”

Even the cat had to agree that I was talking sense, and the parrot seemed too stupid to express and opinion on the matter. From then on, we lived by some rules, the most important of which was that if anybody ate my dinner, they were dead.

I don’t know how long that awful journey went on. I used to think that Jenny’s grandma, was a long way away, but this took much longer than going to her place by the seaside. Food seemed to appear when we were asleep, and although we made the usual mess that all living things make, the straw on the floor just seemed to eat it up and it disappeared. It was a clever contraption that we were in.

Eventually, we heard the roaring sound and the contraption started to shake again. The cat was mewowing “We’re all going to die,” and I didn’t even bother to tell her to shut her silly snout.

Our journey came to its end with an almighty bump and we were all three of us thrown around the place. This time we didn’t float harmlessly around, and we all ended up with bruises, but nothing too serious. But we soon forgot about all that when a door opened in the side of the contraption, and we were greeted by the sweetest, most gorgeous smell in the the universe. Fresh, salty, sea air. So perhaps we had come to Aunty Jane’s after all, by the round-about route.

The Parrot’s cage flew open and she was out in no time. The cat went sliding down a shoot, and I came after her. Soon I was splashing through the surf of the sea, and the cat was looking at me like I was crazy. The parrot was sitting up on a sand dune. I hadn’t been so pleased to be alive since I was a puppy. All I needed now was a stick to fetch, and my happiness would have been complete.

When I came out of the sea, I shook myself so that the water went flying all over the cat and the parrot – that trick never goes out of fashion, and I woofed with joy.

After a while I barked “Cheer up Mog. Aren’t you glad that we’ve arrived?”

“I’d be happier if I saw a mouse,” said the cat. “What are we going to eat? Unless you know how to fish, we’re going to starve to death”

“Don’t be stupid.” I said. “Some humans will come along soon and take care of us. My owner’s grandma lives some where near by. “

“Your owners grandma? said that cat quite astonished. “She’s only a million miles a way. Haven’t you got it yet? They’ve sent us to another planet.”