Chapter One

Emily Elizabeth taught Clifford good manners. He always says "please" and "thank you," follows the rules, and SHARES with his friends. It's easy to like someone like Clifford: even if he makes mistakes, he always tries to be kind and considerate.  - Clifford's Manners 

********

There was once a bear, lived in the woods, has some nice digs.  Coolers full of potato chips, ice cream, the little plastic bear shaped honey bottles.  A flat screen TV which ran off a brilliant little power system run from latent heat created by the forests root structures cooked up by the squirrels in return for protection from foxes and other ilk, and mediation of the occasional zoning enforcement squabble with the chipmunks.  Nothing like a bear sitting in a room during an argument to keep everyone's claws withdrawn, except for an elephant (but we won't talk about the elephant).  He had it good.

Now on the weekends the bear used to play scrabble with a cat . . . The Cat.  The cat was a little white and orange stripped domestic American shorthair, didn't talk at all, but in spelling and vocabulary was like the Websters dictionary with whiskers.  The cat used to make fun of the bear but always let him win.  He drank all the Bear's Pepsi, but always let him win.  Crashed on the dog bed in the dining room (don't ask) after his crash from the Pepsi induced sugar high . . . but Always Let him Win.  One day, one rainy morning, when the sky was as angry as a group of ants being peed on by a garden hose, the cat decided to win.

Oh if he could have that day back.  Oh the victory, so sweet and so cursed.  The bear couldn't quite believe it when it happened.  He kept stared at the board wondering if he had somehow forgotten some fundamental tidbit about reality.  The final word on the board, put there by the cat seconds before, was technically longer than the board, but still somehow the cat fit it on.  He was crafty like that.

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

The cat pointed at the computer, Webster's page already up.  Then took a slow awkward sip from the Pepsi can lying on his stomach.

There was the quota set by the bees on his honey gathering which he voluntarily honored, the ordinance about not walking through the daisy groves he voluntarily honored, the salmon limits, again, which he voluntarily honored.  He even moved caves for the sick mountain lion.  But THIS!  The cat could not restrain himself to afford the bear this one luxury, this one rule the cat was asked to abide by, this one limit on his reckless behavior.  AND after all the bear had done for him.  The bear had no idea what the word meant, but it would mean cat funeral from this day forward.

The table launched across the room almost as quickly as the cat leapt out of it's way.  The bear was big and despite all that extra baggage around his hips the cat thought,he could move pretty quickly.  The cat considered pulling the pepsi can with him but then thought better of it.  One swipe from the bear and, well, we'll just say bear claw beats cat claw.

The bear broke through the flimsy wood he used to call a door and gave chase to the cursed feline.  He chased him through the daisy patch, damn the rules.  Ate a few for good measure.  Swiped a bee hive from a low limb and drank down all the honey.  To heck with their ordinances.  Grabbed a jumping salmon out of mid air as he pursued his quarry along the river bank.  A bear can only take so much, a bear doesn't have rules, a bear makes rules, a bear is the rules!

The cat, if you're color blind 

The bear, sideways, if he cross dressed
and was walking on a measles patient

********

Cupcakia was a small city.  It's main industry, as you probably have already guessed, was cupcake production.  It always smelled good in Cupcakia, the cities districts named after the local flavors; strawberry harbor, vanilla village, blueberry knoll.  It was a constitutional monarchy and hence had a royal family.  That royal family, in addition to all its princes and kings and lords and duchesses, had a princess.  Now she wasn't your average princess.  She didn't speak much and when she did it was almost inaudible, more like a high pitched mumble than words.  And she didn't fit the Barbie doll mold shall we say.  For the people of Cupcakia were not a slender bunch.  The government tried to institute measures to control the peoples diets, make them healthier and more slender, but a spinach cupcake contains as much sugar as a blueberry cupcake and the measures were abandoned.  Cupcakia contained the friendliest populace in the known world and the largest on an individual basis.  

The princess was fond of walking through the wilds beyond the royal castle.  She would take her tablet down by the river and sit on a large rock outcropping in its middle.  She could tiptoe to it only getting the very tips of her toes dampened and sit atop it and text her friends and take photos of the surroundings and draw figures into them with her stylus.  On this morning, the weather was wet and she left her tablet behind, just wanting some fresh air.  She expected the occasional leaping salmon to slap her in the face but she didn't expect the bear and the cat and certainly not the flood.  

What she initially saw was a blur or motion.  Orange and white and black, then the blur came back into view, a cat leapt out of the bushes on the right bank, then a bear close behind, grabbed a salmon in mid air and swallowed it in one gulp.  The cat looked playfully terrified, the bear terrifying.  The rocks were wet and she could not move fast but as quickly as she could she got up and ran in the direction they departed towards.  Whatever in the world would make a bear chase a cat was a mystery to her but something had to be done.

She followed them through the woods, listening for the growls of the bear and the commotion it was making.  Felled trees, claw marks, and disturbed ground marked the path.  She came to a bank where the river met the lake and saw that the cat had actually jumped into the water, the bear swimming close behind him.  The water was cold and this was where her chase would have to end she thought.  But fate had other intentions.

Suddenly and without warning there was water at her back and she was shoved by a wall of it into the lake.  She treaded water desperately but it was hard in the roiling water.  She felt something to her left and grabbed on.  It was furry, black, she didn't care.  She climbed it like a mountain and found herself on the back of the black bear, a wet, emaciated looking feline licking its paw, sitting on the bears neck, swaying back and forth with the waves.  The bear was gently working the lake, taking each wave with a stride of one of its large front limbs.  It's claws were like small swords, its canine teeth poking out from its muzzle, it's eyes cool and calm in the face of a tempestuous sea.   Despite not knowing the bear or the cat, their calmness gave her solace and she plunged her fingers deep into the undercoat of the bears fur, closed her eyes, and thought of her homes hearth, and that she was there hugging the carpet that lay beneath it.