The Land of OCKT and the Adventures of Peeje, the Kat Herder

What others are saying about

The Land of OCKT and the Adventures of Peeje, the Kat Herder:

"The Land of OCKT reads like The Wind in the Willows as re-written in a contest between Lewis Carroll and Dr. Seuss. It's a charming, illustrated romp through a fairy tale of swashbuckling animal characters and witty wordplay. Peeje the weazel has just been handed the most impossible job in the land—to find a missing baby princess. The story unwinds in punning prose and color illustrations of saucer-eyed felines and pipe-smoking dragons. It's up to Peeje to save the day, but is he willing to do it?"

—Paula R. Stiles

Writers of the Future Contest winner 2007

Author of Fraterfamilias and Editor of Innsmouth Free Press

With wit and more than a little wisdom, Peeje the Kat Herder takes readers on a fast-paced adventure to search for the possibly, though not necessarily, lost princess. The fantasy world of OCKT will thrill elementary and middle school readers as they explore the quirky characters, the gorgeous illustrations, hilariously improbable situations, and their own imaginations.

–Lisa Youngblood

Harker Heights Library Director

"With the very first line you’ll be pulled into The Land of OCKT. The opening page immerses you in a world of magic, intrigue and suspense. . . . This is the perfect book to bring back family reading time!"

—Stephen Prosapio

Author of Ghosts of Rosewood Asylum

". . . a story that is every bit as smart and charming as Peeje [the] hero. Whimsical and endearing, The Land of OCKT is a magical journey through a beautifully envisioned and original world."

—R. P. L. Johnson

Writers of the Future Gold Award winner 2010

"Frolicking and whimsical, The Land of OCKT is as imaginatively realized as Alice In Wonderland, with a cast of delightfully-drawn characters – Peeje’s herd proving especially charming, as the eponymous Kats are infectiously mischievous. . . . [The Land of OCKT] appeal[s] to more than just your kids.  It is an adventure to delight the purely adventurous – as playful an original tale – or tail?? – as anything I have read.  Both for myself, or for my own daughter."

—Brad R. Torgersen

Author and Writers of the Future winner 2009

by

M. O. Muriel

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 by M. O. Muriel

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, translation, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Cover Artwork: copyright 2012 M. O. Muriel

Interior Illustrations: copyright 2012 M. O. Muriel

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Summary: Peeje, a wily white weazel who herds katz for a living in the majickal Land of OCKT, gets into all kinds of trouble when he takes his entire mischievous, flame-hawking kat herd with him on the road to track down a missing princess.

* * * *

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1 - OCKT in an Uproar

Chapter 2 - The Council and the Kat Herder

Chapter 3 - Miss-Defied

Chapter 4 - Hey You, In a Hard Hat!

Chapter 5 - The Cinder in the Citadel

Chapter 6 - Chain-Linked Katz

Chapter 7 - Boo-Foo, Queen of the Shirpees

Chapter 8 - Bag-O'Funz

Chapter 9 - Fountains of Hair

Chapter 10 - Busted and Disgusted

Chapter 11 - STAAAAAINS?

Chapter 12 – Bubba Lumps

Chapter 13 - A Snuff and a Snap

About the Author

Connect with Us Online

~ Chapter 1 ~

OCKT in an Uproar

In the majickal Land of OCKT, The Council of Indecision had just made its first decision in a thousand years. There was no mistaking the news. It was all over this morning’s edition of the Ocktumenical Times. Those old fuddy-duddies could never agree on anything. But, they had just agreed that Peeje, wily white weazel and feline-taming extraordinaire, was the one for the most impossible job since kat herding was invented.

"It’s because I’m a professional," said Peeje to his katz, wiggling his brows.

Of course, Peeje’s katz were only pretending to behave. At the moment, the whole lot of them were busy playing tag in the branches of the orchard trees overhead and meandering aimlessly and bug-eyed through the glade by Peeje’s burrow. Others were hunting frogs between the stone wall and the old dirt road. To them, newspaper articles were only good for burning.

Phft!

Peeje straightened his posture on the stone wall. He crossed his legs, scratched behind an ear with a claw, shook out the paper, and resolved to read through the article again—this time much slower, so as not to miss a single compliment. (He’d never read anything so fast in his entire life; his whiskers were still vibrating!).

OCKT IN AN UPROAR:

PRINCESS ROSEPETALS DISAPPEARS AND THE COIN MAKES A DECISION!

Peeje examined the headline thrice over then eyeballed the kat who was hunting him from behind—it skulked off to snuff a pair of old boots on the other side of the road. Reasonably satisfied that he wasn’t at the center of an ambush, Peeje proceeded to skim back down to where the article began. It was hard not to keep his hair from going static, because printed in neat Ocktian script, this was what it read:

The Council is now in order . . . I think? These were the anxious words of the minister of the Council of Indecision this morning, after the future monarch of OCKT, Princess Rosepetals, mysteriously went missing from her nursery in the garden palace of Babble, the capital city where the Council holds parliament. It is unclear at the moment as to whether the disappearance of the Princess is the result of a misunderstanding, or the culmination of a despicable plot, but the scandal has The Council of Indecision, otherwise known as the COIN, in a flurry of panic.

It was horrifying, said Princess Rosepetals’s nurse in an interview this morning. I came in to tend to her daily watering and trim the leaves on her gown, but she was gone! Dear-o-dear, she’s never left the nursery before. No one saw her out and about last night, either. The Palace Guard has searched the grounds over, but it’s as if she has blinked right out of existence. My, and she was going to participate in her first ever teatime today, too.

"Since learning of the unusual disappearance of the Princess, the COIN has called an emergency session to deal with the crisis. The move is unprecedented. It is widely known that the COIN is constantly late, regularly long-winded, superbly flattering, and seldom productive. It has, therefore, come as quite a shock that they have not only come together in such a timely manner, but have made their first ever decision in a thousand years: They have chosen the kat herder, Peeje of Burrowbury, to solve the mystery of where Princess Rosepetals has gone.

PEEJE! Peeje sneezed and, for the second time, almost fell off the wall in an undignified manner. He couldn’t help being flattered—again, and again. With a flourish, he buried his nose in the paper for some more:

The Ocktumenical Times has recently learned that Peeje is, by personal declaration, a professional amongst kat herders. As far as the COIN is concerned, he must therefore be the only creature in OCKT who is up to the challenge of handling a mission of this magnitude. The COIN is still just ironing out the details of how they plan to summon him . . .

POOF! The Ocktumenical Times went up in flames.

Bullfrogs! yelped Peeje, and tossed the burning paper aside before it could singe his fingers. In moments, little flakes of ash and two crumbly half-pages were all that remained of the Times.

Quickly, Peeje looked around. One should never be caught cursing. That was an unforgivable breech of etiquette.

No-um-no. Katz just disintegrated my newspaper!

All around Peeje, his katz went invisible with several soft, sucking POPs. Which was just as good as a confirmation that they had done something terribly naughty. After all, katz used their fantastic ability to go invisible mostly when they were plotting. But they wouldn’t get the better of Peeje just because they thought he was distracted. Peeje had the ‘sight.’ The faint shimmer of disrupted atmosphere always gave them away.

Katz can’t hide from Peeje, said Peeje.

Reaching up, he snatched an invisible kat out of the air by its poof-tail as it attempted to jump over his head. Without missing a beat, he then bounded on top of the stone wall and leapt into a tree, pulling the kat behind him.

A chorus of hiccupping burst out in the surrounding branches. Um-no, the katz were getting excited, and when the katz got excited . . .

HALT! trumpeted Peeje, a claw in the air. Too late. Sections of the tree went up in a blaze of sparks.

Sometimes, Peeje thought the crazy kritters had it out for him. Their ability to go invisible was trouble a-plenty, but the flaming hairballs they hacked up when they got overexcited were enough to keep any kat herder on his toes. Good thing Peeje was a professional.

That’s right, said Peeje to the shimmering throng below as it converged on the wall. He beat out the fire with the kat he had in hand. A professional, that’s me.

With two flicks of his wrist, Peeje flipped from his perch. He flung the kat to the ground, caught a branch, swooped the other katz out of the tree, and shot them over the wall in fast succession by the tails, where they landed, heels in the dirt, quivering. SNAP! Peeje pointed to the rest of his herd, commanding them to go un-invisible.

Yup, snuff. There was only one thing left for a Peeje to do. He made an impossible leap to the ground, complete with a whirl, and landed nimbly in front of the kritter-line-up he had made.

Because that is how a Peeje herds katz.

* * * *

Are they all here? Are they all in line? said the clever weazel, marching in long, elaborate strides down the row. Not all of the katz were the same. In fact, most of the time they weren’t. You see, the secret to herding katz lay in how a well a weazel kept order amongst the katz he did have, at any given time. The katz were always blipping in and out, constantly coming and going. They were transient kritters. Still, Peeje usually had about twenty or so of them at his beck-and-call.

Turning sharply on heel, Peeje strutted down the line-up. Herding katz was the most difficult job to perform in the entire Land of OCKT. Weazels were the only peoples who were clever and fast enough for the job, although even amongst weazels, individuals were not taught how to be kat herders; they were simply born with the skill. A Peeje had to constantly be on his toes—or his boots, as it happened, because he wore extra shiny, spit-and-polish, black combat boots, as was befitting a professional kat herder.

Peeje’s boots were his most important accessory. Into these boots did he tuck the feathery white fur of his legs, which he called his panta-‘loons.’ They distinguished him from the kritters. Peeje was a ‘peoples,’ not a kritter. Being a peoples meant that he was not only required to wear boots and loons, but that he must also deny having paws (or at least, such was his opinion). Certainly they were not hands! Hands were for human beings, those mythological creatures who had once inhabited the Land of OCKT, but like unwelcome guests, came, went, and left behind a great mess of Things. So, this meant that since Peeje had neither paws nor hands to fit into his boots or to carry his daily objects, his logical conclusion was that they must be ‘feets.’

Yes, Peeje had four feets: those two down there and these two up here.

All katz are present and accounted for, O Wily One, said Handjive with his . . . Peeje blinked. (Handjive spoke in sign language). Handjive was the skinniest, scrawniest, and most pathetic-looking of the katz, although he was well tailored: He wore a black pelt with a white underbelly, which was the fashion amongst butlers. Unperturbed by the rowdy assembly, he looked to Peeje for approval.

Positive? asked Peeje, with a squint. Today more than ever, Peeje needed Handjive to translate. Handjive was the only kat who never came and went like the others, being undyingly loyal. Not to mention he was the only kat who spoke intelligibly.

No more invisibles? asked Peeje.

No. Handjive shook his head. No invisibles.

No heads stuck in holes or paws stuck in logs?

Nope.

Any spies hiding in trees, tied into shoes, caged in cans?

Nope. Nope. Nope.

You did check the hazel thicket by the overgrown encyclopedias, didn’t you?

Handjive shook his head ‘yes.’

Um-hum. Peeje squinted harder. If he was missing even one kat, it would light a fire, and then there would be the tedious task of putting it out again: The kat, the grass, and anything else the scheming thing had managed to put ablaze.

Peeje halted in-step. He put fists on hips. This is not good. Not good, um-um. What an unsightly lot.

Katz were