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now it was stiflingly hot, especially for someone as well endowed with fur as I am, who had just been in a strenuous battle, we resumed our fishing posture. Jubal cast his line and I watched—first the water, then Renpet, who appeared to doze, though I
saw
her eye open a slit to spy on me. Turning my tail to her, I dipped my paw into the water as before. As before, a fish swam up to see if my cat’s paw was tasty or not and I snagged it and flipped it up on the bank.
    And—I couldn’t believe this, after all the peacemaking my boy was trying to do—that rotten Renpet pounced my fish again.
    “Hey, you had one!” I yowled, and she pounced me! She wasn’t fast enough this time—I sprang backward and into the river.
    “Chester!” Jubal cried as I went under, and waded in after me. The water wasn’t all that deep at this spot, for a human.
    He didn’t have to worry. I surfaced again without effort. It seemed I was naturally buoyant. My fur was wet but it did not soak up so much water as to weigh me down. I
liked
this. Though it wasn’t any cooler than cat pee, it smelled better and cooled me off.
    Fishing was easier in the water. I could chase a fish and bite it and drag it up with me. The first time I did this, I didn’t know what to do with the fish, but Jubal swam up beside me and cupped the fish in a bag he made from the bottom of his sheet.
    I had to swim away from him to catch them, and then swim back. The fish weren’t afraid of me, more fool them, but Jubal cast a longer shadow.
    When I’d caught three or four, Jubal took them back to shore and gave two to the girl, trapping the others in a netted bag he extracted from the knapsack and sinking it with a rock. “Why don’t you cook these up for us and we’ll have fish for breakfast?” he suggested.
    Nice of you to give our fish away
, I said.
Especially since I, who have caught all of them, have yet to do more than taste one!
    Yeah, but you know how to get more. I don’t think that fool girl even knows how to cook them. Look there, she’s just staring at them like she’s starving but doesn’t quite want to eat them raw!
    I have no interest in the female human or her wretched female cat
, I told him.
    Awww, Chester. They’re hungry
.
    Not that cat. She ate my first ever fishy I caught
, I said.
And she pushed me in the water
.
    I think that might mean she likes you
, Jubal said.
Dad said girls get ornery when they like you
.
    Why shouldn’t she like me?
I replied.
I’m a source of delicious fish for her!
I grabbed another of the slippery little devils.
    As long as I was in the water, I was fairly cool, but when I looked around at Jubal, the parts of him not covered by his sheet or his hat were red. The sun was two whiskers away from the middle of the sky.
    Jubal waded back to his submerged fish trap and the place where we left Renpet, the thieving “princess” cat, and her girl. They were gone.
    I suppose they took the rest of our fish
, I said, cat-paddling back to shore.
    No, no, the fish are still here. I’m not sure that girl knew what to do with the ones I gave her, and two fish for that cat must have been plenty, no matter how hungry she was
.
    Good
, I said, and hunkered down to growl over my last catch, covering it with my body lest any passing feline royalty swoop down and snatch it.
    While I gobbled it up—the most delicious meal I had ever had including the tasty keka bugs or the mice in Jubal’s barn when I was a young kitten—Jubal cleaned and filleted our fish and tucked them into a thermal pack in his bag.
    Then we returned to the ship. I was almost comfortable for about a quarter of the trip and trotted ahead of Jubal until the sun evaporated all the water in my fur and started broiling cat meat.
    Then he tucked me under the sheet and on top of his very fishy smelling pack again. I slept. It was all I could do in the heat. I wasn’t sure if I would wake up or not and I was too miserable to care.

CHAPTER 4
    T he heat was so