Cat Soup and Other Short Stories

輕鬆的英文課餘讀物，有助調劑繁重功課的壓力下的閱讀生活
三個小故事，帶你「經歷」三個截然不同的冒險魔法之旅。

本書含三個故事：
第一個故事關於兩隻小貓尋找貓媽媽的英語歷險故事；
第二個故事關於一個身體有少許缺陷的小孩，在生日時獲得一隻小馬作為生日禮物，然後展開一連串有趣經歷；
第三個故事關於魔法月餅。

Cat Soup
Everybody needs a mama, even cats. So when Mama Mao disappears, her kittens Runty and Stolly travel across Hong Kong to look for her. Will they save her from becoming cat soup?
Twinkle Toes
Twinkle is a Hong Kong Eurasian girl off school after a foot operation. When she is given a pony for her tenth birthday, she meets new friends and has exciting adventures at her dad’s place on Lantau Island.
Mooncake Magic
The Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is fast approaching and the moon fairies can choose only one mooncake for the Chinese moon goddess Chang’e. Will it be Moony, a traditional mooncake?

Jane Houng’s young adult novel Bloodswell was published by QX Publishing Company in 2012. She has also published a biography called Houng’s, children’s chapter books, and poetry. She reviews for the Asian Review of Books and writes regularly in children’s newspapers published by Sing Tao News Corporation. Further details can be found on her author website: http://www.janehoung.com.

Cat Soup
1 Typhoon Tam Tam
2 Unfriendly Pets
3 An Unwelcome Visitor
4 A Divinely Smelly Smell
5 Reunited
6 The Great Escape
7 Everyone Has a Papa Somewhere
8 A Dancing Lion
9 Who’s Boss Now?
10 To Nine Dragon Mountains, M’goy
11 Twit Twoo I Do
12 The Lion Rock King
13 Sometimes Dogs are Cats’ Best Friends
14 Cat Soup
15 The Rescue

Twinkle Toes
1 The Best Birthday Present Ever
2 Sold for a Song
3 Sukee and I Go Swimming
4 Money Bird
5 My Sad Sad Story
6 Now You See It, Now You Don’t
7 Discoveries
8 New School?
9 The Limping Lion Dancer
10 Seafood Racket and Smudge
11 A Moo for the Year of the Horse

Mooncake Magic: A Modern Chinese Fairy Tale
1 Moony and his Double-Duck-Egg Heart
2 The Traditional Gang v. Modern Rivals
3 Moonstruck
4 The Moon Goddess
5 A Cake-in-the-face Affair
6 Tinned
7 Be Careful What You Wish For
8 Attack!
9 Close Encounters
10 A Magical Celebration
11 Another Mean Trick?
12 Wu Gang the Tree Chopper
13 Has Chang’e Changed?
14 Not Even a Piece of Crater Cake
15 The Ultimate Sacrifice
16 A Short Little Life that Wasn’t in Vain

Chapter 1
Typhoon Tam Tam
A strong wind blew down the mountain to the storm drain where Mama Mao and her two kittens lived. The rainwater was rising fast, swirling beneath their ledge like a raging river, splashing their whiskers. Two fat rats paddled by squeaking with fear.
‘We’re going to drown,’ meowed Stolly, hiding his head in Mama Mao’s warm fur.
Runty padded along the ledge to the broken gutter where they usually entered and exited. The wind whistled, rain poured, but the gap in the iron bars was clear of branches. Surely they should escape, he thought. Run into the country park. Shelter under a bush.
‘Come back,’ meowed Mama Mao.
A torch light shone above.
Runty tensed.
There were footsteps. Human footsteps. Coming closer.
Runty froze as a strong light flooded his sky. He couldn’t see a thing.
Then the gutter shifted above him and fresh air gusted in.
Runty was about to run when something caught him. The something held him by his tail and lifted him out of the drain. ‘Help, help!’ he howled.
Mama Mao howled too.
Runty was dropped into a cage. A human face was looking at him. All lips and teeth.
Runty recognised her. She was the girl who sometimes left them biscuits.
‘He’s so skinny,’ she said.
What’s she saying? thought Runty, and hissed. He’d never been so close to a human before.
Another human face appeared. The girl’s mama? She also had thin lips and snappy teeth. ‘Let’s go home now,’ she said.
‘But M-um, there’s another one down there somewhere!’ wailed June.
As the two humans walked away, the full force of the rain hit Runty’s body.
There was more shifting and grating. Then Stolly, howling. Maybe the humans were trying to catch him too.
‘This one has only half a tail,’ said June.
Ouch! Something landed on top of Runty. Big brother Stolly! Never so happy to see him again, Runty nuzzled his neck.
‘Where’s Mama?’ meowed Stolly.
From the storm drain came a yowling, and Mama Mao jumped out.
The two kittens watched as June tried to catch her, ‘Over here, Mama!’ they meowed.
When June tripped on a tree root, Mama Mao stopped and looked over her shoulder. She twitched her tail as if not sure which direction to run.
Then she ran towards the country park.

Chapter 2
Unfriendly Pets
Two moons waxed and waned. Runty and Stolly’s new home was a laundry room on the third floor of a high-rise flat.
Squeezed behind a washing machine for safety, Stolly awoke from a cat nap. ‘I dreamed of her again,’ he meowed.
‘Who?’ Runty pretended to yawn.
‘Mama.’
Runty stood up and stretched. ‘She’ll be fine.’
‘I miss her,’ said Stolly, reaching to rub noses.
Snubbing him, Runty strolled to the water dish in the middle of the room.
Lap, lap. His pink tongue was soon joined by Stolly’s. So Runty rolled over to bite him. But Stolly wouldn’t play.
Runty poked his tongue into his ear instead. An ear clean usually cheered his big brother up.
Footsteps. Human footsteps. In a panic, Stolly dashed back behind the washing
machine.
‘What a brave boy you are,’ June said to Runty, who hadn’t run away. She placed two bowls of biscuits beside the water dish.
Yum yum! Runty crunched a biscuit between his sharp teeth and allowed June to stroke him.
Stolly’s tummy rumbled. How he longed to dig his nose into those delicious biscuits. But hey! Runty had finished one bowl and was eating from the other. ‘Save some for me,’ he meowed.
Runty kept eating!
Stolly stuck his nose out.
Holy cats! June was looking at him. Stolly backed up.
But June lunged forward and caught him by the scruff of his neck. ‘I won’t hurt you, you silly thing,’ she said.
Stolly wriggled and spat as she pushed him into a cage. It was the one she’d used to catch them during typhoon Tam Tam.
Runty ran up to it and pressed his nose against the metal. Inside was a plate of Stolly’s favourite fish, a bowl of water, a blanket, and a poop tray.
‘Tell your brother I won’t let him out until he stops spitting at me, okay?’ said June, removing her rubber gloves.
Stolly hissed and spat.
‘That’s very rude,’ said Runty.
‘I want Mama,’ Stolly howled.
‘June is our mama now.’
‘She doesn’t smell nice.’
‘But she feeds us, keeps us warm.’
Stolly clawed at the cage. ‘She’s not furry. She smells odd. I want my real mama.’
Night and day, he dreamed of how to escape.