for a new, safe home. It must be far from humans. We never felt safe around humans, they are so big.
CHAPTER THREE
The wood was not a wood after all, just a clump of trees alongside a big flat, hard piece of ground, with lots of white lines on it. Mervin was not too happy with us; he expected to be in a very big wood, a very safe wood, not a clump of small trees. We left those trees behind and crossed the flat hard stuff, found a place for the night, just like a cave, and all climbed in.
Mervin and the other strong ones pushed a boulder across the entrance; it went very dark inside, but felt very safe indeed.
“What is that smell, Mother? It is awful, it smells like fish.”
“Settle down and get some sleep, you will need all your energy tomorrow!”
All 30 of us settled down after pushing light square stones aside to make room for us to spread out and lay down. It took time to fall asleep, our fur was dirty and there was slime in this cave like I’d never known. The slime stuck to our fur and made us smell bad, but we all fell asleep and things did not seem so bad.
Suddenly, at first light, there was a bang, a bump, and everybody woke up. The whole cave shook and seemed to be moving along.
“What’s happening?” someone called out.
“Be very quiet,” said Mervin. “There is a human in front of the cave and he’s on fire.”
I could see out now and we were racing along, too fast to jump out, and smoke was starting to get to me. There were human words on the square stones all around us; words like COD and HADDOCK.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Don’t know, be quiet,” was Mother’s reply.
“If it stops, when it stops, be ready to jump out and run, everybody,” said a frightened Mervin.
The cave rumbled on and fast down a hill, fast into a human place, then under an arch. There was another word we could see; DOCK.
“What is that, Mother?” I asked.
“Short for doctor, I think. Be quiet.”
“I could do with a doctor. I smell awful, never smelt so bad in my life.”
The cave slowed at last and turned into a lane with big buildings on both sides.
“Get ready,” said Mervin. The human got out and walked away. The cave was still at last, and very quiet.
“Push hard lads, get it open.”
With the cave open we all jumped out. Some slid and fell over, the slime was everywhere. There were lots of noisy humans inside the long building as we settled down among more boxes, and looked around this strange place. The young ones were hungry, everybody was thirsty, and everybody looked to Mervin, our leader, to provide these things.
“Sit tight right here, under cover, where it looks safe enough. You two, go forward; you two, go back, that way, and look for food and water.”
Four hungry meerkats set off to find food for 30, as the rest of us settled down to wait their return. They returned with flat, colourful boxes and a big smile.
“Smells nice, but what is it?” Mervin asked.
“It says PIZZA on the box, and over at the place where they are made, some get thrown out on the ground at the back of the building. I guess they don’t want them all.”
“We found these bottles and filled them from the water taps on the side of the building, so we have plenty of food and water.”
Loaded up, we moved on to a safer place to sit and eat the free feast they had found so easily. It did not take very long; we soon found a pile of plastic, some boxes, old rope and things to climb under. There we broke the pizza into small pieces and shared it out, and started our feast. I had some marked ‘Margret and Rita’, washed down with gulps of fresh clean water. I was starting to like this ‘freedom’, which Mervin had talked about for so long, and the fuller I became the more I liked it. Someone had a cheese pizza that they could not manage to eat, so Mike and I forced that down too, until our normally flat tummies were round and full.
It was time to sleep now. Fat and full we settled down, with Mervin and Marcos looking out to keep us all safe.
CHAPTER FOUR
Across from our beds there stood an island, and Mervin said we should try to go there. If we could get to it we could claim it and call it ‘Meerkat Island’, and make it home perhaps.
“Mum, what does EMPRESS mean?”
“I don’t know, it’s a human word silly.”
“OF is easy; even I know that little word,” I said. “So what does DURBAN mean?”
“Oh it’s some kind of hat, a long piece of material or something. Now be quiet.”
Late that evening we were all warned to be very quiet as two humans with roly-poly bags over their shoulders were coming towards us. Luckily for us they turned and walked up a wooden path that led up onto our Island, and then they disappeared.
“That’s for us, that’s the way onto our Island, come on everybody, time to move,” called an excited Mervin.
All together we walked up the steep wooden path to the very top where Mervin turned to the left to go to the opposite end of the island, away from those two humans.
We climbed high and followed him along a cold branch and dropped down onto something a bit soft. The strong ones pulled at the soft stuff and made a space that we could all climb down into where we found, to our delight, a nice dry and clean cave.
Fat and full, and now with a new home, we were all well pleased with the efforts of our leader, Mervin. In just a short time the young ones had to go to the toilet so had to keep to the rules and leave the cave.
“Go find some sandy place away from here,” their mothers said firmly. Off they set, but could not find anything like soft sand or bushes. It was the same for us all; just find a private place behind something tall and dark.
The grooves in the floor were good to lie in and made a comfortable bed, the night wore on, and after settling down every meerkat slept well until the sun came up early next morning.
The roof was pushed back a little to let in some sunlight and it was then Mother looked at us and exclaimed, “Your faces… just look at your faces! Both of you have gone all pink in the face!”
We looked at each other and could see she was right, and there were many other rather pink faces all around.
“I do not feel so good, Mother, my stomach is so tight and I am so fat.”
“Me too, Mum,” said brother Mike. “Fat and full and kind of tight everywhere.”
With that Mike did a big loud burp and Mother put her paw in his ear. She scalded him with shouts of “Manners!” and things like that.
