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When the Cat felt comfortable enough to, he climbed partially up one of the trees and watched them unseen. Eventually, giggling again, they went back inside.  They left the sliding door open. The Cat looked at the open door for a long time, as though considering going in. The hostile action finally must have decided him against it.

At this point he jumped down from the tree and walked towards the gate. He looked up at the lock, a visual memory coming to him of his Man opening a similar gate by pressing on part of the metal lever. The Cat jumped up to a crossbeam of the fence that was parallel to the lever. Keeping his precarious balance, he pushed his paw down experimentally and without result. Then he positioned his body, coiling it as well as he could on the narrow ledge for a jump. He could hear them, scratching and moaning just beyond.

He jumped straight down on the lever and fell clumsily to the ground. The gate immediately was pushed open, and the Cat could hear and smell the Not-People move from behind it. He up-righted himself and sprinted back to the tree at top speed, climbing halfway up it and stopping to watch.

Beneath him, the Not-People lurched throw the lawn, a brown lady at their front. They made for the sliding door and pushed it open, filing into the house in their clumsy way. Wednesday’s voice rose above the din, saying something almost intelligible, and then her screaming, and that of her boyfriend, started in earnest.

Outside, the Cat patiently lay in the tree, waiting for when it would be safe for him to run down and rejoin his colony. He licked a paw and cleaned his face while he waited, while the screams within the house turned first to a wet munching noise and then, finally, the moronic and ceaseless bumping and moaning of the Not-People.