A crowd of stuffies had gathered on Scissors Bridge. Their binoculars were trained on the Wiggly Mountains. The calico cat was tearing down a gully, covering ground at an incredible rate.
The dog didn't stand a chance. He was only the size of a freight truck, and the cat was bigger than a battleship. She'd run him down, humiliate him, tie him up like a steer in his own yanked-out packing twine, flay his skin, eat his tongue, and then hump his cadaver in the dead of night, while howling to wake the dead. And why not? The dog deserved it. The cat couldn't recall just what he'd done, but that wasn't important. He was guilty as sin, and he'd take what was coming to him.
That night the cat would cripple and devour her perpetual playmate, according to the ancient curse that neither monster could break, since neither could remember it. And at midnight Anndy would return to the Table Land with his questions and her impatience. And as usual the god's monstrous pets would try to follow their master's train of thought, as a dog might chase a car. But their answers to Anndy's questions would be stupid, as stupid as stupid could be, as stupid as the moronic celluloid smile on the face of a mute and paralyzed stuffed animal.
So things went in Plush City. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the dog had hunted the cat. On Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, the cat had exacted her revenge. Next week the schedule would reverse itself, just as regular as a seesaw or a hobbyhorse or a metronome. Just as regular as the pendulum of the old Dutch clock in the Parlor Behind the Sky.
So nothing would ever change in Plush City, except in the way that a seesaw changes — back and forth, up and down. Which is really no change at all.