RONA AND JONAH STEAL A CAT (Pt. 1)

October 15th, 2026

By: Eli Protas

There are a few ways to steal a cat. This one isn’t the easiest, or the safest, or the most tethered to reality. This one comes up late at night, it creeps into the conversation in the unexamined darkness of the witching hour, far far away from the glaring lamplight of reason. This one happens because Jonah and Rona miss Chile, and they miss Santiago like a big fuzzy cat that won’t let you scratch her belly, except maybe on your very last day. San Francisco is thirteen hours from Santiago, and it’s 10 from New York. But that’s direct, and the Na’s fly Hopegoo.

Hopegoo is the kind of flight booking site that isn’t on the dark web, but probably should be. It’ll give you a flight for $100, look you right in your eyes with a grimace, and then spit on your shoes. It might also give you a $5 coupon for a shoe shining. Hopegoo isn’t the kind of travel company you use if you want to get where you're going fast, or at all. If you look on Reddit they will tell you that their tickets never arrived, or they were sent somewhere far across the world, or ended up on a one way flight right back to the airport they left from. The top comment on a post asking if a $500 flight being sold for $43 on Hopegoo is too good to be true is “come on man, you know better”

But Jonah and Rona don’t know better. They are already at the airports, with Hopegoo’s small, too-thin tickets riding snugly in their pockets. Jonah is ushered to a flight for North Las Vegas. Rona heads for Tallahassee. At this point I should probably tell you their plan, at least as far as I’ve worked it out from the midnight voice call they made on their way to the airports. It was established pretty early on that Maria Paz, their former host mother (a term generous to the point of insincerity), was not the kind of lady who would ever let them set foot into her small pottery encrusted home in Bellavista ever again. If it were up to Princesa Peluda – the lounging orange tabby that rounded out their lopsided family – they’d be welcomed with open arms, but Peluda had no opposable thumbs to work the door and ranked a close second in authority to Maria Paz. After batting around the idea of prosthetic cat thumbs, the Na’s moved on to questions of locks and doors. They were pretty sure that Maria Paz had a door, and knowing their luck she probably had a lock too, one that the door wouldn’t be keen to part with.

A second point, established as Rona passed by some bridge nobody had ever heard of, was that breaking and entering was a bad look legally, and an unfitting punishment for Maria Paz. Meals of rice and a single cut up hot dog were regaled, as well as pairs of underwear burnt on the space heater and arguments about having their very dashing and quite polite friend over to spend the night. Ultimately, bashing in the front door was thrown out in favor of a larger and inarguably funnier option. Jonah and Rona were going to take the roof. Strictly speaking this wasn’t necessary in order to see Princessa Peluda, but Rona and Jonah were seldom ruled by the mandates of “strictly” and “necessary.”

Jonah had already tried burning the house down on one occasion, so he figured he might as well build on an existing body of work. Anyways, where are they? Rona landed with a jolt in North Las Vegas, cursing her lack of a neck pillow, and possession of a neck. The trouble with neck pillows is that you only remember to buy them when you’re already at the airport, and by that time the rising price of inflation has got to them and you end up spending roughly the equivalent of a small used car just to get the airbag.

So ok, the lack of neck pillow definitely didn’t help, but the real reason Rona landed with a jolt was that she was in the incapable hands of Stan Scrangle, the third worst pilot ever issued a certification by the FAA. Worse still, the rest of Scrangle was as incapable as his hands, all except for his rock steady heart of gold that beat madly within his trembling chest.

The reason that such a shining star of human excretion had ever drifted to the great heights of pilocy was that his appraising officer had eaten a particularly spicy burrito in the hours before the big test, and was so upset by her recent loss of a $300 wager on the outcome of the 1993 world series that she was grasping for any opportunity to see the positive in a steadily disimproving day. Unfortunately for Rona, the positive that day was that Stan Scrangle had the bravery and gall to apply for a pilot’s license despite having no business at all flying a plane.

For Rona, the upshot of Scrangle’s bumpy landing was that her suitcase went tumbling from the overhead compartment, knocked the smart bowler cap off the gentleman in row 53, and landed squarely in the middle of the aisle, at which point it was piled upon by approximately 14 other suitcases that had had similar ideas about escaping. Rona’s earthly possessions were lost amid a sea of clothes appropriate to the frigid climes of North Las Vegas, a tundra region commonly and quite incorrectly associated with the arid hell of Las Vegas. In fact, the two were nothing alike, North Las Vegas being an outlying town in the far reaches of the Yukon and Las Vegas being a promontory outpost on the edge of America’s very own lake of fire. This being the case, the clothing consisted largely of smartly lined winter coats, stupidly lined summer slacks, and a light smattering of imitation crab gloves. Remember those now, you just might need them later on.

Rona joined the throng as they rushed into the aisles, employing the every-person-for-themself approach to luggage reallocation. Rona ended up down a considerable amount of bar soap, a pair of matching green jackets, and a bird whistle in the shape of a crocodile. She finally resurfaced from the baggage brawl with three left gloves, all carefully crafted to the proportions of a Maryland blue crab, a basket of irate parakeets all hurling obscenities in a language no one had invented yet, and her very own pair of roller skates. And a good thing she did, too, because Rona would’ve killed someone if it meant getting those skates back. Perhaps it was the mad gleam in her eyes or the menacing way she clicked her newfound pincers that kept the other passengers from laying a finger on those splendid wheels.

One good thing to know about the Yukon is that it is not in Santiago, and in fact it isn’t even particularly close. Rona briefly considered checking the bus schedule, but when she found that the only service running that far north was the Flix bus she thought better of it. Instead, seeing as she was already this far north she figured she might as well just keep going until she came all the way around and ended up somewhere in Patagonia. She’d been there before, so she figured as long as she could skate up to Puerto Natales then instincts would take her the rest of the way. She already had the gloves situation sorted, and while the parakeets took little interest in the voyage to the Antarctic, they did shriek some mildly helpful words of encouragement in a language long lost to the knowledge of men. This sounded something like “DAg Jambit! Afig Fig threep.” Rona, a master intuiter of tone, got the gist.

So up, up, into the north it was, as Jonah labored his way along the lonely roads of Talahasee, scrunching his eyes tight as if to summon the fickle spirits of hitchhiking. He’d actually landed a few hours earlier and a few bumps fewer than Rona, but after learning that there would be no connecting flight to Santiago his methods got a bit unorderly. Jonah sprinted out of the airport in a red rage, letting his long runner’s strides carry him out into the waiting arms of a warm Florida summer night. Jonah chased the yellow median as far as he could over the Florida plains before the hollow smack of the asphalt began to make him paranoid. As he counted out his measured steps he began to hear two, then three feet all meeting the blacktop. He whirled around, but saw nothing except the winking lights of the airport, winks he knew were not meant for him.

What was he afraid of exactly? He’d been in Florida for all of thirty minutes, surely he couldn’t have made any enemies in that time. He thought back to his flight, but even then he’d been on his best behavior. He’d made sure to uncan any gas in the tank before the plane took off, and had even offered the person next to him an extra mint he’d discovered in his pocket. They’d declined, but that was their problem. And he could hardly imagine the De-Mintinator stalking him tirelessly across the plains. He could definitely imagine the mask the De-Mintinator might wear, and their matching red cape swirling in a villainous gust of wind, but that was a story for a different day. Jonah took one last glance back at the road, and then plunged into the orange groves that thronged him on all sides. Soon he was lost among the trees. The wind laughed warmly through the branches as Jonah whirled around, trying to get his bearings in the endless corridors of trees. It struck him that their geometry was perfect, a giant’s bingo board just waiting to be filled with the orange spheres of the coming season. When it was clear that there was no end in sight, Jonah picked up a yellowish orange and hurled it deep into the groves, waiting impatiently for the satisfying smack. But it never came. Instead, as he pricked his ears in anticipation he was met with a low grumble, the kind made by world-weary pick up trucks or malcontent ticket counter operatives. It sounded like a thing not entirely enamored with its job and even less pleased to have been distracted from it. More importantly, it sounded Big.

Suddenly, Jonah watched in horror as a flock of birds exploded from the tree tops like their tails had been set on fire, squawking bloody murder and dashing for the horizon. The trees began to shake and rustle, and booming steps shuddered the ground. In a blind panic Jonah sprinted down one of the long corridors among the trees, begging the unseen god of oranges to have mercy on his poor citrus sinning soul. He dared not look back, but as he ran he felt an inexorable gaze fall upon him, nearly pinning him to the ground with the weight of its intensity. He labored onwards, but his feet seemed to catch on every outstretched root, bringing him closer and closer to the inevitable earth.

Finally he fell forwards, shooting a nasty glance at one of the trees as he went down. It smiled back at him unmovingly, and Jonah reflected how bitter he might feel if he had been made to stand perfectly still all his life and give up the fruit of his labors to the thankless public. His reveries on the plight of the orange were interrupted by a great scaled hand reaching down and scooping him off the floor. Jonah felt a warm wind blowing upon him, and cracked open his shuttered eyes just a sliver to see a huge pockmarked mouth blowing gently upon him. A rumbling voice said, “five second rule” , and then the mouth split open to reveal two rows of crooked teeth, leaning in the silvery moonlight like amateaur grave stones. A green breeze wafted out of that cavernous maw, reminding Jonah of the summertime, not a bad season to die. But then the mouth laughed long and heartily, a booming rumble that shook the trees and made Jonah certain that the joke must be on him. But it wasn’t.

The scaled hand raised him until he was looking at the dome of a gigantic orange head, inlaid with that grinning gravestone mouth, and a large flaring nose, but no eyes. If the thing had had eyes, Jonah thought that they might be peering into his soul. He hoped that the creature was not a good judge of character. “Hey excuse me busta” he managed, “you put me down riiiiight now or I’ve got a big surprise for you.”

The creature rolled its spherical head to the side, as if to ask what the surprise might be. Jonah had never gotten this far with an eldritch fruit horror, and it showed. He squirmed a little in that pulping grasp, slowly squeezing him tighter and tighter until he was sure he’d be juiced. He had no illusions about whether or not he would taste good. He knew he wouldn’t.

“Ok listen mister, you let me go and I know where a huge dummy lives, ” Jonah mustered, “Oh yeah this guy stinks something awful, I bet he’d make really good juice. ”

The monster paused. It looked down at Jonah’s limp body clenched within its fist. He was a meek thing, it decided, a juice hardly worth the squeeze. Still, an orange had to eat. Just as Jonah was brought closer and closer to a liquid state, Ronah was hurtling northwards, he skates striking sparks on the frozen ground. Clutched in her right claw was the basket of parakeets, who despite their general apathy for the human condition had correctly deduced that Rona was by far the most interesting person on the plane and most likely to bring them on an adventure. Now their caws hung frostily in the air, and they wished they had brought their scarves.



How on earth does Jonah escape the orange goliath? Does he trick his way out?? Find out this and more in the next installment of… RONA AND JONAH STEAL A CAT!!