Sharyn McCrumb - Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

The sun was low behind the surrounding pines by the time Danby arrived at the Eskeridge’s mock-Tudor home. He had been delayed en route by the scent of another cat, a neutered orange male. (Even to his color-blind eyes, an orange cat was recognizable. It might be the shade of gray, or the configuration of white at the throat and chest.) He had hunted up this fellow feline, and made considerable efforts to communicate, but as far as he could tell, there was no higher intelligence flickering behind its blank green eyes. There was no intelligence at all, as far as Danby was concerned; he’d as soon try talking to a shrub. Finally tiring of the eunuch’s unblinking stare, he’d stalked off, forgoing more social experiments in favor of his mission.

He sat for a long time under the forsythia hedge in Giles’s front yard, studying the house for signs of life. He refused to be distracted by a cluster of sparrows cavorting on the birdbath, but he realized that unless a meal was coming soon, he would be reduced to foraging. The idea of hurling his bulk at a few ounces of twittering songbird made his scowl even more forbidding than usual. He licked a front paw and glowered at the silent house.

After twenty minutes or so, he heard the distant hum of a car engine, and smelled gasoline fumes. Danby peered out from the hedge in time to see Julie Eskeridge’s Mercedes rounding the corner from Windsor Way. With a few hasty licks to smooth down his ruff, Danby sauntered toward the driveway just as the car pulled in. Now for the hard part: how do you impress Julie Eskeridge without a checkbook?

He had never noticed before how much Giles’s wife resembled a giraffe. He blinked at the sight of her huge feet swinging out of the car perilously close to his nose. They were followed by two replicas of the Alaska pipeline, both encased in nylon. Better not jump up on her; one claw on the stockings, and he’d have an enemy for life. Julie was one of those people who air-kissed because she couldn’t bear to spoil her makeup. Instead of trying to attract her attention at the car (where she could have skewered him with one spike heel), Danby loped to the steps of the side porch, and began meowing piteously. As Julie approached the steps, he looked up at her with wide-eyed supplication, waiting to be admired.

“Shoo, cat!” said Julie, nudging him aside with her foot.

As the door slammed in his face, Danby realized that he had badly miscalculated. He had also neglected to devise a backup plan. A fine mess he was in now. It wasn’t enough that he was murdered and reassigned to cathood. Now he was also homeless.

He was still hanging around the steps twenty minutes later when Giles came home, mainly because he couldn’t think of an alternate plan just yet. When he saw Giles’s black sports car pull up behind Julie’s Mercedes, Danby’s first impulse was to run, but then he realized that, while Giles might see him, he certainly wouldn’t recognize him as his old business partner. Besides, he was curious to see how an uncaught murderer looked. Would Giles be haggard with grief and remorse? Furtive, as he listened for police sirens in the distance?

Giles Eskeridge was whistling. He climbed out of his car, suntanned and smiling, with his lips pursed in a cheerfully tuneless whistle. Danby trotted forward to confront his murderer with his haughtiest scowl of indignation. The reaction was not quite what he expected.

Giles saw the huge, fluffy cat, and immediately knelt down, calling, “Here, kitty, kitty!”

Danby looked at him as if he had been propositioned.

“Aren’t you a beauty!” said Giles, holding out his hand to the strange cat. “I’ll bet you’re a pedigreed animal, aren’t you, fella? Are you lost, boy?”

Much as it pained him to associate with a remorseless killer, Danby sidled over to the outstretched hand, and allowed his ears to be scratched. He reasoned that Giles’s interest in him was his one chance to gain entry to the house. It was obvious that Julie wasn’t a cat fancier. Who would have taken heartless old Giles for an animal lover? Probably similarity of temperament, Danby decided.

He allowed himself to be picked up and carried into the house, while Giles stroked his back and told him what a pretty fellow he was. This was an indignity, but still an improvement over Giles’s behavior toward him during their last encounter. Once inside Giles called out to Julie, “Look what I’ve got, honey!”

She came in from the kitchen, scowling. “That nasty cat!” she said. “Put him right back outside!”

At this point Danby concentrated all his energies toward making himself purr. It was something like snoring, he decided, but it had the desired effect on his intended victim, for at once Giles made for his den and plumped down in an armchair, arranging Danby in his lap, with more petting and praise. “He’s a wonderful cat, Julie,” Giles told his wife. “I’ll bet he’s a purebred Maine coon. Probably worth a couple of hundred bucks.”

“So are my wool carpets,” Mrs. Eskeridge replied. “So are my new sofas! And who’s going to clean up his messes?”

That was Danby’s cue. He had already thought out the pièce de résistance in his campaign of endearment. With a trill that meant “This way, folks!,” Danby hopped off his ex-partner’s lap and trotted to the downstairs bathroom. He had used it often enough at dinner parties, and he knew that the door was left ajar. He had been saving up for this moment. With Giles and his missus watching from the doorway, Danby hopped up on the toilet seat, twitched his elegant plumed tail, and proceeded to use the toilet in the correct manner.

He felt a strange tingling in his paws, and he longed to scratch at something and cover it up, but he ignored these urges, and basked instead in the effusive praise from his self-appointed champion. Why couldn’t Giles have been that enthusiastic over his design for the Jenner building, Danby thought resentfully. Some people’s sense of values was so warped. Meanwhile, though, he might as well savor the Eskeridges’ transports of joy over his bowel control; there weren’t too many ways for cats to demonstrate superior intelligence. He couldn’t quote a little Shakespeare or identify the dinner wine. Fortunately, among felines toilet training passed for genius, and even Julie was impressed with his accomplishments. After that, there was no question of Giles turning him out into the cruel world. Instead, they carried him back to the kitchen and opened a can of tuna fish for his dining pleasure. He had to eat it in a bowl on the floor, but the bowl was Royal Doulton, which was some consolation. And while he ate, he could still hear Giles in the background, raving about what a wonderful cat he was. He was in.

“No collar, Julie. Someone must have abandoned him on the highway. What shall we call him?”

“Varmint,” his wife suggested. She was a hard sell.

Giles ignored her lack of enthusiasm for his newfound prodigy. “I think I’ll call him Merlin. He’s a wizard of a cat.”

Merlin? Danby looked up with a mouthful of tuna. Oh well, he thought, Merlin and tuna were better than Tigger and cheap dry cat food. You couldn’t have everything.

After that, he quickly became a full-fledged member of the household, with a newly purchased plastic feeding bowl, a catnip mouse toy, and another little collar with another damned bell. Danby felt the urge to bite Giles’s thumb off while he was attaching this loathsome neckpiece over his ruff, but he restrained himself. By now he was accustomed to the accompaniment of a maniacal jingling with every step he took. What was it with human beings and bells?

Of course, that spoiled his plans for songbird hunting outdoors. He’d have to travel faster than the speed of sound to catch a sparrow now. Not that he got out much, anyhow. Giles seemed to think that he might wander off again, so he was generally careful to keep Danby housebound.