Shirley Murphy - Cat Seeing Double

The kit followed. They were poised among the pillows looking down at that sea of colors and sniffing the scent of clean wool when Ryan and Hanni looked up.

Ryan lifted her hand as if to stop them, but Hanni laughed. Any other designer, confronted with cats on her costly installation, would have shouted and chased them away. Hanni simply watched them, watched Joe Grey pad in too, stepping diffidently among the pillows.

"What harm can they do?" Hanni said. "Come on, cats. Are your paws clean?" She looked where they had trod and saw no dirt. "Come on, have a roll before the grande dame arrives. It's your only chance. Marianna would eat you alive." She grinned at Ryan. "Can you imagine? Cats on her hundred-thousand-dollar masterpiece?"

"Don't you worry they'll pull a thread?"

"It's a well-made piece, the English know how to make rugs that last-the English know there'll be cats on them. And Joe is a perfect gentleman. Kate and I kept him for a week, at the cottage, when we were down looking at the Pamillon estate. Something about Clyde painting his place. The cat had perfect manners then. Why would he be different now?"

Beneath the cats' paws, the wool was softer than a featherbed. Dulcie and the kit rolled deliriously, wriggling, sinking into the thick pile, the kit flipping back and forth lashing her long, fluffy tail.

But Joe rolled for only a moment. He came to rest lying on his back, his white paws waving in the air as if in total abandon while he considered the flaw in the fireplace.

In the morning light, from this angle, he couldn't see that out-of-place, ragged scar. Rolling across the rug as if crazy with play, he looked again.

Nothing. The rising dawn light coming from every direction showed the black recess as smooth as the other two. But last night he had seen the diagonal scar running down the right-hand rectangle, as sure as his name was Joe Grey. Rolling again, he tried another angle.

"See," Hanni said, "they're not doing any harm. But, oh boy, wouldn't Marianna flip!"

"You love doing something that would enrage her."

"She'll never know, as long as they're out before she gets here."

"She's coming down? This morning?"

"She's in Half Moon Bay-or was, last night. She called me about something, I told her the rug was here. She sounded pretty excited, for ice queen Marianna. Said she'd be down early, that she had some business in the village. One of their rentals, I suppose." Sullivan had, several years before when the real-estate market was soft, made some excellent investments in Molena Point.

"There, that's the last of it," Hanni said, smoothing the corner of the rug. Standing, she stepped up to the tiled entry with Ryan for a full view. They could see, even with the three cats sprawled across the rug, that it lay smooth and flat, a perfect fit, a meadow of color as fine as any painting.

"I'd like to roll on it, myself," Hanni said.

"Go ahead, you earned it. It truly is magnificent. You can-"

Both women turned as a car pulled into the drive. They couldn't see it from the entry, that wall and the door were solid. Hanni, stepping into the bedroom to look through the window, hurried out again. "Get the cats out! Come on Joe Grey, Dulcie. Move it, she's coming."

Her excited voice would have startled even the dullest cat. But as Joe and Dulcie leaped for the open screen, Marianna, with her usual dispatch, was out of the car and through the front door, her tall, slim figure frozen in the doorway.

The cats, crouched among fallen branches, looked for the kit, but she had vanished. They peered back toward the bright room, where Marianna stood on the landing. She was dressed in a severe black suit, long gold earrings, black stockings, black sandals with four-inch heels. Her eyes were fixed on the fireplace, her expression unbelieving.

Staring back at her from among the freshly split logs, the kit crouched unmoving, her black-and-brown coat hardly visible against the pine bark, but her yellow eyes wide with fear.

Having apparently, in her panic, bolted straight through the mesh curtain, she was trapped. When Marianna approached the firebox, the kit backed deeper, shivering, too frightened to bolt past her and run.

Kit stared out of the fireplace at the tall, black-suited, spike-heeled blonde with all the fear she would exhibit facing Lucifer himself. And from the woods outside, Joe and Dulcie watched with the same fear of the woman. Even Ryan looked uncertain.

But Hanni moved into the empty silence, laughing. "One little cat, Marianna. Look at her, she couldn't resist your lovely new rug. Your English weavers would say that's good luck, to have a little cat bless their creation."

Marianna gave Hanni a look that should have reduced her to a grease spot. Hanni took Marianna's hands in her own and tried to ease her down the steps onto the thick, bright rug. Marianna resisted as rigidly as if cast from stone; and Hanni smiled more brightly. "Slip off your sandals, Marianna. Come, sit on it, isn't it a wonder?" Hanni sat down cross-legged on the bright weave. "I am just so thrilled. Tell me you're as pleased as we are."

"There was not one cat in here, Hanni, mere were three. I can't believe you would let cats into my home to make their messes on a brand-new, hundred-thousand-dollar, one-of-a-kind handmade rag, to leave filthy fleas, and very likely ticks."

"We didn't see them come in," Hanni said, smiling. "We didn't see them until just as you pulled into the drive, they can only have been in here for a second while our backs were turned."

Beyond the screened windows crouched among the forest's foliage, Joe and Dulcie looked at each, laughing at Hanni's chutzpah, but frightened. The kit was still trapped in there, crouched in the firebox staring up at Marianna. From the look in the kit's eyes, Marianna would not be smart to reach into the fireplace meaning to snatch her out and evict her.

As they watched, Ryan knelt, reaching in to the kit. The kit came to her at once. Ryan picked her up, carried her to the long windows, set her through and gave her a Utile pat, then closed the screen.

Kit was a streak, fleeing to them. Behind her, Hanni laughed. "What harm did she do? Just a pretty little neighborhood cat."

Pressing between Joe and Dulcie, the kit shivered with the residue of fear, but lashed her tail with anger. "I would have slashed her, I would have bloodied her." But soon she began to wriggle, to scratch at something in her fur. Turning, she licked her back, fidgeting as if she itched all over.

"What?" Dulcie said. "What did you do? Did you pick up a tick? Don't get it on me. Let me have a look."

"Hard," the kit said, licking again and spitting something into the dry leaves and pine needles. "Not a tick. Rocks in my fur."

Joe nosed at the bit of debris that had fallen among the leaves, and peered closely. He turned it over with his nose, then looked at the kit. "Are there more of these in your fur? Don't shake them off! Come out to the drive. Don't spill any! Walk carefully. Hurry, Kit! Come on!"

Puzzled but obedient, the kit followed. Joe nudged her to a spot on the drive not visible from the living room, and licked at her fur until he had dislodged three more rough pebbles. On me smooth drive he pawed at them, turning them over until each piece lay with its smooth side up, the surface painted jet black. They were bits of broken cement, each with one smooth surface.

"Did you feel those before you hid in the fireplace?"

The kit shook her whiskers. "No."

Carefully Joe pawed the fragments onto an oak leaf, and slid that beneath a bush. When he turned to look at them, his yellow eyes burned with excitement. And quickly he moved to Ryan's truck. "Watch for me, Dulcie, in case anyone comes."