Shirley Murphy - Cat Seeing Double

In the bright autumn weather Molena Point was mobbed with tourists, but despite the glut of out-of-town cars Clyde found a parking place half a block from the church. Swinging a U-turn he neatly parked, scooped up the two cats to keep them safe from traffic, and they crossed to the deep garden in front of the Village Church.

The garden paths were already crowded with villagers. Pausing beside a lemon tree, Clyde half-lifted and half-tossed the two cats into the branches away from crowding feet. Ryan watched them climb, as Clyde headed inside the church to his duties as best man.

She saw, across the garden, her uncle Dallas and her sister. Hanni, decked out in outrageous rags, looked like a million dollars. It was the first time in months that she had seen Dallas in uniform and not in his detective's plainclothes. The entire police force had turned out spit-and-polish, everyone in the village was dressed up and in a party mood. In the excitement of celebration on such a lovely day she had no reason to imagine that disaster would, within moments, rock the church and the garden.

But as the wedding guests laughed and gossiped, and inside the church the groom in his captain's uniform paced with nerves, an unexpected event began to unfold, a drama that could alter-or cut short-the course of many lives.

At first, no one saw the lone witness. Not even Joe Grey and Dulcie, crouched high among the branches of the lemon tree, saw the tortoiseshell cat on the rooftops across the street. The two older cats had no glimpse of the tattercoat kit hunched on the dark shingles hidden beneath the overhanging oak branches; they had no hint of the panic that would, in a moment, course through the kit's small, tensed body.

The community church was set well back from the street within its garden of flowering shrubs and small decorative trees. The nonsectarian meeting rooms of the one-story Mediterranean building were employed for all manner of village functions besides church services, from political discussions to author readings. The kit had hung around the church all morning watching the cleaning crew performing a last polish and setting up buffet tables on the back patio; and she had watched masses of white flowers being delivered and arranged within the largest meeting room. Only when the wedding guests began to arrive had she trotted across the narrow residential street, to be out of the way of sharp-heeled party shoes and the hard black oxfords of the many uniformed officers. Swarming up a jasmine trellis to the roof of a brown clapboard cottage, she had stretched out where an oak tree's shadows darkened the weathered shingles. Here, she had the best seat of all, with a clear view across the garden and through the wide glass doors to the lectern where the bride and groom would stand, exchanging their sacred vows.

She had watched Charlie and Wilma arrive, Wilma carrying the bridal dress in a long plastic bag and Charlie carrying a small suitcase. What a lot of preparation it took for humans to get married, nothing like the casual trysting of the feral cats she had run with when she was small. The two women entered the south wing of the church through a back door, where the bride would have a private office in which to dress. The kit was watching the growing crowd when, below her, the bushes stirred with a sharp rustle, and a man spoke.

He must be standing between the close-set houses. The timbre of his gravelly voice suggested he was old. He sounded bad-tempered. "Go on. Boy. Get your ass up there, you haven't got all day."

No one answered, but someone began to climb the trellis, slowly approaching the roof. The kit could hear me little crosspieces creak under a hesitant weight. Padding warily away across the shingles, she crouched beneath overhanging branches out of sight, where she could see.

A young boy was climbing up. A thin dirty boy with ragged shirt and torn jeans, his face smudged, but pale beneath the dark smears. His black eyes were oblique and hard, his hands brown with dirt. One pocket bulged as if maybe he'd stuffed a candy bar in it, fortification against sudden hunger. The kit knew that feeling.

Peering over, she studied the man who stood below. He was equally ragged, his faded jeans stained, his face bristling with a grizzled beard, his gray hair hanging long around his shoulders. Both man and boy stunk of sharp scents that made the kit's nose burn. The boy had gained the roof. He didn't swing up onto it, but stopped at the edge, turning to look down.

"Go on, Curtis. They'll be filling the church in a minute."

"I don't…"

"Just lie under the branches, no one'll see you. Wait till Harper's in there and the girl and them cops, then punch it and get out. I'll be gone like I told you, the truck gone. You just slip away, no one'll see you."

Clinging in the vines, the boy looked both determined and scared, like a cornered rat, the kit thought, trapped in a tin can with nowhere to run.

"Just punch it, Curtis. Your dad's in jail because of them cops."

Swinging a leg over, the boy gained the roof, crouching near the kit beneath the oak branches. She didn't think he saw her, he seemed totally centered on finding a vantage where he would be hidden but could best see the church.

When he'd chosen his place he removed from his pocket a small smooth object like a tiny radio, and laid it on the shingles beside him. The kit puzzled over it for some time before she understood what it was, this small, plastic, boxlike thing that the boy could hide in one hand. Wilma had one, and so did Clyde. And the old man's voice echoed, Just punch it and get out. She didn't understand-there was no garage door in the church to open. Why would…

Just punch it and get out…

What else could a garage-door opener do, the kit wondered, besides open the door for which it was intended? With its little battery inside, its little electrical battery, what could it do?

Just punch it and get out… Wait until Harper's in there, and the girl…

That little electrical battery, that little electric signal…

All the wonders of electrical things that had so astonished the kit when she first came to live among humans: the dishwasher, the refrigerator, the warmth of an electric blanket, the magical lifting of the garage door while Wilma was still in the car, its signal leaping from that opener-its electrical signal leaping…

She remembered cop talk about triggering devices. She stared across the street into the church where someone had left a gift for the bride and groom, a silver-wrapped package tucked down into the lectern where Charlie and Max Harper would stand to be married. She had seen it earlier as she watched the workers, had thought it was a special present hidden just where the preacher would stand, where the bride and groom would stand, a gift all silver-wrapped with little silver bells on the ribbon…

A special present…

A gift that was not a gift, she realized with a quaking heart, and the kit exploded to life, racing at the boy, leaping on his back, raking and biting and forcing him away from that electric signal-maker, that plastic box that could send its message across the street into the church, could send its triggering message…

She might be wrong. The boy's actions might be innocent. But… Your dad's in jail because of them cops… Punch it and get out… Terrified and enraged, she clawed and raked and bit, driving the boy away across the roof, forcing him toward the trellis. Nearly falling, he swung away down the trellis, the kit clinging to his back.

Before he hit the ground she dropped clear and ran flashing across the street between cars…