Shirley Murphy: Cat Spitting Mad

To Kate Osborne, an invitation to view the Pamillon mansion was a welcome excuse to get out of the city and away from the danger that, perhaps, she only imagined.

Whatever the truth, the stories in the papers had fired her fear until she couldn't sleep at night, until she had put a bolt on the inside of both the front and the bedroom doors, until she was afraid to walk, except in the middle of the day, or even to take the bus or cable car. She was losing all sense of proportion, and that terrified her.

She had vowed, before ever she fled the city, to make herself visit the Cat Museum, to lay to rest that part of her fears. She would not leave until she had made that short trip up Russian Hill.

Last year, when she'd moved up from Molena Point to the North Beach apartment, she'd been eager to see the museum.

Pictures of the gallery had so intrigued her, the lovely Mediterranean buildings tucked among their sprawling gardens, beneath the old, magnificent oaks. She'd been so eager to study the museum's amazing collection of cat paintings and cat sculpture. How strange that she'd lived in the city when she was younger and had known about the museum, but had never bothered to go there.

Well, she hadn't known, then, all the facts about herself. Anyway, she'd been so busy with art school. Her museum visits, then, had been school related, to the San Francisco Museum and the de Young.

Yet the art collection at the Cat Museum included work by Gauguin, Dubuffet, Picasso-fine pieces, housed in that lovely complex at the top of Russian Hill.

It was only now, after going through a divorce and returning to the city-and after learning the shocking truth about herself- that she had a really urgent reason to visit there. Yet she'd procrastinated for over a year, unable to find the courage, unable to face any more secrets. Each time she'd tried to make that short journey, she'd become all nerves, and turned back.

So they keep real cats, too. Of course they do. Everyone says those lovely cats wandering the gardens add a delightful charm to the famous collection.

Well, but what kind of cats?

That doesn't matter. No one will guess the truth - not even the cats themselves. And what if they did? What do you think they'd do? Come on, Kate. You're such a coward. Can't you get on with it?

And on Saturday morning she woke knowing she would do it. Now. Today. Put down her fear. No more hedging. The morning was beautifully foggy, the way she loved the city, the wet mist swirling outside her second-floor windows, the muffled sounds of the city calling to her like a secret benediction. Quickly she showered and dressed, letting herself think only of the perfect morning and the beauty of the museum, nothing more. Debating whether to have breakfast at the kitchen table, enjoying her view of the fogbound city, or go on to her favorite warm, cozy coffee shop two blocks up Stockton and treat herself to their delicious Swedish pancakes and espresso and homemade sausage.

Hardly a choice. Pulling on her tan windbreaker over jeans and a sweatshirt, fixing the jacket's hood over her short, pale hair, she hurried down the one flight and into the damp breeze that had begun to swirl the fog. Only once, striding along Stockton, did her thoughts skitter warily again, forcing her to take herself in hand.

Slipping in through the glass door of the Iron Pony, she settled in her favorite booth, where she could look out at Coit Tower, fog-shrouded and lonely.

From the kitchen, Ramon saw her, and brought her a cup of freshly brewed espresso, greeting her in Spanish and laughing. She returned his "Buenos dias. Como esta?” laughing in return. Ramon's English was impeccable, but, he'd told her solemnly, he spoke only Spanish when a patron angered him. He'd told her he had a violent temper, that he found it imperative sometimes to hide a sudden anger behind the barrier of language to avoid calling some customer names that would get him, Ramon, fired. If he pretended not to understand the insults, he need not confront them.

A strange young man. Maybe twenty-five years old. Very quiet. And except when he'd been insulted, which she'd never witnessed, a content young man, she thought, seeming totally pleased with the world. Maybe he shifted as quickly as a cat from cool satisfaction to raking claws.

Did she have to drag in the simile of a cat? She sipped her espresso crossly. Couldn't she think of some other description?

She had the notion that Ramon's alabaster-pale skin offered a clue to the quick temper he described, that such bloodless-looking skin and slight build were signs of a person capable of deep rage. She had no notion where she'd gotten such an idea. Of course it was silly. Ramon's obsidian hair and black Latin eyes simply made him look paler-as did the birthmark that splotched his left cheek, the rust-colored deformity spreading from his eye to the corner of his mouth as dark as dried blood, in the shape of the map of India.

She had never dared ask him, in the months she'd been coming here, if it was indeed a birthmark or was perhaps a burn scar- though the skin looked smooth.

She enjoyed chatting with Ramon; she didn't have many friends in San Francisco except her boss, Hanni, and Hanni's uncle, Dallas Garza, a detective with San Francisco PD. She hadn't tried hard to make other friends, because of her situation. She felt uneasy with other people-as if they might be able to tell what she really was. Her casual acquaintance with Ramon allowed her to walk out of the coffee shop and that was the end of it, no social obligation, no secrets shared, nothing more expected.

"The pancakes and sausage as usual, senora?"

"Yes, and orange juice if you please, Ramon, it's such a beautiful morning."

He seemed to understand that a beautiful morning called for orange juice. "The fog is going quickly-like a watercolor washing away. Look how the sun makes jewels."

Together they watched diamonds of dazzle spark at them from the sidewalk where the sun sliced down through the vanishing fog. Ramon had a good eye; he was a student at the art institute where she herself had gone ten years before. It was so good to be back in San Francisco. Nowhere in the world, she thought, were the subtle city colors as splendid as on these hills. When soon the sun rose, every hill, with its crowding houses, would be alive with swift-running cloud shadows, the whole world seeming to shift and move. The city stirred such a fierce joy in her, made her want to race through the streets, turning flips and laughing.

Ramon brought her breakfast and the morning Chronicle, frowning at the story that slashed across the bottom of the front page. The lead and first details were so gruesome that all the fear rose in her again, sour as bile. Why had he brought this paper to her? She wanted to wad it up and run out of the cafe.

"This terrible thing," Ramon said, setting the paper down beside her plate. "How can this be, that a man could do such a bloody deed? For why would a man do this?"

She did not look up at him. She thought she was going to be sick. She imagined far too vividly the poor dead cat hanging limp and twisted from a lamp pole, its throat constricted by a cord tied in a hangman's noose.

"That man should be hanged," Ramon said. "Muerto. Debe murir."

She looked up at him, and swallowed. Ramon wanted only to share with her his rage, share with another his own indignation.

For the last week, all over the city someone had been killing cats, hanging the poor beasts by a twisted noose, choking out their gentle, terrified lives. There had been nineteen incidents, in Haight, Nob Hill, Russian Hill, North Beach, the Presidio. Shoving her plate away, she felt her hands clench and stiffen with what she would like to do to the cat killer.