Shirley Murphy - Cat Playing Cupid

Mike swung out of the car, and before he could move around to open her door, she was out and on the sidewalk. He caught a glimpse of the two of them approaching the glass door to the station, and was startled by the rightness of the reflection, his lean build and her slim, long-waisted figure seeming to cleave together naturally. Watching the reflection, he felt as if they had never broken off their relationship.

He held the door for her, and when he looked up, Dallas stood in the foyer, beside the dispatcher's counter, watching them with that unreadable, dark-eyed gaze that would intimidate the hardest felon. The Latino detective was freshly shaved, his short, dark hair newly cut, and was dressed for the party in jeans, a white turtleneck, and a tweed sport coat. The look on his face, as he studied Lindsey, gave Mike pause. It was a look of interest that Mike seldom saw in his brother-in-law's eyes- Dallas 's warm Latin temperament embraced his good hunting dogs in a far more constant manner than it had ever done with any of his short-lived love affairs.

Mike tried not to bristle at Dallas 's interest as they moved down the hall to the detective's office where Dallas made Lindsey comfortable in the leather easy chair and offered her coffee, which she refused. There was a brief discussion of what the cold file contained, and they made an appointment with her for late Monday morning, at the station, the morning after the wedding. If not for Dallas 's watchful interest, Mike might have asked her to join him for breakfast before they were to meet. Dallas rose first, to escort Lindsay out to the front. Watching the two of them walk down the hall together, Dallas's broad, tweed-covered shoulders and dark hair, Lindsey's slim, graceful walk in the pale, faded jeans and sweater, the two of them looked, he thought, startled, as if they had known each other for a long time-maybe it was a trick Lindsey had that he'd never before noticed, maybe her way of bonding with a man.

Or maybe her compliance was totally unconscious. Whatever the case, the effect was charming-or, in this instance, damned annoying.

He didn't want to be at cross purposes with Dallas, certainly not just before Ryan's wedding. He watched Dallas escort Lindsey out, then he and Dallas headed for the party, saying little on the short drive, their silence not their usual easy quiet, but tense-they were, for the first time he could remember, at odds over a woman.

But as they pulled up in front of Clyde's house, he looked at Dallas and grinned, and they put their bristling aside and went in, wisecracking and looking for a beer.

A FTER THE BLOODLETTING, as Joe Grey thought of his stress-filled donation of vital bodily fluids, the tomcat lay safely on the couch in Dr. Firetti's private office snuggled among Dulcie, Kit, and Charlie, listening to the doctor's voice from the surgery and the occasional sound of instruments clicking against the metal table-and thanking the great cat god that he was out of there.

"How did it go?" Charlie said, gently stroking him. "You seem a bit pale."

Joe glared up at her. "How can a cat look pale? You can see beneath my fur?"

"Your expression is pale. Wan," she said. "Inside your ears is pale."

In truth, he felt pale. Felt wiped out. His paws were still sweaty, and he could still feel the cold metal table under him, where he'd lain half blinded by the harsh hospital lights reflecting off the table and the bright metal instruments and glass tubes; he could still feel that huge needle going into his little cat vein-he'd tried to be macho when his foreleg was shaved, his sleek gray fur stripped away to pale, naked skin and blue veins and then that huge needle was plunged deep in and his lifeblood drawn from his body into a syringe big enough to bleed a cart horse.

How could a heretofore kind and caring doctor cold-heartedly remove all his life-sustaining juices? As Firetti had drawn the plunger back farther and farther, extracting more blood than any cat could have inside him, Joe had resisted a terrible urge to claw and tear at the doctor. In fact, though, with the needle in him, he'd been afraid to move at all and cause himself further damage-but then, when he'd glanced across at Kit expecting to see her trembling and cowering, what he saw had shattered him.

There she lay on the next table, calmly purring while she was shaved and the needle was inserted and her blood burbled out into the vial. Purring. As mindlessly relaxed as a stuffed teddy bear-her cool nonchalance had left him furious and shamefully embarrassed.

The fact that Firetti had said he'd take less than sixty cc's had no meaning for Joe. And it wasn't Firetti's blood.

At least Dulcie hadn't seen his cowardice, she hadn't been in the operating room; she'd been out here with Charlie lounging in Dr. Firetti's office, supplied with catnip, a bowl of turkey tetrazzini gourmet cat food, a cuddle toy, and a soft blanket.

Now, listening to Firetti's and his assistant's voices resonating softly from beyond the closed door against the harsh sounds of metal on metal, he pictured scalpels and other sharp cutting instruments, and he felt sick and hurting for poor Sage-every alarming TV show he'd ever seen featuring veterinary surgery came back to him. Why had he ever watched that stuff? He vowed never to watch again. He was glad Clyde and Ryan's taste in TV ran to turning off the set and snuggling before the fire or opening a good book. Beside him, Charlie was still fussing over him, stroking him way too gently.

"You want more custard, Joe, to get your strength back?"

"I've had three."

"I expect Kit seemed braver," Charlie said, as if reading his mind. "I expect she seemed more stoic in the matter of blood and needles?"

Joe stared coldly up at her.

"Human males are the same," Charlie said. "It's in the genes, that sudden weakness at the sight of blood."

"Cops can handle blood," Joe said irritably, wishing she'd mind her own business.

"Cops get used to it early, they have to. Anyway, you don't shrink from mouse blood."

"Mouse blood is not my blood."

Beside him, Kit had begun to squirm, as nervous as a rat on a hot stove, pawing the blanket one minute and deadly still the next. She didn't take her eyes from the inner door to the surgery. Her tortoiseshell ears were sharply forward, picking up every faint sound, her whole being focused on the young tomcat lying in there under the knife. Joe had seldom seen her so distressed; he watched her uneasily.

"You and Sage were kittens together?" he asked.

"Ever since my momma abandoned me where the clowder roamed. I remember her taking me there, carrying me by the nape of my neck swinging and jiggling through the tall grass. She laid me where the clowder would find me then she went away again and I think she was sick. I guess she died," Kit said sadly. "I followed the clowder, but they kept chasing me away. Sage was little, too, but he was Stone Eye's nephew, he belonged with them. I was an outsider, they didn't want me. Stone Eye didn't want me, and they all did as he told them. He didn't want any kittens besides his own. Sage was the only one who liked me, and he would sneak away to be with me. I was terrified of Stone Eye, but I needed to stay with them, I was only small and I needed the safety of that big band of cats. I didn't know how to hunt, and there were foxes and raccoons and coyotes in the hills.

"Sage stood up for me against the other young cats, and then one day Stone Eye mauled him real bad for being my friend. You can feel the scars under his fur."

She pricked up her ears at a new sound from the surgery, as if a table had been rolled across the room. Then all was still except the doctor's voice, too soft to understand.