Shirley Murphy - Cat Playing Cupid

Sage, by this time, was fidgeting and scowling. Everyone watched him, but Kit most of all, her dark ears back, her tail twitching with irritation. When Pedric had finished reading, she crouched for a long time looking at Sage, then she rose to prowl the house, her tail lashing, her yellow eyes blazing; and soon she slipped out of the dining room window and across the oak branch to her tree house where she could be alone.

Quietly Dulcie followed her, concerned for the young tortoiseshell. She found Kit curled up on a cushion in the far corner of the tree house, still scowling, her fluffy tail tucked morosely beneath her. Dulcie approached, sniffed at her, and curled up beside her.

"What, Kit? What's wrong? Sage doesn't like the old tales, but why does that bother you so? Joe doesn't like them either."

"That's different," Kit said, hissing at her.

"Can't Sage have his own likes and dislikes? You're his friend, you should understand that. Or maybe more than his friend?"

"It's the way he…," Kit began miserably. "He so hates the old tales where there are heroes, where there are brave cats saving the weak. He calls those stories foolish." She looked crossly at Dulcie. "That's what Stone Eye told him, and he always believed Stone Eye, he thought Stone Eye knew everything-when all he really knew was how to bully us."

"But Sage turned on Stone Eye," Dulcie said, puzzled. "Sage fought him, and helped kill him." This was more complicated than she'd imagined-and more important to Kit.

"Yes," Kit said, "I thought he'd changed. Maybe he did for a little while. I thought after the battle, with Stone Eye dead and the clowder free again to run and live as they choose, I thought Sage saw what a tyrant Stone Eye was.

"But he hasn't changed," she said sadly, tucking her nose under her paw.

"But you love him, Kit?"

Kit looked up pitifully at Dulcie. "I love what he could have been. What we could be, running free together on the hills and no one to beat us down and fill us with ugliness…

"But I can't love that he still worships Stone Eye's cruel ways. I don't want to be with him if those ways are still part of him." And miserably Kit closed her eyes and ducked her head again, shivering.

Dulcie lay beside her for a long time puzzling over Sage and hurting for Kit, and the evening ended, for all of them, not filled with the joy Dulcie and Wilma had expected from hearing the old tales, but with unease all around.

T HE NEXT MORNINGKit didn't appear at Dulcie and Wilma's house to share breakfast with Sage, as she had every morning since he'd arrived. When they had finished their pancakes and she still hadn't come, Wilma phoned Lucinda.

"She slipped out at first light," the older woman said. "She isn't there?" she said worriedly. "I saw her padding away over the farthest roofs, her head down and her tail dragging, and I thought…She was like that all night, would hardly talk to us. I'm frightened for her, Wilma. I'm frightened that she's sick; she says not, but…"

Dulcie lifted her nose from her syrupy plate. "Tell Lucinda she's not sick. I know what's wrong, I'll go and look for her," and, licking syrup from her whiskers, she took off though her cat door, raced through Wilma's garden, and up a tree to the neighbors' roofs. There she paused a moment, then headed for the library-this morning was story hour. Sometimes when Kit felt blue, she would join the children while they were read to, wanting the warmth and love of the children petting her and the joy of a good story for comfort.

Across the rooftops to the library's red tile roof Dulcie raced, and down a bougainvillea vine to the front garden, where she reared up, looking in the big bay window of the children's reading room.

Yes, there was Kit crowded among the children on the long window seat. Dulcie could hear the librarian's story voice, and the kids were laughing.

Waiting for the story to end, Dulcie padded in through the open front door as if to make her official library rounds, preening and purring while the patrons and librarians petted and spoiled her. She was, after all, the official library cat. When she didn't appear on a regular basis, Wilma was deluged with questions: Was Dulcie all right? Was she sick? Did she not like the library anymore?

It was nearly an hour later when Kit came padding out of the children's room. When she saw Dulcie, she followed her out into the garden and up to the roof, but when they were alone, she said nothing. She paced irritably, as fidgety, now, as she had been dark and morose the night before.

"What?" Dulcie said. She was grateful for the change in Kit, that she no longer seemed to be grieving. But what was wrong now? The curved roof tiles felt cold under her paws, the shade of the overhanging cypress tree damp and chill as she watched the pacing tortoiseshell.

Kit paused in a patch of sunshine. "I saw that man this morning on my way to the library. That Ray Gibbs. I saw him at the PD, he sneaked in through the back gate to the police parking lot and up to the back door looking all around not wanting to be seen and he left a note there with a rock on it to hold it down and then he sneaked away again, fast." Now, though she seemed as eager as ever in telling what she'd seen, just beneath that paws-over-tail earnestness was the same flat pall that had subdued Kit last night, her eyes not quite as flashing, her enthusiasm not bursting out like rockets, as was her way. That saddened Dulcie, that made her feel flat and grim, too.

"Maybe the note's still there," Dulcie said, hoping to distract and cheer Kit, and she crouched to run, to head for the PD.

"No," Kit said. "Officer Brennan saw it, coming to work. He picked it up. What would…?"

Dulcie imagined hefty Officer Brennan bending down in his tight uniform and picking up the note. "If Brennan found it, then it's inside, on someone's desk. Come on." And she took off across the roofs, glancing back to make sure Kit was with her.

They arrived on the courthouse roof just before the change of watch. Backing down the oak tree, they waited, crouched in a bed of Icelandic poppies, for someone to open the heavy glass door so they could slip inside.

"You feel better this morning?" Dulcie said softly. "You want to talk about it?"

"No. Yes…No."

"He's still your friend."

"I suppose." The joyous young tortoiseshell seemed to have slipped away again, leaving only a morose shadow of what she should be, and Dulcie hurt for her.

They were quiet for a while, waiting to get inside, the morning brightening around them, cars pulling into the parking lot beneath the big oak trees as folk went to their jobs in the courthouse. Most of the officers were going in and out of the back this morning, they could hear car doors slam behind the building. But then a uniform approached the door. "Come on, Kit, here's Wendell." And the cats slipped out from among the poppies and skinned inside on the heels of the young officer.

L EAPING TO THEdispatcher's counter, waving their tails, they smiled at Mabel Farthy then wandered down to the end where Detective Davis was talking on the phone. Kit looked at the note Davis held and cut her eyes at Dulcie, hiding a little smile, as if she recognized the look of it, and that was the first smile Dulcie had seen all morning. Davis was saying, "Brennan brought it in, it was tucked under a rock at the back door."

The note was typewritten, and unsigned. When Dulcie reared up, rubbing against Davis's shoulder and her face brushing against the phone, she could hear Harper's voice clearly. "Typewritten or computer?"

Davis petted Dulcie absently, glancing down to see if the tabby was depositing cat hairs on her dark uniform. "It's a printout." Beside her, Dulcie read it quickly.