Shirley Murphy: Cat Under Fire

At least if Dulcie had to solve puzzles, the murder of Janet Jeannot was better than agonizing over the mystery of their own pasts. They'd done enough of that this summer. Their sudden onslaught of uncatlike thoughts, and their ability to speak human words had been a shocker. When Joe had first experienced his new and alarming talent, he had tried to remain cool and laidback. Scared as he was, he'd attempted to handle the matter with some restraint. But not Dulcie. She had exploded into her new life with wild eagerness, embracing her sudden new talents with hot feline passion. Wanting to learn everything about the world all at once, trying to make sense of the entire universe, she'd just about driven him crazy. Even watching TV had become a challenge as she soaked up information

Ever since she had been a kitten, Dulcie had watched TV with her elderly housemate. Curled cozily on Wilma Getz's lap, she had basked in the music and motion of the programs, and in the incomprehensible but fascinating voices. Then suddenly this summer, when she had begun to understand human words, she'd fixed her attention on the programs, eagerly lapping up the smallest detail. Sitting rigid on Wilma's lap, like a little furry scholar, she had soaked up the daunting new experiences and ideas as if, her entire life, she had been waiting for this moment to learn and discover.

Good thing Wilma has some taste in what she watches. Though even Dulcie had better sense than to shape her total view of the world from TV.

Leaving Ocean behind him, Joe sped down the sidewalk the three blocks to his own front yard, to the small white Cape Cod that he shared with his own human housemate. Joe and Clyde's cottage, snuggled comfortably beneath the sheltering oaks, was a somewhat decrepit structure, mossy around the foundation, and with a green-tinged, mossy roof, the shingles loose where a reaching branch had been at them. Clyde grumbled hugely about having to replace a few shingles, though he wouldn't dream of trimming the trees. Nor did he do much else to pretty up the property, except mow the ragged grass. But the worn old place was home, cozy and safe.

Clyde Damen was thirty-eight, once married, before Joe's time. He was stocky and dark-haired. He liked professional boxing, liked all competitive sports. He worked out with weights regularly, an activity which he performed with much grunting in the spare bedroom, lying sandwiched between his battered desk and the guest bed. He loved his beer and his women; though he had grown far more selective, these last couple of years, in choosing the latter. Joe never could figure what women saw in Clyde, but they were always there, laughing, drinking beer with him, cooking his suppers.

Clyde had rescued Joe from the gutter as a half-grown kitten, where he lay fevered from a broken, infected tail. That was in San Francisco, and not in the best section of the city. One might say that Joe had been born on the wrong side of Market Street. Clyde had been driving up Mission when he saw Joe lying in the gutter. He said later Joe had looked like a bit of trash, and then like maybe a dead rat, but something had made him stop short, squealing his brakes.

Getting out, he had crouched over Joe, had touched him tentatively, then carefully examined him for broken bones.

When he found only the tail broken, he had gathered Joe up and taken him to the vet, then home to his small Sutter Street apartment. There Clyde had cared for him like a baby, had doctored him, spoon-fed him, and given him pills, talking baby talk to him. They had not been parted since.

They had moved from San Francisco to Molena Point a year later, and it was in the village, back in the summer, that Joe's strange metamorphosis occurred. Clyde had been surprisingly stoic about the matter.

Trotting across the ragged grass that Clyde euphemistically called a lawn, Joe leaped up the concrete steps and slid in through his cat door, wincing, as he always did, when the plastic flap dropped against his back If humans can go to the moon, can't they invent a more comfortable cat door? What's with human priorities?

He crossed the living room, passing the dining room that Clyde seldom used. The instant he pawed open the kitchen door, the menagerie hit him like a kamikaze attack, the two big dogs pranced around, stepping on his toes, slobbering in his face, the three cats preening and pushing at him, inanely waving their tails.

The scent of fresh coffee filled the kitchen, and he could hear Clyde in the shower. Fending off the friendly, stupid dogs, he leaped up to the kitchen table. The old Lab and the elderly golden stood on their hind legs, staring at him, then at last resumed their pacing, waiting for Clyde to come out and fix their breakfasts. The three cats wound around the table legs, mewling as if Joe himself might open their cat food. The cats had treated him with great deference since the change in his life.

He gave them a patronizing stare and turned his back. They knew they weren't allowed on the table. And, while they didn't often mind Clyde, they minded him. The poor things never had figured out why, suddenly, he was so alarmingly different, but they respected that difference. Well hell, I hardly know, myself, what's happened to me and Dulcie.

All he and Dulcie knew was that their species seemed to go very far back into history, into Egypt and into the medieval Celtic villages. Clyde and Wilma had done enough research to turn up some spectacular and unsettling implications. In the Molena Point Library, they had found references to Irish burial mounds with doors opening down into them, doors carved with pictures of cats. Had found, in Egyptian and Celtic and Italian history, tales of people vanishing and cats suddenly appearing instead, tales that made Joe's whiskers bristle with unease.

He liked his new talents fine; he didn't need to go into some elusive background. He was what he was. A talking cat. Brighter than many humans, clever and talented. He didn't need all the hyperbole.

But Dulcie seemed fascinated that somewhere there were others like themselves, and she was intrigued by the further talents that they might yet discover in themselves-matters on which he would rather not speculate.

Now, atop the kitchen table, he sat down on the morning paper, reading quickly. The whole front page was given over to Rob Lake's trial. There might be famine, flood, and war in the rest of the world, millions dying, but you'd never see it in the Molena Point Gazette, not until this trial was resolved and Rob Lake was either convicted or released.

DAY THREE. AMES CALLS FOR DELAY. EVIDENCE SHAKY.

So the evidence was shaky. So, big deal. Couldn't the local reporters find anything else to write about?

But, he thought uneasily, what if Dulcie's right? What if Lake didn't kill Janet? Could be, if Dulcie keeps poking around looking for the real killer, she's going to get herself hurt.

Despite Dulcie's human perceptions, she was still a cat, small and delicate, heartbreakingly vulnerable. If she made too many waves, if she exhibited her strange talents too openly, she could end up in deep trouble.

Already one man in Molena Point had realized they weren't normal cats and had tried to kill them. And maybe other people knew.

Worrying about Dulcie, wishing she'd come to her senses, he sighed and stretched full-length across the newspaper. So who can reason with her? She's going to keep on pressing until someone hurts her - or until she solves the damned murder.

The Molena Point jail stood across a narrow alley from the police department and courthouse. Its ancient brick structure was well past its prime but solid as the proverbial brick outhouse, and Police Captain Harper fought each attempt to condemn the jail and tear it down. Its proximity to the station was convenient for new bookings and court case confinements, so his officers did not have to transport prisoners to and from the county lockup. The property, however, in the center of the village, was so valuable for commercial purposes that every year there was a battle. So far, Harper had prevailed. The back of the jail faced the police parking lot behind the station, and was shaded by a gnarled oak, its branches caressing the barred jailhouse windows.