Shirley Murphy: Cat Striking Back

Pushing through a forest of stickery holly bushes into the overgrown side yard, trying to keep his dangling charges from catching on the protruding thorns, he was just approaching the empty swimming pool when a smell stopped him, a smell that made his fur bristle.

When the divorcing couple vacated the house, the pool had been drained. Why they hadn’t covered it, why the city hadn’t made them cover it, the tomcat didn’t know. The concrete and tile chasm was cracked and stained. Silt and debris had collected in its bottom into a sour-smelling mire. But now, another kind of stink drew him up short, a scent far stronger than the rancid mud or the sweet, musty smell of the mice he carried.

The stink of death, of blood and human death.

As many murders as the tomcat had witnessed in his busy life, he knew that smell intimately, but he still found human death unsettling, not at all like the death of the simpler animals who were his normal prey.

Sniffing again, he told himself this might be animal blood, but he knew it wasn’t. He stood looking around him, listening. He’d like to drop the mice so he could get a clearer scent message. But he’d hauled them this far, partly at Dulcie’s insistence, had nearly put his neck out of joint, and he wasn’t dropping them now-it would take the little beasts only a second to realize their opportunity, come fully alive, flick away from his reach, and run like hell, scattering in every direction. In Joe’s opinion, the intended recipients were far more needful of his gift than were the dull little rodents of their time on earth-let them scamper on into mouse heaven where they could live in mousy glee with no more cats to chomp on them. As he approached the abandoned pool, the grass growing up through the cracks in the coping tickled his paws. Standing at the edge, he looked over.

In the first weak light of dawn, the mud and slime on the bottom still held the blackness of night; the view was murky even to a cat’s sharp vision. He could see that one area had been disturbed, the mud and moss so churned up that surely something much larger than himself had squirmed around, or had been moved around, and then had been dragged across the pool to its far side; the drag marks were accompanied by a line of shoe prints embossed sharply in the mud. A man’s shoes, and the indentations had been there long enough to have filled with seeping, muddy water. The double trail led to the tile steps which, if the pool had been full, would be underwater. The tile was covered with slime that would be slippery, but the wide track led upward and over the coping to the tile apron. Moving around to stand above the steps, he studied the disturbed surfaces.

From this angle, he could see dark spatters of what looked like blood. Letting the mice rest for a moment on the tile while still firmly gripping their tails in his teeth, he took a good whiff.

Yes, blood. Human blood, nearly dry now despite the damp surround. He could tell, by other scents, that it was a woman who had died here.

The footprints and the slithery smear headed across the patio to the concrete drive and straight up toward the street. He followed, taking care to leave no paw prints on the pale cement. Halfway up, the trail stopped. From that point on, the drive was unmarked. Someone had dragged the body from the bottom of the pool to this juncture. And then, what? Studying the concrete, he found several small marks where the tire of a car had picked up mud and deposited it. Sniffing along the concrete, dragging his mice, he caught the faint scent of the man, too, though it was so mixed with the smell of human blood and of sour mud, that he wasn’t sure he would be able to identify it if he should smell it again later. There were no other tire marks, no other footprints. The tomcat, standing alone on the empty drive dangling his mice, studied the surrounding yards and looked up and down the street.

It was such a peaceful Sunday morning, the sky just beginning to lighten above a tangle of pale clouds and above darker and more serious clouds that smelled of showers. The sea wind was clean and fresh, blowing from the south. There was no other sound, even the birds were quiet, no doves crooning, no scream of a nervy crow. There was no sound of a door closing somewhere, no distant car starting up.

But suddenly he did hear a car turning off from the next block. He bristled as it made its way down the street, moving slowly as if scanning the neighborhood-he relaxed as the driver began tossing out Sunday papers, thunk, thunk, one by one, into the neighbors’ yards. The tomcat dodged away as a paper sailed to the gutter in front of him.

Other than the paper man, he could not see another human soul on the empty street; he stood looking around him, filled with a sudden chill. A woman had died here and been hauled off. And Joe Grey wondered, not for the first time, why he had been the one to happen on the scene. Was there something in his nature that drew him to such events? Some hidden sense that pointed his inner compass toward human violence and suffering, some weird feline perception, some impossible or poorly understood magnetism?

But the tomcat huffed at that idea. That was Dulcie’s kind of thought, that was the fanciful conjecture of fe males. Joe was a down-to-earth tomcat. What happened, happened. There was nothing mysterious about it.

And yet even Joe’s human housemate, who did not believe in things occult any more than Joe did, would accuse him of being drawn to murders, of being attracted to human death as surely as a nail is attracted to a magnet. He could just hear Clyde scolding, over the dinner table or at breakfast.

“Why is it, Joe, that you are always the one to find the body? Or to stumble on a burglary?” That wasn’t true, and Clyde knew it. Sometimes the case was well under way before he got involved. But still Clyde would grouse at him: “Why is it you have to have your paws in police business? Why are you always there, right in the middle of a case?”

It did no good to point out that Dulcie and Kit were just as involved in the details of human crime, in what went on at Molena Point Police Department. In Clyde’s view, the cats’ preoccupation was all Joe’s fault, and he could already hear Clyde ’s comments about this discovery. But whatever his housemate might imagine, the fact was that a woman was dead, apparently only Joe had happened on the evidence, and the tomcat was burning with questions.

Dangling his mice, he padded on up the drive to the street, studying the concrete, seeking further tire marks.

He found no more, only the few small hints down the drive behind him, hardly visible. And when it rained, he thought uneasily, those would be washed away. The smell of rain was strong, the clouds and wind shifting in an unsettling manner.

Pausing at the curb, he studied the parked cars. All were cars he recognized, all belonged in this neighborhood, all were fogged with the night’s damp breath as if they had been sitting here for many hours.

Even so, he made the rounds along the one block, sniffing tires and walking close to engines to see if he felt any warmth. There were only five cars parked on the street, and four in driveways, all of them familiar, all tires and hoods cold, and not a whiff of lingering exhaust. As he returned to the empty house and made his way back to the swimming pool, the sun was rising, the tops of the hills to the east catching its glow, the dawn beginning to brighten around him.

Along the steps that descended into the empty pool, the blood was drying, as were the muddy shoe prints, as if several hours had passed. Whatever had occurred had taken place, he’d guess, maybe late yesterday afternoon. Any earlier and the hot sun would have dried all the marks to a powdery consistency that would easily flake. Very much later and the prints would still be wet. Studying the scene, he was startled when the rising light of morning dimmed suddenly, as if someone had appeared from nowhere, stepping up behind him.