Shirley Murphy: Cat Striking Back

Theresa said, “To break in like that, break into our houses where he’d made himself at home and was always welcome. They were friends with everyone on the street…Or we thought they were. They were always there for us, they babysat for people’s children…” She looked sadly at Max. “He killed her? Because she found out he planned to steal from us?” A tear slid down her cheek. Quietly Carl put his arm around her.

Max said, “A lot of questions still unanswered. We have, apparently, no one to prosecute, but that doesn’t mean we won’t still dig for answers. For one thing, Becker’s MO could fit a whole string of similar unsolved burglaries, we’ll be working on that.”

On the mantel, the cats looked so satisfied at the resolution of the case and at the death of Ed Becker that Clyde glared at them, and Ryan raised a warning eyebrow. Turning away, they wiped the smug little cat smiles off their faces and leaped down.

But as Joe went to sit behind Clyde ’s chair, out of sight, a look of triumph returned to his gray-and-white face. Dulcie, as she leaped to the arm of Wilma’s chair, was purring. Only Kit, as she snuggled on Lucinda’s lap, looked not quite at ease with herself, looked as if she was still filled with questions.

LATER THAT NIGHT, when Dulcie and Wilma were home again by themselves, Wilma told her, “You cats are getting careless, you looked way too interested tonight. When you learned that Becker was dead, all three of you looked much too alert, far too pleased.”

Dulcie said nothing. She watched Wilma turn back the bedcovers and kneel to light a fire in the woodstove. As Wilma tucked herself up under the quilt with her book, Dulcie jumped up on the bed beside her, but still she said nothing.

“Do you want to spoil everything?” Wilma asked, stroking her. “You want to blow this exciting life you’re living? You want to spend the rest of your lives trying to be no more than clueless housecats, not daring to do anything interesting?”

“We don’t want that,” Dulcie said contritely.

Wilma opened her book, and held up the comforter. Quietly Dulcie slipped in under it, and put her head on the pillow beside Wilma’s where she could clearly see the pages of the new mystery they were reading. Why was it that these fictional characters could get away with outrageous behavior? But an innocent little cat, just because she could speak, had to watch herself every waking minute?

IT WAS LATER that night that Kit, at home with Lucinda and Pedric, left her warm nest on the bed between her two companions and trotted off, alone, to her tree house. As the older couple slept, Kit pushed out through the dining room window and onto the oak limb, and padded along the branch among the shadows to curl down in her cozy lair among her cushions, looking out at the starstuck sky.

The tree house had belonged to the children of the previous owners. It was, in fact, one of their main incentives in choosing this particular house. Now it was Kit’s own, a secluded aerie in which to dream and to become a part of the night. She lay listening to the little sounds from the garden, to the rustle of a mouse far below scurrying among the dry leaves, to the shrill voice of a brown bat high above, banking and diving to catch his supper. She thought about Tansy and Sage, up in the hills among the clowder. She thought that last night when they had all attacked that man together, that something had changed in Sage. Afterward, the look in his eyes was different. As if he had learned, suddenly, what it meant to take decisive action and stand up for himself. She thought Tansy had looked at Sage differently, too. Maybe, Kit thought, all would be well with them now. The two seemed stronger now, as if their indignant response to that man’s brutality had strengthened them and brought them closer together.

Smiling, Kit rolled over on her back, looking up from her tree house at the sky. The stars gleamed at her, the cool air rippled her fur, and for that one perfect moment, all was right with the world.

UP IN THE hills among the Pamillon ruins, Tansy knew that life was different. In the shadow of a broken wall, the pale cream female sat close to Sage, watching him devour the rabbit he’d caught. He’d caught two, and he’d given her the first one. Now as he greedily ate his own supper, Tansy smiled and purred. The decisive way he’d hunted, and the way he tore into the rabbit, told her that he was strong again and that the pain was gone-certainly he’d been stronger last night when they attacked the killer, when Sage clung to that man, kicking and ripping his face. Something had awakened in Sage last night. The cold cruelty of that human had stirred alive something new in him, something fine and bold, had awakened a keen and indignant ferocity within the tomcat’s soul. She looked around them at the fallen buildings and crumbled walls of the old estate, at the dense cover of overgrown bushes, at the tumbled trees hiding tunnels deep beneath their fallen trunks. This was a fine world for cats, here were a hundred places to hunt, a hundred more where a cat could hide from danger. Here, the cruelest predator of all seldom ventured-there were no twisted humans here to bedevil them. This world, abandoned by humans was, Tansy thought, a finer world than she, as a kitten, had ever imagined. Certainly it was a fine world in which to raise a family.

IT WAS TWO weeks later that the crime scene tape was removed from the remodel, allowing Ryan to pour new gravel and cement and finish up the work on that house. Later, while Fernando was shoveling dirt back into the pit, he stopped suddenly, looking down at a small plastic container lying in the freshly turned earth. He called to Ryan, and she picked it up with a tissue, wrapping it carefully. When she gave the inhaler to Dallas, it was duly bagged and booked in as evidence. The department found Ed Becker’s prints on it, though it would probably never be needed in a court of law.

Ryan and Clyde bought an old cottage in a crowded, hilly neighborhood not far from Lucinda and Pedric’s home, an ugly little place that anyone else would call a teardown but which they meant to give new life. And they weren’t done shopping yet, they were looking at a ranch up near the Harpers’ and who knew what else? Gently amused, Joe Grey put aside his misgivings about the project and turned his attention to other matters, leaving the newlyweds to their folly.

Kit didn’t see Tansy or Sage for a long time, though she looked for Tansy whenever she and Pedric and Lucinda went up in the hills to walk. Indeed, she didn’t see the two ferals again until the end of August, when the days were long and the weather had turned dry and hot. As Kit stood high on the hill above her resting housemates, looking up toward the ruins, she could see looking back at her a small pale smudge atop a jagged wall. Now Tansy seemed very far away, and they did not approach any closer. That was another world up there, so very different from Kit’s world, she realized. But still they were friends, they would always be friends, she thought, smiling.

But then suddenly, in what seemed a vision or a dream, Kit saw the tiniest speck leap up onto the wall beside Tansy, and then another, both little smudges as pale as moonlight. Then a third, and the three went frolicking along the wall, chasing one another. Then Sage was there, strutting a little and gamboling with his babies, and Kit laughed out loud. Tansy had made her choice, between an exciting life among humans and that frolicking family. And if still, deep inside Tansy, there burned a touch of longing for the wonders of a larger world, maybe she’d give those dreams to her babies. Maybe they’d grow up yearning, too.

And who knew where that would take them?