Shirley Murphy - Cat On The Edge

He refilled his coffee cup, letting his thoughts return to the subject he'd been avoiding, playing over again in his mind this morning's phone call. I can't come home. Someone is following me… Trust me. When I get this sorted out, I'll be home. I am your cat… I guess I miss you.

The dogs pushed against his bare legs, demanding breakfast. He pummeled them absently, letting them chew on his hand, then opened the cupboard and lifted out assorted cans. If Joe Cat were here he'd be up on the counter clawing open the cupboard himself, yowling and raking cans onto the floor, his bomb raid narrowly missing his companions, though they knew to stand out of the way.

The shaky feeling started again.

He needed to talk to someone.

Someone who wouldn't say he was nuts, who wouldn't laugh at him.

When the dogs had finished scarfing up Kennel Ration and began to slobber on him, smearing dog food down his legs, he pushed them outside into the backyard. The three cats looked up at the open door, but continued to eat.

The only person besides Kate who would listen to his crazy story about the phone call and not fall over laughing was Wilma.

He'd known Wilma Getz since he was eight, when her parents moved next door, up on Harley Street. She was in graduate school at USC, having returned to college after breaking off a bad marriage. She'd stayed with her folks during vacations while she interned in various law enforcement agencies. A tall, slim, stunning blond, she was his first love, her warm smile and her easy ways sending his eight-year-old libido into a wild juvenile spin.

Even then, when he was eight, Wilma had always had time to listen to him, always had time for a game of catch or to toss a few baskets in his driveway. Over the years, she had never lost her ability to listen and to ease him.

Wilma's passion for law enforcement had taken her from USC to State Parole, then to Federal Probation and Parole in San Francisco, and then to Denver. She had retired from the Denver office five years ago. Returning to Molena Point, she had gone to work in the understaffed village library, where her thorough, almost picky approach to a problem was put to good use as a reference assistant.

He had to talk with Wilma. There was no one else who, upon hearing his description of that phone call and the reasons why the caller couldn't have been any of his friends, wouldn't suggest an appointment with a local shrink.

He poured the last of the coffee and carried his cup into the bedroom. He phoned the library to see if Wilma was free for lunch, but she'd taken the day off. When he called the house, there was no answer. Annoyed, he decided to run by. Maybe she was only out walking. He hung up the phone, tossed his shorts in the laundry bag, and got in the shower.

At the foot of the Molena Point pier ran a boardwalk. The strip of muddy shore beneath it was never touched by sunlight. In that damp gloomy world under the pilings sour smelling puddles oozed, their surfaces scummed with green algae, their murky depths half-concealing empty, rusted beer cans and the sheen of broken wine bottles. A few boulders rose from the damp sand, and between these were strewn additional cans, fish bones, and sodden cigarette butts.

In the half dark between the puddles, the wet sand was crisscrossed with the pawprints of an occasional dog or with human prints, barefoot or with embossed rubber patterns. But the preponderance of prints were cat tracks.

Despite the damp, inhospitable environ, Molena Point's few stray cats considered the roofed shadows their own. They moved from the area only when forced out by children or dogs, or by desperate lovers with nowhere else to find privacy. Then, routed from their home, the cats crouched in the bushes at the edge of the beach, waiting patiently to return.

The area stank of dead fish and of cat. The cat colony was small, and these few thin beasts were the only strays in the village. They were fed weekly by one or two elderly villagers, but they made their meals primarily on fish offal carelessly thrown down from the dock above as village fishermen cleaned their catch.

None among the strays had the courage to cross the beach and make its way up the village streets to see what better fare, or perhaps a better life, might be available.

None of the lean, starving cats had any notion of the elegant repasts offered in the alley behind George Jolly's Deli. The mangy felines fought constantly over their meager fish scraps, and over the weekly, dry cat food. Sometimes a boy brought food, too, a skinny kid on a bike. He left not only cat kibble, but traps, placing several metal cages under the boardwalk, simple wire boxes with oneway doors leading in, but no way to get out. The cats were understandably wary of the arrangement.

But when all other food had been eaten, when they were desperate with hunger, one or two among them would chance the encounter, slinking in after the food. Caught there, the cat would eat his fill and then, unable to get out, would crouch in misery, though somewhat appeased by a full belly. Hours later the boy would return and take both cat and trap away with him.

The other cats didn't notice that one or several of their number had disappeared, nor would they have cared. They fought over breeding rights, fought for no reason, fought constantly for the best damp, cold niche between the boulders, in which to sleep or rest.

In a dark concavity between the bank and a wet piling hunched a cat so filthy she looked like old, used scrub rags. For uncounted days she had hidden beneath the boardwalk, sleeping on the mud, drinking sour rainwater, fighting the other cats for fish scraps and for a place to rest. She had no knowledge of how she had come there. Her pale, dirty coat and tail were matted with mud, and her fur was marked with strange rusty streaks, as if she had been crawling though the rusty drainage pipes which emerged at intervals along the shore, spilling gutter water into the sea. She didn't seem to care that she was dirty; she made no effort to wash herself. She avoided the other cats as best she could, and she stayed away from the gridded indentations in the sand, where the metal cages had stood, because the sand there smelled strange. Crouching alone, shivering, she huddled among the boulders hungry and confused.

This cat had no imprinted memories as would a normal cat, no recollection of an earlier life. No sense of where she had been before she came here. No reference of past, familiar smells or of remembered physical sensations. She did not remember ever being petted, had no memory of either stroking or of pain.

A cat's memory is built on shapes and sounds and scents, on the swift movement of prey, on images which speak directly to her senses. Cold stone beneath the paws, wet grass tickling the nose. A warm soft blanket beneath kneading claws. Hot concrete warming a supine body, hot tarry rooftops to roll on. Soft words, soft hands stroking, or cruel hands. Memory of a screaming voice, of rocks thrown at her; of the shouting and abuses of small boys. Memories of hunting: the swift dive of a bird on the wind, the warm taste of mouse.

This cat's memory held nothing. No lingering feline imprint of place or of experience. If she had a past, it was gone.

But she had retained one puzzling fragment: a recollection of sounds so alarming that when they assaulted her in half sleep she woke shivering and quaking. Sounds as unwanted as broken glass puncturing her paw, and she could not escape them. Within her confused memory, human voices spoke.

This was not the incomprehensible shouting of tourists on the walk above, or the softer voices of the village fishermen as they sat idly in the sun. These were words occurring inside her head, and they were spoken directly to her, as if she should understand.