Shirley Murphy - Cat On The Edge

He shouted, pounding after her. She prayed for a shop to duck into, but she was beside a tall, solid fence. She bolted for the shops ahead, but Wark grabbed her from behind, spinning her around to face him.

His voice was so low she had to strain to hear. But now she wanted to hear, suddenly she needed to hear, she longed to hear every whispered word. His words made a rhyme, soft and foreign and musical, words flowing all together. Sweet, so sweet, like music. His hands were huge. Immense hands jerking her up, dangling her off the ground. He was a giant swinging her in the air, throwing her soft furry body like a toy. She tried to scream and heard a cat screaming. She dug her claws into Wark's arm and leaped into his face, clawing and biting, wild with rage, hungry for the taste of his blood, relishing the feel of his tender flesh tearing under her claws.

He struck her. She fell twisting, hit the sidewalk on four paws running, dodging pedestrians' feet, running from him. Her vision filled with shoes and pant legs. She skidded past the wheels of parked cars and beneath bushes, then across a street. Huge cars exploded toward her; tires squealed as she fled between them.

The village she sped through was both familiar and totally foreign. She saw streets and buildings she recognized. But mostly she saw the bottoms of windows just above her, the thresholds of doors, saw feet and wheels and skirt bottoms. She dodged between potted trees, seeing little more than the pots, leaped beneath newspaper racks. The smells from the pavement were sharp, smells of people, of dogs. The sidewalks were so hard under her paws; every crack and pebble telegraphed itself through her body by way of her flying paws. She heard her pursuer pounding behind her. But his footsteps grew fainter.

When she at last reached home, she had lost him. Or he had simply stopped following. She didn't think until later that Wark already knew where she lived, that he had stopped by the house several times on business, once to consult Jimmie about a restored MG that Wark had bought for the agency.

Wark knew where she lived. He could find her any time.

Shivering, she crawled beneath the rhododendron bushes that edged the front lawn, the bushes she had so painstakingly planted, digging the deep holes herself, working in the peat moss and manure. Jimmie hated yard work.

Beneath her flowering bushes she lay licking the pain in her side where Wark had hit her. Slowly her breathing eased. She lifted an exploring paw and touched her long whiskers. What a strange, electrical sensation that made, the charge racing all through her. Her whiskers were little, stiff antennae sending intricate alarm messages through her entire body.

She flexed her claws, liking the feel of that, and she was amused to see Wark's blood on them. Casually she licked it off.

How sharp were the smells in the garden, the spicy geranium, the bitter scent of the lantana growing along the sidewalk. Her ears flicked forward, then back, catching each hint of sound. She could hear clearly the sharp, bright, tin whistle call of a wren several blocks away. She could hear the loud rustle of a lizard across the yard, one that had got itself trapped in a discarded candy wrapper.

Each sound was many-layered, not flat and muffled as it had come to her as a woman. Even the breeze had far more tones than she had ever imagined, as did the pounding waves on the distant shore.

For the first time in her life, her senses were totally alive, as if she had just awakened from some somnambulant half-life. As she rose to prowl the garden, her pads telegraphed every turn of earth, every degree of warmth or chill or dampness. Wandering, she stared over her shoulder at her lashing tail, and she liked the feel of that, too. Tail lashing seemed as sexy and liberating as dancing.

She should have been terror-stricken at her transformation, should be screaming with horror, trying to escape the thing she had become. Instead she felt only delight.

For the first time in her life she was free. This keen-sensed, sharp-clawed, soft-furred and perfect creature was an entity all to herself.

She didn't need Jimmie. She didn't need any human companionship. She didn't need money or clothes or even a roof. She could hunt for her supper, sleep where she chose. She had no doubt of her hunting powers, at the movement of each bird she could feel her blood surge, feel her body and claws tense.

She had no need, now, of anything human. She was absolutely perfect, and free.

Night closed quickly around the Molena Point Library. From within, the bare black glass reflected walls of books; and striking through the reflections, shone the branches of oak trees which stood guard outside the Spanish-style building, big twisted trees sheltering the patio and the street.

In the library's reference room, Wilma turned off the computer and began to collect the scattered machine copies which were strewn across the table. Beside her, Clyde tamped a stack of papers to align the edges. They had been at their research, through the computers and books, since midmorning. Clyde now knew more about cats than he had wanted to know. The new knowledge was sharply unsettling.

Early that morning when he arrived at Wilma's house, she had just come in from looking for Dulcie, from wandering the streets and walking the shore calling the little tabby cat. He had set out with her again, working their way through the village, searching for both cats. Not until they returned to Wilma's kitchen to brew a pot of coffee, did he tell her about Joe's phone call.

Of course he had expected her to accuse him of a bad joke. But he had to talk about it, get it out. He had to bounce that unnerving call off someone: the rasping voice, the mysterious and knowledgeable presence of a supposedly feline communicator. What he badly needed was a dose of Wilma's sympathy and understanding. Maybe a dose of her more liberal outlook.

From the time he was eight, her supporting slant on the world had helped sort out his often confused views. His parents had been good and steady; but Wilma had supplied that extra something, had offered slants that sometimes were beyond the realm of parental conservatism. Wilma was able to see life with a rough, commonsense humor.

This morning, sitting in her bright kitchen, fortified with coffee and a slice of her homemade lemon cake, he had told her about Joe Grey's call, expecting- waiting warily for-the wisecracks.

But she did not accuse him of a bad joke. In fact, her reaction had been remarkable.

Wilma had reminded him that cats were strange. "That," she said, grinning at him, "is the very nature of cats."

"Hey, this is beyond strange. This is impossible."

Wilma shrugged, pushed back a strand of hair that lay tangled over her shoulder. "Cats' strange habits and strange perceptions, that's part of their charm. Read any cat magazine, look at the letters they receive from readers. Cats are admired for their peculiar behavior, their sometimes almost-human behavior."

She had recounted a dozen stories about the strange deportment of individual cats. She told him about a cat who would lie beside the telephone recorder and punch the button to hear the little message his mistress had left. She told him about a cat who liked to unravel balls of yarn, and while doing so would weave the yarn around chair legs, back and forth into intricate and sophisticated patterns.

"That," Clyde said, "is not a normal cat."

"With cats, what's normal? You've read about cats who have wakened the family during a fire. And about the cats in San Francisco that alerted their households before the 1906 quake."

"But that's…"