Shirley Murphy - Cat Fear No Evil

Unwrapping the little bag of English Breakfast, she dropped it in the cup, poured boiling water over it, and carried teacup and sandwich into the little dining room, stepping over her nice place mats that were wadded on the floor. She needed to eat. She was weak; her diminished blood sugar dragged her courage even lower. She told the dispatcher where she now was in the apartment. She was pulling out her chair when a movement in the living room brought her up short. She turned, swallowing a cry of alarm.

A black cat sat on the overturned couch disdainfully watching her.

He was huge; his amber eyes blazed so fiercely they seemed filled with licking flames.

There could not be another like him, this cat who called himself the death angel, this cat who had stolen her safe deposit key and had stolen her signature; the same thieving cat that had arrived in the village last year with Greeley Urzey to steal from the village shopkeepers. The beast that, at supper after Charlie's gallery opening, had looked down through the skylight watching them. She stood beside the table facing him, as ice cold as if all her blood had drained away. She looked down at the phone in her hand, and quietly broke the connection.

The cat smiled. "Little Kate Osborne. Pretty little Kate Osborne."

"Why did you help Consuela? What do you get out of it? Why would a cat like you be interested in a handful of costume jewelry with paste stones? Your thieving partner could steal anything you want."

"What partner would that be?"

"Old Greeley," she said, sitting weakly down at the table, cupping her cold hands around the warm teacup.

"I don't run with him anymore. She is my partner now, sometimes. I see that you gave her the jewels."

"How would you know what I gave her?"

"I saw her leave the parking garage. She would not have left unless she had the jewelry."

"And is he your partner, too? The man with the big nose?" She sipped at her tea. Where were the police? What was taking so long? What would they do, now that she had hung up?

The cat's eyes narrowed to slits and his ears laid close to his head. "If the jewels are only paste, why do you treasure those pieces so highly?" His crouch was so tense she thought he would leap on her, biting and clawing.

"The jewelry is part of my past. A past that has no meaning for you, or for Consuela and her friend."

Again the cat smiled. "I could tell you about your past." He looked at her sandwich, which lay untouched in the open foil wrap, the melted cheese turned to the consistency of rubber. "You were told at the orphanage that McCabe might be the name of your grandfather."

"How would you know that?"

He rose and stretched, eyeing her dinner. "Is that shrimp I smell? Grilled shrimp?"

Defensively she picked up her sandwich. The cat leaped six feet to an overturned chair and leaped again onto the table. He stood on her dining table staring intently at her supper.

Removing half the sandwich from the open wrapper she shoved it across to him, leaving a greasy path on the nice oak. She'd have to have a cleaning crew in; she wasn't going to deal with this alone.

Gobbling greedily, the black tom was as messy as a stray dog. The sandwich was gone in six gulps. Licking grease from his whiskers, he eyed her half. She ate quickly though it was cold and rubbery. If in her uneasy hunger she gulped as ravenously as the tom, she didn't care.

"I can tell you about McCabe," the cat said. "I can tell you about your grandfather and your parents, if you indeed want to know."

"How would you know about my heritage?" The cat's words deeply frightened her. Her search, which had started out nearly three years ago as a fledgling interest in her strange heritage, had turned into a nightmare of fear.

The black tom pricked his ears, watching her. "You'd be a pretty little cat, Kate Osborne. Oh, yes, all cream and silk. Maybe more willing than little Dulcie or that tortoiseshell. I do like a partner with my own talents."

His audacity enraged her. And the feline part of her nature deeply upset her. The joy she had once taken in those talents had vanished-to be a cat, rolling in the garden, racing over rooftops. Those changes had occurred only those few days when her life was threatened; they had not remained a part of her life. She looked at the tomcat. "Tell me why Consuela wanted the jewels. Why she would want paste jewels?"

"Shall we say she collects oddities?"

"She'll go to jail for robbing me, her fingerprints are on my safe deposit box, her forgery is on the bank records. That's a big risk, for oddities."

The cat's eyes grew as large as moons; he stared at her, keening a wild hunting cry, creeping toward her-she imagined his teeth in her flesh. Palms sweating, her heart racing, she rose and backed away.

He sat down suddenly on the table and began casually washing his paws, his expression one of deep amusement.

Watching him, she didn't know why she had launched herself into this search for her past, why she had opened this Pandora's box of perplexing connections, seeking matters that any sensible person would leave alone.

The black cat looked deeply at her. His purr was ragged. "You have amazing talents, Kate Osborne."

"Not anymore. That is past. I am no more than what you see."

The cat smiled. "You were under great stress at that time. Your life was threatened, your marriage shattered, your fear that your husband would kill you shocked and sickened you. Perhaps that was why the changes occurred-but what a lovely white and marmalade cat you must have been. And now… Perhaps the stress of present events will-"

"No!" Kate flung her cup at him; he leaped out of its path and it shattered against the wall. He sat down again facing her, his yellow eyes filled with a mad light. The cat was mad. There was no reason that such a beast, with the sentient skills of a human, could not be as stark raving crazy as some poor, demented human.

But she did want to know how he had learned about her, and what else he might know.

Watching her, he smiled. "The Cat Museum, Kate Osborne. There is more information there than you have found."

"I have been thoroughly through the archives."

"The oral tradition, among our kind, is reliable and useful." The cat's eyes narrowed. "Nothing written. Much that can be told."

She thought of the other cats prowling the museum gardens, and she shivered. She had wondered about those cats. But now… she would not, could not ever go there again, to that place she had loved so well.

"They do not like me there," he said. "Those cats who are like us, they do not like me." He looked deeply at her. "There is indeed a hidden world, Kate Osborne. That is the world I seek. That is your true home, the world where the jewels come from."

"What, some commune hidden back in the mountains? Some colony of crazies with guards at the gate?" Where were the police? She wanted this cat out of there, she wanted this unpleasantness over with.

"A world lying deep beneath this city, Kate, a world cavernous and vast. That is the world that should have been McCabe's. The world where I, too, belong."

She was certain that when the law arrived the cat would vanish the way he had come, that she would be rid of him-he wouldn't dare stay, he daren't sit watching while she answered the officer's questions, while she tried to skirt around the answers that she couldn't offer. Hurrying to the kitchen she removed the carving knife and opened the window again, providing for him the same four-inch escape route by which he must have entered. Sickly, desperately, she wanted this cat gone. What did he want with her? Moving quickly back into the dining room Kate found the cat still on the table, nosing at her cell phone. Snatching it up, she dropped it in her pocket. She wanted to snatch up Azrael and shove him out the window, but she was too afraid of him.