Shirley Murphy: Cat Fear No Evil

Clyde dished up the omelet. "You were listening, you know how she sounded. You were all over me, stuffing your ear in the phone."

"Maybe you should go up there. Two hours to San Francisco…"

"She'll be down for Charlie's gallery opening on Sunday. Maybe I can find out then what's going on." He set their plates on the table. He had added kippers only to Joe's part of the omelet.

Crouching on the table, Joe waited for his breakfast to cool; he didn't like burning his nose. "I still don't see why Sicily has her openings on Sunday. You'd think that earlier in the weekend…" Cautiously he licked at the edge of his omelet.

Clyde shrugged. "Those parties spill out the door. Since she's changed to Sunday, the crowd has nearly doubled."

Joe didn't reply. He was too busy tucking into breakfast-a good fight made him hungry as a starving cougar. But after several bites he looked up at Clyde. "Kate's situation is the same as Dillon's."

Clyde looked at him. "I don't see the two situations as even remotely the same. Dillon's mother has broken up their family. Kate has no family, she… Oh well," Clyde said, shrugging, "both are family problems."

Joe twitched an ear. "Both shattered families. Only in different ways."

Because he'd been an abandoned kitten, Joe had done a lot of thinking about family. Had wondered how life would have been with that kind of security, a mother to take care of him, other kittens to play with…

Maybe his mother had been run over in the San Francisco streets. He always told himself that was what happened, that she hadn't simply abandoned him. He didn't remember if he'd had brothers or sisters. Whatever, with no mother to fetch him up past the first couple months of life he'd had nothing to depend on but his wits. Catch a meal or a one-night stand wherever he could con some apartment dweller, then off again searching for something better. Not until he was lying fevered in the gutter nearly dead from a broken and infected tail, and Clyde discovered him, did he see the world as more than the pit of hell.

And not until he was grown and learned suddenly, after a rude shock, that he could speak and could understand human language-not until he began to think like a human and to understand human civility, did he realize what a family was all about.

He was getting so philosophical and sentimental he made himself retch-but the fact remained, he could now understand why Kate wanted to know her heritage, why she wanted her past to be a part of her no matter how bizarre-just as he understood why Dillon was so shattered by the destruction of her family, by her mother all but abandoning her.

That was the trouble with thinking like a human. You started empathizing. Suffering the pain of others. Compromising your autonomy as a cat. You were no longer satisfied to slaughter rats, get your three squares, and party with the ladies. Even his previous promiscuity he now found juvenile and boring. Now his partnership with Dulcie was deep and abiding.

When Kate called last night, Clyde had been sprawled in bed reading the latest thriller. Joe, lounging on the pillow next to him reading over his shoulder, had reluctantly left the aura of the story and pressed his ear to the phone.

"You sound way stressed," Clyde said. "What's the matter?"

"Just need to talk, I guess." Kate's voice sounded tight and small. "Maybe need a change, maybe I'll move out of the city for a while, come back to the village." She had sounded so deeply upset and off center, that Joe went rigid listening.

"Is it your job? Has work gone sour?"

Joe had rolled his eyes. Clyde could be so imperceptive.

"No, the studio's wonderful."

"It's the search for her grandfather, "Joe had whispered, nudging Clyde.

"Is it the search for your family?"

"Maybe. I guess. I don't want to talk about it. I just want to get away, to be with-with friends."

"Kate…"

"Well I'm coming down," she'd said putting more spunk into her voice. "Even if just for a few days. I want to see Charlie's show-her first one-man exhibit. At the Aronson. I'm coming to the opening; I can't wait. While… while I'm there, maybe I'll look at apartments."

"You can stay here while you look. In the new guest room. Strictly platonic."

Well, Joe thought, it had always been platonic, their friendship had never gone any further. One thing about Clyde, when Kate was married and living in the village, and she and Jimmie saw a lot of Clyde, it was just friends and nothing more. Clyde would never have gotten involved-but there had always been that spark between them, Joe had seen it even then.

"Thanks for the invitation." Her voice started to sound weepy again. "I've already called Wilma, already arranged to stay with her. But can we have dinner?"

"I'd like that. You…"

"I know you're dating Hanni's sister. Could we make it a threesome? Or why not everyone? Ryan, Hanni, their uncle Dallas, Charlie and Max and Wilma…"

Clyde stared at Joe. Joe stared back at him. Now she was gushing. She didn't sound at all like herself.

"Royally scared," Joe had said when Clyde hung up. "Maybe she'll talk to me, maybe I can get a line on what's bugging her."

"Maybe you can meddle."

"Maybe I can help."

"In your case, helping is meddling. Leave it alone, Joe. She doesn't want to talk, she just wants company. Kate's a big girl. If she wants to keep this private, she can handle her own problems."

"Well, aren't you out of joint. And she doesn't seem to be handling them, she's scared out of her pretty blond head."

"Just give her some space. Don't overreact." Clyde's nose, in other words, had been royally put out of joint. Joe had tramped across the bed to his own pillow, kneaded it with a vengeance that threatened to send feathers flying, and curled up for sleep with his back to Clyde.

Kate was his friend, too. Thinking about her problems left him as irritable as a trapped possum.

But now, finishing breakfast in a withdrawn silence, neither Joe Grey nor Clyde imagined that soon the lives that touched them would fall into a deeper tangle. That at Charlie's gallery opening they would be treated to a glimpse of future events as dark as the leer of the black tomcat.

The party was in full swing, the champagne flowing, the talk and laughter in the Aronson Gallery rising louder than the three cats found comfortable; despite the din they peered down from the loft far too interested to abandon festivities: three furry people-watchers taking in the glitter, the excitement, the popping of corks, and the women's elegant gowns.

Of course the guest of honor was most elegant of all. The cats seldom saw Charlie in anything but jeans and workshirts. Her transformation was impressive, her gold lame sheath setting off her tall slim figure and picking up the highlights of her red hair. "Oh, to be an artist," Dulcie said, "to have your own exhibit, with all the lovely people and champagne and delicious food, and to wear gold lame like a movie star."

Joe cut her a tolerant look. Dulcie's dreams ran heavily to silk and cashmere and gold lame.

"And the gallery's never been more elegant. I'm sure," she said with a little grin, "that Sicily Aronson built the loft just for us."

"Right," Joe said, laughing.

"Well we are the star models, with our portraits in the window," she told him. As well as the drawings of the three cats in the window and in the gallery below, many of the works on the loft walls were of them: small, quick sketches of the cats playing and running.

But the real ego trip was the large portraits in the gallery below, hanging shoulder to shoulder with some very handsome horses and dogs. Peering down through the rail watching the crowd, the cats tried to look everywhere at once. The opening was mobbed with Charlie and Max's friends, art patrons, and animal lovers-and of course there were lots of cops present. The cats could see how pleased Charlie was that the department had turned out for her-well, for Max, she'd be thinking. For their chief. But then, the whole department had been at their wedding, just three months ago, where the head of detectives had given the bride away, and Clyde had been best man.