Shirley Murphy - Cat to the Dogs

The yelp came again: It was a dog, one of the pups. The cats knew that voice. A pup yowling with pain and fear. They reared up in the grass to see.

There was no car on the highway to have hurt a puppy. Stretching taller, they saw Clyde and Charlie standing at the edge of the road staring back toward the village. Charlie held the bigger pup on a leash-that was the pup she had named Hestig. The pup fought his lead, lunging and trying to bolt away, his feet sliding on the asphalt as he tried to join his brother, who raced madly toward the village, yipping and screaming.

Clinging to Selig's back was a small animal, a dark little creature yowling and clawing, its fluffy tail lashing with rage. When Selig swerved from the road, the little animal rode him like a bronc-buster; they vanished among the houses.

Joe stared after them, torn between amazement and a huge belly laugh. "So that was what the pups were afraid of-a mangy little cat. That's why they didn't want to come up Hellhag Hill."

Below them, down the hill, Clyde stood on the road, staring at where the pup had vanished. "What was that thing? What kind of wild-"

"Cat," Charlie said, doubled over laughing, and trying to hold the plunging Hestig.

"No, not a cat. It was some kind of wild animal. No cat would… My God. A cat?"

"A very small cat," Charlie said. "And very, very mad." She knelt and pulled Hestig close to her, stroking him and speaking softly until he became quiet. "A cat, Clyde. A tiny, angry little cat." She watched Clyde take off jogging, hoping to round up Selig. "They never," she told Hestig, "cats never cease to surprise me."

"I hope," Dulcie whispered, "that little cat finds her way back." She imagined the little stray leaping off Selig's back in the middle of the village, confused among so many cars and people, not knowing where to run.

"Those cats might be wild and shy," Joe said, "but they haven't survived without being clever. She'll be okay. Why was Clyde walking the dogs here? The highway's no place for those two."

"Do you think he came to follow Lucinda, after Harper's questions about her?"

"After he ragged me for being nosy? That would be more than low."

They watched Lucinda, across the hill, hurrying down to join Charlie; Charlie had slowed, waiting for her. Lucinda fell into step, smiling as if she had enjoyed the spectacle of runaway Selig, as if she had liked seeing one of the wild, shy felines show some unexpected spunk.

Lucinda and Charlie had known each other only casually, through Wilma, until Shamas's death drew Wilma, herself, to see Lucinda more often. Then Charlie, with her usual warmth, had taken a deeper interest in the old woman. Gently, Charlie put her arm around Lucinda, gave her a hug. "Did you see poor Selig? Was that one of the little cats you've been feeding?"

"I believe it was," Lucinda said, laughing. "Wild is the word for that one."

"How many cats are there, Lucinda? Are they all that wild? Where did they come from?"

"I think there are six or seven. They appeared a few days after the quake. I only get glimpses of them, usually one at a time. Only that dark little cat-the one that just rode away on the back of Clyde's dog-only that one has had the nerve to approach me."

"Cat the color of charred wood," Charlie said with interest. "Black and brown swirled together on the palette."

"Tortoiseshell," Lucinda said.

"They must be glad of the food you bring. Though surely they are hunters."

"I'm sure they are. They're most likely feral cats, they're far too shy to be simply strays."

The old woman was silent a moment. Joe and Dulcie slipped quickly through the grass, following close behind the two women. "Maybe," Lucinda said, "Pedric would have some knowledge about feral cats. Pedric is Shamas's first cousin. He seems to have some interesting theories about-feral animals." She hesitated. "Strange theories, maybe. But these cats strike one as rather strange."

"Is Pedric the thin old man? The one of slighter build?"

"Yes, that's Pedric." She glanced at Charlie. "He's… very kind. He's one of Shamas's relatives that I… feel comfortable with. He and Newlon Greenlaw. Newlon… tried to save Shamas, you know."

Charlie nodded.

"Pedric is… perhaps not as harsh as the others. Perhaps he has more of the old-country ways," Lucinda said shyly. "Pedric Greenlaw might have stepped right out of his own myths, out of the same dark and shadowed worlds that shape his folktales."

"He sounds interesting," Charlie said, pushing back her windblown red hair. "I've always loved storytellers. It's a wonderful art: the skill to draw you in, make you see and live a tale as if you were there, to truly wrap you in the story."

"Pedric… I think he looks at life through the lens of his stories… through the lens of dead ages. He clings to the old myths just as Shamas did, to the Irish beliefs and folklore woven through their family. That history was very important to Shamas."

"I didn't know that about your husband."

Lucinda smiled. "All the Greenlaws live to some extent a strange double existence. I think that in many ways they truly believe the old tales-believe in the old-world magic."

She glanced at Charlie. "And yet another part of them-except perhaps Pedric and Newlon-is as cold and selfish as it is possible to be. That… that is the way Shamas was."

Charlie turned to look at her.

"Well, I'm not grieving for Shamas," Lucinda said softly. "If I am grieving, it is only… for myself, for what I have… missed."

And, Dulcie thought, grieving for a life wasted. She thought about what Lucinda had told Wilma, in a moment like this when Lucinda seemed to feel the need to talk, perhaps to bare a bit of her soul.

Lucinda had come to have tea with Wilma; Dulcie had been lying in her favorite spot on the blue velvet couch pretending to nap. Lucinda told Wilma that when the police came to her door that morning to tell her that Shamas was dead, she'd felt a drop of emotion straight down into panic, and then, almost at once, she'd been swept by a surge of relief so powerful that she'd tried to hide it from the officers, such a sense of freedom, of elation that the painful burden had gone from her life, that Shamas's lies and cheating were ended. That she could, at last, know some peace. Her words had seemed to spring from such a strong need to unburden herself; and when Wilma put her arm around her, Lucinda wept helplessly.

She told Wilma that she should have walked away from Shamas years before, should have taken the responsibility to change her life, but that she'd never been brave enough. Had never had the courage to walk out on Shamas Greenlaw.

But Charlie was saying, "Wherever those wild cats came from, the little creatures are lucky to have you, Lucinda." Gently, Charlie shortened Hestig's leash, to make him walk by her heel.

"Maybe with time," Lucinda said, "they'll grow tame, and I can find homes for them. The strange thing is," she said, glancing at Charlie, "how powerfully those wild cats draw me. I don't usually think about stray animals; the world is full of strays, and I can't change the world. But these cats…" Lucinda shrugged. "Maybe they're something to hold on to, just now. Something outside myself, to love and care about."

Charlie smiled at her, and nodded.

"Perhaps," Lucinda said, "it's their freedom, too, that draws me-and the mystery of why they appeared so suddenly on Hellhag Hill, where, in all my years of walking there, I've seldom seen any creature."

The two women turned down Ocean onto the grassy median, Hestig walking sedately at Charlie's side, watching his manners now, as if the spectacle of a cat attacking his brother had made a lasting impression. If the pup was aware of Joe and Dulcie slipping through the shadows behind him beneath the eucalyptus trees, he gave no sign other than to twitch an ear back, once, and wag casually. And soon Lucinda turned away, not toward her own street as she usually did, but in the opposite direction, into the heart of the village, leaving Charlie and Hestig to cross to Charlie's apartment above the shops on Ocean.