Shirley Murphy - Cat to the Dogs

The jolt hit. Shook them hard. As if the world said, I am the power. They saw the kit sprawl, clinging to the boulder.

Then the earth was still.

The three cats waited.

Nothing more happened. The insects crept out and began to chirp again. The birds spiraled down and dived into the grass, snatching up bugs. An emboldened house finch sang his off-key cacophony as if he owned earth and sky.

And the cats saw that someone was on the road below them. Down on the black ribbon of asphalt, two small figures were rising-Wilma helping Lucinda up, dusting themselves off.

The two women stood talking, then climbed quickly toward the outcropping where they liked to sit- where the kit had been poised. Where, now, the rocks were empty.

The two cats moved away, intent on finding the kit-they hadn't gone far when the little mite was right before them, stepping out of the grass.

"I found him," she said softly. "A white trailer with a brown door."

"How do you know it's the killer's?" Joe said.

"He left his shoes on the stoop. I can smell the blood. He wiped them with something wet, but I can still smell it. He washed his shirt and hung it on a chair, where the sun shines in through the screen. It still smells of blood."

They rose and followed her up the hill, across the trailer park's brick walks, across a narrow, scruffy bed of poppies and beneath half a dozen trailers, trotting between their greasy wheels.

"This one," the kit said, slipping underneath, losing herself among the shadows.

Joe sniffed at the wheels and then at the little set of steps, flehming at the man's scent. "It might be Fulman; I never got a good smell of him. He's always with other people."

"He was alone with Cara Ray," Dulcie said.

"In the middle of a geranium bush, Dulcie, everything smells like geraniums."

"Well, if-" she began, then hushed as footsteps drummed overhead. They heard water running, heard a man cough.

Padding up the narrow steps, Joe peered in through the screen men backed away.

"It's Fulman," he said. "In his undershirt and shorts, eating a salami sandwich." He turned to look at the kit. "You sure it was that man?"

"That man. He hit the old man. He makes my fur bristle."

"Well, we can't toss the trailer with him in it. Have to hope he goes out."

Moving back down the hill, the three cats settled in the grass some way above Wilma and Lucinda. The two women had brought a picnic lunch; the cats could smell crab salad. Licking whiskers, they watched Wilma unwrap a small loaf of French bread and take a bottle of wine from her worn picnic basket.

Softly, Dulcie said, "Tell us why the other cats are so shy-and so angry."

"Angry because they can't go home," the kit said. "Because the shaking earth drove them out. Afraid to go down again."

Joe frowned. "Down again, where?" He looked toward the cave. "You didn't come from-in there?"

"From a place like it. I was little, I hardly remember. The earth shook. The clowder ran and ran-through the dark-up onto hills like these. That way," she said, gazing away south where the coastline led wild and endless along the ragged edge of the continent.

"We were in a city when I was little. Somewhere down the coast. We ran from packs of dogs at the edge of a city. I remember garbage in alleys. I could never keep up. My mother was dead. The big cats didn't care about me, but I didn't want to be alone. I knew we were different from other cats, and I didn't want to be in those alleys alone.

"We went away from the garbage place and through the city to the hills. The others would never wait for me. I ran and ran. I ate grasshoppers and lizards and bugs, and sometimes a butterfly. I never learned to hunt right; no one wanted to show me.

"Then the world shook again, and we ran again. We came here. I was bigger then, I could keep up. Or I'd find them the next morning when they stopped to sleep.

"Hungry," she said. "Always hungry." She glanced down the hill at the picnickers, sniffing the sweet scent of their luxurious meal.

Dulcie licked the kit's ear.

"Well, that was how we came here. Along that cliff and these hills. They told me, home is here, too. They mean the cave. They mean it will lead to the same place the other cave did. They said we could go home again into this hill if the earth would stop shaking. They want to go in, and down to that place, but they are afraid." She placed her black-mottled paw softly over Dulcie's bigger paw. "I do not want to go there; it is all elder there."

"Elder," Dulcie said. "Elder and evil, as in the old stories."

And at that instant, as if the small cat had summoned demons, another quake hit.

First the quick tingling through their paws as the world gathered itself. Then the jolt. It threw Dulcie and the kit against a boulder, knocked Joe sideways. Dulcie kicked at the air and flipped over. The kit crept to her, and she gathered the little one close, licking her.

Below them, Lucinda was sprawled, and Wilma crawling on hands and knees to reach her-and still the earth shook and rocked them, the hardest, longest surge the cats had ever known. Clinging tight to the traitorous earth, they refused to be dislodged; fear held them, as fear freezes a hunted rabbit, turning it mindless and numb.

Then all was still.

The earth was still.

They stood up, watched Wilma rise and lift Lucinda to sit against a boulder. The only movement in all the world, then, seemed the pounding of the sea beating through their paws.

And the tortoiseshell kit, who, before this day, had hidden each rime Lucinda brought food, who had never shown herself to any human, padded down the hill.

She stood looking at Lucinda, her round yellow eyes fixed fiercely on Lucinda's frightened face.

Lucinda's eyes widened.

Wilma remained very still. Joe and Dulcie were still.

Lucinda asked, "Are you all right, kitten?"

The waif purred, her thin sides vibrating. She stepped closer.

Lucinda put out her hand. "The quake didn't hurt you? Poor, poor kitten."

The kit tilted her little face in a question. She moved closer still, her long bushy tail and thick pantaloons comical on that thin little body. Lucinda said later that her black-and-brown-mottled coat was as beautiful as hand-dyed silk. The kit went to Lucinda and rubbed against her hand.

And Dulcie, watching, felt a sharp jealousy stab through her. Oh, she thought, I don't want you to go to Lucinda. I want you to come to me.

But what a selfish thought. What's the matter with me?

The kitten had turned, was staring at Dulcie. The expression on her little streaked face changed suddenly, from joy to alarm. And she fled. She was gone, flying down the hill, vanishing in the long grass.

"Oh," Lucinda said. "Why did she run? What did I do to frighten her?"

But behind Lucinda, Wilma looked accusingly at Dulcie. And Dulcie hung her head: something in her expression or in her body language had told the kit her thoughts, as surely as if she had spoken.

Lucinda looked after the kit with longing. "Such a tiny little mite. And all alone. So thin and frail."

Wilma helped Lucinda to stand up and brush off, and supported her until she was steady on her feet. She picked up the picnic things, and as they started down the hill again, Wilma looked up sternly at Joe and Dulcie.

"Come on, you two."

Chastened, Dulcie followed her. Joe, watching them, fell into line. Lucinda seemed too shaken by the quake and by her encounter with the little wild cat to wonder at Joe and Dulcie's willingness to trot obediently home beside Wilma.

Reaching the village, they found shopkeepers and customers standing in the streets among broken glass, broken shingles, shattered roof tiles. The cats could see no fallen walls, no buildings that looked badly damaged- only one small section of broken wall where a bay window jutted over the street. Bricks had fallen out, but the window glass itself was still in place.