Shirley Murphy - Cat Breaking Free

Clyde started to speak, then caught himself. Joe could see on his face the clear question: How is he? Clyde blinked at his near blunder, looked embarrassed, and knelt beside Ryan, to stroke Rube. As the two talked to the old dog, the white cat looked up at them, purring. Ryan laid her ear to Rube's chest, her dark hair blending with the Lab's black coat; then she smelled Rube's breath in a very personal manner. Ryan had grown up with Dallas's gun dogs, she had helped to train the pointers, had hunted with them and had tended to more than a few ailing canines. She looked up at Clyde with the same look, Joe was sure, that Dr. Firetti would have given him. The time was coming when Clyde must make the big decision, when he could no longer let Rube suffer but must give him ease and a deserved rest.

No one that Joe knew would keep an animal suffering for their own selfish human reasons. He'd heard of people who did, but neither Ryan nor Clyde, nor any of their friends, thought that death was the end for the animals they loved, any more than it was for humans. They were sensible enough to give an animal ease when there was no other solution to its distress. Joe nosed at Rube, wishing very much that he could make the old dog better, and knowing he could do nothing. And soon he left the laundry and headed upstairs feeling incredibly sad. He wished he had as powerful a faith in the wonders that came in the next life as did Dulcie.

Leaping to Clyde's desk, disturbing a stack of auto parts orders, he sailed up into the rafters and slipped out through his cat door into the tower, where he curled forlornly among the pillows and closed his eyes.

After a long time of feeling miserable, he slept. At some point he woke smelling coffee brewing and heard the faint clink of cups from down in the kitchen; and when he slept again, his dreams were uneasy. The next time he woke, the house was silent and Ryan's truck was gone-workday tomorrow. He imagined Clyde would be giving Rube his medicine and sitting quietly with the old dog.

Rube seemed to have aged quickly after his golden retriever pal, Barney, died. Joe thought the household cats missed Barney, too. Certainly the cats felt a true tenderness for Rube, they spent a lot of time washing his rough black coat and sleeping close to him or on top of him. Two of the cats were getting old, up in the high teens. Someday there would be only the young white female, the shy, frightened little one, Joe thought sadly.

Such thoughts made him feel pretty low; he didn't like to dwell on that stuff. But, it happens, he told himself sternly. That's how life is, life doesn't last forever.

He wondered how much ordinary cats thought about death, or if they thought about it at all. He didn't remember any such thoughts before he discovered his extended talents-but he'd been pretty young. The thoughts of a young tom in his prime were not on death and the hereafter, he was too busy living life with irresponsible abandon.

Joe did not like to think about his own age. He and Dulcie hoped that, along with their humanlike digestive systems capable of handing food that would put down an ordinary cat, and with their more complicated thought processes, maybe their aging would follow a pattern closer to that of humans. This life was such a blast that neither cat wanted to toss in the towel, they were too busy fighting crime, putting down the no-goods. Who knew what came next time around, who knew if they'd like it half as much.

Scowling at this infrequent turn of mind, he dropped into sleep again, and this time he slept deeply and without dreams, floating in a restorative slumber-until sirens brought him straight up, rigid. Their screams jerked him from sleep so suddenly he thought he'd been snatched out of his own skin.

Half awake, he backed away from the ear-bursting commotion, from the ululating harbingers of disaster. The walls of his tower fairly shook with vibrations. He could feel through his paws, through his whole body, the banging ramble of the fire trucks. Then the shriller scream of a rescue unit joined in, then the whoop-whoop of Harper's police units. Sounded to Joe like every emergency vehicle in the village was streaking through the night, rumbling up the narrow streets heading toward the hills. Rearing up in his tower, all he could see was the racing red glow of their lights running along the undersides of the trees.

Slipping out of the tower and leaping up onto its hexagonal roof, he reared up like a weather vane, watching the wild race of red-lit vehicles hurtling between the cottages, heading up the hills-and he could hear, from up the hills, faint shouting, men shouting. Rearing taller, he could see an eerie red glow flickering. Fire. Fire, up around the high school. A tongue of flame licked at the sky, and another, and a twisting cloud of red burst into the night. He was poised to leap away across the roofs to follow when, below him on the dark street, three unlighted police cars slipped past him as silent as hunting sharks.

But these cats were not headed for the high school, they made straight for the center of the village, moving fast and quietly. He glimpsed them once, crossing Ocean, then lost them among the roofs and night shadows. He stood studying the silent village looking for some disturbance, but saw nothing, no one running, no swift escaping movement. He heard no shouts, no sound at all. Saw no sudden cops' spotlights reflecting against the sky. What the hell was happening? He was crouched to race across the roofs for a look when, from below in the study, Clyde began shouting. Joe stared down toward the study and bedroom, and dropped down to the shingles again and through the tower and cat door, peering down from the rafter.

Clyde's shouts came from the bottom of the stairs. "He's worse, Joe. His breathing's bad-we're off to the vet. Call him, Joe. Punch code two. Call him now, tell him you're a houseguest, that I'm on my way." And Clyde was gone, Joe heard the front door slam, then the car doors, and the roadster roared to a start and skidded out of the drive, took off burning rubber.

Leaping down to the desk, Joe hit the speaker button and the digit for Dr. Firetti; he felt dizzy and sick inside.

"Firetti." The doctor answered sleepily, on the first ring. Joe imagined him jerking awake in his little stucco cottage next to the clinic, pulling himself from sleep. "Yes? What?" Firetti said.

"This… I'm a friend of Clyde Damen, Clyde's on his way. Rube's worse, really sick. He should be…"

"Just pulled in," Firetti shouted from a distance as if he'd laid down the phone to pull on his pants. Joe heard a door click open, heard faintly Firetti shouting to Clyde; then the silence of an open line.

Seeing in his mind the familiar clinic with its cold metal tables, but with friendly pictures of cats and dogs on the walls, seeing old Rube lying prone on a metal table gasping for breath, Joe clicked off the phone. And he sat among the papers he'd scattered, thinking about Rube. Seeing Dr. Firetti's caring face peering down the way he did, leaning over you while you shivered on the table. Seeing Clyde's worried face, beside Firetti. And Joe prayed hard for Rube.

Then there was nothing else he could do. He hated idle waiting. He was crouched to leap back to the roof, when the white cat came up the stairs announcing her distress with tiny, forlorn mewls. She padded into the study and stood shakily below the desk staring up at him, crying.

Dropping to the floor, Joe licked Snowball's face, trying to ease her. She knew Rube was in trouble, this little cat knew very well what was happening. Snowball was, of all three household cats, by far the most intelligent and sensitive.

"It's all right, Snowball. He has good care. He'll be… he'll be the best he can be," Joe said gently.

Snowball looked up at him trustingly, the way she always trusted him, this innocent, delicate little cat. "It's all right," he said. "You have to trust Clyde, you have to trust the doctor."