Shirley Murphy - Cat Breaking Free

"Come on," Clyde said. "We're out of here, you can tell us later."

"Now!" Kit said with an imperative yowl that startled them all. "Right now! That man… Slayter, that handsome obnoxious man? He's part of this gang, with Luis, it's a big gang. They broke in the jewelry store. He's part of it and he's staying in the Gardenview Inn and Chichi wants to get in there and search for something, I don't know what. She…"

A sound from the house, a hush of muffled footsteps in the bedroom, made Clyde snatch at her again. He missed and she leaped away and Clyde could only follow, clutching Joe and Dulcie. When they heard the bedroom door bang open Clyde ran, Joe and Dulcie clinging to him with all forty claws. But Kit was gone, racing away through the night.

"Kit, come back!" Dulcie hissed. "Kit, wait…" They heard her leaping away through the bushes, following the wild ones.

Shocked, Clyde clutched Joe and Dulcie closer as he rounded the house, heading fast for the car. No one said what they were all thinking-that Kit might stay with the feral band. Might race away with them into the hills to take up that old life once more. Swinging into the car, Clyde still watched the bushes, but Joe and Dulcie knew she was gone. Kit's wild streak had taken her, Kit's longings that could never be tamed.

They were all three strung with nerves as Clyde dropped the two cats in the back of the roadster and slid in beside Chichi and headed home. They were all three hearing Kit's words… Slayter… staying in the Gardenview… Chichi wants to search. ..

Chichi, all scowls and fidgets, watched warily for Luis's car, as if it would appear at any instant racing after them or waiting on some dark side street. Joe considered her with interest.

She did not look like a vamp now, but like a lost soul. She sat hunched and miserable, perhaps imagining what Luis would do to her when he found the cats gone, certain that she was responsible. All her lipstick had worn off, and her pale hair hung limp and lifeless. She seemed not to care. There wasn't, at this moment, much pizzazz left to Chichi, and Joe liked her better this way.

But then the next minute she whipped out a comb and lipstick and got to work fixing herself up in the dark. She seemed to be skilled in such matters. Fishing out a little vial of perfume, she had soon restored the old Chichi. She watched Clyde with speculation.

In the back seat, Dulcie peered out, longing for a glimpse of Kit and feeling cold inside and lost and frightened. She was far more upset than she wanted to let on. Oh, Kit, she thought, you won't go with them, not forever. Not back to the clowder. You won't go for good, you won't do that, you can't.

But when she looked at Joe, his whiskers drooped and his yellow eyes were filled with misery, and she could smell fear on him. Fear that Kit had gone for good with the ferals, that the little tattercoat had let her hunger for crazy new adventures magic her away-that the unfettered wildness of her kittenhood had filled her right up again so she could think of nothing else.

Clyde's yellow convertible, having no power steering or power brakes, took his full attention-or he let Chichi think it did as he negotiated the dark, narrow, hilly streets down into the village. Three times Chichi asked him how he knew Luis had his cat, when he hadn't known anything about Luis.

"Damn, that was lucky," Clyde said. "I was just coming home from walking the streets shouting for Joe-he'll usually come when I call him. I was getting mad and worried. I guess you think it's foolish, to be that fond of a cat, but I've had him a long time. I'd about given up, and was going in the house when I passed that guy leaving your place." Clyde looked across at her. "I heard him muttering. Talking to himself about cats. Something about a cage, a key. Muttering about cats in a damned cage."

Joe, crouched in the back seat with Dulcie, glanced at her with amusement. Clyde wasn't the greatest liar. Still, it wasn't bad. He watched Chichi sidle closer to Clyde, looking up at him engagingly.

Ignoring her advances, Clyde parked across the street from her place, didn't pull into his own drive. He glanced at her. "You know how cat lovers are. The guy looked… I just had this feeling he was talking about my cat! That he was some nutcase, had caught my cat here in the yard, and put him in a cage." He left the engine running, glancing at Chichi. "This time, my hunch was right. Thanks, Chichi. I really owe you." He swung out to open her door. "You want me to walk you back? That driveway's dark."

Chichi looked at him with speculation. "You want a cup of coffee? Or a drink?"

Clyde shook his head. "I need to run Dulcie home, her owner's worried, too. She called me twice."

"Could you walk me in, though? It is dark back there. If Luis-if he's come back…" She shivered. "If he got home and saw the empty cage…" She did look frightened. Joe wished he knew what she was thinking, wished he could read her thoughts.

He'd been startled at how tender she was with Abuela, as if she really cared for the old woman. Strange, he thought as he watched Clyde walking Chichi down the drive. He hoped Clyde wouldn't go in, wouldn't succumb to this out-of-character side of Chichi Barbi, and to the charms that would likely follow.

As Clyde walked Chichi down the dark drive, Joe leaped to the front seat and reared up, looking out the window. He heard Chichi's key turn the lock, and her soft "I'll just check my room…" Heard her door squeak open. Dulcie hopped over the back of the seat and stretched out beside him, her dark tabby stripes tiger-rich in the gleam of the moon. "I'm bummed, after that cage."

"We were in there only a few hours." But Joe felt much the same, wrung out with the stress of being locked up. He couldn't half imagine how the others had felt. He'd never before been in a cage, except at the vet's, and he could open those cages if he wanted. Besides, Dr. Firetti treated him royally. Well, he guessed his cat carrier was a sort of cage, but of course he knew how to open that.

Dulcie's pink tongue tipped out, licking nervously at her front paws. "The padlock and those heavy bars, the awful crowding. And the stink." Her emerald eyes were round with stress. "I was really scared. I never felt like that before."

Joe lay down and put his head against her. "I knew we'd get out. If not Clyde or Wilma or Charlie, if not Kit, then we'd find some way."

"I wasn't so sure. Thank God for Kit." But she looked at him mournfully. "Where is she? I couldn't stand it if she never came back."

Joe licked her ear. "She'll come back." He only wished he believed that. "Kit likes her luxuries too well. She won't get filet mignon and Alaskan salmon and imported cheeses up on those wild hills. Or silk pillows and cashmere blankets. Anyway, she loves Lucinda and Pedric far too much to leave them, or to hurt them."

"But she…" Dulcie sighed, and shivered, and was silent.

"She's just having a lark. She'll be home. I never dreamed Chichi would help us."

"You really think she'll come home, that she won't stay with that wild band?"

Joe listened to the hush of Clyde's step coming back up the drive and crossing the street. "She'd be crazy to do that. All the time she was a kitten, running with them, she longed for someone to love her." He nuzzled Dulcie's shoulder. "Kit might go off for a while. But it won't last."

Clyde slipped into the car and started the engine. "What won't last?"

"Kit wouldn't stay with them."

Clyde glanced at him. "Maybe she's already home with Lucinda and Pedric."

"Maybe," Dulcie said hopefully. "Tucked up warm, with a tummy full of goodies. Maybe she just showed the ferals the best way out of the village, where to cross, to avoid the traffic…" Trying to convince herself, she rolled over on her back, watching the treetops swing by upside down as Clyde headed across Ocean for Wilma's. She could smell home, smell the scents of her neighborhood, before ever Clyde slowed the car.