Shirley Murphy: Cat Raise the Dead

That ended with claws and teeth and a fur-flying scuffle across the roof. Fighting, they rolled so near the edge that Joe nearly fell to the pavement below. As he hung swinging, and then crawled up again, they'd stared at each other, shocked; then they'd raced away across the roofs, dodging the flue stacks and chimneys.

But no matter how she flirted and teased him, he hadn't changed his mind about visiting Casa Capri. She felt so frustrated she'd been tempted to tell him Mae Rose's story. That would get him up there in a minute.

But then he'd be all fake purrs, fake wiggles, snooping around, caring nothing for the old people, caring for nothing but Mae Rose's little mystery that might, after all, be only a figment of an old woman's twisted imagination.

Mrs. Rose was a tiny woman, a little miniature human like an oversize doll, the kind of life-size old-lady doll you might see in the Neiman-Marcus windows at Christmas. There was no Neiman-Marcus in Molena Point, but Wilma did her Christmas shopping up in the city, returned home to describe the wonders of the store's Christmas windows. Dulcie could just imagine Mae Rose in one of those elegant displays, the little old lady sitting in a rocking chair, her bright white hair all wispy and glowing like angel hair on a fancy Christmas tree, her round face with too much pink rouge on her cheeks, her plump little hands, her twinkling eyes as bright blue as the blue eyes of the finest porcelain doll.

But Mae Rose wasn't all fluff. Not if you could believe the old lady's stories about what went on behind the closed doors at Casa Capri.

Dulcie told herself, when she was feeling sensible, that probably the disappearance of certain patients was the old woman's imagination. Mae Rose said that six patients had vanished, that when a patient had a stroke or became severely ill, sick enough to be transferred from the Care Unit over to Nursing, that was the last anyone ever saw of them. When Mae Rose's friend Jane Hubble was sent to Nursing, Mae Rose claimed she was not allowed to see Jane anymore. Jane had no family to care that she had vanished or to try to find her. Mae said that none of the six who had disappeared had a family.

As Dulcie lay curled on Mae Rose's lap, with Mae Rose tucked into her wheelchair, Mae told her about Lillie Merzinger, too, and about Mary Nell Hook, both of whom had gone to Nursing and were not seen again. Mary Nell Hook, who had cancer, was moved to Nursing where she could be on pain medication. Mae said if Mary Nell Hook had died of the cancer, then why didn't the staff tell them all, and maybe take them in the van to Mary Nell's funeral.

Mae Rose said Lillie Merzinger had owned a cocktail bar when she was younger, and when she came to Casa Capri she brought her record collection from the forties, that she played the old records in her room, and they all liked to listen. But when Lillie had the heart attack and was taken to Nursing, no one ever heard her music anymore. Well of course Lillie was too sick to play her records. But couldn't they have played her music for her, over in Nursing?

Dulcie couldn't point out that there might be reasons for them not to play music in a sick ward, that maybe it would disturb the really ill patients. Sometimes it was all she could do to remain mute. She couldn't argue with Mae Rose that there might be reasons for not letting everyone go visiting over to Nursing, where people would be disturbed; she couldn't say anything. All she could do was purr, hold her tongue and purr.

Mae Rose never mentioned her wild tales to Wilma; probably she thought Wilma wouldn't believe her. The sensible thing to think was that Mae's stories were only an old lady's crazy imaginings, tales woven to keep from getting bored.

But try as she might, Dulcie couldn't leave it at that. She kept wondering how such stories got started in Mae Rose's mind, from what crumb of truth they might have grown. The stories picked and nipped at her as persistent as a hungry flea nibbling.

Lashing her tail, she stared out through the dark library windows, past the knotted oak branches, where the lifting moon beckoned. Midnight was near-hunting time. She needed no clock-her sense of time was far better than the ticking white clock hanging on the wall above the checkout desk; a cat knew when the mice and rabbits stirred. Leaping down, she trotted through the shadows into Wilma's office, hurried past Wilma's desk and out her cat door to the narrow village street.

Moonlight brightened the shop windows and flower boxes and sheltered doorways, sent long shadows stretching out from the potted trees and the tubs of flowers, and from the old oaks that shaded the sidewalks taking up part of the street, narrowing the flow of daytime traffic. Oak branches reached across rooftops and fingered at balconies; and between the knotted limbs the moonlit clouds ran swiftly. The hunting would be fine, the rabbits giddy and silly in the racing light.

She felt giddy herself, felt suddenly moon silly. Felt like rolling and playing.

And, though both cats and rabbits play and dance in the moonlight, that did not prevent her from hungering for rabbit blood. Heading south through the village, she was wild with conflicting emotions-the hunger to hunt, but hunger as well for things she could hardly name. She stopped every few doors to stand upright and stare into a lit shop window.

The little coffee shop kept baked breads and cookies piled in baskets just behind the glass; the scent was heady and sweet. But she stopped for a longer look into the dress shop, admiring a red silk cocktail sheath. For strange and mysterious reasons, the richly draped garment made her little cat heart beat double time.

To the casual viewer Dulcie was only a plain tabby cat. Yet beneath her sleek dark stripes, beneath those neat, peach-tinted ears, fierce yearnings stirred. Longings that had never belonged to an ordinary feline.

Ever since she was a small kitten she had coveted silk stockings, little silky bras, black lace teddies, soft gauzy scarves and the softest cashmere sweaters. By the time she was six months old she had taught herself to claw open any neighbor's window screen and to leap at a doorknob, swinging and kicking until she had turned it and fought the door open. Wilma's neighbors for blocks around were used to Dulcie's thefts. When they missed a silk nightie, or a pair of panty hose which had been hung over the bathroom rack to dry, they had only to walk up the block to Wilma's house, rummage through the wooden box that Wilma kept on her back porch, and retrieve their lost garments. Neighbors, heading for Wilma's porch to look for stolen undies, often ended up in pleasant little social gatherings.

Now, staring up into the shop window at the red silk dress, Dulcie yearned. She thought about the feel of the silk, and about diamond earrings and about midnight suppers at lovely restaurants. Who knew what strange heritage produced such unfeline dreams? Who knew what lineage made the little cat yearn so desperately, sometimes, to be a human person. She knew there were Celtic tales of strange, unnatural cats, stories so old they were passed down and down before history was ever written; she knew folk stories that made the fur along her back stand stiff with amazement and sometimes with fear.

Fear because she longed so sharply for things a cat did not need, longed so intensely for a life she could never know.

Joe Grey's talents were just as remarkable as her own, but Joe was quite content to remain a cat, was totally happy to experience human perceptions and human talents but not have to bother with neckties, income tax, or vicious lawsuits.

Leaving the dress shop, she trotted north up the sidewalk to the Aronson Gallery, and there, pressing her nose against the glass, she enjoyed a moment of pure self-indulgence. Studying the three drawings of her that were exhibited in the window, she let her ego fly, allowed her own lovely likeness, gold-framed and more than life-size, to inflate her feline ego, enlarge her self-esteem like a hot balloon threatening to sail away with her; she imagined herself dangling in the sky, unable to return to earth, hoist on her own silly vanity.