Моника Шонесси - The Black Cats

“Cats are your business, aren’t they, Mr. Eakins?” Sissy wiped a bit of sweat from her neck with a handkerchief. “That is what I heard on the street today.”

“You heard right.” His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Tea?”

“Yes, please.”

Tea? The woman had lost her faculties. Could she not fathom my predicament? I was a captive, for kitty’s sake.

The Butcher—or Mr. Eakins?—crossed to the cook stove and poured hot water from the once-boiling pot into two waiting cups. He returned with their refreshments, taking a seat once more. “I have no cream or sugar, Mrs. Poe. Please accept my apologies. My meager income is spent on my…business, as you say.”

Sissy took the cup from him and placed it on the table. “That’s a lovely book you showed me earlier. The one with Cattarina’s sketch.”

“Oh, me, yes,” he said. “It’s taken years of meticulous work.” He, too, set his teacup aside and reached for his notebook. “Every cat I rescue gets a page. I sketch their picture and make notes about their health, the location in which I discovered them, any distinguishing marks, and so on before I find them a new home. It’s quite consuming. Philadelphia is overrun with the creatures.” He opened the book to my entry and handed it to Sissy with a shaky hand. “Now that I’m too old to work for Mr. Lansing—I was a law clerk, you know—I spend my days on this. It keeps me from thinking too much about Mrs. Eakins, God rest her soul.”

“So the cat hanging this morning…”

“Shocking.”

She flashed her teeth. “You had nothing to do with it!”

“Dear, me, no. In fact, just talking about it upsets my stomach. I feel partly to blame.”

“Why? Because despite saving so many strays you couldn’t save the one?”

Mr. Eakins hesitated. “As I said, Mrs. Poe, I’d rather not talk about it.”

“You have done enough good in this world. Let that be of comfort.” She thumbed through the book, perusing a few sketches before shutting it. “Mr. Eakins, I’m glad we crossed paths.”

“As am I. I knew the tortoiseshell belonged to you because I saw you out with her this morning. She’s a pretty thing, isn’t she?” He unhitched the latch and opened the cage door.

I flew onto Sissy’s lap, anchoring my claws into the brown checked fabric of her dress. Sweet freedom at last! She laid her hand on my back to comfort me, and I settled at once into the folds of her skirt, shifting to an uneasy calm. To make my position clear, I turned my ears back and fixed the old man with a stare. I would not suffer the cage again.

Before long, Silas and Samuel trotted into the room, their fat tails bobbing behind them. Sissy touched her collarbone. “Mr. Eakins, those are the largest felines I have ever seen. They are as big as bobcats. And their tails! Why, they look like feather dusters!” She replaced his book on the table and leaned forward to study the pair.

“They are from Maine, Mrs. Poe. Do you like them?” When she nodded, Mr. Eakins added, “They are called Coon Cats. If you think they’re special now, just wait.” He retrieved a bucket of well water from the bottom of the cupboard and set it in front of Silas and Samuel. They took no interest. “Prepare to be fascinated,” he told Sissy. At this, he produced a jug cork from his pocket and floated it on top of the liquid, giving it a spin to set it moving.

To my bewilderment, Silas and Samuel dipped their paws into the bucket and played with the cork, batting it as one might a fish. Before long, water covered the floor, even dampening their tails with the vile liquid. I shuddered at the thought of it between my toes. How much grooming would it take to put them to rights again? When my paws tingled at the thought, I licked them. Why, Silas and Samuel might not even be cats at all. They might be— I looked again to the brothers. I had found the Water Giants mentioned by George and Margaret. Mr. Thaddeus Beal’s companions had been right, or partly right, about the cookery book as well. But they had been wrong about the old man. The Butcher was nothing more than a false goliath built of rumor and dread.

“Hello,” Samuel said to me. He shook the water from his paws and hopped to Mr. Eakin’s lap, engulfing his companion in a mat of fur and bones.

Sissy and Mr. Eakins continued their conversation, which we ignored.

“Why didn’t you tell me before that Mr. Eakins meant no harm?” I asked Samuel.

“No one is ever in danger here,” he said. “I thought you knew that.” He looked to Silas. The other tom had fished the cork from the bucket and was chewing it to crumbles. “She didn’t know, brother,” Samuel said to him. “Brother?”

Silas turned his back to us and finished killing the cork.

“Don’t mind him,” Samuel said to me. “Once you do away with all the mice, that leaves little else to hunt.”

“The feeling is familiar.” I thought about telling him of my escapades but decided against it. The City of Brotherly Love had room for only one feline ratiocinator. “Mr. Eakins took you in and gave you a home?”

“Yes, a very good one. We don’t leave much. He thinks it best that we stay inside. But we sneak out on occasion. Mostly at night.”

“And the book he keeps?”

“It’s a record of all the feral cats he’s rescued over the seasons.” Samuel jumped to the table and pawed the notebook open. “There are many pictures. Too many to count.”

I joined him and looked over his shoulder at the sketches. “And what becomes of them?”

“He finds them homes, of course.”

“What do you know about the hanged cat this morning?”

Samuel crooked his tail. “What hanged cat? We do not get out much.”

With Samuel’s next swipe, the book fell open to the middle. A tom with luxurious fur and a white mark on his chest stared back at me from the page, his coat the color of… Midnight . My old pal from Rittenhouse did not come from noble lineage, as he’d once said. He’d been born feral, like me, the cad.

Sissy picked me up and laid me over her shoulder like a fox stole. “Thank you again, Mr. Eakins. I don’t know how I can repay your kindness.”

“You have repaid it by giving Cattarina a good home.” He showed us to front the door.

Samuel followed, scampering behind Sissy. “What was the black cat’s name?” I asked him. “The one with the white mark on his chest?”

“Mr. Eakins named him Crow because he was as black as—”

“Yes, how fitting,” I said. This very afternoon, I would confront Midnight about his lies. He would soon eat an uncomfortable portion of his namesake.

Rittenhouse Redux

WHAT NERVE MIDNIGHT HAD, masquerading as a house-born cat when he’d sprung from the gutter like me. Our relationship commenced last fall when I was but a fledgling crime solver. I’d tracked my quarry, the Glass Eye Killer, as far as Rittenhouse Square before running out of clues and ideas. That’s when I happened upon Midnight—a chance meeting that led to, I am loath to admit, an infatuation. He dazzled me with kittenhood tales of velvet pillows, everlasting tuna, and silken collars, and in my naiveté, I believed every word. Having spent my formative years as a stray, living in a wooden crate behind Osgood’s Odd Goods, I was in no position to judge the veracity of his stories. Looking back, his proclivity for theft had hinted at a less than fortuitous upbringing. I’d just been too enamored to notice.

As the omnibus turned the corner of North 9 thonto Spring Garden, I thought of the ancient proverb: scratch me once, shame on you; scratch me twice, shame on me. I would not be scarred by Midnight again. The long four-horse carriage stopped at the curb near my paws.