Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

But the caller would not be lured into further words. The hiss continued, interrupted by a slurping, breathing sound.

Temple stretched up to hang up the phone, and then turned to poor Miss Tyler, who was watching her with sharp eyes.

"What did they want?" she asked.

"Not much. Peggy said that you'd been getting odd phone calls, just hissing on the line."

"You heard it, then!" she crowed. "I am not crazy. I have a witness. They've never called before when Peggy was here, or Sister Seraphina."

Temple checked her watch again, past seven. "When does Peggy come for the evening feeding?"

"Five or six, at the latest, I've never told her about the calls; no point, she wouldn't believe me. Nobody does."

"Then you've never had company this late before?"

Miss Tyler smiled. "You're right. Sister Seraphina is careful not to walk back to the convent after dark, though it's only a few doors. This neighborhood has changed." she added in disgust. "But the phones have never hissed before."

"Does it stop?"

"Only when I hang up,"

"Has . . . the caller ever said anything?"

Miss Tyler shook her head and used her cane to shoo away from her ankles the big cream tiger-stripe that had come in with Temple. "You've mooched enough, you big galoot. Gone over to the enemy, haven't you, Peter, even though they won't make room for you in the afterlife? And you with nine of 'em to go through, too!"

"What about the caller?" Temple repeated patiently. "Has he spoken?"

Miss Tyler shook her head again. "Nope, don't even know if it is a 'him,' though the phone people said most of these callers are. Hims, or kids. But I've never heard a word, just that strange hissing sound. I've heard noises, though, and seen lights at night, outside the house."

"You need to notify the police," Temple advised, wondering whether to mention that brief, unsettling phrase, you'll be s-s-s-sorry.

"Huh. I did, Many times. They ignore my calls now. They never find anything outside and I don't want 'em inside.

They might take my cats. No one believes me. NO one believes a crazy old woman who keeps a lot of cats."

"I believe you," Temple said stoutly--or was that Girl Scoutly? "I heard the hissing with my own ears. Do you have good locks on the house?"

The woman came slowly across the uneven floor, her cane prodding the yellow cat ahead of her. "Go on, go on. Usually it's his partner Paul who visits. Go on, Peter, you traitor. Just as in the New Testament, yellow through and through, until the cock crew thrice. And then they make you gatekeeper. Huh. No justice, not even in church." She eyed Temple as she came even with her. "Good locks and the windows are nailed shut. Still, it's scary, alone at night. And no one will come."

Temple waffled. Should she offer to stay? Here, with all these cats? Blandina Tyler wasn't her aunt; her problems weren't Temple's responsibility. She was already doing far more than she should. And the police were probably right; old ladies alone heard things, saw things, worried about things. Many became slightly paranoid, or even clinically so. Still, it was eerie that both the aunt and the niece were being methodically hissed at . . . or not so odd if you concluded that the aunt had been included in the harassment of the niece, or that it had something to do with a shaved Birman cat at the cat show.

Temple stood on the threshold with the ejected Peter and waited to hear Miss Tyler turn her lock and deadbolt. She spun to face the street, which was dark now. Her Storm was a huddled shape blacker than the evening. Only Peter by her legs was a reverse shadow, a beige pool of motion.

Then he took off, trotting around the side of the house.

Curious, Temple followed his pale form in the dark. Had she heard a dry twig snap? The ground was sandy and uneven. Her heels sank with every step, and she imagined them getting scuffed beyond repair. The oleander bushes clinging to the side of the house loomed as tall as Max Kinsella and scratched gently on the screens as she passed.

This was hopeless, she thought, stopping. The cat was no longer visible, and Temple felt lost in an unknown stretch of underbrush.

She retreated, coming at last to the front flagstones and clicking down them as softly as she could. Neighborhood kids--even gang members--could be tormenting Miss Tyler. She had taken their living toys away, hadn't she? Such kids, if you could call them that, would be coming out for the night now that it was dark, to hang out, drag race, do drug deals.

Scary stereotypes, but not unrealistic, Matt's self-defense instructions started droning in her head as she trotted for the safety of her car. Somewhere a sinister-sounding car motor throbbed, its muffler growling in the empty night like a lion roaring out a challenge over the African savannah.

Why were there so few streetlights along here? She glanced up to see the church's square tower black against a still backlit, charcoal-gray sky. Old neighborhood, that's why; now a poor neighborhood, with no clout for civic improvements.

She had her keys out before she reached the Storm, had unlocked it and hurled herself inside, locking the door again. Relieved, she started the car. The loud churn of the engine was an answer to the idling lion's roar down the block. Her headlights stabbed the night, announcing her presence. But she was secure in her metal island and, rolling into gear, glad to get away and now inhale--ah, air that was not cat-clogged.

She turned on the radio for the company of its lighted dial as much as for any music. But before she turned up the sound on Rod Stewart's latest hit cut, another, less upbeat sound replayed in her head: You'll be sorry.

Would she?

Chapter 11

Prize Pussycat

Here is my problem. I must find many cats. Normally, this is a piece of catnip for me. I am a first-class finder with a world-class sniffer, particularly if the subjects in question are cats. However, I have no desire to hit the most conspicuous locale for a surplus of cats, which is the animal pound.

The deliberately mysterious Karma has indicated that a large portion of Las Vegas's cat population is in danger of a blanket snuffing. The animal pound is too obvious a site of feline slaughter. Karma is anything but obvious. So, where do scads of cats gather? I do some walking around, which is conducive to thinking, and come up with nothing but the Cat's Meow retail establishment, a clearing house where wandering strays are promptly seized and made into other than what they were; that is, eunuchs. Some of the more successful products of such experiments end up as window-dressing, not for sale, but for display in their diminished state.

I am the first to admit that the feline gene pool is more than somewhat vast, not to mention mathematically staggering. Still, some sense must be used in determining who to turn off and who to leave free to turn on. I am not about to put my particular genes lower on the evolutionary ladder than any other dude's of my acquaintance. In fact, I have been thinking of making a sacrifice for my community by offering a donation to one of these sperm banks that specializes in providing material of a superior sort. My kind of street smarts is just what the species needs, but there is a foolish prejudice against dudes of a free-wheeling background.

I say nature, not nurture, makes the feline. These pampered purebred pussurns are not worth one of my used-claw sheaths. Where and when have they demonstrated their survival suitability? Dudes of my sort, of which there are damn few, excuse moi franpais, are just what the doctor ordered for my besieged and rapidly degenerating species.

Speaking of which, I encounter a bit of unforeseen luck. I have returned to the Circle Ritz and my dear little doll's apartment, and am reclining on one of my favorite spots, the latest edition of the day's newspaper (before Miss Temple Barr has had a chance to read it), when I begin to knead my powerful front limbs in the Sports Section of the Las Vegas Sun, which is my form of aerobic exercise these days.