Ширли Мерфи - Cat Chase The Moon

One oversized, bright photograph showed a velvet-draped corner of the gallery where a queen’s throne might stand. Here rose the calico queen’s aerie, a satin bed within a tall cage rising up, hand carved of what might be rosewood, a bright, three-tiered structure big enough for a dozen cats, its many nooks and shelves embellished with embroidered pillows and handwoven throws. This was Courtney’s home-to-be. But this enclosure, instead of impressing her, totally undid the young calico. When she looked past Fay, out the window at the three cats, her amber eyes were big and frightened. Suddenly she wanted out—out of the apartment, out of the antiques store, outside on the far rooftops, and free.

Yet her look was determined, too. Dulcie could read her calico kitten’s intent: she did not mean to leave this place until she knew what final fate these two meant for her.

When Seaver rose, the three cats dropped flat and backed away on their bellies, sickened by the kitten’s fear and uncertainty. She might revel in thoughts of fame for a while, and then in fame itself. But what next? Would she live all her life as a captive, a caged show cat? When the woman rose and closed the draperies, they could still see beneath, through a tiny space. They looked at each other, and backed away. They hated leaving Courtney but at that moment there was nothing they could do to free her, even if she had been ready to escape.

All these windows were beyond opening, and the door to the stairs seemed always to be closed tight. They wished Joe Grey were there. Watching Courtney, they knew that deep in her calico soul she was as conflicted as a kitten ever could be. One minute happily purring with thoughts of a life as glamorous as a movie star’s, the next minute her eyes wide with fear, imagining herself forever locked in a cage stared at by strangers while the Seavers’ gold-framed tapestries of her raked in the money—and who knew how many of those beautiful pieces were even authentic?

The three cats left Seaver’s feeling grim, trying every way they could to work out a plan, to get Courtney out of there. At least the Seavers seemed to be treating her well, cushions strewn around, a soft blanket, and they were feeding her lovely delicacies—though they didn’t know much about cats. If she were an ordinary feline, she’d be sick as hell from that diet, and soon she’d be dead. Speaking cats did fine on human food, but ordinary cats did not. With all Dr. Firetti’s tedious research, with all his blood tests, he had never found the answer as to why.

As they prowled the rooftops, Dulcie’s mind on Courtney and on the fancy promises that the Seavers had laid out, shame touched her—how could a kitten of hers, certainly not one with Courtney’s beauty and intelligence, stupidly hand over her life to captivity, how could she sell out cheap to this shoddy deception?

Heading over the shingles for MPPD, they stayed close together, each trying to think of a plan to free her and wondering if one of them, in the role of snitch, should report to the cops that they knew where the lost cat was, and that she had been stolen. Was there a law against stealing cats?

Or they could capture Courtney themselves. If they could still get out the window. If they could, but she refused to go with them, their claws and teeth might force her out of the shop.

But how do you imprison your own kitten? Maybe they could lock her up at home with Wilma until she found her senses. Dulcie could imagine her tall, gray-haired housemate, her retired parole officer housemate, nailing the guest-room windows shut and standing guard at the door, and that made her roll over laughing. They had reached the roof of the station and were about to drop down the oak tree when a sheriff’s car pulled up, a deputy got out, opened the back door, and hauled out two young boys handcuffed together.

“We didn’t do anything, that’s my uncle’s house, we were only—”

The deputy laughed. “With three broken windows, and a pile of jewelry and electronics already in your car . . . ?” He marched them into the station fighting and kicking. The three cats slid in behind them, Kit trying so hard not to laugh that she almost got kicked, herself, by the little varmints. The cats fled down the hall past the young officer at the desk who was standing in for EvaJean; he glanced down at them and smiled. The deputy from the sheriff’s department, unfamiliar with MPPD’s casual routine, grinned broadly. Usually the cats were more careful around officers from other departments. Now they sped past the counter as fast as they could run. Behind them the desk clerk started to book the boys while the sheriff’s deputy called their parents.

On down the hall, Kit and Pan and Dulcie sniffed at Max’s door, listened, then peered in. They did the same at Davis’s office and then Kathleen’s. Not a sign of anyone. Joe Grey’s scent lingered at all three doors. They found the back door closed, both the barred door and the heavy wooden one. They waited in the shadows for some time until the boys were booked and led back to a cell. As the two angry youngsters were pushed into their cage, the cats were through, too, between the bars behind them. They leaped up through the open, barred window as the boys jumped at them and shouted, and they hightailed it across the police lot between parked black-and-whites, following Joe’s scent.

Crossing the street avoiding slow-moving cars that had dutifully lowered their speed when passing the PD, they were soon up a small vine to the roof that joined Juana Davis’s condo; her second-floor retreat was one of two dozen, worked into a design as complicated as a three-dimensional chessboard. Climbing the bougainvillea to the low roof, they crouched low beneath Juana’s side window.

Juana had drawn the draperies against any glimpse within. Though with the roofs tilted and angled all around, it would be hard for a prowler to gain that flat area and see in—except for the three cats, crouched below the sill; even with sharp reflections of rising sun from the other, distant apartments, they could peer up below the drape for an occasional look. Now, they pressed their ears to the wall.

They could hear Chief Harper, Juana Davis, Detective Dallas Garza, and Kathleen. And the low, unfamiliar voice of a woman they didn’t know—then they caught the scent of Joe Grey and heard a short purr behind them. The next instant he was crouched below the sill beside Dulcie, his ears flat, his short tail down, leaving no eye-catching appendage sticking up. Juana had left the drapery slightly open but as the sun moved higher sending a bright gleam off the tangle of roofs, she rose and pulled them fully closed; the dazzle ended. The cats could see only by crowding at a tiny crack in the corner—but they had gotten a glimpse of Maurita. “That,” Joe said, “is the lady of the grave.”

She lay on the couch, a blanket around her, talking with Captain Harper; her scars and bruises were fading, there were still bandages on her face and ears, and one large scar wrapping her throat. She was nearly as pale as the room itself, which Juana had recently redone. Clear white walls, soft white furniture, stainproof but decorated with a number of multicolored cat hairs, an expensive sisal rug that showed only a few kitty claw marks. It wasn’t a large room, the five officers and Maurita took up all the furniture. Rock’s blanket was folded in the corner where the big silver dog, scenting the cats, was intently sniffing. Dallas told him to be still, then looked again at Maurita.

“How long have they been at this? You had nothing to do with the first robberies?”

“I was with him maybe five years. Enough to be part of the last seven thefts . . . Brazil, Colombia, Panama, New York, but every one of them frightened me more. I wanted out. I didn’t know how long they’d been pulling these jobs, but I didn’t like it.