Рита Браун - The Big Cat Nap

The whistle blew; play resumed. The faster players remained free. The intensity grew. The sidelines erupted.

“Humans invent some funny games, don’t they?” Cazenovia mused.

Mrs. Murphy sauntered down, jumped up on the stone wall at a distance from Pewter but within speaking range of the Lutheran cats.

“I’m not speaking to you,” Pewter huffed.

“Good. You’re a bloody bore.”

“I resent that,” Pewter snapped.

“Come on, you two. We want to enjoy the day,” Lucy Fur, with authority, spoke.

Pewter jumped down into the cemetery just as the reds were freed, their chain having grown longer so it was easier to have a free player touch a captured player without being captured herself. A huge roar went up. “I hate them all,” she grumbled. The gray cat walked to the far side of the cemetery, toward the large old stately tombstones.

Mrs. Murphy moved closer to Elocution, Cazenovia, and Lucy Fur to chat.

Pewter sat for a moment on the back side of the large Trumbull tombstone, a huge recumbent lamb on top of it. She sniffed. Sniffed again.

“Hmm.” She walked around the tombstone—and stopped cold.

Leaning against the carved family remembrance, bolt upright, was a young man, eyes staring into space. Dead as a doornail.

“Hey! Hey!” Pewter shouted.

Of course, the other cats paid no attention, so she tore through the graveyard and screeched to a halt at the bottom of the wall. “There’s a dead man in here.”

“They’re all dead.” Cazenovia laughed.

“But someone is leaned up against a tombstone!” Pewter panted.

Mrs. Murphy jumped down and ran to her friend, anger forgotten. The two cats hurried around the Trumbull monument.

Mrs. Murphy put a paw on the dead man’s leg, looked intently at what she could see of the corpse. “No wound. No blood. How did he die?”

Pewter also stared at the body. “Could he have been strangled?”

“His eyes would be bloodshot,” Mrs. Murphy replied.

Pewter wailed, “Why does everything happen to me?”

No point in arguing, so the tiger just nodded. The two cats raced across the well-tended graveyard.

As they sailed over the stone wall, Mrs. Murphy called over her shoulder to the three cats, “Dead body at the Trumbull monument.”

This was too good to be true. Cazenovia, Elocution, and Lucy Fur hopped down to run in the opposite direction.

Calling out before she reached Harry, Mrs. Murphy hollered, “Tucker. Tucker, I need you.”

All the commotion surrounding the game drowned out her voice.

The two cats reached the dog, and Mrs. Murphy rapidly filled her in on their discovery.

“I was the one who found the body,” Pewter corrected the tiger, who had said “we.”

Stifling the urge to smack the gray cat, Mrs. Murphy simply agreed, then ordered, “Tucker, take Mom’s hand. Pewter, you and I need to get behind each leg, stand on our hind legs, and push. Sooner or later, she’ll get it.”

Tucker, on her hind legs, grabbed Harry’s hand gently in her mouth. The two kitties started pushing. Standing just inside the limed sidelines, Harry resisted them.

“Guys.” Harry shook off Tucker.

Fair, amused by their antics, returned his attention to the evenly matched game. The contestants were now showing the effects of hard running.

“Mother, pay attention!” Mrs. Murphy screeched as loud as she could.

Tucker barked, taking Harry’s hand again, leading her a few steps.

“What is wrong with you all?”

Arms across his massive chest, Fair looked down at the animals. He could read their behavior better than most humans could. Not that Harry was oblivious to their methods of communicating, she just had never been accused of being overly sensitive.

“Honey, I’ll follow them. You can’t leave your ref duties.”

“Damn, these people are hard work.” Tucker allowed herself a brief complaint.

Looking at the dog, Pewter unleashed her claws. “It’s refreshing to hear you not defend Mom for once. You’re always sticking up for her.”

“I love her, although at this moment I’m loving her a little less,” the dog replied.

“They’re all idiots, even her.” Pewter retracted her claws, since Harry had taken advantage of a time-out and called to BoomBoom to fill in.

She handed off her ref’s shirt to BoomBoom and followed the threesome. “I’ll be right back.”

The cats ran ahead, occasionally stopping and looking back. Tucker followed them. The animals hoped this would encourage the two people to move faster.

The cats jumped on the stone wall. Tucker raced to the iron gate, wiggling underneath.

Fair lifted his wife up on the stone wall.

“I can climb,” she said.

“You can, but why deny your husband the pleasure of feeling your body?”

“Oh, you big, strong thing.”

This playfulness abruptly ended when they rounded the Trumbull monument. Gathered there were all the cats. Tucker barked once for good measure.

Harry’s hand flew to her mouth. It was Bobby Foltz.

Fair was smart enough not to touch the body, but he knelt down for a closer look. “Dead, obviously.”

He reached into his back pocket, pulled out his cellphone. Although not on call this weekend, he knew that certain of his clients preferred only him and would fuss if they couldn’t reach him—hence, he carried the damned phone. He dialed the sheriff’s department.

“Honey, what would you rather do?” Fair, once finished, asked his wife, whose curiosity was now overtaking shock. “Stay with the body or go tell the reverend to move people into the inner quad?”

“You’re a medical person. You stay. I’ll go.” She hurried back through the graveyard, looking over her shoulder. “Tucker, come on.”

Harry filled in the reverend with the news as the blue team came within a whisker of winning.

Reverend Jones said to Harry, “Let them finish the game. It will be much easier to move everyone in. I have to present the trophy anyway.” He paused. “This is just terrible. What in the world is going on?”

Harry then ran along the sidelines to go and ask BoomBoom to help after the game.

As Reverend Jones had anticipated, herding people into the stunning inner quad after the game proved easy. Tucker was a big help, snapping at people’s heels. The corgi did this respectfully. Harry was too distracted to call her off.

Once in the inner quad, Herb presented the trophy to the triumphant blues, then said, voice commanding, “We’ve had a bit of an accident. I ask that you all go home, and, Craig, as people leave, please have them sign a—Susan, get a notebook from the supply room. Have them sign the notebook with their name and the names of their family members. I’m sorry to do this, folks, but all of this will be clear later. We need a record of who was here today, as best as we can get one.”

The crowd grumbled in confusion, and then sirens split the air.

Cooper had intended to come to the celebration but was delayed, thanks to an accident on the old bypass. Fortunately it wasn’t serious. She’d picked up Fair’s call and informed Marcie, the dispatcher. Rick would arrive shortly after her, she hoped.

As people left, the murmur became a roar, especially when they saw Coop’s vehicle fly down to the reverend’s garage. She hit the brakes and jumped out.

Cool in a crisis, BoomBoom continued to move people along. She glanced back at Harry. “Whatever happened must be big.”

Harry simply nodded.

Susan stood at one end of the quad with the notebook. She, too, quizzically looked at Harry, who made the wrap sign with her forefinger.