Блейз Клемент - Cat Sitter On A Hot Tin Roof

I said, “Sorry to interrupt, but I’m here to pick up Leo.”

Disengaging herself from the limp cats, the young woman rose with feline grace.

“Last name?”

“His owner’s name was Halston, but Marge may have registered him under my name. I’m Dixie Hemingway.”

She looked at me with more interest. “I’ve heard of you.”

I swung the cat carrier. “I’m in a bit of a hurry, so I’ll settle up the charges with Marge later. I know where Leo is. Do you mind if I go on back and get him?”

She looked a little flustered at so much decisiveness in one sentence, but opened the door to the private cat rooms and followed me to Leo’s quarters.

Setting the open carrier on the floor, I said, “Good news, Leo. You’re going to a new home.”

I opened the screen door and lifted him, taking a moment to stroke him before I settled him in the carrier. He hunched low to the floor, looking up at me with suspicious eyes.

The attendant said, “He’s been very quiet. I think he’s sad.”

“He’ll be happier now.”

“His owner got killed, didn’t she?”

I gave her the look I give dogs who lift their legs on the furniture, and closed the cat carrier.

“Tell Marge I’ll stop by in the next few days and pay her.”

The attendant blushed, undoubtedly hoping I wouldn’t mention her tactless nosiness to Marge.

The cats in the velvety front room languidly flipped their tails as Leo and I went out the door. While Leo had considered his time there a jail sentence, the resident cats believed themselves in paradise. I know humans who feel one way or the other about their own situations.

It was almost eight when Leo and I got to Mazie’s house. While Leo waited in the Bronco, I rang the bell. Pete was slow getting to the door, and when he opened it his hair was standing upright as if he’d been in a whirlwind.

He said, “I’m just finishing up. Had a heck of a time getting the sheets on the bed. Those king-size mattresses are big as a circus ring.”

“Leo’s in the car. Can you use a hand?”

“Purr-C. No, no, I’m almost done. My bags are packed and in the car. I just have to gather up some last-minute things, get my saxophone, make a last check to be sure I haven’t forgotten anything.”

I said, “I’ll wait with Purr-C.” I was sort of looking forward to seeing how Leo would react when he found out his name had been changed.

“Dixie? Did you think to get food for him?”

I did a slow pivot to look at him. If he hadn’t looked so cute, with his white hair sticking up like a Smurf’s and his bramble eyebrows hovering above the kindest eyes in the world, I would have yelled at him. I’d been up since 4 A.M. with only a catnap in a hospital lounge, I’d driven over the Skyway Bridge to St. Petersburg, I’d shopped for supplies for Mazie, I’d been damn near attacked by a man who might be homicidal and who was definitely crazy, and I’d picked up Leo at the Kitty Haven, all without any food since nine o’clock in the morning, which was damn near twelve hours ago unless you counted the piddling little apple thing I’d eaten in the car on the way to St. Petersburg, a little apple thing I wished I had right then, and he wanted to know if I’d remembered to get cat food as well?

With what I thought was admirable mildness, I said, “No, Pete, I didn’t.”

“Well, I guess I can stop on the way home and get some. But I hate to leave him in the car by himself while I’m in the store, and I don’t want to take him home first and leave him by himself because he won’t know what’s going on. Do you think you could go pick up some things for him now? While I finish up inside? I’d go but I don’t know what brand to get. That’s one of the things I’ll have to learn.”

Like a lazy shark, the memory of the box of cat food on Laura’s counter swam across my cortex, the box she had set out to remind herself to buy more. That was the brand Leo liked, but Laura had died before she could replace it. If she had lived long enough to buy another box, I could have simply used the key the locksmith had given me and gone in her house and got it. Got the box of cat food, got Leo’s food and water bowls, got his toys, got the cat treats I’d seen in Laura’s kitchen cabinet.

It’s a wonder an orchestra didn’t pop up by the driveway right then with a rousing rendition of “The William Tell Overture,” because remembering the kitty treats made me remember the two whopping twenty-pound bags of organic cat food that had been in the cabinet with the treats. Forty pounds of dry cat food would be like money in the bank for a retired clown on a fixed income, and it would be a steady source of meals for Leo.

I said, “There’s cat food at Laura’s house, and a lot of other things you’ll need. I’ll get it while you finish making the bed.”

He looked anxious. “Is that all right? To go in her house?”

I shrugged. “It’s Leo’s house too, and Celeste officially gave me authority to find a home for him. As far as I’m concerned, that includes handing his food and toys over to his new owner.”

“Well, if you think it’s all right.”

From the Bronco, Leo made a loud and indignant yowl. It was the first sound he’d made, and both Pete and I hurried to the car to see what had provoked him. He was poking his paws through the air holes in the carrier, and from the low growling noise he was making, I didn’t think he was going to be quiet much longer.

Pete said, “I don’t want him to think I’m keeping him locked up in here. That’s not a good beginning for us.”

I grunted and reached inside the Bronco for the carrier.

I said, “I’ll take him with me.”

“Well, maybe that’s good. He can say goodbye to his old home before he moves to his new one.”

I grunted again. I was too tired and too hungry to speak. As I trudged down the sidewalk to Laura’s house with the cat carrier in my hand, a neon sign inside my head was flashing Will This Friggin’ Day Never End?

32

Laura’s house looked smaller in the dark. Security lights on each side of her front door cast glittering reflections on the glass panes, but dull grayness lay behind the glass. As I unlocked the door and pushed it open, I had a momentary apprehension that a passing motorist might see me going in and think I was an intruder.

Out of habit, I locked the door behind me, but I didn’t switch on a light. I might have had every legitimate right to be there, but I didn’t want to call attention to it. An observer looking through the glass-paned front door and seeing me inside might get suspicious and call the cops, and then I’d have to explain the whole business. I was in no mood to explain myself to anybody.

The house had the strange neutral feel that a place gets when its life odors have been eradicated. Crime-scene cleaners not only remove all traces of blood and body fluids, they destroy all possibility of bacteria and odor with a pall of ozone, then cover up the ozone with a spray that smells like cherry-flavored cough syrup.

As I walked through the shadowy living room, Leo made a noise that seemed to end in a question mark.

I said, “I know it smells different, but this really is your house.”

At the end of the living room, where it made an L to a dining area next to the kitchen, I turned the corner and set Leo’s carrier on the bar between kitchen and dining area. Out of sight of the front door, I felt safe to flip on overhead kitchen lights.

Leo whined and scrabbled at the roof of his carrier.

I said, “We’ll just be a minute, and then you’re going home with Pete. You’ll like him, he’s a sweet guy.”

While Leo growled and pushed at the carrier’s top, I searched for his food and water bowls. I found them in the utility room between kitchen and garage, where somebody had neatly stacked them on the dryer. I carried them to the bar and put them down beside the carrier. As I did, it occurred to me that it was going to be awkward, to say the least, to carry the bowls, two twenty-pound bags of cat food, and the cat carrier.