Lillian Braun - The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern

As soon as he stepped off the elevator on the fifteenth floor, he started jingling his keys. It was his signal to Koko.

The cat always ran to the door and raised his shrill Siamese yowl of greeting. As part of the ritual, Qwilleran would pretend to fumble with the lock, and the longer he delayed opening the door, the more vociferous the welcome.

But tonight there was no welcoming clamor. Qwilleran opened the door and quickly glanced in Koko's three favorite haunts: the northeast corner of the middle sofa; the glass-topped coffee table, a cool surface for warm days; and the third bookshelf, between a marble bust of Sappho and a copy of Fanny Hill, where Koko retired if the apartment was chilly. None of the three offered any evidence of cat.

Qwilleran went to the kitchen and looked on top of the refrigerator, expecting to see a round mound of light fur curled on the blue cushion — headless, tailless, legless, and asleep. There was no Koko there. He called, and there was no answer. Systematically he searched under the bed, behind the draperies, in closets and drawers, even inside the stereo cabinet. He opened the kitchen cupboards. In a moment of panic he snatched at the refrigerator door. No Koko. He looked in the oven.

All this time Koko was watching the frantic search from the seat of the green wing chair — in plain view but invisible, as a cat can be when he is silent and motionless. Qwilleran gave a grunt of surprise and relief when he finally caught sight of the hump of fur. Then he became concerned. Koko was sitting in a hunched position with his shoulder blades up and a troubled look in his eyes.

"Are you all right?" the man said. The cat gave a mouselike squeak without opening his mouth.

"Do you feel sick?" Koko wriggled uncomfortably and looked in the corner of the chair seat. A few inches from his nose was a ball of fluff. Green fluff.

"What's that? Where did you get that?" Qwilleran demanded. Then his eyes traveled to the wing of the chair.

Across its top a patch of upholstery fabric was missing, and the padding was bursting through.

"Koko!" yelled Qwilleran. "Have you been chewing this chair? This expensive Danish chair?" Koko gave a little cough, and produced another wad of green wool, well chewed.

Qwilleran gasped. "What will Harry Noyton say? He'll have a fit!" Then he raised his voice to a shout, "Are you the one who's been eating my ties?" The cat looked up at the man and purred mightily.

"Don't you dare purr! You must be crazy — to eat cloth! You're out of your mind! Lord! That's all I need — one more problem!" Koko gave another wheezing cough, and up came a bit of green wool, very damp.

Qwilleran dashed to the telephone and dialed a number.

"Connect me with the bartender," he said, and in a moment he heard the hubbub of the Press Club bar like the roar of a hurricane. "Bruno!" he shouted. "This is Qwilleran. How do I reach that doctor? That psycatatrist?"

The morning after Koko ate a piece of the Danish chair, Qwilleran telephoned his office and told Arch Riker he had a doctor's appointment and would be late.

"Trouble?" Riker asked.

"Nothing serious," said Qwilleran. "Sort of a digestive problem." "That's a twist! I thought you had a stomach like a billy goat." "I have, but last night I got a big surprise." "Better take care of it," Riker advised. "Those things can lead to something worse." Bruno had supplied Dr. Highspight's telephone number, and when Qwilleran called, the voice of the woman who answered had to compete with the mewing and wailing of countless cats. Speaking with a folksy English accent, she told Qwilleran he could have an appointment at eleven o'clock that morning. To his surprise she said it would not be necessary to bring the patient. She gave an address on Merchant Street, and Qwilleran winced.

He prepared a tempting breakfast for Koko — jellied consomme and breast of Press Club turkey — hoping to discourage the cat's appetite for Danish furniture. He said goodbye anxiously, and took a bus to Merchant Street.

Dr. Highspight's number was two blocks from the Allison house, and it was the same type of out-dated mansion.

Unlike the Allison house, which was freshly painted and well landscaped, the clinic was distinctly seedy. The lawn was full of weeds. There were loose floorboards on the porch.

Qwilleran rang the doorbell with misgivings. He had never heard of a psycatatrist, and he hated the thought of being rooked by a quack. Nor did he relish being made the victim of an- other practical joke.

The woman who came to the door was surrounded by cats. Qwilleran counted five of them: a tiger, an orange nondescript, one chocolate brown, and two sleek black panthers. From there his glance went to the woman's runover bedroom slippers, her wrinkled stockings, the sagging hem of her housedress, and finally to her pudgy middle-aged face with its sweet smile.

"Come in, love," she said, "before the pussies run out in the road." "My name's Qwilleran," he said. "I have an appointment with Dr. Highspight." His nose recorded faint odors of fish and antiseptic, and his eye perused the spacious entrance hall, counting cats. They sat on the hall table, perched on several levels of the stairway, and peered inquisitively through all the doorways. A Siamese kitten with an appealing little smudged face struck a businesslike pose in a flat box of sand that occupied one corner of the foyer.

"Eee! I'm no doctor, love," said the woman. "Just a cat fancier with a bit of common sense. Would you like a cuppa? Go in the front room and make yourself comfy, and I'll light the kettle." The living room was high-ceilinged and architecturally distinguished, but the furniture had seen better days.

Qwilleran selected the over-stuffed chair that seemed least likely to puncture him with a broken spring. The cats had followed him and were now inspecting his shoelaces or studying him from a safe distance. He marveled at a cat's idea of a safe distance — roughly seven feet, the length of an average adult's lunge.

"Now, love, what seems to be the bother?" asked Mrs. Highspight, seating herself in a platform rocker and picking up a wild-looking apricot cat to hold on her lap. "I was expecting a young lad. You were in such a dither when you called." "I was concerned about my Siamese," said Qwilleran. "He's a remarkable animal, with some unusual talents — and very friendly. But lately his behavior has been strange. He's crazy about gummed envelopes, masking tape, stamps — anything like that. He licks them!" "Eee, I like to lick envelopes myself," said Mrs. Highspight, rocking her chair vigorously and stroking the apricot cat. "It's a caution how many flavors they can think up." "But you haven't heard the worst. He's started eating cloth! Not just chewing it — swallowing it! I thought the moths were getting into my clothes, but I've found out it's the cat. He's nibbled three good wool ties, and last night he ate a chunk out of a chair." "Now we're onto something!" said the woman. "Is it always wool that he eats?" "I guess so. The chair is covered with some kind of woolly material." "It won't hurt him. If he can't digest it, he'll chuck it up." "That's comforting to know," said Qwilleran, "but it's getting to be a problem. It was a costly chair that he ate, and it doesn't even belong to me." "Does he do it when you're at home?" "No, always behind my back." The poor puss is lonesome. Siamese cats need company, they do, or they get a bit daft. Is he by himself all day?" Qwilleran nodded.

"How long has he lived with you?" "About six months. He belonged to my landlord, who was killed last March. Perhaps you remember the murder on Blenheim Place." "Eee, that I do! I always read about murders, and that was a gory one, that was. They done him in with a carving knife. And this poor puss — was he very fond of the murdered man?" "They were kindred spirits. Never separated." "That's your answer, love. The poor puss has had a shock, like. And now he's lonesome." Qwilleran found himself rising to his own defense. "The cat's very fond of me. We get along fine. He's affectionate, and I play with him once in a while." Just then a large smoky-blue cat walked into the room and made a loud pronouncement.