Shirley Murphy - Christmas Cats - A Literary Companion

Inside, he could see three clean squares in the dust of the cement floor, over in the corner where she'd moved some boxes. "Put your hand in here behind these other boxes, Hector Lee, these rags back in here are warm. They must've been sleeping here when I opened the door. She might even have born her kittens here."

He looked behind the boxes, reached in and felt the dirty rags. They were warm, all right, and smelled of young animals. Virgie said, "I guess she's been coming in here all along. Maybe that tomcat is too skittish to come inside. I'd best put those boxes back, or she'll be really upset." The boxes she'd moved were neatly labeled: Old towels. Cancelled checks. Turkey roaster. He remembered family dinners when they were kids, a twenty-five-pound turkey sizzling brown in that roaster. Virgie didn't have cause no more to cook a big turkey dinner. Undoing the four flaps of a box lid, she looked in at packets of bank statements and cancelled checks held together with rubber bands. "Years old. These can go in the fireplace."

But then, frowning, she lifted out a canvas bag from beside the bales of checks. "I don't…"A sound made them turn.

The tomcat stood in the middle of the garage, looking at them. He did not look friendly. If he'd been any bigger, a fellow would want to back off. Virgie had opened her mouth to say something, when the female appeared on the shelf above the torn, looking down at him. Everyone was still. Then the mama cat jumped down, chirruped to her kitten, and the two of them waltzed past the tomcat, not inches from him; sauntering to the corner, they leaped over the boxes and settled down in their nest. The tomcat sat looking after them, his body and tail softly relaxed, his purr loud and ragged. Virgie smiled.

"I never," Virgie said softly. "That's his little family. Not a tomcat in a thousand would do like that." Satisfied that the tomcat meant no harm, she set the canvas bag on the workbench and opened it, frowning at a tumble of small plastic bags.

"Rock salt," Virgie said. "But we haven't made ice cream…" Her eyes widened.

"Not rock salt," Hector Lee said softly, looking at the stash. "Better open the rest of them cartons… No, second thought, better not."

Twenty minutes later Virgie had the female cat and her kit inside the house, settled down with a bowl of cat food. She had just picked them both up from their nest, real bold and gentle like, and carried them right out, before the sheriff and four deputies arrived to take pictures and lift fingerprints and count the bags of crack. Leaving the law to their work, and with the state drug unit on the way, Virgie and Hector Lee sat at her kitchen table drinking coffee, eating her good punkin' pie, watching the two cats settle in, and listening to the choir's sweet voices, Hark! the Herald Angels . . . . The tomcat had disappeared.

Tomcat showed up again hours later, when the law had finished in the garage and gone away. It was just dusk. Outside, all was quiet, no music now. Already folk were heading for the church. Soon most of Greeley would be crowding in for the service—there would be grand music, then. It was truly Christmas Eve; and when they looked out the window, there stood the tomcat, staring in at them.

Handing the kit to Hector Lee, and picking up the mama cat in her arms, Virgie opened the door. She let him see the female, then she stood aside.

Tomcat, he looked up at the scrawny little female, and he looked at Virgie. And without a by-your-leave he walked up onto the porch past Virgie as bold as Sherman himself, and right on into the house. Followed Virgie and the little female right on into the kitchen where Virgie poured him a saucer of cream off the top of the milk jug. Fresh thick cream.

That was the way the mama cat and her kit and that ole tomcat moved in with Virgie. And that cat, he helped the mama take care of their kit and teach it to hunt, as gentle as a person could want. Virgie said, "I guess, once in a while, you find a tomcat like that." Hector Lee, he moved in, too, into Virgie's spare bedroom. All of a sudden Virgie Woods wasn't alone anymore. And, it being Christmas Eve and all, Virgie thought that was the way a southern story should end. With family coming in out of the cold together, the spicy smell of Christmas baking, the turkey roaster waiting all scrubbed to take a fresh turkey, and holy music filling the night brighter than Sherman's fires ever blazed.

As for them Worley boys, there was no Christmas Eve charity for that bunch. The DEA boys packed 'em off to Atlanta, and no one in Greeley, that Christmas Eve nor ever after, was sorry to see them go.

Kitty "Box"-ing Day

Betsy Stowe

Christmas is the time of year

When humans go insane-

Rushing, wrapping, hiding gear,

And never time for games.

They bring trees right inside the house Hang shiny, dangling objects out

We're not supposed to find!

So cats must make our own good fun,

Ignoring normal rules,

And claiming for our own the one

Thing cast aside by fools!

Paper, boxes, bags, and bows—

Amusement park for cats!

To shred, to hide, to take a roll

Sounds like a mousie's scratch!

Colored, crackly paper sheets…

I must untie this knot!

This pile was once a single piece.

My kingdom for a box!

Then finally attention runs

Back to its rightful place.

Festivities are overcome

By my too gorgeous face!

I make them laugh.

'Don't even care

That they forgot my treat.

Admit it, felines have the flair

To make Christmas complete.

The Mystery of Musetta's Mistletoe

Clea Simon

Mistletoe? No, Musetta! Put it down!" Even as I jerked awake, startled from sleep by the thud of my stout pet landing on the pillow beside me, my cat-loving instincts kicked in. "Put that down, Musetta!"

The round green eyes staring at me were all innocence as I reached for her, but she dropped the sprig. The muted green leaves and white berries had started alarms in my head—mistletoe may not be fatal to cats, but who wanted to deal with even a moderately sick feline during the crazy season? Only when I picked it up did the last of the cobwebs clear: It was plastic, a false alarm.

"Musetta? Where did you get this?" She was grooming, stretched around to a hard-to-reach place at the small of her glossy black back, and didn't respond. "Kitty?" She straightened up and stared back at me, but only licked her pink nose.

"Strange." I twirled the plastic plant in my hand. I sure hadn't brought it into the apartment we two shared, not being a fan of fake plants or of Christmas, particularly this year. Musetta reached a white mitten out to bat at the faux sprig, and I made her stand up for it, exposing her fluffy white belly.

"Tickles!" I yelled, giving in to the urge to ruffle her soft tummy fur. My vulnerable pet nipped me for my troubles and then jumped off the bed, leaving me with the plastic mistletoe. Fake cheer. How appropriate, I thought, my mind racing back to the night before.

That was supposed to be fun, too. A holiday party, hosted by one of my friends, but Bill—my sometime boyfriend—and I had arrived already snarling. The evening hadn't started that way. Sitting up in bed, I could still see the five outfits I'd discarded in my quest for a perfect party look, and the stretch velvet dress I'd chosen—olive green to set off my red hair—now lay draped over my bedside chair.

The problem was the holidays, the whole "be jolly" spirit. That was what had urged me to push Bill. To ask him again for a key to his place, to make us more of a real couple. I'd reached for an excuse: "It will match the one I gave you when you had to sit Musetta last month." But we both knew what I was doing. So when he hesitated—beginning one of those "Theda, aren't we having fun?" speeches every woman knows—I'd pulled back and snapped at him. A hurt look had flashed over his face, but his response was curt, and everything had just gone downhill from there. By the time we reached our destination, we might as well have been at different parties. I talked to my friends; he moped, his tall, lean frame wedged into a corner. I danced, he glowered, particularly when a string of slow songs found me in the arms of a particularly hunky guitarist. Maybe I was being a jerk. Some of that dancing was awfully close. But didn't Bill deserve it? Yeah, he gave me a ride home, but that was it; his long face had been closed and stern. The guitarist—what was his name? Dan? Dave?—hadn't even asked for my number. And so I'd tossed and turned in my favorite ugly flannels, and now, to add to it all, my cat was acting weird.