Кроха - Dedication

She had told no one. Except her human housemate, because how could she not tell Wilma, when Dulcie threw up her breakfast every morning?

But yet Misto knew, with those same powers that let him remember ages long past and let him see into the future. “Three kittens, three tiny mites,” he’d said, “snuggled within, secret and warm and happy.” And he had known more than that about her unborn kits; he had said, with a faint and ragged purr, “Three strong babies waiting eagerly to be born, two boy kits, and a calico girl.

“And,” he had told her, “there is an amazement about the calico kitten. She . . .” But he began to yawn, and before he could continue, the old cat had drifted into sleep, as was often the way since his illness. Maybe it was the medication sending him dozing, or maybe he thought he had said enough. Dulcie only knew that now, prowling the roofs in the cold fog, she fidgeted with unanswered questions. What had Misto started to tell her? What about her girl kitten, whatamazement?

And, though she longed to tell Joe Grey about the kittens, still she didn’t know how to tell him. What would Joe say when he learned that new little lives waited within the dark of her sheltering body? Would he want kittens, this tomcat whose very existence was committed to the exciting dangers of tracking human criminals? To the uncertainties of helping the law, of apprehending evil? Would fatherhood hold him back from what he was born to do? Would rallying around helpless babies, while burning to chase after human scum, only make him restless and cross? Joe Grey was not an ordinary tomcat to casually father a litter and then disappear. Would the innate commitment, the very responsibilities of kittens, his kittens, only distress him?

And, she wondered, if she told Joe about the kittens now, would that news make Misto’s impending death seem even more cruel by comparison? As if the inestimable powers of the universe meant to take Misto’s life in exchange for the three new lives soon to be?

She knew that made no sense. But would such an idea strike Joe, as he grieved for their dying friend? Would such thoughts make him turn away from her joyous secret?

Or was the intention of the greater powers not to exchange life for life, but instead to fill the emptiness, once their friend had departed? To bring new happiness into their world through these young, fledgling spirits?

No matter how she pondered the question, she didn’t know how to tell Joe. And she didn’t knowwhen to tell him. Now, as they watched the foggy streets, still she kept her own counsel; though she was amused that Joe hadn’t already guessed, by the look of her.

She liked to think she was still svelte and sleek, that no one would see her condition. But when at home she posed before Wilma’s full-length mirror, looking at herself sideways, she could see the gentle curve of the babies that waited safe beneath her tabby-striped fur.

Well, she was just as fast as ever at the hunt. Or nearly as fast. Maybe it took a little more effort to outrun a rat and take him down; maybe she was a bit slow keeping up with Joe, was too often the last to rise after resting in the grassy fields. So far Joe had said nothing about the changes. He was either being polite or was too occupied with the crimes that had beset the village and with Misto’s illness to think much about a lazy partner.

And, Dulcie worried, what would happen to Misto’s spirit when he’d left them? Would the old cat step into a new life, as he said would happen? Into the bright realm where, he told them, all souls journeyed after this world? Were Misto’s tales of multiple lives true or were his stories of a long and varied past, before this life, only fabrications, the yellow tom’s imaginative fancies?

Yet what he’d told them of those past lives was linked to facts in the present, to photographs of a long-ago child Misto had known, to the cache of hidden money the cats had found, to so much that was very real, that they could do no less than believe him. But now, as the old cat grew thinner and his life faded, now when Misto asked for his son, Pan, they knew he was reaching his last days. The old cat was weak, indeed, if he had forgotten that just a few days earlier, before Misto grew ill, Pan had left the village. That the red tom would already be too far away from Molena Point for anyone to ever find him—Pan and tortoiseshell Kit were off on an adventure of which they had only dreamed; they had set out for a world where perhaps no sensible feline would venture. They wandered, now, on a journey they would not have begun had they guessed that Pan’s father soon would die.

If, when they departed, Misto had already divined his own illness, he didn’t tell Pan. He had wanted them to pursue their journey free and happy, perhaps the greatest adventure, in this world, that any cat could know.

But then later Misto, caught in the haze of pain medication, would forget they were away, traveling, and would ask for Pan. And then, remembering, the old cat would drop his ears, embarrassed. But then he would look at Dulcie and remember she was expecting kittens and the old cat would smile. In illness, his moods and the clarity of his thinking swung alarmingly, frightening Dulcie, and saddening Joe Grey.

Now on the foggy rooftops Joe and Dulcie dropped down from a high peak to a shingled slope, moving on toward Ocean Avenue, toward the village’s main street. Pausing sometimes, they looked idly into the second-floor windows of scattered penthouses where residents had left their shades up. Folks glancing out while showering or brushing their teeth knew there was nobody up on the roofs to see them—only gliding seagulls, and a pair of prowling cats peering in. They had no idea how their morning rituals amused the two feline observers. But at last the pair moved on, watching the streets and listening—and suddenly they leaped to the roof’s edge.

Paws in the roof gutter, they cocked their ears to a sound barely heard. They caught an elusive aroma drifting on the mist. Every sense alert, they stood seeking through the fog, keen to spot the attacker, hoping they might alert some unwary would-be victim.

But it was only a dowdy woman walking her three leashed beagles, only the hush of her footsteps and of their paws and the faint jingling of their collars.

So far neither the cats nor the cops had any clue to the street prowler. He left footprints that the police photographed or picked up electronically or captured in casts, but they had nothing to match them to. They’d detained no suspect, had found no matching footprints from another crime scene, no shoes tossed into a Dumpster, yet the prints at each attack were different.

Even more puzzling to the cats, the attacker left no scent for them to follow. Always some mélange of competing smells got in their way: diesel exhaust, the heavy aroma of fresh bread and cakes from a nearby bakery, the stink of marigolds crushed underfoot, the overlying exhaust of a vanished car in which the guy might have fled. “Maybe,” Joe had said bitterly, “he can levitate like some would-be comic-book hero.”

Whether the assaults exploded out of cruelty or were born of some unknown reason, or were a sick prank with no real purpose at all, no one yet knew. Nor had the attacker left a clue at any scene, no dropped possession, not even trace evidence of hairs or fabric particles, no lost button; the perp seemed as ghostly as if, indeed, he had materialized from some phantom life.

Nor was there ever a loiterer nearby to be questioned as a witness. With each incident, the cats’ frustration grew apace with that of the detectives, the patience of both sets of sleuths wearing thin. The cats’ usual pleasure at offering Molena Point PD a telling clue, the officers’ stoic reception of mysteriously proffered information, all came to nothing. There was no information. Meanwhile lone senior citizens were being injured and frightened. Those older folks who had not been attacked, but who read the local paper, listened to the news, and gossiped among their friends, grew more wary and angry. One of the victims had been in a wheelchair, two walking with canes, folks out to take care of a few errands, get a little air. Each one was knocked down, wheelchair or cane cast aside. And the perp was gone, vanished, leaving the victim to the mercy of whoever might happen along and find them; but none of the marks was robbed.