Shirley Murphy - Murphy_Shirley_Rousseau_Cat_Bearing_Gifts_BookFi

But why would they go to Molena Point? They were probably headed miles away in the stolen Lincoln, maybe away from the coast where the cops might not be looking for them yet. Above her, the coyotes had eased nearer, through the trees, muttering among themselves. At a faint yip she crouched lower. They’d soon catch her scent, if they hadn’t already, and come snuffling down among the rocks, hungry and tracking her.

If the beasts attacked, those two cops down there wouldn’t help her. Why would they? A cat screaming in the night, they’d think it a wild cat, maybe hunting or mating, all a part of nature. All part of a world in which they had no call to interfere. How long before help would come, before she saw the lights of Clyde and Ryan’s truck approaching up the road? It seemed forever since she’d called them. Hunkering down between the rocks, she stared up at the vast night sky, stared until the wheeling stars turned her dizzy, and made her feel so incredibly small. Tracing their endless sweep, she couldn’t conceive of anything so huge that it went on forever.

What was she , then, in this vastness? Forgetting the innate cat creed that made each individual cat know that he was the center of all else, Kit thought, at that moment, that she was less than nothing, a speck of dust, a pinprick.

Except, I have nine lives to live, and that is not nothing.

And to a hungry coyote I’m something. I might be nothing in the vastness of time and space, but I’m something to those hungry mothers.

But then she was ashamed of her fear. What if, right now, no one knew I was here, no one in all the world was coming to help me? What would I do, then? I’ve rambled all over on my own, I grew up alone without humans to help me, and ignored by the other clowder cats. I made out all right, then. I always outsmarted the coyotes, I didn’t cower, then, shivering like a silly rabbit. So what’s the big deal, now? I’ll just hunker down here between the boulders where they can’t reach me, and damn well bloody them if they try.

But then she thought , Maybe I have more to lose now. More than I did when I was a harebrained youngster wandering alone. Now I have Lucinda and Pedric, I have all my friends, cat and human, I’m part of the human world now, as I never dreamed could happen. And best of all, I have Pan. I can’t die now in the mouth of some slavering predator, and lose what we have together.

From the moment she’d spied Pan up on the cliffs, heading for the windy shore searching for his father, she’d never doubted they were meant for each other, never doubted it even if, sometimes, their arguing grew volatile. We always make up, she thought with a little cat smile, and making up was so nice . No , she thought, I don’t mean to check out of this world now, in the jaws of some slobbering coyote. Screw the damn coyotes.

Listening with renewed disdain to the beasts’ yodeling, she backed deeper down between the rocks where she could lash out in safety, where they, if they tried to reach her, would meet only slashing claws. Curling up in a little ball, she deliberately made herself purr, and in a more sensible feline mind-set she imagined herself, as was proper to a cat, the very center of the vast universe. She was the center of all time and all space, one small and perfect cat, the universe whirling around her in endless veneration. This was cat-think, even nonspeaking cats knew in their hearts this assurance, and it made her feel infinitely better. Soon she felt whole again. Sheltered deep down among the rocks, too deep for a prying nose or reaching paw, Kit smiled to herself, and she slept.

BUT TO PAN, tonight, the universe seemed unruly and fierce as he hurried from the last roof down a pine tree, and across the Greenlaws’ dark yard. Scrambling up Kit’s oak tree to her tree house, clawing up over the edge, he already knew she wasn’t there, her scent was old, mixed with the aged smell of feathers from a bird she had consumed weeks ago. The high-roofed aerie was empty, its cedar pillars pale against the night, Kit’s tangle of cushions abandoned, crumpled together and half hidden by browning oak leaves.

Looking back along the oak branches to the big house, he saw no light in any window. There was no sound, and no lingering whiff of supper. No faintest scent of exhaust from the empty driveway as if the Greenlaws had only now returned and perhaps already gone to bed, as if maybe Kit would be tucked up under the covers between them.

Maybe they’re on their way. Maybe they stopped for supper along the coast, and will be here soon. Sand dabs and abalone , and Kit’s making a pig of herself . Trying to reassure himself, he crept at last onto Kit’s cushions. Burrowing among the leaves and pillows, he lay on his belly watching the street below, his whole body rigid with waiting and with his lingering sense of danger. He was so tense he couldn’t rest; soon he rose again and began to pace, his heart filled with Kit’s fear, his belly churning with her uncertainty and loneliness. He was pacing and fussing when the sound of leaves crumpled in the yard below by approaching paws brought his fur up, sent him peering over the edge, swallowing back a growl.

EARLIER THAT EVENING, two blocks up the hill from where Pan would spin his whispered magic for little Tessa Kraft, Joe Grey and Dulcie had slipped down through Emmylou’s ragged yard, departing the stone shack. Over the past weeks, whenever they found its two scruffy occupants absent, they had searched the fusty room, pawing behind whatever boards the men had loosened, sniffing the old stone wall so long concealed there. Early on, when the men first moved secretly into the stone shack, the cats, spying through the dirty window, had watched them searching and had pressed their noses to the glass wondering what could be of such interest, wondering why two tramps would tear the siding from the walls, removing it board by board and digging into the concrete behind, lifting out loose stones. What were they looking for?

What the cats had found was the oily smell of money, old paper bills, sour with mildew, but no money was there now in those spidery recesses. From the size and shape of the concentrated scent, they were certain thick packets of old bills had lain there. Hidden away for how long? Looked like the men hadn’t finished searching, one whole wall was still boarded over. The cats took turns, tabby Dulcie crouched on the windowsill watching the woods and the weedy driveway below, while Joe Grey sniffed and poked behind the loose boards, where rocks were loose or missing. Was this Sammie’s money, that had been hidden here? Did Emmylou know about it? In the six months since she’d inherited the place and moved in, they’d never once seen her near the stone hut.

It was Dulcie who first discovered the men slipping down through the woods and into the stone house carrying two grocery bags, a loaf of bread sticking out. She had been sunning herself on Emmylou’s roof, deeply absorbed in composing a poem, when their stealthy approach made her fur go rigid.

“They’ve broken in,” she’d said to Joe later. “Emmylou can’t know they’re there, she doesn’t go up there, she’s said nothing to Ryan though Ryan has been helping her with the lumber for her renovation.” They were about to pass the word, see that it got back to Emmylou through human channels, when Joe saw the men as he was hunting rats in the yard below. From the looks of the smaller man, and from descriptions he’d heard, he thought that was Sammie’s brother.

“Why would he be so secretive?” Dulcie said. “Why wouldn’t Emmylou welcome him, Sammie’s own brother?”

“Let’s wait a while, and watch them.”