Shirley Murphy: Murphy_Shirley_Rousseau_Cat_Telling_Tales_BookFi

The old one looked familiar, as if he might have glimpsed her now and then among the shops; Molena Point was small, it was hard not to know the locals. But the young, dark-haired woman was a stranger to him. Oval face, ivory complexion, cleft chin as if a dimple lodged there. A pouty mouth, a sullen, selfish look about her that, whatever the argument had been about, made Joe want to side with the older woman. When he thought too hard about the dream, his paws began to feel cold and wet again, his fear gauge to shoot right through the roof. But at last he tucked the nightmare away, shoved it to the far dark at the back of his feline thoughts along with other matters he didn’t much care to dwell on, with incidents he’d bring forth into the light only if they were required.

But he slept no more, this night.

Leaving his tower, he prowled across the rooftops of the village cottages and shops, brushing among overhanging branches of the oak and cypress trees, peering into cozy second-floor bedrooms still dark and peaceful and into the occasional rooftop penthouse. Galloping up and down the steep roofs, he wondered if his footfalls woke anyone in the rooms below where even the patter of a squirrel might be heard by a light sleeper. And the dream ran with him, shattering his sense of what was real, almost made him question his own convictions. Prowling among the shadows of roof vents and warm chimneys, he watched the sky pale from deepest gray to its first predawn silver streaked with wisps of blood-tinted clouds and still he couldn’t put the dream away, couldn’t know if it was a prediction or some mysterious voice from the past—or simply damn foolishness? Badgered by futile questions, he snapped back to the present only when he caught the first smell of coffee from the cottages below and the aroma of frying bacon. As hunger jolted him back to reality, he spun around and raced for home, his soft paws pounding across the rooftops, thinking of breakfast. To hell with stormy mind games, with nighttime portents and with visions he didn’t want, and didn’t believe in.

2

The rising sun fingered in through the glass walls of Ryan Flannery’s upstairs studio, and a fire burned on the hearth against the dawn chill. The brightening room smelled of fresh coffee from the pot on the big worktable where Ryan and Clyde sat surrounded by stacks of real estate ads and flyers. The lingering scent of frying bacon and waffles had drifted upstairs, too, mixed with a whiff of Joe Grey’s breakfast kippers. He lay purring, stretched out across the mess of real estate come-ons, his hind feet anchoring a pile of foreclosure notices, his front paws idling with a stack of price lists and specs the couple had been collecting for weeks. Licking a bit of maple syrup from his whiskers, he marveled at the propensity of his two favorite humans to complicate their lives—they needed another falling-down cottage to renovate like he needed a bed full of hungry fleas.

Ryan had pulled a sweatshirt on over her jeans, its white fleece setting off her dark, tousled hair, her sea-green eyes and high coloring. Her Latino and Scots-Irish heritage had blessed her with the delicate beauty of both races—as well as the volatile temper of both, which, most of the time, she kept pretty well reined in. Across the table, Clyde looked a bit shabby this early morning in ancient, faded jeans and a colorless, threadbare T-shirt that, in the gray tomcat’s opinion, had long ago been ripe for the ragbag. Beneath the soft lamplight, both were examining eagerly the color ads for the small, neglected houses spread across the table, as if each cried out to them with the insistent voice of temptation: Buy me, remodel me, make me beautiful again.

Clyde and Ryan had been married just a year next week, but nearly from the moment Clyde slid the ring on her finger and engulfed her in a bear-hug kiss, they’d celebrated their marital bliss by throwing themselves into buying run-down houses, taking advantage of the falling market to launch into the small but challenging remodel projects that were a sideline for Ryan, turning each dilapidated shack into a bright little home so appealing that, despite the economic downturn, it sold often within days of being listed. This, on top of her full schedule of new-house construction, indicated a form of insanity that could beset only the human mind.

Though maybe, Joe thought, Ryan’s creative inner fire was, after all, somehow akin to the same burning drive that made a cat stalk, capture, and kill; maybe, indeed, the same single-minded kind of obsession and commitment. Looking around him at the studio Ryan had designed and built atop their home, he did have to admire his housemate’s talents: The heavy wood beams of the studio and its three tall glass walls had turned what could have been a dull second-floor addition into a treetop aerie, the space skillfully tied into Clyde’s adjoining study and the master bedroom beyond. Those two rooms, she had built some months before they were married, expanding what had been a poky one-story cottage into a spacious and imaginative environment.

As the sun lifted, the glass walls of the studio seemed to melt away, the surrounding tree branches to become even more a part of the airy room, mingling their shadows with the oak worktable, the computer desk and old drafting table, the long, antique storage cabinet with its wide, thin drawers that held Ryan’s drawings and blueprints. In the far corner, two campaign chairs, fitted with deep blue canvas, faced the blue daybed where Ryan’s big silver Weimaraner lay on his back, his four gray legs in the air, snoring, his upside-down rumbles soft and rhythmic. The little white cat slept curled against his shoulder, safe and trusting. Rock was Snowball’s guardian, she felt deliciously secure under the big dog’s stewardship.

Ryan, having given up her small apartment when she moved in with Clyde on their wedding day, had started constructing the studio the minute they arrived home from their honeymoon. Frantic for a place to work, she’d been just a bit cranky as she tried to complete the designs for two new houses and four remodels, place orders for materials, do her invoices and bookkeeping, all in the downstairs guest room where she’d crammed in her office furniture, while at the same time starting construction on the studio, and supervising three building crews. Those first months of marriage she had, in short, not been your typical lighthearted bride. Thank God Clyde could cook. Or life might have degenerated into an endless round of frozen dinners for the humans and, too disgusting to contemplate, canned cat food for Joe himself.

Now, since she’d moved into her comfortable new studio, you’d think she’d take a break, but no way. She and Clyde had bought and completed two remodel prospects and were burning to buy more. Joe tried to keep his opinion, and more scathing remarks, to a minimum; he made no comment now as they passed real estate ads back and forth, discussing the possibilities of each little house, its charms versus its drawbacks and weaknesses. Rolling over, he edged into a patch of sunlight that shone down through the clerestory windows; the bright shaft streaming past him picked out, as well, the carved antique mantel with its hand-painted tile insets, each bearing the image of a cat—cats whose history often perplexed Joe, their uncertain origin an aspect of life that sharply unnerved the tomcat, that told him more about his own ancestry than he cared to dwell on.

Ryan and Clyde had found the mantel while on their honeymoon up in the wine country northeast of San Francisco, in a musty antique shop, and of course they had to bring it home. They’d left for their wedding trip driving a borrowed Cadillac Escalade. Two weeks later they arrived home with Ryan hauling a trailer behind the SUV, and Clyde following in a large, rented U-Haul truck, every available inch of all three vehicles loaded with dusty relics unearthed from junk shops all along their way: six antique mantels, twelve stained-glass windows, old hand-hewn lumber, detritus from people’s basements and attics and torn-down houses that fit right in with Ryan’s remodel designs. Amazingly, Clyde had been just as hyped as Ryan over their cache, the onset of feverish love apparently affecting his mental health, generating this new obsession that replaced his erstwhile preoccupation with antique cars. Oh well, such was love, and the tomcat had settled in, to adjust to household changes that, while frenetically busy, were far cozier and more charming than the careless environ of their austere bachelor pad.