Shirley Murphy: Murphy_Shirley_Rousseau_Cat_Telling_Tales_BookFi

Ryan said, “Don’t even suggest Charlie and Max. Though,” she added with a wicked smile, “it would do Debbie good to live in a cop’s house for a few days.” The Harpers lived up among the green hills, happily alone except for their dogs and horses. Joe could just imagine the havoc two unruly kids could create among the defenseless animals, not to mention the danger, leaving gates open, letting the horses or dogs out onto the highway. And of course getting themselves stepped on by a hard hoof or snapped at by a usually patient mutt, and then blaming the Harpers. Charlie Harper worked at home, she didn’t need the frustration of nosy houseguests underfoot. A published writer and a successful artist, she had commission deadlines, publishing deadlines, and had neither the time nor the patience for such an intrusion. Restlessly Joe dropped off the mantel. “Going for a little hunt,” he said impatiently. “You two can work out the logistics—just send her somewhere else.”

Trotting from the studio into Clyde’s office, he leaped to the desk and up onto the nearest rafter. Padding along beneath the ceiling, he pushed out through his rooftop cat door into his tower, into his hexagonal glass retreat that rose atop the roof of the master bedroom. This was his private place, daytime suntrap, nighttime lookout beneath the scattered stars—and now suddenly a trap for inexplicable nightmares that, he sincerely hoped, would not return.

Pausing among his sun-faded cushions, he nibbled at an itchy paw then pushed out a window onto the roof of the master bedroom. With the rising sun warming his sleek gray coat, he leaped away across the shingles into a tangle of oak branches and across these onto the neighbor’s roof, then the next roof and the next, heading for Dulcie’s house. He needed Dulcie to talk to; needed a good run with his lady by his side, needed to stalk and kill a few rats and work off the unease. The woman hadn’t yet arrived, and already he was clawing for fresh air.

3

“You could be wrong,” Dulcie said, licking blood from her paw, the sun gleaming off her brown tabby fur. When she looked up at Joe, her green eyes were questioning. “Debbie could be a perfectly nice person, just broke and alone. And scared, with two little kids to care for.” They had been hunting all morning, had caught and devoured four fat wood rats between them. The hills rose emerald green around them, patterned with an occasional twisted oak, the land fresh with the scent of new growth and with the salty tang of the sea; the sea itself, down beyond the village, gleamed deep indigo beneath the wide, clear sky.

“She didn’t ask if she could move in,” Joe said, “she announced that she was, she did her best to make Ryan feel sorry for her—played on her sympathy like a panhandler.”

Dulcie flicked her tail. “You can move in with Wilma and me. Except,” she said, cutting him a look, “you’d miss all the excitement and high drama.” Having washed her whiskers, she nibbled delicately at the new winter grass, then looked down toward the village rooftops. “Kit’s off with Misto again,” she said with interest, thinking of Misto’s ancient tales.

Joe laid back his ears. “She’ll forget how to hunt. Misto’s a fine old fellow, but . . . Does he have to fill her head with so many stories, with all that foolishness?”

“Not foolishness! He’s taking her back through past ages, through our own history. Even the old myths grow from real history, Joe.”

Joe sneezed. He didn’t like tales of ages past, he didn’t like all those yarns of peasants and nobles and magic that so pleased Dulcie and made Kit purr as if she’d rolled in the catnip; the tortoiseshell was enough of a dreamer without Misto’s help. Pretty soon she’d hardly care what was happening here and now, and where could that kind of foolishness lead her?

Dulcie said, “Let her be, Joe. Misto’s the closest thing she’ll ever know to a father. She hardly even knew her mother, the only way she could hear the old tales was to crouch in the shadows at the edge of the wild clowder, just a tiny, scared kitten, listening. Not one of those cats wanted her there, no one wanted to love her and care for her. And as to the tales,” she said softly, “if we don’t understand our past, Joe, if we don’t know where it all began, how can we understand what’s happening now, all around us?”

Joe gave her an impatient look, and turned away. He didn’t need to know what happened ten centuries gone, to make sense of life around him. He didn’t need stories to tell him right from wrong, tell him the difference between good and evil. Both cats came alert as a band of coyotes began to yip, back among the hills. The beasts were very bold, for the middle of the day. With an alarmed look at each other they raced for the nearest oak tree, scrambling up its gnarled branches to safety, above the reach of prowling beasts. There, curled up together in a fork of the heavy branches, they slept. The sea wind whispered around them, the sun warmed them, and the coyotes remained busy looking for other prey. Dulcie dreamed of medieval villages, but Joe dreamed of Debbie Kraft, her invasion bolder than any hungry coyote, and then his dreams turned darker still, caught again in storm, and human rage, and a strange prophetic fear. When he woke, the bright day was gone.

The clouds were nearly as dark as his nightmare, heavy clouds hanging low above them, hurrying night along. They yawned and stretched, and smelled rain on the wind, and the wind itself had grown colder. Weather in Molena Point, which was notional any time of year, could never be trusted this early in the year. One moment the sidewalks and rooftops were burning hot, an hour later the streets and roofs were soaked with rain. Ever since Christmas the weather had swung from heavy storm, to idyllic spring, to days as humid as summer; only a cat could tell ahead of time what the day would bring, and this time of year even a cat might be inclined to wonder. The coyotes were silent now; the cats listened, and sniffed the breeze. When they detected no scent of the beasts nearby they backed down the rough oak trunk and headed home, thinking eagerly of supper.

Below them in the village, high on the rooftops, tortoiseshell Kit and Misto barely noticed the weather or cared that rain was imminent, they were deep into another time, another place, as the old yellow tom shared his ancient tales. The tide was out, the iodine smell of the sea mixed with the scent of the pine and cypress trees that sheltered the crowded little shops. As Misto ended a tale of knights and fiery dragons, as if in concert with his words the last rays of the setting sun blazed red beneath the darkening clouds. And when they looked down from the roof of Mandarin’s Bakery where they sat, a thin stray cat, a white female, was slipping along the sidewalk and into the alley—toward a baited trap redolent with the smell of canned turkey. Maybe tonight she’d spring the trap and end her wandering.

Neither Kit nor Misto moved to stop her, to scramble down and haze her away from the waiting trigger that would snap the mesh door closed and shut her inside. This stray was starving on the streets and too fearful to approach strange houses for food, she was a dumped cat, an abandoned household pet with no real notion how to hunt for her living. Her instincts to chase and catch were still kittenish, without focus, without the skills wrought by training. She was a charming little cat but, in their opinion, helpless as a newborn.

It hurt Kit that so many unwanted pets roamed the village, animals often sick, thrown away by their human families. Coddled from kittenhood in warm houses, then suddenly evicted, they had little chance to survive on their own, no notion how to snatch gophers from the village gardens or snag unwary birds on the wing. Many still lingered hopefully near the very homes from where they’d been abandoned, houses standing empty now. Families without jobs, moved away suddenly, leaving the village to search for cheaper rent, cheaper food, for the possibility of work somewhere else. Families who dragged away their grieving children and left behind the little family cat, to make it on her own.