Shirley Murphy - Murphy_Shirley_Rousseau_Cat_Coming_Home_BookFi

Ryan came to join Maudie and Juana Davis, sitting cross-legged on the floor. “That little boy idolizes Lori. He told me he didn’t know girls could hammer and saw so straight.”

Maudie laughed. “Benny loves having someone besides an old woman for company, and Lori’s good with him. He’s enamored of Rock, too … I thought, for his birthday—it’s just two days before Christmas—I’d go out to the pound, see if they have a really nice young dog. What do you think?”

“I think that’s a great idea,” Ryan said. “Your backyard’s already fenced, with a lawn where a boy and a dog can play. Or you might decide to take Benny with you, let him pick out his own dog?” She went silent as Benny, Lori, and Cora Lee returned with loaded plates. All three sat down on the floor beside Ryan to enjoy their supper, Cora Lee nearly as supple as the children.

“The nativity pageant starts at four,” Cora Lee said. She looked up at Maudie. “You are coming, you won’t mind the crowd?”

“I’m a bit under the weather,” Maudie said. “My shoulder’s hurting, but nothing to worry about.”

“We can take Benny,” Cora Lee offered. “See the pageant, take a wagon ride, then I’ll bring him home.” She reached to pat Maudie’s hand. “No one would dare bother him with us, in that crowd.”

“I could pick him up here,” Maudie said, glancing at Ryan. “If that would be all right? It would be closer for Cora Lee.”

“That’s fine,” Ryan said. “Rock will be happy of the company.” Her glance said, No one will bother him here, either, in front of half the department. Soon Maudie had risen and hurried away, down the street to her car. Padding out to the porch, Joe watched her with interest, thinking about her returning to her empty house alone. He had turned back inside when Kit streaked past him out the front door and up the nearest pine and took off, heading for Maudie’s. As if she didn’t want to see Maudie go home alone, with so much activity in the village inviting mischief in the quieter neighborhoods.

Or did Kit not want Misto to face an emergency alone? Or, fascinated as she was by the grandfatherly cat, was she simply using Maudie’s departure as an excuse to share Misto’s vigil and perhaps learn more about him?

36

MAUDIE’S CAR STOOD in the drive and a soft light burned in her upstairs bedroom, but from up the street where Kit and Misto crouched on the Damen cottage roof, they couldn’t see the front door of the Tudor bungalow. The cell phone lay beside them, next to Misto’s plate, which he had licked sparkling clean. Above the mottled oak branches, heavy gray clouds were blowing in, leaving only patches of darkening blue as evening closed around them—but it wouldn’t rain for the Nativity play, the air didn’t smell of rain.

Lights would be bright down in the village, every house sparkling with decorations, the shopping plaza ablaze with hundreds of tiny lights for the pageant. Kit imagined folk crowded along the plaza’s upstairs balconies, against the shop windows below, and lined up all around the big, enclosed garden where the Nativity drama would be played out. She imagined Benny and Lori afterward, riding all over the village in a horse-drawn buggy. Kit had ridden on the back of a horse once, sitting in front of Charlie, but never in a wagon with a driver snapping his whip.

Beside her, Misto yawned. “Don’t go to sleep,” she told him. “You were asleep when I got here.” He’d been tucked beneath the overhanging branches in a bed of fallen leaves, had pawed the oak leaves up around himself to keep warm, and had been snoring.

“I wasn’t asleep, I was resting, I didn’t miss a thing. House has been silent as a deserted rat hole, no one there but Maudie. All the windows dark until she got home, nothing moving in the yard, no one on the street, no cars cruising.” As they watched, the bedroom light went out, and in a few minutes a faint light came on in the kitchen.

“If there had been someone,” Kit said, “would you have used the phone?”

He laid his ears back. “Of course I would. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Have you ever talked to a human?”

Misto gave her a devilish smile. “Not so they knew. When I was a kitten, I liked to sneak up behind someone, say something rude, then run like hell. I’d be gone when they swung around, I’d watch from up a tree. They’d look and look, but saw no one.” The yellow cat licked his paw, laughing. “I thought that was funny until I got older and saw what a chance I was taking—not just for me, but for all of us. After that, I didn’t play those games anymore.”

Down the hill, a second, brighter light came on in the kitchen and they could smell coffee brewing. The windows were still bare of shades, but from this angle they couldn’t see directly in, could only see Maudie when she moved close to the glass. When the brighter light went out again, and a light blazed on in the studio, they trotted over the roofs to the house next door to Maudie, where they could look down directly inside.

The new room was a storm of color, the shelves stacked with squares of rainbow bright cloth. On the far wall hung three quilts, their patterns so intricate and vivid they took Kit’s breath away. One in autumn colors, one a winter pattern in shades of gray and soft blues, with twiggy branches woven across; and the third quilt shouted of Christmas. Its many shades of red and green and brown picked out partridges, pear trees, maids a-singing—such a happy scene it made Kit laugh.

“She invents the pictures,” Kit said. “Then cuts out little pieces of cloth and sews them together, to bring her dream alive.” Kit knew about dreams. “Quilts like music,” she said. “Quilts that tell stories.”

The tomcat looked and looked, then turned to Kit, his thin tail twitching. “That’s what it means to be human,” he said softly. “A cat might dream, but without human hands, what can we do? Not even a speaking cat could bring to life a work of art or an invention. We can never make our dreams into something that will please others.”

Kit considered Misto, his scarred ears and shoulder, his big, scarred paws with the one crooked claw that must have been torn and healed wrong. She imagined how he must have looked as a little yellow kitten there on the shore, and then how he’d looked grown-up and handsome, his wide shoulders hard with muscle, a fine young tomcat—but now he was frail and old, old enough to be her great-great-great-grandfather. What had he seen in his long life, this cat who had, clearly, once been a muscled brawler and bold adventurer, but who was a dreamer, too?

Below, Maudie took something from her pocket and laid it on the worktable beneath a fold of cloth, then began to select squares of fabric and lay them out into a pattern. Though she was working in the lighted room with no shades or draperies at the windows she didn’t seem nervous. When shadows stirred outside she glanced up briefly, saw only tree shadows blowing in the wind, and turned back to laying out quilting pieces in an intricate Christmas tree design.

But soon something did startle her, jerking her gaze up to the garden. Her hands stilled; then she slipped one hand beneath the fold of cloth, revealing for an instant, a dark revolver.

She was still for a long time, looking out into the night. At last she slid the gun back into her pocket, picked up her empty coffee cup, and moved away into the kitchen.

“Well,” Kit said with surprise. “Maybe Maudie doesn’t need so much protection, after all.”

Misto smiled. “That soft little grandmother. She isn’t as helpless as everyone thought. Maybe,” he said, “if we need to use the cell phone, it’ll be to help some unfortunate burglar.”