The Whiskered Spy (3 page)

A
mbling over to the kitchen
, I slipped out through the pet door and onto the small patio. Dana was sitting on the wooden bench Zack had once placed there for purposes of smoking a gasper—since then he’s quit smoking but the bench has remained and is now one my favorite haunts.

“What’s up?” I said in my most casual voice. I don’t entertain female visitors as a rule and the fact that this Siamese had come all the way down for a visit affected me strangely. I guess that’s me in a nutshell: the strong yet surprisingly diffident male.

“They’ve found the body,” she said, and didn’t even have to explain which body she was talking about. I understood straightaway.

“I know,” I said. “Floating in the pond, right?”

“Right.” She shivered visibly. “Gruesome, isn’t it?”

I reflected. “Yes, but also poetic in a way.”

She gave me an odd look. “How can murder be poetic?”

“I don’t know. There’s just something about being gently laid to rest in a watery grave, swans gliding gracefully across the surface, water lilies gently floating by, dragonflies writing your name across the sky one last time…” I paused, for I could see that I’d failed to grip the attention of my audience of one. “What is it?”

She leaned in and whispered, “Don’t look now but I think we’re being watched.”

The suave and astute secret agent would now, of course, casually glance over his shoulder, carelessly flicking a speck of dust off his tail, and spot the intruder in a single glance. But since I’m neither suave nor astute I simply jerked my head around and hissed, “Where? Where is he?”

“Oh, my God,” said Dana, annoyed. “You really have a lot to learn, haven’t you? I was just testing you, you silly tabby.”

I was disappointed and failed to hide it. “So, there’s no one there? You were just joshing me?”

“I was not, as you put it, joshing you, Tom. As I said, I was testing you. There’s a difference.”

This puzzled me. Testing me? What for? And I said as much.

She smiled, and for the first time I noticed something different about Dana. I had always thought her gorgeous as far as physical appearance goes, but her incessant flow of conversation tended to spoil whatever attraction I’d ever felt towards her. Hers was, in other words, not a butt I would ever have volunteered to sniff. But now, all of a sudden, it seemed as if she had dropped the charade of the rather vapid, addle-brained bombshell and was looking at me with the gleam of keen intelligence in her lovely amber eyes.

“There’s something we’ve been meaning to tell you for a long time, Tom, but we didn’t feel you were quite ready yet. Now, though, we think you are.”

“We? Who’s we?”

She cleared her throat and swelled a bit, as one will when on the verge of imparting some truly important information.

“No, wait,” I said, smiling. “Is this about Stevie and that mouse again? Just tell him all’s well as far as I’m concerned.” She opened her mouth to speak but I held up a paw. “I confess I was mad at the time. And who wouldn’t be? I had marked that mouse for my own when Stevie suddenly swooped in and grabbed it. Right from under my nose. Not fair, I felt. Not playing the game. But now I realize the poor fella was probably hungry. Father Sam must be stinting on kibble, I guess. So tell him all is forgiven and forgotten. Clean slate. How’s that?”

I must confess I was feeling pretty good about myself. I’m not much of a Christian cat, but all that jazz about turning the other whisker suddenly sounded very plausible to me. Then something Dana said made me realize that once again I’d failed to grip my audience’s attention.

“Can you put a sock in it for just one minute?” she said. “This isn’t about Stevie and it most certainly isn’t about some mouse he allegedly swiped.”

“He did swipe it,” I mumbled. “Nothing alleged about it.”

“That’s fine. Now will you listen?”

I said I would, and even this seemed to irk her so I made a gesture of locking my lips and throwing away the key.

She shook her head. “I don’t know whether this is such a good idea after all,” she said. “And if it was up to me…”

“If what was up to you?” I said, having forgotten my promise to shut it.

She ignored me, and went on. “But since it isn’t…” She seemed to steel herself and turned those amber eyes on me. I don’t mind telling you it disconcerted me somewhat. You don’t see all that many Persian cats with amber eyes, blue being more in fashion with the breed. “Have you ever heard about the FSA?”

I
assured
her I hadn’t heard of the FSA, and added that if this was some hot new brand of cat food, she could sign me up immediately. I’m always up for testing new cat food. “I’m your man,” I said in conclusion, after giving her my candid opinion on Whiskas, Hill’s, Felix, Friskies, Go Cat, Purina, Gourmet and Sheba. A scorching look from my companion made me cut short my lecture on the pros and cons of cat food, though.

“FSA stands for the Feline Security Agency, an espionage agency run by cats and dealing particularly with matters of—”

“You’re a spy?” I said, surprised and excited.

“Yes, I’m a spy,” she said. “Now if you will let me finish…”

“You mean like James Bond and stuff? Top-secret missions and highly classified information and security clearance and shifty-eyed villainous psychopathic madmen and—”

“Yes, yes, yes!” she said, annoyed. “God! I don’t know anyone like you for talking.”

I considered this a compliment and I said so, though I had the distinct impression that’s not the way she’d intended it.

“Now the FSA is not an ordinary intelligence agency,” she went on.

“No shit,” I said. “It’s run by cats.”

“Exactly. We’re the first and only intelligence agency run by animals, and we pride ourselves on the fact. But what makes us really special is that we are not engaged in some intelligence war with other spy agencies, like our human counterparts are.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “The Russians are spying on the Americans are spying on the Chinese are spying on the Russians…”

“And it goes on and on. We are not like that. We don’t spy on other feline agencies because there are no other feline agencies to spy on.”

“Perhaps there’s a canine agency?” I ventured, for I’d just seen a movie called ‘Cats and Dogs’ the other day with Zack, and the set-up had struck me as sound.

“No. There’s no canine agency; and if there was, and I’m not aware of the existence of one, we wouldn’t consider it our enemy anyway. In fact dogs are an integral part of our organization and help us out on a regular basis.”

“Frank?” I said.

She nodded. “He knows and he’s one of our many informants. Now, you’ll probably wonder what our main purpose is?”

“I do,” I said eagerly, and I did. I’d never heard about this FSA and wondered how they’d been able to keep it a secret from one as inquisitive as I am.

“Have you ever heard of the concept of the Guardian Angel?”

I had to laugh at this. “Those chubby-looking dudes wearing diapers and hovering around on their wings of fairy dust?”

She grimaced. “Not exactly. Though that’s probably the way humans like to imagine their guardian angels to be. It would be closer to the truth to say that a guardian angel is a furry mammal with a longish tail, short snout and retractile claws.” She paused and I blinked.

“Oh,” I said, trying to imagine an angel with a tail, snort snout and claws and covered in fur. “But they still have golden curls, chubby cheeks and wings, right?”

She laughed for the first time and I was relieved. “No, silly. The real guardian angels are us, cats. We are the ones tasked with the responsibility of looking after humans any way we can. Well, at least card-carrying members of the FSA, of course,” she added as she saw my look of incredulity.

“We are supposed to look after humans?” I said, and my mind boggled at the notion. “But I thought it was the other way around. Zack looks after me. I don’t look after him.”

“Now, that’s where you’re wrong,” she said gently, for she could see I was wrestling with the concept. “How many times have you saved Zack from harm?”

“Zero times,” I said truthfully. “Generally I do my thing and he does his thing and the twain only meet at night when we share the couch to watch silly action movies and other such nonsense.”

“That’s where you’re mistaken,” said Dana. “Do you remember about one month ago when Zack had left the gas stove burning even after he’d removed the pan? The house could have gone up in flames if he hadn’t switched off the burner.”

I did remember the incident. My keen sense of smell had detected the omission even before the towel had been set aflame. And though I’d given a squeak of surprise at the time, I didn’t remember having done anything to prevent the disaster from taking place. After all, I’m not a dog. I don’t go in for that sort of thing. Then a thought struck me. “How do you know about that?”

“Ah, that’s where the plot thickens,” she spoke mysteriously. “Now, did the house burn down that day?”

I reflected. “No, it didn’t,” I admitted. “Zack noticed in time, hurried over to the kitchen and put out the fire. And good thing he did. He’d just bought a 15 kilo supply of fresh kibble and that would have been toast if he hadn’t.”

“Yes, well, you may wonder why he suddenly noticed?”

I twitched my ears. “To tell you the truth…”

“No, I didn’t think so.”

There was a hint of reproof in her voice, but I let it go. “So how did you know?”

She leaned in and said in a low voice, her eyes twinkling, “Because I was there.”

“Hah!” I said, more in surprise than disbelief. “Huh?”

“I was there from the moment you sent out the signal.”

“What signal? I didn’t send out any signal.”

“You did. The moment you sensed the danger, you automatically emitted a signal, which was picked up at FSA headquarters, which dispatched me to the Zapp homestead. I then nudged Zack into action, with the result that you know.”

I scratched my scalp with one claw. This didn’t make any sense. “But how come I didn’t see you?” was only the first of many questions that came to mind.

“That’s because I was invisible.”

“
O
h
, boy,” I said. This was really getting beyond me. The spy story she’d dished up was fine, and so was the FSA. But this stuff about guardian angels and invisible cats… I realized Dana was either mad as a hatter or simply pulling my leg.

I looked up and noticed a full moon was out tonight, and suddenly I felt a strong yearning for my favorite tree. There’d probably be field mice in the park, and perhaps even a small rat or two. An empty feeling in the pit of my stomach reminded me there were more important things to do than listen to the ramblings of a certified nutcase. “I think I’m off,” I said therefore.

Dana stiffened. “Is that so?”

“Yah. The weather is fine and the vast wilderness awaits the lone hunter.”

“Don’t you want to hear the rest of the story?”

“Nah, think I’ll skip this one. Invisible cats, guardian angels, strange messages… I’m not so much into fantasy tales myself. I’m more of an action thriller guy. See ya.”

And before she could feed me any more of her patent nonsense, I’d taken a quick leap from the bench and was off running at a speed I knew she would have a hard time matching. Unless she took wings and flew, of course. I grinned at the prospect. Mad as a coot, that dame.

It seemed there wasn’t much substance to Dana’s story, though, for I reached the park without any angels crossing my path, and was up in my tree enjoying the view spread out before me without so much as one invisible cat breathing a word of protest. I sighed a long sigh of relief at finally being on my own again. Who did Dana think she was fooling? Hah. Not me.

I looked down at the peaceful scene below. The notion that a murder had taken place there gave me a tiny shiver of apprehension, but it soon passed. I’d spent so many happy hours in the company of this tree that horrific events like the one I’d been a witness to were blotted out by the thousands of good memories afforded me.

I stretched out languidly on the thick branch that was home away from home and closed my eyes to slits for a moment, quietly observing the wonders of the night. Other cats were on the prowl, but they all knew better than to disturb me. I’d marked this tree for my own and apart from Dana, no one ever bothered me here. Then I heard Brutus speaking irreverently to some poor schmuck and I was reminded that there was one other cat that habitually trespassed on my private property.

“Hey, fathead!”

I wondered who the poor cat was that the big brute had selected for a game of browbeating this time. Probably some feckless youth wandering out into the park for the first time in his life.

“I’m talking to you, meatball.”

So sad, I thought, that bullies have to pick on smaller cats just to boost their own self-esteem. There probably was some psychological explanation for this kind of behavior, and I was pretty sure it had something to do with the length of the thug’s tail, which was surprisingly short.

“Hey, Tommy!”

I opened my eyes with a start. Not only did it now occur to me that Brutus was addressing me and not some random stranger, but all of a sudden his voice sounded a lot closer than before. I looked up and lo and behold: my nemesis had parked his big butt on the same branch I habitually selected for my nighttime entertainment, and now sat staring at me with that mocking expression on his ugly visage.

“Look, Brutus. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times,” I began, but he didn’t let me finish.

“Zip it, hairball. I’m not here to pick a fight with you.”

“Oh? Well, you could have fooled me,” I retorted with some hauteur.

“It’s about that dame,” he said with something approaching embarrassment in his voice.

“Dame? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

He scuffed his paw on the branch and chipped off a piece of bark in the process. “The dead dame. The floater. You remember.”

“Oh, that dame.”

“Yeah, that dame. I’ve seen her.”

This struck me as odd. “Seen her? Where?”

“In my dreams,” came the intriguing reply.

“In your dreams,” I said skeptically.

“Yes, I’ve seen her in my dreams,” he said. “And what I was wondering…” His voice trailed off and he seemed to swallow something jagged lodged in his throat. Probably his pride.

“Yes?” I was still fogged to a degree. This was turning out to be quite the night for oddball confessions.

“Well, you saw what happened. Have you been having bad dreams? Napmares?”

I laughed what I hoped was a mocking laugh. “No, my dear Brutus. I don’t dream about the incident. In fact I’d all but forgotten about the whole thing until you showed up and dredged it up from the dead past where I left it.”

“Oh,” he said, and chipped some more bark from my branch. “Well, I keep seeing some waterlogged human corpse trying to attract my attention every time I close my eyes. It’s not much fun, I can tell you.”

“Yes, I can see how that would be annoying.”

“She seems to want something, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out what it is. Every time I offer her a piece of my codfish, she sighs and vanishes.”

“What I’d suggest is that you have a long talk with Dana. You know Dana, don’t you? Yes, of course you do. Now, you don’t have to take my word for it, but you and she have a lot in common.”

“You think so?” he said. And he gave me a look of such hopefulness my heart almost bled for the brute. But then I was strong again.

“Yes, I do.” I would have added they were both potty and would therefore get along like only two inmates of the loony bin can, but refrained from doing so. One has to remain civil on these occasions.

He looked at me kind of strangely, and finally muttered something that I can only describe as broken words of gratitude, and pottered off.

“Phew,” I said, as soon as he was out of sight, and laid down my weary head for a much needed rest. But, still my troubles were not over.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” a voice spoke from the darkness, and, looking up to see with whom I had the pleasure, I saw that… there was no one there.