Cat Telling Tales (2 page)

Dear Ryan,

It's been such a long time since our art school days in San Francisco. I tried to write to you at your old address. When the letter came back, I called your husband's office. What a shock that you'd divorced, and then he died. Well, I managed to wiggle your address out of them, anyway.

My situation has changed, too. I have two little girls, and now Erik has left me, so I guess men are all the same. He took all our savings. I have no money, even to pay a lawyer to try to get the child support he isn't paying. He stopped paying rent, so of course we were evicted, he did that to his own children. I have to be out by next week and I have nowhere to go. I have nothing, and no one who cares, but you. I have no job, and don't know what I'll do until I can get some money out of Erik.

He'd never dream I'd come to Molena Point, he knows I don't have anything to do with my mother, and that I don't see my sister. Of course he and Perry Fowler still own Kraft Realty and he's right there in the Molena Point office, that's all the more reason he won't expect to see me, he'll think I'd go far away from him. But I don't know where else to go, except there to you, there's no one else to help me, only you and Hanni, you and your sister are the only real friends I have. I'm glad Erik doesn't know about you, at least I kept some things to myself. I'm leaving Eugene the end of the week, but the drive down from Oregon will take longer with the kids, they always have to eat and go potty. Here's our picture that my neighbor took last year, the girls were cute then but they've gotten so gangly now. In the picture, Tessa is four, Vinnie is eleven. We don't have the cat anymore, Erik used to throw things at it, so I guess it ran away. A neighbor said it hung around the nursing home up the street, that they took it in, but then that burned down. The kids won't stop whining after it, so stupid. I'll see you soon, I do hope you have room for us, otherwise I don't know where we'd go.

Your friend and eager houseguest, Debbie Kraft

This was just great, just what they all needed, a whining houseguest with two kids, one that looked like a royal pain—and practically on Clyde and Ryan's anniversary, which they'd planned to spend having a quiet dinner with close friends. Joe looked again at the picture, focusing on the red tomcat, a handsome young fellow with wide, curving stripes. There was a certain look about him, a sharp awareness in his wide amber eyes that made Joe wonder, that made him pause with a keen curiosity. Debbie didn't seem to care that he might have died in the nursing home fire, in a shocking and painful death. Had she even bothered to look for him? Or was a child's lost cat like a lost hair ribbon, of only passing note and no value?

But the strangest part was, they had lived in Eugene. There was the home of Misto, the old yellow tomcat who had left Oregon before Christmas, hitting the highway to begin his journey south to Molena Point, searching for his kittenhood home. Both cats were from Eugene, both had the look that Joe knew well, that was not the look of any ordinary feline.

Misto had left three grown-up offspring somewhere in Eugene, he had lost track of all three as they ventured out on their own into the world.

Could this cat be Misto's son? The picture was taken a year ago. Now, was he even still alive? There was no one to ask, no one to know his fate or to care. When Joe looked down from the mantel, Ryan was watching him. “Stop frowning, Joe. She's not staying here.”

Joe wasn't so sure. Ryan might be a no-nonsense businesswoman, but she had a soft spot for the less fortunate that, Joe feared, would make her cave right in, would let that woman move on in and take over their happy home.

Clyde said, “Why can't she go to her mother? What's that about? She's broke. No job. Two kids to feed. Let her go to her mother or her sister. The Fowlers are loaded, why can't she stay with them?”

“How can she?” Ryan said. “Perry Fowler's not only her brother-in-law, he owns half of Kraft Realty, he and Erik are co-owners. He'd be sure to tell Erik she's here.” She shook her head, perplexed. “I don't know what the estrangement's all about, Debbie was always secretive, often for no reason at all. She told me once, years ago, she and her sisters would sneak around, sneak out at night. That she married Erik to get away from the village and from her mother, but she didn't tell me why. They ran off before she finished Molena Point High. Later, when she moved up to San Francisco, she was in some of my classes in art school, and in some of my sister's. Hanni couldn't bear her, no one could. She'd hang around on the edges of a group, pushing in, interrupting whatever you were talking about, always with a problem of her own that was far more important, always a dilemma she wanted someone else to solve for her. She'd borrow tubes of paint, lengths of expensive canvas, never return anything. She'd say she forgot, then say she didn't have the money. She cheated on tests, begged for rides even when it was miles out of everyone's way. Tag along if we went out for lunch, and then never have the money to pay for hers. She was just there one summer semester, she never graduated, and she never did much with what she did learn. Hanni was one of the gifted ones, and Debbie tagged after her. As if, if she stayed close, Hanni's talent—or her grades—would rub off on her.”

After listening to Ryan's description, Joe considered packing his figurative suitcase and moving out for the duration—he knew Ryan wouldn't refuse this woman. He could move in with his tabby lady, take refuge with Dulcie and her housemate. Wilma Getz spoiled Dulcie worse than Ryan spoiled him, she'd serve up fillet, salmon, anything he asked for. The imminent descent of Debbie Kraft, with one kid who looked mean as snakes and another who was as yet an unknown quantity, made his head hurt and his skin twitch. If Ryan and Clyde wanted kids, they'd have some of their own. Looking again at the photo, he could find sympathy only for the cat.

“I always wondered,” Ryan said, “what could possibly be so bad between mother and daughter, that Debbie never even phoned her, never wrote to her? Well, I guess any number of things could, but I can't get my head around it.” Ryan's own mother had died of cancer when Ryan was small. They had been a close, happy family. The idea of hating your mother was foreign to her, and repugnant.

“Letter's dated eight days ago,” Clyde said. “It's only a two-day drive down from Eugene. She says she has nowhere else to go, so where is she?” He glanced away in the direction of the street as if she might materialize, standing out there looking up at him. “Even the cheapest motel,” he said, “the cheapest restaurant, is expensive if you're flat broke and have two kids to feed.”

Joe said, “We could pull the shades. You could pull the cars on through the carport into the garage, pretend we're out of town.”

“Quit worrying,” Ryan repeated. “They're not staying here.”

“Where, then?” Joe and Clyde said, together.

“Maybe the Salvation Army has room,” she said, referring to the army's charity shelter.

“Did she write to Hanni, too?” Joe asked hopefully.

“She did. You know Hanni has no room, with their two boys.” Ryan smiled. “Hanni said she wasn't inviting Debbie Kraft there to lift the good silverware and trash the house.” Ryan's sister Hanni was among the best-known interior designers in the village, a glamorous woman with striking prematurely white hair, a penchant for bizarre and beautiful costumes, fabulous jewelry, and sleek convertibles—but with an even deeper attachment to old jeans, a fine hunting dog, and a good shotgun, an indulgence that, these days, she got to enjoy only rarely.

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

“Y
ou 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.

B
elow 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.

Only the boldest cats would yowl stridently at a strange cottage door demanding to share someone's supper, only the most appealing cats were taken in and given homes, while the shy and frightened and ugly were chased away again into the cold night.

Some of the strays didn't even belong to this village, they had been dropped from dusty cars stopping along the highway, the drivers tossing them out like trash and then speeding away among the heavy traffic, leaving a little cat crouched and shivering on the windy roadside. All across the state, more animals were abandoned as more houses were repossessed, or leases broken. With taxes rising, fewer customers and fewer jobs, many stores had closed in the village, their windows revealing echoing interiors furnished only with a few empty boxes left in a dusty corner. Ever since Christmas Kit and Misto, and Joe and Dulcie, had watched their human friends trap the strays and settle them in volunteer shelters. Sometimes one of the four would entice a stray into a trap, a strange occupation, helping to capture others of their kind—or, almost of their kind. There were no other cats in the village like these four.

No other cat who carried on conversations with a few favored humans, who read the local
Gazette
but shunned the big-city papers, who hung around Molena Point PD with an interest as keen as any cop—an interest no cop would ever believe. Misto was the newcomer among them, the old cat had shown up in the village just before Christmas, a vagabond who had once been a strapping brawler but was now shrunken with age, his yellow fur slack over heavy bones, his big paws worn and cracked, his yellow tail patchy and thin. But he was a wise old cat, and kind. Now, as they watched the white cat below, Kit gave Misto a shy look. “Tell about the cats from nowhere. Could some of these strays in the village, the ones we've never seen before, who seem to come from nowhere, could they be the same as in that tale?”

The old tom laughed. “These are only strays, Kit. Pitiful, lonely, scared, but not magic. Magic is for stories, just for make-believe.”

Kit nipped his shoulder. “We're as different as the cats in the stories! And we're not make-believe. Do my teeth feel like make-believe?”

Misto swatted at her good-naturedly, and licked at his shoulder. “We're not magical, we're just different. If those poor strays had any magic, do you think they'd be wandering hungry and lost? They'd have made something better happen for themselves.”

“I guess.” Kit cut her eyes at him. “Tell it again anyway,” she wheedled. Above them the heavy clouds had dropped lower still, and a mist of rain had begun to dampen the shingles and to glisten on their fur. The story Misto told came from France; he had heard it among the docks on the Oregon coast, listening to the yarns of fishermen and sailing men while pretending to nap among the coiled lines and stacks of crab traps.

“Five centuries ago,” Misto began, “in a small French town, dozens of cats appeared overnight suddenly prowling the streets, attacking the village cats, slashing the dogs, chasing the goats and even the horses, and snarling at the shopkeepers. With flaming torches the villagers drove them out, but secretly a few folk protected them. Next day, the cats returned, prowling and defiant, and they remained, tormenting the villagers, until on a night of the full moon they all disappeared at once. The moon rose to empty streets, every cat was gone.

“The villagers came out to celebrate, they danced until dawn, swilling wine, laughing at their release from the plague of cats.

“But when the sun rose, the villagers themselves had vanished. In their place were dozens of strangers, catlike men and women who took over the shops, moved into the deserted cottages, settled onto the farms. It was their town, now. Not a native villager remained, except those few who had sheltered their feline visitors. Only they were left, to live out their lives among the cat folk, equitably and, I'll admit, with just a touch of magic,” Misto said with a sly twitch of his whiskers.

Kit smiled, and licked her paw. Ever since she was a kitten, such tales had set aflame her imagination, had brought other worlds alive for her. Around them, gusts of wind scoured the rooftops and tattered the clouds ragged, and soon the rain ceased again, blown away. The sun appeared, swimming atop the sea in a blush of sunset, and below them on the nearly deserted street, an ancient green Chevy passed, heading for the sandy shore. Kit rose, the white cat forgotten, and the two cats followed, galloping over the wet rooftops until, at the last cottage before the shore, they came down to the narrow, sandy street where the old green car had pulled to the curb. The driver remained within, watching the shore.

Only three cars were parked near her, all familiar, all belonging to the nearby cottages; and there was not a pedestrian in sight. At last the driver's door swung open and an old woman stepped out, tall and bone thin, her narrow face and skinny arms tanned and wrinkled from the sun, her T-shirt and cotton pants faded colorless from age and many washings. Her walking shoes were old but sturdy, and as deeply creased as her face. She carried a brown duffel bag that Kit knew held soap, a towel, a toothbrush, clean clothes as thin and worn as those she wore. Heading for the little redwood building at the edge of the sand that held two restrooms,
MEN
and
WOMEN
, she disappeared inside.

Three days ago Kit had followed her, in the early morning, followed her into the dim, chill restroom, not liking the cold concrete beneath her paws, which was icky with wet sand. Wrinkling her nose at the smell of unscrubbed toilets, Kit had watched from behind the trash bin as the woman stripped down to the skin, shivering, and gave herself a sponge bath. How bony she was, and the gooseflesh came up all over her. She had to be homeless, living in her car, she was always alone, keeping away from crowds, careful to move away if a police car came cruising. Kit had watched her dress again in the fresh clothes she took from the duffel, watched her fill the sink with water, squeeze a handful of soap out of the metal dispenser that was screwed to the wall, watched her launder her soiled clothes and wring them out. Back in the car, she had spread her laundry out along the back, beneath the rear window. If the next day turned hot, they should dry quickly. If the morning brought fog or rain, the clothes would lie there wet and unpleasant and start to smell of mildew. Did she have only the one change of clothes? Had she always been homeless? She was nearly as pitiful as the stray cats of the village. Except, she had more resources than they did. She could speak to others, she could find some kind of job, she had a car and she must have enough money to put gas in the tank.

On several mornings, Kit and Misto had watched her carry a plastic bucket down to the shore, scoop it full of sand, and return to the car, leaving it inside. “Is she building a concrete wall?” Misto joked. “She's filling a child's sandbox,” Kit imagined. “She's making a cactus garden,” Misto replied. “She has a cat,” Kit said, “she's filling a cat box.”

But this evening the woman didn't bother with the sand. Reappearing from
WOMEN
, she spread her clothes out in the car, then, carrying a battered thermos and a brown paper bag, she walked down the sloping white shore halfway to the surf. She took a wrinkled newspaper from the bag, unfolded and spread it out on the sand, sat down on it as gracefully as a queen on a velvet settee. She unscrewed the thermos, poured half a cup of coffee into the lid, and unwrapped a thin, dry-looking sandwich that she might have picked up at the nearest quick stop—or fished out of the nearest trash. Eating her supper, she sat looking longingly out to the sea, as if dreaming some grand dream; and Kit and Misto looked at each other, speculating. Was her poverty of sudden onset, had she lost her job and her home? Had her husband died, or maybe booted her out for a younger woman? Or was she an itinerant tramp? Maybe a con artist, come to the village looking for a new mark?