Cat on the Edge (3 page)

This rug was the real thing. Small, hand-knotted,
and expensive. It had been a gift from one of Clyde's more serious lady friends. It offered a most satisfying texture in which to knead his claws.

He kneaded with a vengeance, working off fear and frustration, digging and pulling, trying to think what to do.

Beckwhite's killer had taken the trouble to find him, either by driving the village streets until he spotted him, or maybe checking with the local vet to see who owned a gray cat. Why? Did he think a cat was going to testify in court? His interest paralyzed Joe.

He watched an anemic dawn creep across the closed blinds, turning them the color of a brown paper bag; then suddenly the clouds parted, the sun's first rays burned against the shades, their golden blaze spilling underneath, picking out Clyde's jeans and sweatshirt, turning the worn Sarouk rug as red as the bloody entrails of a jackrabbit. The mockingbird tried again to sing, all grating sharps and flats.

He had told Clyde nothing of his problems. His housemate had no hint of his amazing verbal skills. So Clyde could know nothing about his witnessing the murder. And Clyde, preoccupied with that same murder, distressed by the loss of his business associate, had hardly noticed Joe's confusion.

When Joe had first realized he could understand human speech, he convinced himself that all cats had the same talent. That the ability was simply unused, that cats ignored human speech as too distracting.

But he knew better.

And then, when he realized that he could speak as well, he was so unnerved that he hid in a hole in the basement wall, cowering within the cold, hard concrete concavity, shivering with alarm.

He did not come out in answer to Clyde's shouts from upstairs, not even to Clyde's supper call. When Clyde found him and tried to haul him out, he lacerated Clyde's hand.

Afterward, he was ashamed. But he hadn't come out. He remained in the hole in the concrete for a full night and day. Clyde, always considerate, had left food and water for him on the floor below, but Joe didn't touch it.

When at last he did come out, and slaked his thirst before going upstairs, he had convinced himself this was a good thing, that he would be the envy of all other cats. A veritable feline king. He had talked himself from a gripping horror into a huge ego trip.

He immediately sought out his feline housemates, and tried his new talent, speaking to the other cats in human words, keeping his voice soft and his phrases tender.

“Come on, Snow Ball, come give us a little snuggle. Come on, Fluffy, come share the kibble, come have a little snack with a friend.”

They were not amused. Their eyes grew huge and horrified; their hair stood up, their tails stiffened with alarm, and they hissed and ran from him.

When he tried talking to his current lady love, the results were disastrous. She slashed his nose, ran up a tree onto a roof, and had not come near him since.
She had taken up with an unspeakably scruffy orange tomcat.

No cat he encountered could comprehend the simplest sentence of human speech. Other cats knew only,
Come, Kitty
, and
Supper's On
. They understood human tone—anger, love, human voice inflection, human body language. Nothing more. When he spoke to them they responded either by running away or attacking. After several fights, he gave up.

And, of course, he didn't try talking to the household dogs. What would a dog know? Then last Sunday he discovered that not only could he understand and speak the language, he could read.

All his life he had been staring at cat food cans, pacing around them waiting for someone to fetch a can opener. But on Sunday morning, as he clawed open the cupboard and knocked a can out and watched it fall to the floor, then jumped down and stood over it yowling for Clyde, the words on the label began to make sense.

St. Martin's fresh ocean salmon
, he had read.
This product prepared especially for the household cat
.

Clyde was incredibly slow on Sunday mornings, lingering over the papers unwashed and unshaven. Joe had waited impatiently, mewling and reading the recipe for his breakfast,
Fish parts, wheat flour, sardine oil
, and so on. Nothing wrong with fish innards.

Realizing that he was reading, alarmed and shaken with delayed shock, he had raised his voice louder in a panic of demand until Clyde came to open the can.

In a frenzy of hunger, needing sustenance for spirit and soul, he had devoured the contents in three huge gulps. Afterward, as Clyde held him, not knowing what was wrong but stroking him, trying to calm him, he had belched fish redolently into Clyde's face but he had not, definitely not, spoken any human word of apology.

Then soon after breakfast he had begun to experiment, stalking the newspaper and reading at random. The political columns didn't interest him much, but the advice column was a laugh. Who, except humans, could drum up such complicated intrigue over the simple question of sex? He had glanced over the obituaries and society page without interest, then abandoned the newspaper as unworthy of a feline.

On the couch he found the program from a play, and this was mildy interesting. Then in the bedroom he discovered a collection of steamy personal letters tucked into a half-open drawer. This was more like it. He clawed them out and spent a good hour poring over the contents, grinning.

Now in the brightening bedroom he watched intently the swiftly flitting shadows of birds in the tree outside, leaping from branch to branch. So simple to think only like a cat hungering after bird flesh, and not one beset with human complications.

But that simple distraction no longer worked. The birds seemed distant and frivolous. As frivolous as he had once thought words printed on paper were, silly and pointless. When he was a kitten, seeing Clyde stare at a printed page, he had felt ignored
and indignant. Clyde's inattention had made him crazy.

Though, of course, that view had changed quickly enough when he realized there was something magic in those little marks, something that would cause Clyde to talk endlessly to him, supplying long, comforting intervals of soothing human voice.

He paced the bedroom thinking about the hours he had spent curled up beside Clyde as Clyde read aloud from a great variety of novels.

How amusing that neither he nor Clyde had understood that, as Joe listened and stared down at those little black marks, he was learning things no cat ought to know.

But though he considered his sudden ability to read a feline breakthrough, even that was not the most alarming aspect of this new and puzzling life. The distressing part was, he not only had talents like a human, he was thinking like a human.

For several mornings he had awakened planning his day, wondering if it would rain and spoil the bird hunting but drive the moles out into the open, wondering whether the blackbirds were still feeding on the pyracanthas behind the house. Blackbirds got rolling drunk on the fermented pyracantha berries and were ridiculously easy marks. He would wake wondering if the cute little Abyssinian female down the street was in season yet and if her owners would let her out.

Cats didn't plan their day. Cats just went out and did cat things. But not him. He woke in the big double bed beside Clyde carefully laying out his
day like some grotty old banker marking his office calendar.

Take, for instance, this very moment. Any normal cat would be caught up in the immediacy of winging bird shadows, clawing open the door to get out. Instead he was crouched on the bed analyzing his thoughts in a manner abhorrent to feline nature.

He wondered what would happen if he spoke to Clyde about this. What would Clyde do? Could Clyde help? Maybe try to explain the phenomenon?

Sure. In a pig's eye.

If Clyde knew he was sharing his house with a talking cat, he'd likely throw him out, tell him that if he could talk, it was time he quit freeloading. Tell him to go join a circus.

He had lived with Clyde for four years, since Clyde found and rescued him when he was lying fevered and sick in a rain gutter.

Clyde Damen was an auto mechanic, he had the most prestigious shop in Molena Point, working exclusively on foreign cars, ministering to Molena Point's BMWs and Rollses. He rented his huge shop space from the Beckwhite Foreign Car Agency. He liked rodeos, football, baseball, and liked to watch newsclips of long-ago boxing events; Joe Louis was his hero—he collected Louis memorabilia. On the nights he didn't date or play poker, he read: thrillers, mysteries, and some remarkable books that didn't seem to fit his character. He told his girlfriends that he could write a really clever mystery if only he had the time. Joe's opinion was that Clyde didn't have the discipline for writing, that he had
the curiosity and the wild twist of mind, but not the patience. Being a writer seemed to Joe a matter of taking things apart and putting them back together in new ways. Any cat could understand that kind of thinking. Clyde had the talent; but he just couldn't sit still long enough to be a writer. If you wanted mouse for supper, you had to stick to the mouse hole.

Joe smiled. He might criticize Clyde, but the truth was that he owed his life to Clyde. Born behind a row of overflowing garbage cans, the first of a litter of five kittens, Joe had learned early to fight for what he needed, to challenge what he feared, and to outsmart what he couldn't defeat. He had tolerated the alley just long enough to learn to get along in the world, then had inflicted himself forcefully on the first family he encountered, following two ragged children up three flights of tenement stairs. There he subdued the children's bulldog, then charmed the animal until it became his champion. It was in this home that his tail had been broken when the drunken master, coming in from a poker game, stepped on him in the middle of the night.

He left that place fast, and for good. Within days, his tail was infected. It throbbed, and it wept pus and smelled bad. He took refuge in a sewer opening, but he was soon too sick to find food. Burning with fever, he was unable even to creep out to search for water. He was soon dangerously dehydrated, confused, and disoriented. Late one afternoon, he awakened from fevered sleep to feel hands on him. He was too weak even to fight. Hot and aching, he
felt himself lifted and carried. He heard the man muttering, but only much later did he identify Clyde's muttering as baby talk.

Clyde had put him in a car. He'd never been in a car but he recognized the stink of gasoline and tires and was horrified. That was his first car ride and his first visit to a veterinarian. Lying on a hard metal table he had felt himself prodded and manipulated, then felt the sharp prick of a needle in his rump. Soon he dropped into blackness as deep as a sewer excavation.

He knew nothing more until he woke in a cardboard box, lying on something soft that smelled of the same man. The room was pleasantly warm, and smelled of dogs and of frying steak, too, like the restaurant near his home alley. He was so weak he couldn't even get out of the box. It was when he turned to lick the pain in his tail that he discovered he had no tail.

His tail was gone. He had only a one inch stump.

But he could still
feel
the whole tail. And it hurt like hell. He had stared unbelieving at the raw stump, at his maimed, ugly backside.

For weeks the loss of his tail had badly screwed up his balance, to say nothing of his dignity. But, though the vet had amputated his tail, Clyde had not permitted the man to castrate him, for which Joe was eternally grateful.

When he had gained back some strength and gotten used to going without his tail he began to feel at home with Clyde. He liked Clyde's bachelor ways, and he sure didn't miss his last, drunken master or
the noisy children. He soon set Clyde's household to rights, compelling the other three cats to obedience and subduing, then making friends with, the dogs. He had thought that this home with Clyde was his final, permanent home.

Now, that was not to be. Everything in him said: Get out. Run. He knew the man would return. And after murdering a human, what was the life of a cat?

Very likely, if he remained in this house, the killer would harm not only him. If Clyde tried to protect him, he would attack Clyde. What difference was one more blow to the head, after the first?

He washed his paws and face, smoothed his whiskers. But as he headed for the living room and his cat door, he was trembling. Though he felt goaded into flight, he felt trapped, too, by the world which lay beyond his own familiar realm, by the huge and complicated human world.

Crouched before the plastic rectangle of his cat door, he tried to prepare his thoughts for departure. For loneliness, and perhaps for death. Maybe this flight would be his last adventure, the culmination of a short and eventful feline career.

As the sun crept up above the neighbors' houses, and the translucent plastic of his door turned pale, Joe pushed it open and peered out.

Seeing no one in the yard, he thrust his head and shoulders out into the cool morning and looked along the house to the right, studying the bushes, then looked to his left. When he felt that all was clear he came out, did another quick scan of the street, and took off running.

The brindle cat was a thief, a charming, insouciant little thief quicker and more agile than any human criminal. She enjoyed, far more than any human burglar, her carefully selected prizes—she liked to fondle and sniff the silk nighties she stole from neighboring houses, and she would rub her face for hours against a purloined cashmere sweater. Among the modest, tree-sheltered cottages of the hillside Molena Point neighborhood where Dulcie lived, she was known affectionately as the cat burglar.

She was a petite little cat, a dark brown tabby, her swirled stripes streaked with a soft peach shade, the two colors forming patterns as rich as silk batik. Her pale muzzle and ears were tinted a delicate tone of peach, her soft belly and paws were peach. She was a charmer, an artfully colored little beauty.

She was a young cat, too, and sprightly as a young girl. She had an impish, upturned pink smile, when her white whiskers would stand up like signal flags. Her green eyes were so intelligent that tourists wandering the village would often stop to stare down at her, puzzled and arrested by the questioning
tilt of her head and her bright green, inquiring glance.

Dulcie belonged, as much as a cat can belong, to Wilma Getz, a spinster of middle years, a retired probation officer currently employed by the Molena Point Library. Wilma was constantly amused by Dulcie's thieving. Sometimes, rising early to enjoy a cup of coffee before an early walk along the sea cliffs or up the beach, Wilma would, standing at the window sipping her coffee, see Dulcie coming across the yard dragging behind her a pink bra or a dark lace nightie, the little cat pulling the garment resolutely through the dew-soaked flowers. Then in a moment Dulcie would come pushing in through her cat door, dragging her prize.

Inside the kitchen she would drop the pretty garment, nose at it, and smile up at Wilma with delight.

Who could scold her?

Usually Wilma was able to return the stolen items to their rightful owners, digging out a necktie or a bikini top from beneath her couch or from under the claw-footed bathtub. She was far more lenient with Dulcie than she had ever been with her former clients. Never had she overlooked a parolee's or probationer's theft.

Wilma Getz was a tall, lean woman, with long gray hair she kept bound back in a ponytail. Her collection of silver and gold hair clips were of great interest to Dulcie; her jewelry box was an area for the cat's eager and delighted exploration. Wilma had been with Federal Probation until her retirement at
fifty-five, an enforced retirement because of hazardous duty. She had been known among her caseload as hard-assed, an officer to pay attention to, or to be avoided.

Now that she had moved into a gentler life, with no more parolees to worry over, she could indulge her softer instincts. Could be far more lenient with her one remaining custodial charge, her loving and thieving small cat.

How could anyone scold the innocent young cat for her miscreant ways? Dulcie was so excited, so thrilled with each new acquisition, hugging and rolling on the soft, bright prize. What harm did she do? She was never malicious—her thefts grew from her pure delight in the stolen object.

Wilma kept a big wooden box on her covered back porch, and there she placed Dulcie's trophies so the neighbors could retrieve them at their convenience. Wilma Getz's back porch was known as the repository for all small, cat-sized lost items.

Because a steep hill rose behind the house, Wilma's cottage had been designed so both the back and front porches faced the street. Access to the back door was easy, the neighbors had only to come across the south end of the front yard on the winding stone path, step up under the wide roof into the deep back porch, and there root among Dulcie's treasures to retrieve their stolen garments.

Dulcie loved that box. She liked to curl up in the box among the silk and satin and the occasional finds of velvet. There, lounging on her silken contraband, she could watch the neighborhood, could see every
thing that went on, dogfights, ball games, the comings and goings of all the humans in her world. She did not seem to mind when a neighbor came searching for her own possessions. Dulcie would purr happily while the neighbor rummaged among the purloined sweaters and nighties, and she usually got a nice pet and a scratch behind the ears before the lady went away carrying her treasure. And before long she would find a new item to replace the one retrieved.

Dulcie knew how to get into every house in the neighborhood. She could claw open a window left ajar, could claw open a back screen door. She could leap to snatch and turn a doorknob. Molena Point was quiet, well policed; the village houses were often left unlocked in the daytime.

Dulcie, once she had gained entry to her chosen mark, would head for the bedrooms. There she would lift a pretty sweater she found lying on a chair, a slipper, a baby bootie, whatever took her fancy. With delicate paws she would remove a silk stocking from a bathroom rod where it had been hung to dry, carry it gently home, and hide it beneath the bed, where she could lie with her face on the silken gauze, purring. One young neighbor wore black satin mules that were a favorite. Dulcie took them and Wilma gave them back, but in over two dozen exchanges Dulcie never left a tooth mark on the satin. Once she entered the Jameson house at dinnertime and snatched a linen napkin from the lap of five-year-old Julie; she raced out brandishing the napkin like a flag, with the five Jamison children screaming after her in delighted pursuit.

When she stole the pink cashmere sweater that ten-year-old Nancy Coleman had bought by laboriously saving her allowance, Dulcie didn't know how Nancy suffered. Dulcie was a cat—she had no comprehension of the world of finance.

Though deep within, she sensed that taking the possessions of another was wrong. Every young cat learns quickly about territory by being slapped by larger, stronger cats. Territory should be respected. And Dulcie knew that
things
were territory, too.

But she stole anyway, with the same impish delight with which she would have taken another cat's bed. Stealing was a game. She stole smiling, her pink mouth curved up, her green eyes shining, her brindle tail twitching with pleasure. She once brought home a designer teddy trimmed with gold lamé and sequins. But Wilma took that away from her and returned it, wet around the edges from Dulcie's licking. Another time she stole a crocheted doll dressed in red leggings. She still had the doll, hidden in a dark corner of the service porch. She liked to hold it between her paws, purring.

She was quick to leap through an open car window, too, taking whatever treasure caught her fancy, audiotapes, baby rattles, driving gloves. She was so secretive about her thefts that the neighbors seldom saw her take an item. Though an early riser like Wilma might spot Dulcie dragging something pretty across the dewy lawns, perhaps a silver spoon left on a backyard picnic table, once a small porcelain cup with bright flowers glazed on it; she got the cup all the way home unbroken and hid it under the
footed bathtub. From this crevice Wilma resurrected, as well, the watch for which she had mourned for a year—and had railed at Dulcie with untypical anger.

But she could not stay mad at Dulcie. The little cat was entirely joyful in her acquisitions, so happy with them, and sprightly as a little elf. When scolded she would cock her head and smile. Wilma sometimes brought home little treats for her, a lavender sachet, a lace handkerchief, items she knew would delight Dulcie. When Dulcie saw there was a gift she would sit up on her haunches, waving her paws and reaching, her pink mouth curved up with pleasure, her green eyes so intelligent that Wilma wondered sometimes if Dulcie could be different from other cats. The rapport between them was deep, loving, and comfortable. Wilma thought,
If I were rich, I would give her diamonds. Dulcie would wear diamonds
. In the six-block area where Dulcie had established her territory, the little cat was laughed at and loved, and certainly no one would harm her.

 

Beyond the hill where Wilma's house snuggled among oak trees and other cottages, stretched an undeveloped expanse of steep bluff that looked down on the sea. To humans this was an open, wind-tossed field. To the village cats it was a jungle, the heavy grass waving high above. Within the tall grass roamed a wealth of field mice, moles, grasshoppers, and small snakes. There Dulcie hunted. Or sometimes she simply sat concealed in the blowing
grass, looking out toward the sea and listening to the pounding of the great mysterious water. The rhythmic thunder of the surf seemed to Dulcie like a loud purr or a steady heartbeat, and she would imagine herself a kitten again, snuggling secure in the thunder of her mother's purr. To Dulcie the sea was rich and wise. It was there, sitting concealed in the rye grass late one afternoon, absorbing the sun's warmth, that Dulcie realized she was watched.

A man watched her. She could smell his scent on the wind, sour and strangely nervous, a predatory smell like that of a hunting animal. She rose slowly to look above the grass, flinching with apprehension.

He stood above her up the cliff, where the sidewalk cut along: a lean, pale, shaggy man staring down directly at her, his muddy eyes chill and predatory. He watched her as intently as a crazed dog will stare. And in his eyes she glimpsed a brazen familiarity. She sensed that he could see deep inside her, could see her secret self. She crouched, immobile and rigid.

Dulcie had never been hurt—she had grown up with Wilma from the time she left her mother. No one had ever been mean to her, but she knew about cruelty and hurt. She had seen neighborhood animals hurt. She had once seen some boys beat a dog. She had seen out-of-town children kill a cat. Now she smelled the same scent, smelled the man's lust, and she knew beyond doubt that he would harm her.

Half of her wanted to run, half wanted to remain still, clinging to the earth as a baby animal will cling to avoid detection.

When she was hunched down deep in the grass, she couldn't see him. And she could hear no movement above the wind and the pounding sea, could hear no hush of footsteps approaching.

Yet she sensed that he drew closer. Her heart seemed to knock against the bones of her chest, drowning whatever sound might come to her.

When she could stand her apprehension no longer, again she rose up on her hind legs to look.

He was almost on her. He lunged, reaching. She spun away and ran. He came pounding behind her, she could hear the grass swishing against his pant legs, could feel the earth shake beneath his running feet. She sped along the edge of the cliff, terrified that if he couldn't grab her, he would kick her over the edge. Running, panting, she glanced down that fifty-foot drop, and her terror fuzzed her vision so not even the ground was clear. Her sucking breath burned in deep shudders.