Catboy (17 page)

Dr. Reynolds jumped to his feet. In his hands was the snare pole. He ran toward King. As soon as King realized what was happening, he ran. Dr. Reynolds tried to grab him with the pole, but King was too far away and too fast. He vanished underneath one of the wrecks and was gone.

I should have been disappointed he'd gotten away. I wasn't. I was almost glad. Who needed him at the new colony? He was nothing but trouble, a bully, a…I felt guilty. Even King deserved to live. We still had time to catch him. Today, tomorrow or in a few days.

But I was too happy to feel bad or guilty about King. I was so grateful Hunter and Miss Mittens and all her kittens had been caught. Almost the whole colony had been caught.

I walked toward Hunter's cage, and then I saw somebody else—Rocky. The raccoon waddled across the clearing until he was beside Hunter's cage. He pressed his nose against it. Hunter did the same. The two animals touched noses through the bars of the cage.

“I wish I had a camera,” my mother said.

“I wish I had another vet as a witness,” Dr. Reynolds said.

“You don't need either. It's real. It's happening,” I added. “Let's just watch.”

“It looks like they're talking,” Doris said.

They
are
talking, I thought. And I knew what they were talking about. They were saying goodbye.

I didn't need a witness to know this was real and that, when I told the story in a month, a year or fifty years from now to my grandchildren, it had happened. But still, I was glad to have four other people with me to watch it. Something special should be shared.

The two animals stood nose to nose, on opposite sides of the bars, one inside, the other out. It was real, but it wasn't. Maybe it
was
good I had some witnesses after all.

“Quickly! Quickly!” a voice yelled out. Mr. Singh came running into the clearing and the spell was broken. “You must leave!” he screamed. “You must leave! The police are coming!”

Twenty-Nine

We all froze. The only one who moved was Rocky. He waddled away, stopped for a second at the edge of the wrecks, looked back at Hunter, nodded and disappeared.

“You must all go!” Mr. Singh yelled again. “I will delay them as long as I can, but you must go, now!”

“Where are they?” Dr. Reynolds asked. “Are they at the front gate?”

“They are coming,” Mr. Singh exclaimed. “I just got a call from them! They received a complaint, a call that somebody was in the junkyard, stealing, that there were intruders. They called to tell me, and they said they are sending somebody!”

“We have to leave, now,” Dr. Reynolds exclaimed.

“That is what I am telling you,” Mr. Singh yelled excitedly. “You must leave, quickly, so you are not caught!”

“Ladies, grab the empty traps,” Dr. Reynolds ordered. “Simon, you get the snare poles. I'll take the mother and kittens, and Taylor, you better pick up Hunter.”

We all sprang into action. I raced over to Hunter, trapped in his cage. He looked anxious and alert but not scared.

“It's going to be okay,” I said. “You did the right thing. You saved everybody. Now we have to save us!”

I picked up the cage, and he edged away, rocking the cage, but I held firm.

There was a loud hiss as Dr. Reynolds picked up the other cage. Miss Mittens was hissing and snarling as she batted at the cage, trying to strike Dr. Reynolds's hands, desperate to defend her kittens.

“She'll be okay,” I said to Hunter. “He won't hurt her.”

Hunter let out a howl. It was so loud and plaintive it startled me. Miss Mittens's hissing continued, but she stopped trying to swat at Dr. Reynolds.

Doris and my mother had already reached the van and opened the back doors. The sound of the other cats was overwhelming. We loaded in the remaining empty cages, and Simon practically tossed the poles into the vehicle.

“Get in!” Dr. Reynolds yelled over the noise of the cats, and they raced for the doors. Dr. Reynolds loaded Miss Mittens in the back. “Give me the other one,” he said.

I handed Hunter to him, and he started to put his cage on the other side of the van.

“No,” I exclaimed. “He needs to be right beside her, where she can see him.”

He didn't answer, but he did what I'd asked. He slammed the door closed and raced to the driver's door, while I ran to the other side and climbed in. My mother, Doris and Simon were hunched in the back, crammed among the cages.

“We made it,” Doris said. “We made it.”

“We would make it if I could find my keys,” Dr. Reynolds said. He was trying to sound calm. “They can't be too far away,” he said as he searched through his pockets. “There they are!”

He pulled them free, and the van roared to life. Dr. Reynolds pulled out of the junkyard and into the alley.

“We've made it!” Simon exclaimed. “And I won't have a criminal record to explain to my parents!”

“You better hold off on the celebration for a second,” Dr. Reynolds said.

I looked out through the front windshield. A police car had turned into the alley and was coming toward us. It stopped directly in front of us, blocking our way. The doors opened, and two police officers got out.

“Let me do all the talking,” Dr. Reynolds said.

That wasn't going to be a problem. I was too scared to think about speaking.

Dr. Reynolds rolled down his window as one officer came up beside him. The second officer stood off to the side.

“Good afternoon, officer,” Dr. Reynolds said, trying his best to sound friendly and casual. “Is there a problem?”

The officer poked his head slightly into the van.

“It certainly sounds like there's a problem in here. What have you got in here?”

“I'm a vet,” Dr. Reynolds said. “Here's my id.”

He pulled out a couple of pieces of id from his wallet and handed them to the officer. He looked at them.

“And what are you and these people and these cats doing in this alley?” the officer asked. “How many cats are in there?”

“Quite a few,” Dr. Reynolds said. “I am…I am transporting them, and these people are assisting me.”

“And who is this boy?” the officer asked.

“He's my son!” my mother called from the back. “And I can give you some identification to show who I am as well.”

“That would be good,” he said.

My mother passed forward her identification, and he took that as well.

“Now, would somebody like to explain to me why you have…how many cats do you have in there?”

“About forty,” I said without thinking.

“Thank you. Can somebody explain why you have forty cats in the back of this van?”

“As I was saying,” Dr. Reynolds said, “I'm transporting these cats to my offices for an examination and treatment.”

“Doc, I was born at night, but it wasn't last night,” the officer said. “What I know is that there was a report of a white van parked where the fence had been broken and four or five people were inside the junkyard. Now here I am, standing beside a white van, the only white van I can see, and there are five people inside it. So once again, I'd like an answer.”

“I've given you an answer,” Dr. Reynolds said. “I'm sorry you don't like it, but that's my answer, unless you have proof of something different.”

“Proof? You mean like going over there and taking casts of the shoeprints coming out of the yard and comparing them to your shoes? Do you mean that sort of proof?”

Dr. Reynolds swallowed hard.

“So would somebody like to tell me what you were doing in the yard?” he asked.

“We weren't doing anything wrong,” I said. “Honestly.”

“But you were in there, correct?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He turned to Dr. Reynolds. “Now was that so hard? So what were you doing in there?”

“We were just—” Dr. Reynolds said.

“Not from you,” he said. “I want to hear it from him. He hasn't lied to me, at least so far.”

“We weren't taking anything, except for the cats.”

“And why would you be taking these cats?” he demanded. He sounded angry.

“You don't understand,” Dr. Reynolds said.

“Then let
him
explain,” he said, pointing at me again.

“They're wild cats, feral cats, and we had to move them.”

“And why is that?” he asked. He still sounded angry.

“Because of that,” I said, pointing at a section of the fence that had a poster of the condos. “They're building condominiums, and the cats weren't going to have any place to live, if they even did live! They would have been killed during the construction!”

“And the owner of the property, the man who's developing this property, does he know all of this?” the officer asked.

“He doesn't know, and if he did, he wouldn't care,” I said.

“So he doesn't know you're taking these cats?” he asked. “He didn't give you permission to take the cats or to be on his property, is that correct?”

I didn't want to answer, but I had to. “Yes, sir,” I said quietly.

He let out a big sigh.

“But we had to do it!” I exclaimed. “We had to rescue them or they would have died. We had no choice, even if we didn't have permission!”

“And where are you bringing these cats to?” he asked.

“The Leslie Street Spit is gigantic,” Dr. Reynolds said. “There are already two separate feral cat colonies out there, and there used to be a third.”

The officer shook his head slowly.

“You have to know a couple of things about me,” the policeman said. “First off, I've been a police officer for almost twenty years, and it is my sworn duty to uphold the law.”

This was looking worse and worse.

“And, second, I have a cat named Pepper. He's a wonderful cat, almost a member of my family. So I'm going to back my car up, and you're going to drive away, right now, before any other squad cars arrive.”

He handed the ids back to Dr. Reynolds and started to walk away, then spun around and came back to the van.

“And thanks for taking a chance. Sometimes you have to do what's right instead of what's strictly legal. Have a good day!”

Thirty

We drove slowly, very slowly, along the bumpy dirt road. It led out to a strip of land that jutted into the lake. There were bushes and trees all over and plenty of places where a cat could hide or hunt. I could see city office towers across the water, but where we were seemed more like a little piece of land up north, not the heart of Toronto.

Dr. Reynolds explained there was a connection between the land on which we were driving and those towers. The spit was created when the city had to find a place to dump the dirt it had dug up to build the foundations of those office towers. Somehow it seemed right that our cats, forced from their home by another tower going up, would make
this
land their home.

“There's lots of food out here for them to catch,” Dr. Reynolds said.

“And people who come to feed them as well,” Doris added.

“It is quiet here. There really aren't that many people who come out this way, although it seems busy today, especially for the winter,” Dr. Reynolds said.

It wasn't city crowded, but there were more people than I would have expected. There were couples pushing strollers, people on bikes, joggers and people just out for a stroll. They created a steady stream of traffic. Dr. Reynolds said we should try to be inconspicuous, but the sound of lots of cats calling out like they were being killed wasn't the best way to blend into the background.

It was getting close to nightfall. We probably had no more than an hour before sunset. Dr. Reynolds said we needed enough time and enough light to release the cats, but not so much light that we'd be seen. What we were doing wasn't really illegal, but it wasn't really legal either.

We'd repeatedly cruised past the spot where the colony was going to be reestablished. From the road, I could see a patchwork of partially buried concrete blocks, as well as some holes in the ground. It didn't look like much, but then again, neither did the junkyard.

“I think it's time,” Dr. Reynolds said.

A chill went up my spine.

We waited for a couple of runners to jog past. They had earbuds in, so they weren't able to hear the cats.

Dr. Reynolds pulled the van over to the side, off the road and onto the gravel shoulder. He turned the engine off, and for a few seconds even the cats were silent, as if they knew something was about to happen. I knew
what
was going to happen, but I didn't know exactly
how
it was going to happen.

“We're going to have to do this all very quickly,” Dr. Reynolds said. “From start to finish, we need to have all of this done and us gone within fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“And if we take longer?” Simon asked.

“With each minute there's an ever-increasing risk somebody might call the police. We can't expect every officer to react like the last one.”

“And what could they do?” my mother asked. “Would they charge us with something?”

“I don't even know what they could charge us with— littering maybe?” He laughed. “But still, we want to get this done quickly. Okay?”

“No arguments,” I said. “Devon and his dad and the others are supposed to be here soon. Should we wait for them?”

“We don't have time to wait. If they come, great, but let's get started. We'll get the cages out and place them beside those cement blocks.”

“Are there places for them to go? Nests, dens?” I asked.

“Plenty. This area used to hold a whole colony.”

“What happened to those cats?” my mother asked.

“It might have been a disease, but it's been vacant for over two years. Whatever the problem was, it won't be a problem now,” Dr. Reynolds said. “The junkyard cats are very healthy. I only wish I'd had time to examine and inoculate the last group of cats we captured.”