Children of Bast (20 page)

I looked around at the faces of the other amai, but I couldn’t tell if they meant me harm or were just curious. I was shocked, to say the least. Not that they knew about me, but that Fergus had been so near.

“Is Fergus still around?”

“Nah. He left. Said he was lookin’ for you, but didn’t have time to stick around.”

“And why is my friend a rotten kilaab?”

“Caught a rat and wouldn’t share.”

I laughed. “Yeah, well, that sounds like Fergus. Lived all his life on the streets, and if he caught it, it’s his and don’t mess with him.”

“He’s still a rotten kilaab. We all share here.”

I felt a little miffed about what she said about Fergus, but I decided to drop it and play along. “Hey, no problem with me. I’m a sharer from way back.”

“We’ll see.” It was the faded yellow tabby.

“So, where do I sleep?”

“You know we got to put on a show for the bašar, don’t you? A little hissing, a little screaming, some jumps and weaves, mock fights. You know the routine.”

“No, I don’t know the routine. What are you talking about?”

“You ever live with bašar before?” the gray asked.

“Yeah. I was probably born a house.”

“Other amai?”

“Yeah. My maama and sister.”

“Oh, well, that explains it. You never had to put on a show. Well, here they think when strange amai get together, we fight for territory until we choose a leader. So, they expect us to carry on for a while. It’s sort of fun. No one gets hurt.”

“That’s crazy,” I said.

“That’s bašar,” said yellow tabby.

“Okay. When do we start? And by the way, how about some names? You know mine, so how’s about yours. Oh, you’re all mollies, right?”

“Right. I am Katia,” said yellow tabby, “but they call me Goldie.” She turned and looked toward the stairs.

The fluffy gray said, “My real name is Gato, but here they call me Grey Ghost.”

“Neko over here,” said a black and white amait lounging in the corner. Her eyes were completely invisible because of a black mask that covered them. “But I’m called Cop Car by them for some unknown reason.”

A gorgeous amait came walking toward me, a sleek gray with yellow highlights and black stripping. “My name is Tesau. But the amai around here call me Mack, except for Pauly and Trish; they call me Millicent.” She was a knockout.

“So, what do I call you?”

“Take your pick.” He voice was smoky smooth

“Why Mack?” I’d never heard an amait called Mack.

“Ask Neko. She’s the one who dubbed me with that.”

“She’s what bašar call a mackerel tabby.” Neko strolled over from a corner. “I’ve lived with bašar all my life, like most of us, and I heard them talking about amai and how they’d like to have a mackerel tabby. So, they got one, called Ivy, a pompous little twit I couldn’t stand. Never said anything to me, never even looked at me. Hissed if I got near her, but groveled like a kilaab in front of bašar to get her way. Eventually, they gave me away because I didn’t crawl all over them, I guess. I found myself here, thank goodness.

“When I met Mack here, she looked just like Ivy, and at first I thought she might act like her, too. But, she turned out to be sweet and kind, and I love her a lot.” Neko butted her head against Mack, and they went to grooming each other.

“Quite a story, Neko. If you don’t mind, think I’ll call you Millicent. Mack sounds like a kilaab’s name, like it might fit a tom, but not a mollie.” I wanted to say that she was too beautiful to be called Mack, but I was surrounded by mollies and chose to wake up alive the next morning. I looked over at an amait with blue eyes and a sweet face. “What’s her name?” I walked over to her. She made me think of Adele, but she wasn’t exactly like Adele. This one was white like snow with none of the black that flecked Adele’s faraawi.

“We don’t know,” said Katia. “She’s deaf. We call her Abyad because she’s white, but the bašar named her Snowball.”

“Because she’s white? Gee, so original! I figured she was deaf. ”

I nuzzled Abyad and we pushed our heads together. She wasn’t Adele, but her sparkling, clear eyes put a lump in my throat.

“How do you get through to her?”

“You gotta make sure she’s looking at you when you talk to her,” Katia answered. “We don’t know how she does it, but if she can see our faces, she understands what we’re saying.”

“She’s so sweet and loving that we treat her like a kith,” Neko chimed in. “And we protect her. When Pauly or Trish come in, we make sure Abyad sees them.”

“Looks like you got it together. Say, where’s the box. I need to go.” I hadn’t gone since before Tuyuur Song and I was desperate.

“We go outside,” Millicent said. “Come on.”

All of us went to a door, which had a smaller swinging door at the bottom. Millicent pushed it open and hopped out, followed by the others including Abyad. I was last, Chubby, trying to be a polite tom, hey.

“This is excellent,” I said as I went over to a place that looked sandy and prepared a hole. Two of the others did the same while the rest stretched and scent marked. I noticed there was a fence around the yard, but one that any amait could jump without trouble. Looked like we could escape any time we wanted. Wonderful, I thought as I took the beh yeh that makes your teeth itch. You know what I mean, Chubby. We returned to the house the way we went out, and Neko showed me where to sleep, which I did as if dead. I was warm and safe, so far.

Chapter 19

Dogs eat. Cats dine
. Ann Taylor

Food was served at Tuyuur Song, and it was good–not great–but good. We had two big bowls, one with meat and gravy and the other a dry food that tasted sorta fishy. The clowder told me the dry was good for me because it contained minerals and vitamins, whatever that is. I didn’t care for it because I’d eaten real food that had lived moments before. The meat was okay but it wasn’t fresh and warm.

None of the others had ever hunted, which made me sad and a little aggravated with bašar for having imprisoned them for so long. But, they could go outside, which meant they could escape. Why didn’t they? I made a mental note to find out. But, all in all it was a good place, and I was going to like it until shemu.

Our play-acting for Pauly and Trish went well, and as Katia said, they bought it. And it was fun, pretending to fight, growling, hissing and batting each other around with soft paws. I was sorry when it was over.

My interest in Millicent increased, but I did feel guilty for being interested in a mollie so soon after Adele’s death. I’d been there for several days, and each day Millicent stayed close to me and talked. I was a little annoyed at first because she was always around, and I avoided her and tried to act surly and cranky. But, soon I started listening to her and found that she was very bright and experienced in ways I hadn’t considered, like walking on a leash with a kilaab and doing tricks, which she showed me. Fascinating stuff, but sad, I thought, because it only meant she was fully controlled by bašar.

“Just where do you come from?” I asked her one-day.

“From a very nice place, actually. The bašar who lived with me were wonderful. I loved them very much.”

“So why are you here?”

“They were killed in a car accident. I found out from other bašar who came in the house. I was scared out of my mind with all those strange bašar coming in and out, and one day one of them tried to pick me up and I bit her. So, they got rid of me.”

“Oh, wow. Wonder they hadn’t killed you on the spot.”

“That was the idea. Pauly was supposed to do it, but you’ve met Pauly. I really don’t think he could kill anything.”

I rolled on my side and looked at her. She was gorgeous, all right. Her belly faraawi was white and soft like feathers on a tuyuur and marked with splashes of deep gray with darker stripes. She had four white paws, and a white bib that started around nose and mouth. Her tail was slim, but straight and strong and tall.

And her eyes: Glistening yellow and filled with tender expression. Since Adele, I hadn’t seen another amait as beautiful.

“You’re an eye amait, ain’t ya,” Chubby interrupted.

“Guess so. Adele’s eyes captured me the first day, and Millicent’s got to me right away, too.”

“Tell me more,” I said to Millicent. “What was it like when you got here?”

“Intense. You gotta remember I’d never known any other home. My bašar, Matt and Carol, got me when I was just weaned. I don’t even remember my maama. Until I was at least a year old, I thought I had been born there and was the only amait alive.”

“How’d you find out you weren’t?”

“I heard them talk about it. I guess my maama lived with a friend of Carol’s who talked about me. Said I was the only one of my brothers and sisters marked the way I am between my eyes. Tabby, that is. Carol came, saw and adopted me on the spot.

“Anyway, when I came here it was the end of my world. I was terrified. They were the first amai I had ever seen. Everything about them frightened me, even their scent, which I had never encountered except on myself. So I went a little crazy. I hated everyone and everything. I hissed and growled; I screamed at any move they made that I didn’t understand, and I didn’t understand most; I wouldn’t eat; I stopped sleeping, and I bit Pauly once when he reached out. Any amait that got close to me got smacked hard.”

“You bit Pauly?” I laughed. “You were really asking for it.”

“Yeah. I fully expected to be killed, but I wasn’t. And that’s why I don’t think Pauly could kill anything.”

“So when did you come around?”

“Took me forever, it seemed. Then one day Abyad came to me and we talked.”

“That’s Snowball, right? But she’s deaf.”

“She talks with her body. You gotta watch carefully because she’s hard to understand, but she can talk in her own way.”

“Okay. So what’d she say?”

“Said I was being unfair, that Pauly and Trish were trying to help me and really liked me. Said she’d been there most of her life and had been treated like a pet amait. She said I needed to loosen up and give everyone a chance. But, I was stubborn, self-absorbed and stupid. I was not about to do that, but deep down I knew she was all right.

“Then she told me I was grieving. I didn’t know what that was, and she said it was feeling sad when someone close to us dies.”

“I know about that. I know a lot about that.”

“How so?”

I frowned. “Never mind. You go on. I’ll tell you later. So, Abyad said all that with her body?”

“Yeah. Took a while for it all to get through to me, but I understood, eventually.” She went after an itch on her belly before she said, “Abyad told me she was born in an alley behind a tavern. She was the only mollie out of five. Not long after she was born some tom bašar found them and proceeded to stomp Abyad’s maama to death along with her brothers. Abyad escaped by crawling under something, she doesn’t remember what, and the gaga didn’t see her.”

“Uh, gaga? What’s that?” I asked.

“We use it sometimes for cruel bašar. You never heard it?”

“Nope. New one on me. Gaga. Interesting.”

“Anyway, she told me she laid there forever until Pauly just happened along and heard her crying. The rest is pretty obvious. She was brought here. End of story, except that she was so little she had to be fed by Pauly, and for a long, long time she just moped around because she couldn’t hear and was so scared and hurt by what she’d seen that she wanted to die. She said for me to count my blessings because I had it pretty good compared to her.

“And you know, she’s right. Matt and Carol are dead. I can’t bring them back. So, I started eating. As you see, we have excellent food; also a warm place to sleep, and two sweet bašar who obviously think a lot of us. I mean they don’t have to take any of us in.”

I listened to her and thought of Adele and how tough she was, and I wondered if it might have been better if Millicent had been turned out and made to fend for herself. It’s possible she might have become a real amait like me. My face must have registered something because she said, “What’s the matter?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about something.”

“What?”

“I was thinking about the difference between you and me.” I paused for a moment and looked into those wonderful eyes. “Ever eat a rat you’ve killed?”

“No.” She never shifted her gaze.

“A mouse? A tuyuur? Or a baby araanib or singaab?”

“No, I never have. Never had to.” She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. “What are you getting at, Gaylord?”

“Abyad was right. You have been very lucky. Lived a charmed life. In fact you’re still living a charmed life.”

“I don’t understand.” Her eyes narrowed and filled with darkness.

“I spent a lot of time on the streets, in alleys behind dives, in cracks so small only an amait or a rat could squeeze in, and every meal I ate I had to hunt and kill. Territory was fought for, not given. I’m proud to say I can survive anywhere, good or bad. I’m a real amait.”