Claws! (3 page)

A tall store clerk in a gray uniform stood several cages down from us. As we walked closer, I saw that he had slicked-back black hair, a long nose that jutted down from two tiny, round black eyes, and a pointed chin. He looked like he was half bird or something.

He smiled at us. His smile was crooked. It made his mouth tilt up on one side. “I’ve got the one you’re looking for,” he repeated. His voice was hoarse and high.

He pointed into a cage at an orange-and-white cat. The cat sat on its haunches, calmly watching us, its tail wrapped under it.

Amanda and I both let out sighs of disappointment.

Did we think the man was a mind reader?

The cat-shaped tag on his shirt read:
LOU.

“Sorry,” Amanda said. “That’s not the cat we’re looking for.”

Lou blinked his little bird eyes. “This guy is
on special today. You can name your price. Take him for a dollar. Look what a sweetheart he is. Best cat in the store.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “We’re looking —”

“I’ll give him to you for free,” Lou said. “Here.” He started to open the cage door. “Totally free if you buy a twenty-pound bag of cat food.”

“No thanks,” I said. “We —”

“Too old? You’re looking for a kitten?” Lou asked.

“No. We’re looking for a black cat,” Amanda said.

“Oh. A little bit of good luck, huh? Most people don’t know that black cats are lucky.”

“Not too lucky today,” I muttered. Again, I heard the squeal of brakes in my head.

Lou’s phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and flipped it to his ear. He waved us away. “Go browse. Browse,” he said. “Catch you later.” He started to talk into his phone.

We hurried away from him. He wasn’t going to be of any help.

We stopped at a cage halfway down the aisle. There it was—our first black cat! It was batting a ball around and didn’t look out at us.

“Too big,” Amanda said.

We trotted down the long row. At the very end—another black cat. This one was the right size.

“Wrong color eyes,” Amanda said.

We moved on.

The next black cat was also about Bella’s size. And it had yellow eyes.

“Its fur is a little shaggier than Bella’s,” I said.

“No. The fur is okay,” Amanda said, bringing her face right up to the cat’s cage. “But look.”

It took me a while to figure out the problem. The cat had no tail. Just a short stump on its back end.

I groaned. “Are you sure you want to keep going?”

“Of course,” Amanda said, trotting on ahead of me. “We just started, Clam Face.”

“But don’t you see how crazy this is?” I demanded.

She ignored my question. I had no choice but to catch up to her.

We explored row after row. We looked at maybe thirty black cats. None of them matched Bella.

There was always something wrong with them. Too tall. Too fat. Eyes not the same. Teeth different. Paws too big. Too young. Too old. Face just didn’t match.

Finally, I lost it.

We were at the back wall, somewhere around Aisle 20. I was standing in front of a wooden door with large red letters stenciled on the front:
KEEP OUT.

“ENOUGH!” I screamed.

Amanda spun around to stare at me.

“Enough! I want to get out of here!” I yelled. I balled my hands into tight fists.

“Mickey —” Amanda motioned with both hands for me to cool down.

“This isn’t going to work!” I cried. “We’re not going to find a match, Amanda. This is totally insane. You’re crazy! CRAZY!”

Okay. I admit it. I already said I lost it.

But the cats were driving me crazy. Hundreds of cats meowing and yowling and pawing and clawing.

“Don’t call me crazy, Prune Head!” Amanda screamed back at me. I think she lost it, too.

She shot out both arms and gave me a hard shove in the chest.

I was used to being shoved around by her. But this was harder than usual.

I stumbled back—into the door marked

KEEP OUT.

I hit the door, and it swung open. I fell into a back room. I felt myself swallowed in darkness. A deep darkness, silent and cold.

I fell onto my butt, blinking, my heart pounding.

“Hey —” I choked out. “Where am I? What
is
this room?”

Amanda poked her head into the room. “Mickey? Are you okay?”

I climbed to my feet. I brushed off the seat of my jeans. “Yeah. Fine,” I said. “Do you think you could stop pushing me all the time?”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

She pulled the door open wider and stepped into the room.
“Brrr.”
She hugged herself. “Why do they keep it so cold back here?”

“I think it’s a storage room,” I said. I turned around. And realized I was wrong.

“Oh, wow.”

I was staring at more rows of cages. The cages were sitting on long tables. Were there cats in these cages? I squinted into the darkness, struggling to see.

Yes. There were dark figures in the cages. Dark and still.

“More cats!” I told Amanda.

“But they’re silent,” Amanda said.

I gazed around. The room had a high ceiling, gray plaster walls, no signs or posters of cats with halos.

Gray evening light washed down on us from a row of small windows up near the ceiling. Dust floated in the beams of light. The air smelled sour.

I squinted into the nearest cages. Cats shifted from side to side silently. They stared back at me with dull eyes.

Amanda took a few steps along the nearest table. She leaned forward, trying to see the cats clearly in the dim light.

I shivered. I realized the room was so cold, I could see my breath.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “Come on. I—I don’t think these cats are for sale.”

Amanda didn’t answer. I saw her halfway down the aisle. She had stopped. She wasn’t moving.

“Amanda?” I called. “Hey—we’re not supposed to be back here. Come on—let’s get going.”

She didn’t move.

“What’s your problem?” I called, my voice suddenly high and shrill. “Amanda? Hey—Amanda? What’s wrong?”

I had a fluttery feeling in my chest. Suddenly frightened, I forced myself to move.

I trotted down the row of cages toward Amanda. My shoes kicked up dust.

I grabbed her arm. “Amanda? What’s up with you? Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

She stared into the cage in front of us. Her mouth hung open. Her eyes were wide.

I turned and followed her gaze. I stared at the black cat lying in the cage. The cat stared back at us with dull yellow eyes.

“It—it looks a lot like Bella,” I choked out.

Amanda nodded. She finally found her voice. “A lot,” she whispered.

I lowered my face until it was just an inch or two from the wire cage.

The cat didn’t move. For a moment, I thought maybe it was stuffed. But then it blinked and shifted its tail behind it.

“It’s the same size as Bella,” I said. “Is it a female?”

“Think so,” Amanda murmured. “Look, Mickey. It has the same yellow eyes. And kind of the same face, don’t you think?”

I studied the cat. Yes. Yes. The fur was the same length as Bella’s. I couldn’t see the cat’s face clearly in the dim light. But it seemed pretty much the same.

The cat yawned. It made a soft whining sound as it did.

“I think I saw Bella yawn like that once,” Amanda said. She squeezed my shoulder. “Mickey, I think this is the cat we want. I think we’ve found the right cat. Yaaay!”

I realized my heart was pounding. I was excited, too. Could this crazy idea of Amanda’s actually work?

The cat stood up suddenly. It made a small circle, its tail curling around its body.

“It’s a female,” Amanda said. “She is almost perfect, don’t you think?”

I couldn’t stop a grin from spreading across my face. “Yes!” I pumped a fist in the air. Then I bumped knuckles with Amanda. “I think this is definitely Bella Two,” I said.

“We’ll bring her to her new home and let her get acquainted with it,” Amanda said. She had her eyes on the cat as it circled its cage.

“The Caplans won’t be home for four or five
days,” I said. “That will give Bella Two plenty of time to make herself at home and get used to everything in their house.”

“When they get back, they won’t notice a thing,” Amanda said. “Am I a genius? Or am I a genius?”

“Don’t get crazy,” I said. “You’re not up to genius yet. First, let’s buy Bella Two and get her home. Push the button on that buzzer. It’ll call that girl Lucy.”

Amanda pulled the buzzer thing out of her pocket. I reached for the cage latch and started to swing open the wire door.

And an angry voice from the doorway boomed: “Step back from that cage. What are you two
doing
back here?”

I closed the cage door and jumped back. I bumped into Amanda and we slammed into the table behind us.

The man came running toward us, his footsteps heavy on the concrete floor. As he came nearer, I recognized him. The tall sales guy we met up front—the one named Lou.

Breathing hard, he swept back his oily black hair. “You can’t —” he started.

But Amanda interrupted him. “We’d like to buy this cat,” she said. She patted the side of the cage.

“No. Sorry,” Lou replied. “You shouldn’t be back here. It’s off-limits to customers.”

“But we found the cat we want,” Amanda insisted.

Lou shook his head. “Sorry, guys. These cats are special. They’re not for sale.”

“Special?” I said. “How do you mean, special?”

Lou gazed at me, but he didn’t answer my question. He motioned to the door. “We need to get you out of here,” he said.

Amanda put on her best pleading face. She made her eyes really wide and her mouth all pouty. “But we really really
really
need this cat,” she said.

“We’ll pay double,” I said. I don’t know where that idea came from. It just popped out of my mouth.

“Yes,” Amanda quickly agreed. “We’ll pay double for this one. Whatever it costs. And we’ll be your best best friends for life!”

That made Lou chuckle. His tiny eyes flashed for a second.

“Trust me, guys,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t think you want that cat.”

“But—but —” we both protested.

“Come up front with me,” Lou said. “I have plenty of black cats you will like.” He turned away from us and started to the door.

Amanda leaned close and whispered to me: “We need this cat. Not another black cat. What are we going to do?”

Lou was waiting for us in the doorway.

Suddenly, I had an idea.

“We’ll go up front with him,” I whispered to Amanda. “Distract him somehow. Make a fuss or something. Just keep his attention. You’re good at that.”

“And what are
you
going to do?” Amanda demanded.

I pointed to a back door. It was narrow and made of solid wood, nearly hidden in darkness at the far wall.

“You keep him busy,” I whispered. “I’ll sneak back in here. I’ll grab the cat and run out through that back door.”

Amanda gasped. “You mean
steal
her?”

I stared over Amanda’s shoulder at the cat. The perfect cat.

“We have to,” I said. “We don’t have a choice.”

Amanda had a strange look on her face as we followed Lou out of the back room. I knew I had surprised her. She is usually the bold one.

We walked down a long aisle of cages toward the front of the store. We stopped in front of a cage. Lou pulled out a black cat. He held it in his arms for a moment. Then he started to hand it to Amanda.

But Amanda tossed back her head and let out a loud sneeze.

She sneezed again. Again, even louder and harder.

“I think I’m allergic to this cat.”

She went into a total sneezing fit.

Perfect. What an actress!

Time for me to move. Lou had his eyes on Amanda. I took a deep breath and crept
as fast as I could down the aisle to the back room.

My heart pounding, I reached for Bella Two’s cage door. I fumbled with the latch. Swung the door open.

I reached inside for the cat.

Would she give me a hard time? Try to squirm away?

No. She just stood there and let me wrap my hands around her middle.

Carefully, slowly, I lifted her out of the cage.

She seemed very relaxed. She didn’t tense up her muscles at all. She didn’t paw at me. And she didn’t make a sound.

What a sweet, gentle cat,
I thought.

I could hear Amanda sneezing her head off in the front of the store. Lou was calling for someone to help her.

I lifted Bella Two onto my shoulder, and I strode quickly to the narrow back door. I held her tightly against me with one hand. I could feel her heart beating steadily on my shoulder.

I gripped the door handle with my free hand—and pushed.

The door didn’t budge.

I looked for some kind of lock. No.

I pushed again. The door was jammed.

I switched the cat to my other side. Then

I lowered my shoulder—and smashed it into the door.

Pain shot down my arm, down my side.

But the door didn’t budge.

I glanced all along the back wall. No other doors.

I was stuck. No way out.

The cat lowered her head against me and clung to my shoulder.

I gazed all around for an escape route. Panic made my blood pulse at my temples. I was breathing rapidly, short, wheezing breaths.

I heard a whistle. Like a police whistle.

“Huh?” I raised my eyes to the open door.

I saw Lou running toward me. He had his eyes on the cat in my arms.

Amanda stood behind him, her eyes wide with fright. “Run, Mickey!” she shouted. “Run! He —”

Her voice was cut off by another loud blast of Lou’s whistle.

A clanging alarm went off. Cats began to yowl.

“Stop right there! Drop that cat!” Lou screamed over the noise.

He blew his whistle again as he came thundering up the aisle toward me.

I gripped the cat tightly. I froze for a moment, froze in total panic.

Then I started back to the door. In my panic, I bumped into a row of cages. I sent them tumbling to the floor.

The cages clattered loudly on the concrete. Doors flew open. Cats came slithering out.

I didn’t care. I had to get Bella Two out of there.

I lowered my shoulder and barreled into the narrow back door.

One last try. One last desperate try.

I went crashing into the door—
and it swung open.

“Yesss!”

I stumbled out of the store. I nearly dropped the cat.

Pressing her to my shoulder, I caught my balance and started to run. I could still hear the clanging alarm and Lou’s angry shouts behind me.

My shoes thudded in the empty parking lot. Cats wailed and cried. Did other cats escape?

I could see the street curving up ahead at the end of a wide patch of tall weeds. Huge trees at the edge of the road cast long black shadows over the weeds.

The sun had gone down. The sky was charcoal gray. The cool wind brushed my hot face.

I swung back, gasping for breath. The back door of the store stood open. But I didn’t see Lou or any store clerks coming after me.

The black cat stretched her paws over my shoulder and lowered her head. She didn’t try to squirm or pull away. I couldn’t believe how calm she was.

The wind sent a Coke can rolling across the pavement. I nearly tripped over it. A sharp pain stabbed my side as I ran as fast as I could. I wanted to reach the trees, where I could hide.

“It’s okay, kitty. It’s okay,” I murmured as I stepped into the tall weeds. They shifted from side to side in the night breeze. They brushed the legs of my jeans as I ran to the trees.

I ducked behind a wide tree trunk and waited. I sucked in breath after breath. I knew the tree hid me from the store. Pressing my back against the tree, I listened for Lou’s shouts and his whistle.

Cars moved slowly along the crowded street. People were still driving home from work. Headlights swept over me.

Holding the cat tightly, I dropped to my knees behind the tree. I needed to catch my breath. I needed to try to think clearly.

But I let out a scream of surprise when a voice right behind me shouted:

“Where’s the cat?”