Nancy J. Bailey - Furry Murder 01 - My Best Cat (2 page)

“Yes.”

He shook his head, chewing the almonds, and gestured with the cone.  “Would you look at this?  It’s all done up like some kind of kitty brothel.”

It was true.  The rows of cages were decorated in the most gawdy lace and fabric imaginable, and with furry beds and pillows, beaded curtains, leopard prints, silk.  Some even had doll furniture inside, tiny ottomans, couches and chairs in stripes and paisleys, which the cats lounged on or hid behind.  Many cages were covered with framed photos and stuffed cats and other paraphernalia.  One even had pictures of famous people with their cats, celebrities from Hillary Swank to Hillary Clinton.

And there were signs everywhere, little colorful plastic warnings like, “Touch Not the Cat”, “Keep Fingers Out, My Owner Bites,” and “Please Don’t Touch Me, Even If I Ask.”

Reynolds walked down the aisles, now and then peering into the cages as he went by.  Every variety of cat stared back at him.  The spotted and aloof Ocicat, the playful, flat-faced Persian.  The silvery Russian blue, the angular and elegant Siamese.  Reynolds hadn’t looked back, but knew I was there, and gestured to me.  He pointed into the cage. “Look at that one.”

There in the cage stood a Somali, a ruddy longhaired cat with a warm, glowing coat that was ticked like a bunny.  It was a male with friendly green eyes, and he stood with back arched, brush tail up, feet padding happily.  He squalled a greeting, and his tail quivered.  I grabbed the detective and pulled him back a step, as past his coat sleeve whizzed a stream of foul-smelling urine.

“Nice!” Reynolds said.  He instinctively brushed the front of his coat and moved on.  “Thanks for the rescue.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Chapter Two

Cecilia
Fox

Thursday Morning

“Hold still!” Roxanne barked.  She stood with her butt sticking way out while she groomed my Somali.  She would bend over while she combed Kenya’s britches, then grab the tip of his tail and shake, shake, shake the hair so it fell down backwards.  It made his tail real fluffy, and made her butt shake at the same time.  Kenya’s back feet would be lifted off the carpeted grooming table, but he didn’t care.  He just kept right on purring and smiling that kitty smile.  He was that dumb.

The real goal in Roxanne’s grooming yoga was to get Jack, the guy down the row, to look at her ass.  Jack was married to a giddy, heavy-set blonde named Tracy.  But he and Roxanne had been carrying on for a few weeks, and were fresh in the throes of new lust.  Jack pretended to be oblivious to Roxanne’s grooming efforts, but it was only pretend.  He rattled the newspaper he was reading, but I saw his eyes roll briefly toward the target area as he turned the page.  It made me want to gag.  Nothing more nauseating than being witness to someone else’s foreplay.

I didn’t think Jack was all that attractive.  He had pasty skin, a fading mustache, and overall he looked sort of used and dull.  But he was one of the only straight guys in the cat crowd who was over eight and under sixty.  And he was great
with the cats, handling them gently and with adulation.  As a result, he was object of perpetual crushes of various cat fanciers.  While other husbands scorned the cat shows, Jack came weekend after weekend, trundling the grooming carts, fetching litter and water, and pinning up lacy cage curtains.  I could understand why.  In the real world, Jack was a dork.  In the cat world, he was a god.

“All done!”
  Roxanne barked.  She threw Kenya unceremoniously back into his cage and slammed the door.  Most cats would have shaken their fur and probably licked themselves, a sign of haughty indignation.  But Kenya arched his back and rubbed against the wire door, not the least bit bothered by her callousness.  He was always happy.  My precious boy.

Roxanne whirled to Jack and her manner changed.  She stood on her toes and adopted an air of somewhat vulgar femininity.  She was not a small woman, and her ample hips swung from side to side flirtatiously as she walked toward him.  Her voice lifted to a high falsetto.  “Jack!  Are you making a lunch run today?”

He looked up from his paper, his face aglow with pleasure.  I wanted to choke.

“ROX-
anne!”  A voice behind me squealed the familiar tune.  “You don’t have to put on the red light…”

I turned to see Roxanne’s nephew, Andrew, standing behind me.  Roxanne hadn’t heard the song.  Andrew was shaking his head, bouncing on his toes as he watched his aunt’s
predation.  “I see she’s at it again.  The poor guy.  Good thing his wife is so dim.  She doesn’t even have a clue.  Have you noticed that she’s cross-eyed?  Maybe that’s why she can’t see what’s going on.”

I had noticed that Tracy had one eye which drifted inward.  That was hard to miss.  But I said nothing.

As Andrew watched his aunt lean over Jack’s shoulder to look at his newspaper, he hummed the theme, “Roxanne” and he bounced some more.  He was tall and so skinny I wondered if he was ill.  He exuded nervous energy.  Probably just burned everything off that way.

“Looks like I’m getting yet another new uncle!” he crowed.  “Want to know what my nickname is for her?”

I made no comment, just turned back to my show catalog.  They were getting ready to read Absentees and Transfers over the loudspeaker.  I bent to dig through my backpack.

“
Whatcha lookin’ for?”  Andrew said.

“My ink pen.”

“Wanna borrow one?”

“I need to find this one.  I had it made up special for the show.  It had a long cord on it, so I could hang it around my neck.  It said ‘I LOVE MY SOMALI’ and had Kenya’s picture on it!”

I bent to look under the row of cages, thinking maybe it had fallen out.

Andrew had moved down the aisle.  He had his own show cat, a Devon Rex.  His partner Dennis was a show photographer and had a booth set up not far away.  Andrew opened the cage and the Rex, a gnome-like thing with enormous ears and wavy orange hair, stepped out onto the grooming cart.  Her long, thin tail twirled first one way and then the other, signaling her happiness.

I stood up and went over to them.  The cat looked up at me and blinked, a distinct and friendly feline “hello”.  I noticed that she had green eyes.  It was very striking in her orange face with the big bell-shaped ears.

“Hello,” I said back to her.  I kept my hands carefully behind my back, remembering the strict “Do Not Touch” code of the cat fancy.  Among exhibitors it was frequently broken, but one must always be invited first.

The Devon was interesting, but it was the baby Somalis that drew my attention.  One was a black-ticked ruddy, like Kenya, and the other was a blazing brick red.  They clamored together in the cage, reaching their forepaws out to swipe at me, begging for attention.

“These are little half sisters to your boy,” Andrew said.

“Really?”

“Yes, the sire is Rusty Halo and the dam is my red girl from California.”

“They’re darling!  Are they in the show?”

“Oh, no.
  They won’t be four months old until next week.  If I had thought about it I would have fudged the litter application.  Actually they aren’t even supposed to be here.”

The Devon tapped my arm gently with one paw, a reminder that kittens were fine, but the lion’s share of the attention really belonged to her.

“What is her name?”  I asked.

“
Anden’s Hot Purrsuit.  We call her Hotsy.”  Andrew pulled out a toy, a coiled string on a stick.  On the end of the springy cord, there was a furry mouse.  The Devon crouched, hindquarters trembling with joy.  Her head flipped this way and that as the mouse swung in the air above her.  Then she stood, balancing lightly on her hind legs as she skillfully reached and grabbed and came back down with the mouse in her mouth.  She did not try to leave the cart, instead just crouching there, holding the mouse and growling, while the stick dangled over the edge.  Her tail flipped back and forth with determination.

I couldn’t help but laugh.  “She is so cute!”

He grinned.  “Thank you.  She is the best thing Dennis and I have produced so far.  She is only eight months old, and this is her first championship show.”

“I see.”

He scooped her up and held her on her back.  Her paws folded gently into her almost-naked chest and she gazed at me in contentment, a tiny Buddha in his arms.

He leaned close to me, conspiratorially.  “We expect her to grand this weekend.  The judging lineup is great for her.”

I grinned, but inwardly, I rolled my eyes.  A Devon, granding in one show?  Please.  That was tough enough for longhaired cats to do.

“Roxanne says her head is too
round.  But then again, Roxanne has Somalis.  Devons are supposed to have heads like this.  That’s my aunt for you.  She does have her opinions.  So where are you staying?”

“At the Vagabond.”

“Oh, us too.  You’re not rooming with her, are you?”

“No.”

“I should hope not.  How can you sleep in the same room with that snoring?”

I shrugged.  The snoring hadn’t bothered me quite as much as the sleep apnea.  She would suddenly go silent, not breathing at all.  The first time it happened I got up and put my hand a couple of inches over her open mouth.  There was no air going in or out.  Then suddenly, just as I was about to panic, she took a deep gasp and renewed her thunderous snores. 

There were other things that happened too, but I wasn’t about to go into them, certainly not to him, at least.

“She’s a real trip, isn’t she?”  Andrew added.  His voice seemed edged with contempt, but I may have been imagining it.  He nodded toward Kenya’s cage.  “Is her premier here?”

“Zephyr is here, yes.”

“It’s funny how he just seemed to appear out of nowhere.  I don’t remember him as a kitten at all, but he is supposed to be Kenya’s littermate.”  His eyes narrowed suspiciously.  “And why is he a Premier?  Why would she neuter a cat like that?”

“I don’t know.”  I had wondered the same thing myself.  Zephyr was loaded with coat.  He had more hair than any Somali I had ever seen, all in the right places.  He had a generous ruff, gorgeous britches and his tail was probably six inches thick.  And his pigment was phenomenal.  I couldn’t believe the richness of his auburn coat.  He was like a torch. 

“I would think she would want to pass that color on to the next generation.  It would be so good for the breed,” I added.

He laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“You probably think her hair color is real too!” he said.

I looked at him.  “You can’t be serious.”

He looked around, popped Hotsy back in her cage, and gestured me with a come-hither wave.  He minced up the aisle to Zephyr’s cage.  The big cat lay quietly in his cuddle bed, but he looked up and spoke a soft, polite greeting when we approached.  Without hesitation, Andrew opened the door, reached in and pulled him out.  He held the cat’s forepaw gently in one hand, squeezing the toes so that the claws protruded.  Zephyr merely purred.

“See this?”  Andrew said.

I leaned closer, examining the toenail, and saw that the base of the claw was an unnatural orange color.

“She can’t keep it from getting in there,” he said.  “All a judge would have to do is examine his nails, but they just look the other way.”

“You mean – “

“Yes.  She’s dyed his hair.  I don’t know with what.  The ticking still shows up.”  He ruffled the hair along the cat’s back.

“Unbelievable!”

“Well, just look at him.  I mean, that’s not a natural color.  See how his armpit hairs are no lighter than the rest of him?  It’s wrong.  And his face is so pale!”  He laughed.

“You’re right!”

“Yep, I know my aunt.
Unfortunately.  She’s a Leo, so what can you expect?”

I smirked.  “You believe in that stuff?”

“Oh honey,” he reached out one hand and touched my shoulder.  “Absolutely.  Do your homework, and you will see how true it all is.  It’s scary how true it is.”

“Uh huh.”

“When is your birthday?”

“You know what?  I’m not going to tell you.  I’ll let you guess.”

He grinned.  “Ooh, now I like this girl!  Okay.  Let’s see.”

He squinted, tilted his head, looking at me.  “You’re kind of the quiet type aren’t you?”

“Just a little I suppose.”

“You’re a Libra,” he said finally.

My jaw dropped.  “How did you know that?”

“Mostly your mannerisms.
  You are tentative, agreeable, indecisive.  But Libras often have a darker side.  An angry side.  A lot of bitterness that’s been smoothed over.”

He waved his hand gently through the air as he talked.

“I see,” I said.

“You’re very angry deep down,” he added.

I shifted uncomfortably.  “Well, who can argue with ‘deep down’?”

He laughed.

“So, what are you?”  I asked.

“Oh Honey, I’m a Gemini, through and through. 
The twins.  Sometimes I really think there are two of me.”

“And what is a Leo?”

“Leo, the sign of the lion.  And she is it.  Always chasing glamour, money, attention.  The only inconsistency is, Leo is supposed to have a big, loyal heart.  Roxanne is loyal only to Roxanne.  She has a heart of stone.  She has a moon rising in Scorpio.  It’s a bad combination.”

“Scorpio, the scorpion.
  The stinger.”

He leaned closer and whispered, “She is horny like a Scorpio too.”

As if I hadn’t noticed.

“So what is it?”  I asked.

“What is what?”

“What is your Aunt Roxanne’s nickname?”

“Ohhh.”  A smirk crossed his lips.  He held Zephyr up toward the ceiling, and directed his answer up at him.  “Auntie Climax.”