World without Cats (14 page)

“Madame was strictly an indoor cat,” replied Mrs. Amend. Angelo wrote on his pad.

“Were there any cat visitors in the week or so before Madame fell ill?”

“No. Dr. Barnett asked me the same question.”

Angelo asked a few more questions, thanked the woman, and said good-bye.

The next day, Angelo visited Noah at the institute. “I would like to take some swab samples from surfaces in your lab and the cat room,” he said.

“Oh, now you really do think the disease originated here,” said Noah in an angry tone of voice.

“Please, Dr. Chamberlin, as a scientist you surely understand that I am merely trying to be as thorough as possible. My taking samples from your lab does not implicate you in any way. I will also take swabs from Dr. Barnett’s clinic and from Mrs. Knowland’s house. I will have a complete picture of the disease only when all the data are analyzed.”

“Of course,” said Noah. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m on edge as a result of all the attention my lab has been getting.”

“I understand.” Angelo was silent a moment. “You know, it is possible that my investigation will exonerate you. Let us leave it to science, for better or worse.”

Angelo sent all the swabs by express mail to the Atlanta headquarters of the CDC.

He even requested stool specimens from Noah, Gary, Vera, and Dorothy to have them checked for any unusual strains of
E. coli
that might have originated with Noah’s research strains.

“Angelo, that’s a nasty thing to ask,” Dorothy complained.

“I’m sorry. I guess I should have explained why this is necessary.” Angelo chose his words carefully. “Have you ever been asked by your doctor to furnish a stool specimen?”

“Yes,” Dorothy replied, “several times when I had intestinal problems.”

“Do you know why doctors need to examine stool?”

“I guess so. It’s so they can look for germs that might be causing a disease.”

“Exactly!” Angelo cried triumphantly. “That is the same reason I want the CDC to examine your feces. To see if you or Dr. Barnett or Dr. Chamberlin might be carrying some germ that is associated with the cat disease.”

“Well, since you put it that way … I guess sometimes there are unpleasant aspects to your job.”

Angelo smiled. “Yes, my dear, that is correct. However, it is honorable work, no matter how disagreeable it is on occasion.” He put his arms around Dorothy and hugged her. “Thank you for understanding.”

His phone buzzed. It was the reporter McNally. Although she had spent three days running around Los Angeles, interviewing the biologist at UCLA and several veterinarians in the city, and even the vet at the Griffith Park Zoo, she had not obtained any information she hadn’t already gotten while spending time with Angelo. She was planning to return to Atlanta that day.

“I wish you success with your article,” said Angelo. “Perhaps we will meet again in Atlanta.”

During his sojourn in Southern California, Angelo stayed in Dorothy’s guest bedroom. One evening, while Angelo was typing notes into his laptop on the day’s investigation, Dorothy was playing the harpsichord. Angelo looked up from his work. “Woman, I find it difficult to concentrate on my work while you play. Oh, that’s not a criticism, it’s a compliment.”

Dorothy stopped playing and walked over to where Angelo was sitting. “You know, we have a lot in common—at least where music is involved.”

“Yes, I guess we do.” He stood and faced her. “I … I think I am becoming very fond of you.” Dorothy took his hands in hers and squeezed them gently.

Angelo was quiet. Finally, he pulled her close and gently stroked her face. He broke away and returned to his seat. Dorothy resumed her playing, but Angelo noticed it was a bit choppy. He refrained from commenting.

A few days later, after Angelo had spent the day investigating the disease in nearby Oxnard, he was relaxing as Dorothy played the “Goldberg Variations.” Deeply moved by the beauty of the music and Dorothy’s skillful rendering of it, he walked over to the harpsichord and put his hands gently on her shoulders. For a moment, the music faltered, and then continued. After she had finished the fourteenth variation, she turned and looked up at Angelo. His eyes were moist—the man was weeping. “What’s wrong?” she asked, “Did I …”

Angelo stifled her question with a chaste kiss. A little embarrassed, he backed away. “I am sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”

Dorothy gazed at him fondly. “It’s all right. I thought for a moment that you didn’t like the way I was playing.”

Angelo smiled. “Scandaloose,” he said quietly. He took Dorothy’s hand and drew her from the bench. He brought his smile to hers. Now, without embarrassment, he kissed her with considerable passion. She responded in kind.

Angelo was in Ventura, interviewing a vet, when his phone buzzed. It was Vera. The tortoiseshell tabby had expired. The vet informed him that she’d dissected the furry corpse, placing small samples of the tissues Angelo had requested into small vials. She’d labeled each vial with the date and, in a notebook, recorded the gross and microscopic anatomy of the tissues. “The cat’s spleen was much enlarged,” she said, “and, as expected, there was considerable internal bleeding.”

“Thank you,” said Angelo. “I see you are thorough in your work.”

Angelo went to Vera’s clinic on the same day and sent the samples, frozen over dry ice, to his home base at the CDC for analysis. He included a lengthy note requesting a complete viral workup with special attention to feline leukemia, AIDS, and sarcoma viruses.

He had previously been providing a continuous flow of dust, skin scrapings, saliva, stool specimens, and other biological material to Atlanta. The technicians at the CDC were used to Angelo’s donations. No other epidemiologist sent so many specimens for analysis. Angelo knew that some of the techs complained, but Bronkowski would always defend him; more than once it had been some obscure scraping or tissue sample Angelo had sent in that proved to be the breakthrough in tracing the origin of a particular epidemic.

However, this time, nothing had turned up. Even the stool samples contained only the normal intestinal flora one would expect in a cat or human. No recombinant plasmids or anything like that had been found. Angelo was mystified; the disease was like no other disease he’d encountered.

On Saturday morning, while Dorothy was tuning the harpsichord, Angelo browsed the local newspaper on his laptop. He came across a notice of Ibsen’s play,
A Doll’s House,
currently running in Ventura
.

“Do you know this Tiber Theater?”
he asked.

“Why yes,” answered Dorothy, “Dave and I used to attend plays and musicals there.”

“Ventura. Aha! That is not far. They are performing a fine play,
A Doll’s House
by Norway’s greatest playwright, Henrik Ibsen. Have you ever seen this play?”

Dorothy thought a moment. “No, I don’t think so. Wasn’t there a movie, though? With Jane Fonda, I think. There’s a woman named Nora, isn’t there?”

“Absolut. That is the one. We will go tonight.”

“We may not be able to get tickets on such short notice.”

“I will try.”

As it happened, there had been a cancellation moments before Angelo phoned the ticket office. He was able to arrange for tickets provided he arrived early to pick them up.

“Well, that is certainly a feminist play,” remarked Dorothy as they walked from the theater to Angelo’s rented car under a star-flecked sky. “When was it written, anyway?”

“About 1880, before the word
feminist
had entered the language, I suspect, especially the Norwegian language. I think maybe Ibsen was ahead of his time.”

“Do you consider yourself a feminist?”

Angelo remained silent for a moment. “I believe all people should be judged and rewarded on their accomplishments. Women are people. It follows, that, if I understand the meaning of the word
feminist,
I am guilty of being one.”

“Oh, you’re such a scientist, even when we’re discussing a nineteenth century play.” She gave him a peck on the cheek.

Angelo took her hand. “
A Doll’s House
is more than a feminist play, you know. There are other levels of meaning. Some people find the last scene, where Nora walks out on her family, ambiguous. They see Nora as a villain, and not a heroine, because she abandons her children.”

“Yes, I can see her that way. Maybe she’s not such a feminist role model after all.”

“Besides, throughout the play, Nora comes across as self-centered. She doesn’t seem to be a very deep person. In the final scene, she complains to Torvald that they never have serious conversations. But whose fault is that, anyway? Torvald’s or Nora’s? I once read an essay about the play where it was compared to a Greek tragedy and Nora to tragic figures like Oedipus.”

“I don’t know much about Greek plays,” noted Dorothy. “Angelo, you know so much about the drama and about music. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe you’re a scientist.”

“I suspect that is what you call, in this country, a backhanded compliment. Can’t a scientist have interests outside his field? Oh, Oh—I should say, his or
her
field.”

Dorothy laughed and squeezed his hand.

“My father was a lot like Torvald,” Angelo offered.

“Really? That must have been unpleasant.”

“It was not so bad. He was away on business much of the time, and my mother was everything my father wasn’t. She made up for his coldness.”

“But Torvald isn’t what I would call a cold person. He’s just very conservative and bound by society’s rules.”

“Yes. That is correct. My father resembled Torvald in just that sense. He was also very reserved, unlike Torvald Helmer.”

In the car, Angelo mentioned, “I once saw a performance of the play in Norway where they had a living cat sitting on the sofa through most of the play. During one of Nora’s conversations with Dr. Rank, the cat woke up and made a big yawn. It started clawing the sofa, the way cats do—you know, to stretch the claws. The audience laughed, and the actors had to wait before they could resume talking.” He was quiet a moment. “I suspect we are not likely to see
A Doll’s House
with a living cat anymore.”

“How many times have you seen this play?”

“Mmmm. Maybe six. I’m not sure. I’ve seen most of Ibsen’s other plays too. You know, Ibsen spent a good part of his life in Italy. I think of him as a kind of Norwegian-Italian like me—only with me it’s genetic, with him it was cultural.”

“You must be his biggest fan.”

“Absolut!”

During the last two weeks of May, large numbers of cats in Tacoma, Yakima, Santa Barbara, Bakersfield, Vancouver, British Columbia, and other western cities came down with the rapidly developing, universally fatal disease. Newspapers across the nation reported new outbreaks on their front pages.

Beth Murphy, owner of the Coos Bay Cattery tearfully locked the doors of her breeding business. Without cats, she saw no point in keeping the business operating.

When he was seven years old, Juan Valenzuela’s father had introduced him to the great outdoors on a hiking trip in the Grand Canyon. Juan’s love of nature and open spaces had begun with that trip and was a dominant facet of his life. Now twenty-two, the native Chumash-American was hiking the John Muir Trail alone, through the high country, in Sequoia National Park. Much of the trail was still buried under snowpack. Resting by an ice-covered tarn, he noticed movement about a hundred yards away.

“
Madre de Dios!
” he gasped. The tan shape moved again, and Juan recognized it as a mountain lion. Juan’s ancestors were Southern California mountain Chumash and had hunted pumas in the old days. His father had told him that the old hunters would use every part of the kill—the meat for food, the bones for tools, the hide for clothing; nothing was thrown away.

Juan drew his hunting knife and remained watchful. The cat also stayed where it was. After some twenty minutes, Juan realized that something was not right. By now, the beast should have made a move or slunk away. Juan slowly began inching toward it. The animal did not move. Shortly, the young man was within a stone’s throw of the puma. He stared, and the cat stared back, but it still made no move. There was terror in the eyes of the animal.

He then saw why. The cat was sick—very sick. It was emaciated, and there was mucous stuff and blood around its eyes and nose. The young man stood in awe a long moment. Presently, Juan, having been imbued with a love of and respect for animals by his father and mother, quickly put the animal out of its misery with several well-placed thrusts.

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