The Cat's Paw Cozy Mysteries

by Fiona Snyckers

  Morwen was standing at the front door with her hands clutching her head, making inarticulate squeaking noises. In front of her was a woman from the village, holding a cardboard box to her chest.

  Morwen turned when she heard Fay pounding up the stairs.

  “Look, Fay. Kittens!”

  Fay clutched her chest. “Kittens? Is that all? We thought you were being attacked at the very least.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t think. But look!”

  “They’re mine,” said the woman. Fay recognized her as Molly Chenowith who taught at the nursery school.

  Joe slipped past them on his way out the door.

  “Afternoon, Molly. I’ll be getting back now. Maybe I will drop in to see Doc Dyer after all. And then I think I’ll take the rest of the afternoon off. Thanks for the talk, Fay. Everything’s clearer in my mind now.”

  Fay and Morwen hardly noticed him go. They were fixated by the contents of the box.

  “My tortoiseshell female had kittens yesterday,” said Molly. “Four of them. She’s had a litter before, without any problems. She was a great mom back then. But this time she wants nothing to do with them. She rejected them from the moment they were born. Whenever they come up to her trying to have a drink, she bats them away with her paws. I think her milk has dried up by now. I’m worried that if I leave them alone with her she might kill them. But they’re starving – literally starving before my eyes. That little one in the corner there – I don’t think he’s going to make it.”

  “You’ll need to feed them with an eyedropper,” said Morwen. I’ll give you a recipe to make the milk they need…”

  She broke off when she saw that Molly was shaking her head.

  “I’m at school all day. I can’t be feeding a litter of kittens every hour on the hour, or whatever it is. Won’t you take them, Fay? It’s what your grandmother would have done.”

  Fay knew this was true. Her grandmother had run an unofficial cat shelter from Penrose House for the past fifty years. She had fed, tamed, and hand-reared dozens of kittens and cats before finding homes for them. When Fay had moved in, the number of permanent residents was down to three adult cats - Ivan, Olive, and Smudge.

  “She would, you know,” said Morwen. “Your grandmother would have taken them like a shot.”

  Fay’s arms were already stretching for the box. “Let me see them.”

  The box felt impossibly light. She peered inside, thinking there was no way there could be one kitten in there, never mind four.

  “Oh, they’re so tiny. Are you sure they…?”

  Molly beat a hasty retreat down the driveway. “Thanks, Fay! I owe you one.”

  The next thing they heard was the roar of her car starting up as she disappeared in a cloud of dust.

  Fay shook her head. “I wish she hadn’t waited so long to bring them to us. I’m not sure we’ll be able to save any of them. They’re so small and weak.”

  “I’ll make up the feeding mixture,” said Morwen. “You go and see if one of the cats upstairs is prepared to be a surrogate mum to them.”

  Fay stroked the kittens with a forefinger. “Really? Do you think they might?”

  “I’ve seen it before. Female cats have a strong maternal instinct, even after they’ve been spayed.”

  Feeling a little out of her depth, Fay hurried up the stairs towards her office. All the cats were still there. They sat up and paid attention the moment they heard the plaintive squeaking coming from the box.

  Sprite lowered her ears and slunk out of the room, belly close to the ground. Ivan lifted his head, and followed her with his eyes, but made no effort to get up. Whisky wound his way in and out of Fay’s ankles as though he were trying to trip her up. Smudge and Olive watched her with great attention, almost quivering with concentration.

  She laid the cardboard box down in a warm corner of the room, near the radiator. She tipped the box gently onto its side to allow the adult cats access if they wanted.

  Three of the kittens paddled blindly with their tiny paws. One remained silent and motionless.

  “How are we doing in here?” Morwen said, coming into the office with a container full of milk.

  “I think the little one just died.”

  Chapter 8

  “Don’t just sit there,” said Morwen. “Do something.”

  “What?” Fay wanted to panic. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Your grandmother used to do kitten CPR. She would warm them up, and kind of… massage them, and sometimes blow in their mouths. I saw it work more than once.”

  Fay sprang into action. She picked up the tiny, unmoving body and looked around for something to warm it on. The radiator was warm, but it looked hard and uninviting.

  She pulled open the top of her sweater and popped the kitten onto her chest just under her neck. Then she started a gentle rubbing all over its body, concentrating on the back and chest, trying to stimulate it back to life. She tipped her chin onto her chest and blew softly into the little face.

  Morwen nodded. “Yes, that’s it. I’ll start feeding the other three, so we don’t have any more emergencies on our hands.”

  She opened a closet and took down a box of supplies that had belonged to Fay’s grandmother.

  All Fay’s attention was on the little creature she was trying to revive. Its body felt warm, and that gave her hope. Her own heart pounded so loudly in her chest, she felt as though the kitten must surely feel it and start to breathe again.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Morwen opening the box and taking out a collection of tiny bottles.

  “Your grandmother had feeding bottles for every age of kitten. These are the ones for newborns. Look at that tiny rubber teat. It is designed to feel just like a mommy cat’s teat.”

  She filled three bottles with the mixture she had made.

  Fay’s hands kept up the rhythmic rubbing. “Why don’t you feed them all from the same bottle?”

  “Because I don’t want them to catch any diseases from each other. These bottles were still sterilized in their containers from the last time your grandmother used them.”

  “Come on, little one,” Fay muttered. “Come on, come on, come on. Breathe!”

  Morwen gave her a sympathetic look as she picked up the first kitten and began to feed it. “It can be a heartbreaking business when they don’t respond.”

  Fay massaged the tiny rib cage, uttering prayers in her head.

  “At least this one is sucking well.”

  The kitten in Morwen’s hand gulped at the mixture, its little ears wiggling back and forth.

  Fay’s heart leaped when she felt a twitch against her chest. For a second, she froze, and then resumed her rubbing with new enthusiasm.

  “I imagined it,” she said. “I must have imagined it.”

  “Imagined what?”

  “Something. A little twitch. It was probably just me. I moved its body with my finger.” She was too scared to hope.

  “Keep it up. Just keep it up.”

  There was silence in the office, apart from the gulping noises of the kitten, and Fay’s ragged breathing as she tried to rub life into its sibling. Ivan and Whisky ignored the kittens and the humans, but Smudge and Olive were fascinated. Their eyes were fixed on the tiny bundles of fur with fierce concentration. Fay wasn’t sure if they wanted to mother them or gobble them up.

  “I felt it again!” Her body jerked as she detected another twitch against her chest.

  “You’re doing it, Fay. Keep going.” Morwen passed her a bottle. “Take this and see if you can get it to suck. I’ll make up another one. The first kitten is nearly finished. It’s important not to overload their bellies at any one feed.”

  Fay took the bottle and touched the teat to the kitten’s muzzle. There was no response, although its body was clearly twitching.

  “Nothing’s happening,” she said. “Its eyes are closed, and it won’t suck.”

  “Have you ever seen a newborn kitten before?”


  “I don’t think so, no.”

  “Their eyes are always closed. They only start to open about a week after birth. Try dabbing a little milk on its muzzle so it can smell it and taste it. But be careful not to block the airways.”

  Fay shook the bottle and when a drop of milk appeared on the teat, touched it to the muzzle. This time the body twitched again, and the kitten’s head lifted a quarter inch off Fay’s chest before flopping back down again. Its mouth was a fraction open. She shook the bottle again and nudged a droplet of milk into the kitten’s mouth. She felt it give a reflexive swallow.

  Then she did it again. And again. And kept doing it until the kitten was breathing so strongly that she could see its rib cage going up and down.

  Morwen had finished feeding the second kitten. She reached into the box.

  “Now for Mr. Fatty here. He is the biggest and the strongest, so he could wait the longest for his feed. How is the little runt doing?”

  “Don’t call her that.”

  Morwen smiled. “Her, is it?”

  “It is. She’s definitely a girl. I can feel it.” Fay encouraged another droplet into her mouth.

  “If you say so. You have a fifty-percent chance of being right, after all. I just hope you didn’t have any big plans for this afternoon because you should really keep up that skin-to-fur contact for as long as possible.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until she is ready to be left on her own.”

  Morwen finished feeding the biggest kitten and stood up. “Wait here a minute. I’m going to see if I can find one of your grandmother’s old nesting boxes.”

  As she left the office, Fay noticed that Smudge and Olive had moved even closer to the kittens. Their interest was palpable. Olive stood up and walked towards Fay, staring fixedly at her chest where the tiny kitten still lay.

  Fay stretched out a hand to stroke Olive’s stripy back. “If I let you sniff them, you’ll have to be very gentle. No mistaking one of the kittens for a mouse and chomping it by mistake.”

  Olive made a grumbly sound. It was one of her happy noises.

  “Here it is.” Morwen came back in, carrying a large wooden box. It was smooth and splinter-free and had been whitewashed. She put it down near the radiator.

  “I even found one of the old blankets to line it with.”

  “How does it work?”

  “You put the kittens inside and it makes a nice contained space for them. They can’t climb out until they’re a few weeks old because of this barrier here.” She pointed to a plank of wood, about six inches wide, that closed off the front of the box. “The mother cat can come and go through here.” She pointed to the opening above the barrier.

  “It looks like those three are ready for a nap now,” said Fay. “Let’s put them in the box and see if they settle down.”

  Still clutching the little runt against her chest, Fay helped Morwen load the other kittens into the nesting box. They crawled blindly towards each other and fell asleep in a heap.

  Olive and Smudge were now so close to the box their noses were almost touching it.

  “Shall we let them in and see what happens?” said Fay.

  “Okay. But one at a time.”

  Fay held Smudge back with her free hand while Morwen encouraged Olive to climb in through the opening. She stepped delicately into the box, being careful not to put her paws on the sleeping kittens. First, she sniffed them all over, and then she began to lick them. Her rough, sandpapery tongue lifted and resettled their fur as they slept.

  “That’s what they need!” said Morwen. “Proper grooming from an adult cat. It keeps them clean, stimulates their bowels, and builds muscle tone in their bodies. You and I would be sitting here wiping them with a wash cloth if Olive hadn’t taken over the job for us.”

  Smudge sidestepped Fay’s restraining hand and slipped into the box too. Olive showed no signs of aggression at her sister’s arrival. Smudge sniffed them all over and began licking from the opposite side to her sister. The kittens seemed to relish the attention, stretching and rolling their bodies, and paddling their way towards the warmth of the older cats. Soon they were all asleep together, and the purring from inside the box was thunderous.

  Morwen smiled. “Looks like we have two surrogate moms.”

  “I wonder why Sprite wasn’t interested. She’s also a female but she flattened her ears and slunk out of here the moment we brought them in.”

  “It’s probably because she was spayed at a young age. She never had a litter of her own. She has no previous behavior pattern to fall back on. Smudge and Olive had both had litters before your grandmother took them in. They’re experienced mums. It’s lucky they’re so close that they don’t mind sharing the kittens.” Morwen touched the bulge near Fay’s neck gently. “How’s the little one doing?”

  “She’s moving more and more, which is great. And she’s starting to suck on the teat, instead of just swallowing the drops of milk I put in her mouth.”

  “Your neck clearly has super powers. It brought her back from the dead.”

  Fay laughed and felt the little creature wriggle in response.

  “I’m glad the mixture I made has gone down so well, but eventually we’ll have to go into the village and get some KMR from the pet shop.”

  “KMR?” asked Fay.

  “It stands for Kitten Milk Replacement. It’s a powdered formula for feeding to motherless kittens.”

  “What is in this mixture of yours anyway?”

  “Goat’s milk, condensed milk, plain yoghurt, egg yolks, and a little water. It sounds incredibly rich, but even that isn’t quite nutritious enough. We need that KMR.”

  Fay glanced at her watch. “I can get it for you. I need to go down to the village again anyway.”

  “The shops close in ten minutes. And besides, you’ve already been to the village once today.”

  “I’ll call the pet shop and ask them to stay open until I get there.”

  “Do you want me to take the kitten?”

  “No, she’s fine. A walk will do us both good. When I come back, she will probably be ready to go into the box with the others.”

  Fay phoned the pet store and set off for the village as quickly as she could. She didn’t want to think too closely about her own motivations.

  Why couldn’t she let this investigation go?

  It wasn’t her case and she wasn’t the lead detective. She wasn’t any kind of detective anymore. She had retired from that way of life because she had been exhausted and burned out. It was the best decision she had ever made. So, why couldn’t she resist sticking her nose into the murder of Martin Caldwell? It was like she couldn’t help herself.

  “It happened in my guesthouse, so that makes it my business,” she said out loud as she walked between the hedgerows.

  The fact that she was actively looking forward to investigating it was something she chose not to think about too carefully.

  Chapter 9

  The kitten against Fay’s chest wasn’t moving as she walked to the village, but it wasn’t the immobility of near-death. It was sleep - simple and healing sleep. The tiny rib cage rose and fell, and occasionally the kitten snuggled against Fay’s chest.

  At first, she feared that her breathing was too rapid. Then she looked up ‘Is my kitten breathing too fast?’ on her phone and saw that newborn kittens could take more than forty breaths a minute.

  Down in the village, she hurried along the high street to the pet shop. The owner was standing in the doorway, waiting for her.

  “If you weren’t such a good customer, I’d have closed up and made you wait until tomorrow morning,” said Kristin.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry!”

  “No worries. The cat food order from Penrose House paid for my kid’s braces last year so I decided to cut you a break.”

  “Appreciate it.” Fay stepped into the shop, puffing slightly, and looked around for the kitten milk substitutes.

  “This is what you’re looking for – KMR. Wh
y do you have a hand up your sweater? Don’t tell me there’s a kitten in there?”

  Fay lifted the kitten up to her neck to show Kristin. “This one nearly died. She needs to get a little stronger before she can go into the nesting box with her siblings.”

  “Look at her! She’s so sweet. Bless her little heart. I hope she makes it. I’ll just put the KMR on your monthly account, right?”

  “Right. Thank you.”

  Fay hurried out again. She had one last stop to make before she went back to the Cat’s Paw.

  She walked past an antiques and collectibles shop and turned into the Royal Hotel.

  “Hi, Fay,” said the woman behind the desk. “All good? We had a family of three in here the other day looking for accommodation when we were full up, so I sent them over to your place. Did they ever arrive?”

  “A mom, a dad, and an adult daughter? Sure. They’re in the Boscastle suite as we speak. Thanks for the referral.”

  “No problem. You keep sending your guests to us for dinner, so it’s the least we can do. Why do you have…?”

  “A hand up my sweater?” suggested Fay. “There’s a kitten in here that I’m trying to nurse back to health. Her mom rejected her, and she nearly died. But she’s getting stronger all the time.”

  “Just like your grandmother.” Bronwyn sighed reminiscently. “She could never walk away from a cat in distress. What can I do for you and your little passenger today?”

  “Did you have a man dining here last night – about forty-five, medium-brown hair, on his own? He was staying with us. His name was Martin Caldwell.”

  “Are you talking about the guy who died? We were taking bets on whether it was him. Yes, he was here. He came in quite early. It must have been about six-thirty. Why are you asking about him?”

  “The deceased’s last meal was shown on preliminary autopsy to be…” Fay caught herself. This was not a fellow detective that she was sharing case information with. This was a civilian, and a squeamish one too. “Sorry. What I mean is, we heard that he had a Beef Wellington for dinner last night, and the only place in the village that serves it is right here.”