She licked her paw and then gave her pretty face a wipe, then another, before she answered. “No, not about you. But you were out in the open more than I was. If you mentioned Little Bell, the Bird-Eating Terror to any one of them, it would be a different story. If they ever saw me, they wouldn’t even bother to run away. They’d know they’d already had it.” She gave the paw another lick, then flicked her tail with casual contempt.
“Mm-hmm,” I said, allowing just a touch of sarcasm to temper my tone. Then I walked past her to glance around the rest of the house. There wasn’t much I couldn’t tell about people from their houses, but Molly’s whole story was pretty transparent, even without my honed and professional investigative skills.
She liked birds. There were bird pictures, bird clocks, big stacks of books that were probably about birds. And she’d said five birds were missing?
“How many birds have you taken?” I asked, nosing around a corner. There was a second door out to the back, one that wasn’t directly visible from where Fred and Molly had headed. It could be possible to get it open and go outside without being seen, if I moved quickly.
“Dozens.” She blinked at me as though watching for my reaction to that piece of information.
“Mm-hmm,” I said again, feeling my sympathy for this admittedly attractive young female drain away. Not that I was the mating kind in the first place. Confirmed bachelor (even before the unfortunate incident with that animal doctor at a young age) and not one to be turned by a pretty tail and clean coat, but she looked, like I said, extremely superficially like me, so I liked to look at her.
But she was telling stories. It was one thing to hunt down birds in a place like this where they couldn’t get away. It was another to have only done it a couple of times and to pretend to another cat, one who could sniff out lies as quickly as if they were food that had been left out for more than four minutes, and was therefore no longer edible.
I also knew cat psychology.
“You haven’t caught a single bird. They’d spot you a mile away.”
Her golden eyes flashed. “Think you’re so smart, don’t you?” Little Bell said. “It wouldn’t even do me any good to show you. You’re so domestic, you wouldn’t understand. You’re an owned cat.”
“Takes one to know one,” I said, getting a little hot under the collar. “In fact, I bet you are this lady’s cat. I bet you’re a bird lover whose never sunk a tooth into a feather in her life.”
“Hmph!” she snorted, then stretched, yawned, and curled away from me.
“Yes, I’m sure this is the bird-safest place on the planet. I could probably stroll right out there and grab one off the tree without it stirring. If the only cat they knew was you, they wouldn’t even know cats were terrifying predators.”
“Would so,” she said, much quieter now. I was really getting to her. Hah!
“Wouldn’t even be worth it. These birds are the easiest pickings in the county. I’m going to go somewhere for a challenge. There aren’t even any good fun jumping places in this yard. I checked.”
“Oh? Oh?” she said, leaping up, chasing toward me, stopping for a stretch, then continuing on at a more measured pace, not looking at me as she trotted past.
If there’s one thing a cat cannot resist, it’s showing another cat that they know more about something, that the other cat is presumptuous and wrong, wrong, wrong, especially when it came to matter of territory. Little Bell clearly presumed that this sanctuary was hers, and would not have its ample jumping locations besmirched by another feline’s arrogance.
“A smart cat could see how easy it is to get in and out of the house, first of all. None of this going through doors nonsense,” she said, her tail almost touching the tip my nose in a deliberate bit of defiance. I would have bit down on it, were I not so professional.
I followed her as she walked through a narrow passageway where the floor sounded different. It was the only place in the house that had a proper window, and the shade was only half-drawn.
“You see here? There’s a bit of a gap in the floor—” And there was, underneath a large bench where there were several bird cages in various states of repair. A cat less kind than myself would have pointed to the pair of doorways we went through to get to this little, tight crawlspace, but I was being an investigating cat, and didn’t feel the selfish need to prove myself.
Little Bell slinked underneath the bench to a space, invisible from above where a couple of floorboards were loose and pried up. Someone had to have done it intentionally… but this Molly woman deliberately enjoyed the company of birds, so I wouldn’t put anything past her.
Through that hole, we came to be underneath the house, and then it was an easy crawl back out into the sanctuary, where both Molly and Fred had been. They had stomped back into the house just before we left it, so I could continue my investigating in peace.
“And from here, you can see the dozens of places I go to do my birding. Climb to the top of this shelf,” she said, as she did exactly that, “and you’re a whisker away from the branches, and the dumb fliers still can’t see you.”
She flitted up to the branch, shook her tail, mere feet from a big white bird with a wide plume and a booming voice, talking to other birds about whatever it is birds talk about. I could understand it, if I felt like it, but it takes concentration, and I was trying to feel this Little Bell lady out.
“And here, you can hide amongst these leaves,” she said, demonstrating on a tree much lower than the oak, “and pick out your snacks without being seen.”
I climbed up the shelves, mindful not to knock anything over or make too much of a clatter.
“And sometimes I climb up onto the roof just for a laugh,” she said, and she skittered with some admittedly good footwork from one tree to the next to a high shelf to the low-end of a gutter which, with a bit of kitty cantilevering, got her to the roof. I took a much easier path, getting to the top of a tall shed, and hopping across that way.
“And from here, we can get anywhere,” she said, skipping daintily on the roof of the house. I came after her, a little less daintily. It was a normal human shingled roof, all of it angled slightly for rain and to keep cats from ever feeling too sure footed, I guess.
“Well, maybe we can, but that doesn’t mean we should,” I said, in a rare moment of expressed doubt. Something about this entire scenario was bothering me. Little Bell sure did flit around the place like she owned it (and why shouldn’t she? We cats own any place we can master, and she danced around the roof with more abandon that I would have used, being older and much wiser.)
But as I say, something was bothering me. Something I couldn’t catch with both paws, but was staring me in the face…
“Of course, everything is much more fun with an element of danger,” she said, skipping like a kitten toward the front of the house. There the roof had a second peak, and she scrambled up it, not as cleanly but with as much feline arrogance. “Not that a domestic would know anything about that.”
“Little Bell, it’s rude to show off,” I said, coming after her, but at a much slower pace. What was it that didn’t fit? Little Bell was a cat, so at heart she was a killer. We all are, it’s how the world works.
So it wasn’t her that was wrong…
“You see, it’s not showing off if you know just what… aaaah!”
She had taken one skip too many, and planted her feet down where there was no roof. She scrambled, scratched, whipped around, and disappeared from view.
I moved, not too quickly though, lest I suffer the same fate, and reached a place where I could see over the edge. She’d caught onto a gutter… but had lost her grip just as I came near, and fell completely from the roof.
Of course, I made no motion to grab after her, or catch her. Not that humans deserve the credit, but they have these thumbs, and hands that can grab. Our claws, though useful for snagging, are not made for such work.
She fell, screeching, and hit something half the way down that scr
eeched back.
“A cat!” the screecher screeched. Her voice was distorted from surprise and sudden pain, but I was quite sure that Little Bell had fallen directly onto that nasty woman--Molly. Good, soft landing place. She had a cat’s luck.
But it ran out just as quickly. While struggling and shouting in a justified feline panic, she was grabbed from the woman by Fred.
“Is that the same cat? They’re all killers,” Molly said shrilly, between heaving breaths. Fred held the struggling Little Bell at arm’s length, and glanced at her.
“No, I think this is a different cat.”
“Agh!” Molly said, sitting down on her porch like a sack of potatoes landing on a flatbed. “It tried to kill me! Go get rid of it.”
Despite her struggling, Little Bell was no match for the professional animal controller. Fred held her in just the right way where she wasn’t injuring herself, nor him. He carried her out like that to the back of his van. “Get the door for me,” he called, and Molly got to her feet, still breathing heavily.
I watched the whole scene unfold, my mind still puzzling over what was happening, and what I should do. Little Bell had caused me no end of trouble… but she hadn’t thrown that yellow bird over the fence on top of me. Someone or something else had done that. Hmm.
While I sat there pondering the issue, one of the big white birds from the sanctuary flitted over, and landed two feet from me.
I stared at him, and he stared back, stupidly.
“I’m a cat,” I said.
“Oh, I know, sure,” the bird said, nodding a dozen times.
“Cat’s catch birds.” Just how dumb was this flapper?
“Nu-uh.” He shook his beak from side to side. “They just look at ‘em. I’ve known, lessee… one whole other cat. And she never touched no bird in her life. Was it you? I’ve seen maybe one cat, maybe two in my life, and you both looked the same. I think you’re her,” he said, nodding to himself again. “Catch birds. Silly cat,” he said. Then he pecked at nothing on the roof.
“Hasn’t a cat been taking birds from here?”
“Oh, no, sure,” the white bird said, nodding. “That’s the big-ole gunge. It comes and birds go. Just happens.”
That bird might have been monumentally stupid. It was the nature of the animal, however…
“What do you mean, gunge?”
This was where communication between animals, alas, broke down. You humans have one thing on us, I’ll admit. Your monkey mouths can make all kinds of different ook noises. Cats… to say we’re limited by our meows is to misunderstand them completely. But the bird, who I must stress is not a cat and cannot be expected to have a cat’s subtle ways, just indicated, “gunge” again, tapping his bird-claws in a thump-thump-thump rhythm, then he flew off.
While we talked I kept my eye on Little Bell’s fate. Molly had come around, opened the van, and the cat had disappeared inside.
Something clanged shut inside the van.
“Ugh, I’m all scratched!” Molly said, wandering away, screeching out complaints, inconsolable. The animal man Fred swung the door of the van shut, then turned to the cab.
“I’ve got some bactine spray in my kit here,” he said.
The back door he’d swung shut didn’t latch, and while he rifled in the front of the van, it came partially open. From inside, I could hear Little Bell crying, “Meow, meow, meow”.
After a cat sigh (makes no noise, but you’d know it if you saw it) I found a graceful and invisible path down to the ground. This was not my responsibility… not entirely. But it didn’t add up - Little Bell was not the bird terror. The birds around here had no fear of her. So I couldn’t let her get captured and taken to whatever fate befell those who angered the screechy bird woman (a fate, I recall, that was intended for me.)
“Quit crying,” I said as I leapt unseen into the back of the van. The instant I was inside, I felt a little like crying, too. It smelled. It smelled like dozens of different, terrible animals, not all of them alive, but all of them in some state of distress.
I paced around the back of the van, eyes darting everywhere, sniffer sniffing at uncountable different unpleasant smells, wary of the owners of those smells. But there was no one else there. Plenty of cages and blankets and stuff, but only one poor crying animal, and that was Little Bell, stuck in her cage.
“I want out. I want out. I want out!” she said, in a steady caterwaul (I can use the word, it’s not speciest).
“Give me a second of silence, and I’ll figure out—”
Thud. That’s the sound of a door closing, thud. A door that was supposed to let both me and Little Bell back out into the world.
Instead, it closed off the van.
In a few second, the gunga-gunga-gunga of the engine woke up in front of us, and the van was moving.
“Oh, heck,” I said. Little Bell just kept crying.
Chapter 4 - Sami Gets to the Bottom of Things
I started listening to the road with the best of intentions… or second best of intentions. I was glad the engine was louder than Little Bell’s whining, but it also made it hard to do any of my cat detective tricks, counting bumps and listening for changes in the road texture, so I could figure out where I was.
After five minutes, Little Bell stopped whining, did her proper due diligence for finding a comfortable spot (that means turning three times in place) and then, with a whimper, she conked out.
I do my best thinking when not awake. So while I meant to stay up, instinct took over yet again. I slept through as much of the worrying van-ride as I could, letting that terrible sound draw me to my dreams. Gunga-gunga-gunga. Gunga-gunga… gunge?
That weird little flappy noise the bird made, describing the thing that took the birds. That rhythm of his claws. Gunga-gunga-gunga…
“Fred’s the thief!” I said stretching to full wakefulness, yawning to let the steam out. Fred the Animal Control guy was the one taking the birds - his engine gave him away!
So, this knowledge was no doubt obvious to my keen inner cat mind that I was on the right trail. It was not just my deep compassion for other living things that sent me after Little Bell. Truly, those who can call me cat-friend were twice-blessed, having such a brain and such a heart at their disposal.
As I was coming to understand my flash of insight, more little clues came to my brain, largely through my nose. All the animals I was smelling in the van at first seemed like a big swirling mess, but now, under careful cogitation, I could pick out some specifics, and the yellow feathers that woke me up this morning were there, definitely.
I had some other ideas, but I needed more information.
“Little Bell, wake up.”
I rattled her cage. Her eyes opened, closed, then she smacked her lips and looked up again.
“Oh, I was dreaming that I’d never met you and I was still the only cat in the world.”
“You didn’t catch any of those birds, did you?”
She looked away, lazily, keeping her head on her paws. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business. I could have, and you wouldn’t know it.”
“I need to know, please. I need to know you wouldn’t have done such a sloppy job as to get caught at it.”
She eyed me again, and while she made a bit of a kitty pouting face, she finally indicated, no. “I don’t care for the taste of bird. And in that big enclosure… might as well be a cage she had thrown over their heads. No sport.”
“And you were owned before this, right?”
She closed her eyes at that. “I briefly took up residence with a family. When they left the area, I disinclined their obvious invitation to remain with them.”
Sounded to me like a cat abandoned. Some caretakers barely know what it means to be human, let alone that exalted state they goofily call “cat owner.”
“And you were picked up in a van just like this?”
“Perhaps I decided a change of scenery would be needed, and took an offered ride.”
Cu
rse cat pride, it makes interrogations take forever.
“And then you were left near the sanctuary?”
But Little Bell was tired of talking to me. She closed her eyes with a soft little moaning sound, and I was left to piece the rest of it together myself. But the picture was becoming clearer by the minute.
We stopped a few minutes later, turning into a garage whose door shut behind the van, making everything even darker and creepier than it had been. Through the darkly tinted windows, it looked like the sun had been waning, and now with the door closed, the whole world felt like nighttime - and one I couldn’t just sleep through.
“What do you suppose he’s going to do with us?” Little Bell said, seconds before the back door to the van flew open.
It was a work of an instant to leap behind some piled boxes and make myself invisible, but it also meant I could not peer out and see what Fred was doing.
“You nearly screwed everything up, you little monster,” he said, and I could hear him pick the cage up roughly. Little Bell got her spirit back from the rough treatment, and she spat and growled at him. “Complain about it now. You’re going to have less to say at the pound. Or, heck, I’m leaving town tonight if everything works out. Maybe I’ll just leave you in a cage in the middle of nowhere. Keep hissing.”
His voice receded as he walked away. I heard the van door swing closed, but just like at the Sanctuary the latch didn’t catch, and with very little pressure it swung back open.
I sneaked out and under the van so that when Fred came back, using some human bad language about his stupid back door, he didn’t see me and turn his bad mouth and bad mind on me. I followed him from the garage to the inside door, which lead to a house I didn’t like at all.
It wasn’t very human seeming. People accumulate dust and things, shelves and bookcases. They do it, so they tell themselves, to have places to put all their “stuff”. In truth, I believe it is their subconscious subservience to their constant guests, the cat. Shelves and boxes and furniture and counters are all kitty playgrounds, made just for jumping to when we want to feel more up.
Mele's Ghostly Halloween Caper: Plus Sami's Story by J.D. Winters and Dakota Kahn (Destiny Bay Cozies Mysteries Book 6) Page 11
