The Big Kitty

by Claire Donally

  Mike’s shock of white curls bobbed as he shook his head. “He moved out when the cats began moving in. And then for a while he was a guest of the county, some sort of thing about missing car parts.”

  After taking in that information, Sunny thought for a moment. “In that case, there’s a phone call I’d better make. Then I’ll come out and check your meds.”

  Mike turned around and headed back to the living room, muttering something about the “pill police.”

  Sunny went to the phone extension on the kitchen wall, paused for a second, and then went to the cabinets. She took down a can of tuna, got the opener, and spooned half the contents of the can onto a small saucer. Shadow didn’t even come close to the food until she’d deposited it on the floor and stepped away.

  “Just remember, there’s no litter box in here,” she warned the cat as he investigated the plate of fish. “And you heard what Dad said about the garden.”

  While Shadow went to work on the tuna, Sunny stood frowning at the telephone as she recalled what she’d heard from Ada Spruance—and what she’d seen. Finally, she went up to her room and dialed the number for the Harbor Crier. Ken Howell was still in his office—he seemed to spend most of his time there, from what Sunny could tell.

  “What do you want?” he demanded as soon as Sunny identified herself.

  “A polite greeting would be a good start,” she shot back. “Listen, I heard something that might turn out to be a good human-interest story.” She told him about Ada Spruance’s errant ticket, adding, “Ada mentioned that the expiration date is coming close. So there’s a suspense element, too.”

  “And I suppose you want to write this … burning news story?”

  Sunny was surprised that the editor’s words even came through, what with all the suspicion clogging the phone line.

  “No, I’m handing it to you to run with,” she told him virtuously. “Check the facts. I just thought it could be a good piece for the paper.”

  “If Ada won an amount like you’re saying, maybe she’ll move that menagerie of hers out of town,” Howell said sourly. “A lot of people would consider that good news.”

  But it won’t be good news if somebody—like skeevy Gordie—has glommed on to the ticket, hoping to cash it in quietly right at the deadline, Sunny thought. A little publicity might lead to the ticket mysteriously reappearing, and save me from having to search through the Cathouse from Hell.

  *

  Shadow poked his head into the room, listening to the Young One talk. He’d followed her up the stairs, eager to explore the new house. It was much cleaner than the last house he’d stayed in—the dust in most of those rooms had been so thick, it made all the cats there sneeze.

  He’d already amused himself a little, skidding along the bright, shiny floors. But when the Young One went upstairs, he’d decided to tag along. Still, he kept in the hallway, barely poking a nose in wherever he found an open door. Some of the smells—especially from the room where the Young One was—were pretty interesting.

  Even so, Shadow didn’t go in. He’d discovered early on that some of these two-legged people had some odd ideas about privacy. And he was leery about following her into a space where a slammed door could leave him trapped in a small area. He hated the idea of being a prisoner; worse, a cat could get hurt if he didn’t have space to run from danger.

  Not that this one seemed dangerous. But harsh experience had taught him to be careful. He’d been in houses where seeming kindness had abruptly turned into kicks and curses—usually from males when the female wasn’t around. When that happened, Shadow hadn’t stayed around for any second helpings.

  But for all his wariness, he couldn’t help himself when he saw the young woman get into her car. He’d leaped on the front of the thing to play with her. He’d taken a big chance, letting himself get locked up in that go-fast thing, especially after the young woman had tried to shoo him away. But something deep told him the time was right, and after watching from afar for so many days, he couldn’t resist the urge to come a bit closer. And he’d been right. She’d spoken to him gently, taken him to this nice place, and even fed him despite the objections of an Old One who apparently lived here, too.

  A male Old One—that would take some thinking about. Males could be dangerous, very free with their fists and their feet. But Shadow smelled illness on this one. Between that and the male’s age, it wouldn’t be too hard to dodge whatever he came up with.

  Almost all the older two-legs that Shadow had lived with were females, like the one in the place full of other cats. She was a needy one, always clutching at her four-legged companions, petting and cooing at them. It was more than a self-respecting cat could stand, although some of the horde in that house put up with it to get treats.

  They might as well be dogs, wagging their tails for a biscuit, Shadow thought with disdain.

  But this two-leg hadn’t been overeager to put her hands on Shadow’s fur. She’d just been nice—and maybe a little bit lonely. Shadow could understand that.

  It had taken all of Shadow’s bravery to make the approach to the Young One. And so far, this had turned out to be a Good Place.

  He took another deep, appreciative sniff in the doorway. A Good Place, indeed.

  *

  Sunny smiled as she came out of her room and found a gray-furred shape lurking in the hallway, his stripes making him almost blend into the shadows.

  “What have you been up to?” she asked, bending and extending a tentative hand toward the cat, an overture which he smoothly sidestepped.

  “Okay,” Sunny said, standing up and heading back down the stairs, where she started rooting around in the front hall closet.

  Mike emerged from the living room. “What are you up to now?”

  “Looking for something that Shadow can sleep on,” she replied.

  “What, the floor’s not good enough for him?” Mike shot a grumpy look from Sunny to the cat who sat at their feet, looking into the closet with interest.

  “I read somewhere that cats should sleep a little bit up from the floor so they won’t be in drafts.” Sunny didn’t mention that the “somewhere” was the Internet and that she’d just looked it up now. “I seem to remember an old pillow in here …” She got on tiptoe to rummage on an upper shelf.

  “That’s for guests!” Mike objected, but he shut up when Sunny brought down the pillow in question. It was lumpy and misshapen, and it boasted a tasteful collection of yellowish sweat stains.

  “Looks better in a nice pillowcase,” Mike mumbled.

  “Well, I think it’s fine for this particular guest just the way it is.” Sunny tossed the pillow to the ground, and Shadow immediately climbed on, sniffing.

  “Now what?” Mike demanded as Sunny began rattling hangers. She unzipped a plastic bag and pulled out an old bottle green raincoat. With a few brisk movements, she removed the raincoat’s fake-fur lining.

  Mike’s face got a little pink. “What are you doing? That’s a good coat!”

  “Dad, when’s the last time you wore it?” Sunny asked.

  He humphed for a second, then said, “I’ve been waiting for it to come back into style.”

  “For the last thirty years, the only people who’ve worn this kind of coat were flashers,” Sunny told him.

  Shadow instantly abandoned the pillow, reaching up with a paw to bat at a dangling sleeve. Sunny returned the coat to the closet and brought both lining and pillow into the living room. Wrapping the pillow in the fake fur, she arranged it in a quiet corner.

  Shadow crouched low, then sprang onto the pillow, kneading it with his forepaws and then rolling on the fake fur.

  “He likes it,” Sunny said in satisfaction, then glanced at her dad. “It’s only for a night,” she said with an apologetic grin.

  “Looks to me as if you’re making our house way too attractive to this stray.” Ignoring Shadow’s apparent ecstasies on the pillow, he returned to his couch and the program playing on the TV.

&
nbsp; *

  Shadow rolled until he lay facedown on the pillow, inhaling deeply. Warring scents fought for his attention, some of them old and faint, others more recent. He smelled cedar most strongly, and under that, the scent of the Old One without the taint of illness. The aromas of many heads wafted up from the pillow, and then there was just a trace of the Young One that teased his nostrils.

  Most of all, he enjoyed the sensation of being caressed by the fake fur. When he closed his eyes, the sensation brought up his very earliest memories of his mother.

  Shadow had been taken from his mother just after he’d been weaned. He’d found himself on the street as little more than a kitten, big for his age … but alone. For just a moment, he could lean against the soft fur and remember what it was to be loved.

  He snuggled down into the fur. It might not be real, but it was very, very comforting.

  3

  Mike’s dire warnings turned out to be groundless. When Sunny let Shadow out into the backyard the next morning to do his business, the cat didn’t come back.

  At breakfast, Sunny’s father breathed a loud sigh of relief. “I guess we can burn that,” he said, gesturing toward the living room and the improvised bed.

  “I’d like to keep it around,” she said. “He might turn up for another visit.”

  But over the next few days, Sunny didn’t get a return appearance of her gray-furred hitchhiker, although she caught occasional glimpses of a feline figure from her office window and in the neighborhood.

  “Cats on the brain,” she told herself sternly.

  But if she had struck out with Shadow, Sunny hit a home run when it came to publicity for Ada Spruance and her lottery ticket—far more than she’d expected. Ken Howell had led with the story when the Harbor Crier made its weekly appearance on Thursday, available for free all over town.

  And the story had appeared at the end of a slow news week. The Portsmouth paper had picked it up on Friday, along with all the local network affiliates. Ada’s ticket couldn’t have become more famous.

  But Ada herself hadn’t called with any good news.

  So when Saturday morning came, Sunny found herself staring at a bleary-eyed image of herself in the mirror. Once upon a time, that look would have been the result of hearty partying. These days, though, it came more from insomnia, checking the bedside clock at least once an hour from two a.m. onward.

  But other than puffy eyelids and the beginnings of dark circles, Sunny had to admit she was looking pretty good these days. Sharing her dad’s low-sodium, low-fat, and low-sugar diet had honed away a bit of pudge and enhanced her cheekbones. While she didn’t have Mike’s piercing gaze, her eyes were wide and blue. Her brown hair had a generous helping of her dad’s curls and a hint of her mom’s auburn coloring. As she pulled her hair back and into a scrunchie, though, Sunny grimaced. She really had to get this mane cut—but she’d yet to find a local stylist who could deal with her wild hair.

  Well, no sense worrying about that right now, she thought, tucking her unruly curls under a battered baseball cap. Sunny gave a rueful smile at the rest of her ensemble—a stained long-sleeved T-shirt, a pair of rubber boots she’d dug up from the basement, and her oldest jeans. A pair of heavy-gauge rubber gloves dangled from her back pocket.

  All set to go Dumpster diving, she decided and quietly headed downstairs, leaving her dad to sleep undisturbed. She went out the front door and walked along the street. Ada’s house was only around the corner and a few blocks away. Wild Goose Drive was quiet at almost half-past eight. The real early risers were long up and headed off to whatever Saturday activities they intended to do. The rest of the neighborhood seemed to be still in bed.

  She passed only a single pedestrian—Mrs. Parker, one of the local widows, out power walking. Sunny gave the older woman a friendly nod, even as she inwardly cringed at the look Mrs. Parker gave her cleaning getup. Then she got a little annoyed. If she’d gotten her husband to power walk, maybe he’d still be around and she wouldn’t be chasing after my dad.

  Reaching the corner, Sunny took a quick right, walked two more blocks, and then crossed the street. Almost there. The Spruance place, a large Colonial Revival, had been the finest on the block in its day. Now it had a curiously mottled appearance, with patches of silvery wood revealing where paint had flaked off the siding and darker stains suggesting the beginnings of mold. Knee-high grass fought an infestation of weeds in the unkempt yard.

  As Sunny came up the cracked walkway, she saw the undergrowth shaking in something’s wake.

  Please let that be a cat, she prayed. It’s still too early to deal with wildlife.

  The mover and shaker popped out ahead of her—Shadow!

  “Where did you get to?” She bent to pet the cat, only to see him glide back into the strawlike growth. “You eat our tuna and then just disappear. Or do you just like Ada’s dry food better?”

  She turned to the scabby-looking door, trying not to think of the alternate theory she’d developed, where Dad had trapped the cat and ejected him from the house.

  The doorbell was a tarnished mass that stained the wood around it. Sunny knocked on the center panel, wondering if she should put her gloves on right away.

  No answer.

  She knocked again, louder, calling Ada’s name.

  The only response was a faint “meow” from inside.

  Sunny tried to peek through the dirty glass of the living room window. She jumped back, nearly tripping among the weeds, when she came face-to-face with a golden calico cat peering out and making a mournful noise.

  “Maybe she’s in the back,” Sunny told herself. She worked her way over to the driveway and around the house, discovering she had an escort again. Shadow had reappeared, trailing about a foot behind her.

  The backyard was just as poorly maintained as the front. Sunny found a few pebbles and tossed them at the kitchen window, calling Ada’s name.

  Nothing, except more meowing—louder meowing, too, as if several cats had taken up the call.

  “I don’t suppose you know where she is,” Sunny asked Shadow, who stared unblinkingly up at her. She was torn between annoyance at being stood up after dragging herself up early and worry for the older woman—not to mention a mild case of the creeps from all the cat noises filtering out from the kitchen. Cursing the strict New England upbringing that wouldn’t let her take the easy way out (like leaving after she’d promised to show up and help), Sunny approached the only other way into the house—the slanting cellar doors whose hinges had rusted in the open position.

  The aromas wafting up from that hole in the ground were anything but inviting. Sunny found herself thinking of those kitty-litter ads that boasted about their product’s ability to hide the presence of multiple cats.

  Obviously Ada Spruance wasn’t using that particular brand.

  Sunny brought her rubber boot down on the first step—and had to restrain herself from kicking out with the other as Shadow now planted himself underfoot. He added his voice to the meowing chorus, but it managed to sound more like a warning than a hungry complaint. He rose up until his paws were at knee level, trying to stop her even as she carefully stepped around him to descend another step. Still, he kept making unhappy noises.

  She pulled on her gloves, held her breath, and worked her way down the rest of the stairs. They were damp and a bit spongy. The only light came from the doorway behind her. Sunny blinked a few times, trying to accustom her eyes to the dimness.

  A shaft of stronger light came in as a cloud moved off the sun.

  Sunny gasped, then coughed at the almost solid stink that attacked her throat and nose. Her eyes watered, but she definitely saw something at the foot of the other stairway in the cellar—the stairs that led up to the kitchen.

  It was too big to be a cat.

  And anyway, she’d never heard of a cat going around in a worn, flowered housecoat.

  *

  Shadow watched warily as the young woman made her way to the huddled fig
ure on the cellar floor. He’d tried to stop her. Now he crouched low, his ears instinctively going back. From his experience, these two-leggity types made a lot of noise when they came across dead things.

  This young woman surprised him. She got close enough for a good look at the Old One—the Dead One, Shadow corrected himself—took a single, deep breath, coughed, and then quickly headed back up the stairs.

  Shadow followed her, opening his jaws wide to let the rank, green smells of the backyard wash away the scent of old decay—and worse—lingering in his mouth and nose.

  The Young One didn’t stop to enjoy the change. She dug out one of those strange, bright things that humans liked to talk into and spoke quickly in a high, excited voice.

  The Dead One had one of those gadgets, but it was heavy and clunky, mounted high on the kitchen wall, a clumsy place to leap at.

  But the Young One’s talking-thing was small enough to fit in her hand—cat sized. Shadow’s paw itched at the idea of getting that gleaming gadget on a nice floor—like the shiny floor in the Young One’s kitchen, so good for sliding along—and giving it a good bat …

  A sharp click got Shadow’s attention. The woman had finished talking, hiding away that interesting toy. Now she paced back and forth in the yard, overgrown grass stalks lashing against her shins.

  Was she annoyed? Without seeing a tail, he didn’t have enough information to be sure—and Shadow wasn’t about to risk a kick by coming closer to see her response.

  Instead, he stretched low and closed his eyes, enjoying the sunshine. But the quiet didn’t last. Long before Shadow managed to drift off into a nap, he found himself raising his head. A car was coming—one that didn’t belong here.

  *

  Sunny stopped short as a furry gray form zipped across her path, almost over her toes. She followed Shadow to the corner of the house, where he peered around.

  By the time she joined him, she could see what had attracted the cat: a dusty black pickup truck turned onto the weed-choked driveway and came to a stop. The driver’s door opened, and a tall, rangy guy in jeans and a denim jacket got out.