Food Bowl Mysteries Books 1-3

by Katherine Hayton

  Still, a sneaky nap by the fence might be in order. A chance to let my empty stomach settle and my head steady before I launched into a confrontation. I didn’t even attempt to kid myself that there would be any other result once I got through Whitey’s cat flap. I’d be flinging myself headlong into a fight and only shouted appeals to logic would offer me a chance to win.

  I was shaking my limbs out, readying myself for the terrible ordeal in front of me, when a council net scooped me up and locked tight.

  I’d been so absorbed in my preparation, I hadn’t even heard the council worker approaching.

  He threw me into the back of his van, releasing me out of the net, but only into the confines of another cage. I stared out with pleading eyes as the worker slammed the van door shut. The engine started, the vehicle pulled out into the street.

  It carried me away to the big slammer.

  Chapter Three

  I knew that the council had another name for their house of death and pain. I’d heard it be referred to as the animal ‘shelter’—a cruel reversal of what the structure actually entailed. No animals sheltered there, they cowered. In the end, some were taken away by humans at their choosing, but most met the needle in the end.

  I tried to remain calm in the back of the van as the engine purred away the minutes until I faced the house of horrors for the first time myself. My human wouldn’t let me stay in there for long enough to die. He cared for me, he loved me. We were soul mates.

  Except… I didn’t have a collar. How would my human even know for sure where I’d gone?

  As the van came to a halt, the slide of the door opening emitting the same sound as the slice of the guillotine, I gave in to the panic nibbling away at my nerves. As the thick-gloved hands reached into the cage and yanked me out, I screamed for help. I screeched in pain and fear.

  “Will you get a load of this one?” the worker called out in a voice that seemed impossibly good-natured. Another trick, no doubt, to put a kind voice over top of pure barbarism.

  Well, my mother didn’t raise any fools. In fact, she didn’t get the opportunity to raise me at all.

  I scrabbled against the front of the smooth talker, digging my claws into the shiny coating of his reflective jacket. No matter how I tried, my sharp talons couldn’t get any purchase. The man was a wizard, slippery and repellent.

  He tossed me into a cage and walked away, whistling. As soon as the bars slammed shut in front of my face, I’m ashamed to admit that I cried.

  Everything was too much. Even when I tried my hardest, I failed. I’d never amount to anything.

  Every word that had ever been spoken to me in anger came flooding back. Every mocking tone, every taunt. My ears filled with the teasing notes and I drowned in the totality of all the tears I’d ever shed.

  My crying jag gave way to sleep. I’d missed more than a few hours the past few days—not getting anywhere close to my required sixteen, let alone a few naps on the sly or a sleep-in. Even while unconscious, my mind continued to taunt me with harsh rebukes. When I woke, my cheeks were wet with still more tears.

  The minor rest brought restored energy along with it. While I stretched out my limbs inside the tight confines of the cage, my mind began to work arrow sharp for the first time in many hours.

  If only I could get free of these bars, I might have the beginnings of a workable plan. Unfortunately, that was a very big if.

  I played with the bars on the front of my cage for a while. If I fully extended my claws, I could achieve quite a different note than if I retracted them halfway or even down to the nubs. In a few minutes of tuning, I could play a mournful tune of imprisonment on their steel rods. By the time the first rays of sunlight spread across the cell floor, I was a virtuoso.

  With the morning light came food. At least, I think that’s what my captors were trying to pretend was in my bowl. I sniffed at it cautiously, attempting to make sense of the aroma. It smelled like weak bone structure, molting fur, and loose teeth.

  Sickness in a can.

  I pushed it aside, settling for a few gulps of the tap water to fill up the hole in my stomach. If I thought I could have kept the muck they fed me down, I would have given it a go. In fact, if an infected rodent crawled past me, foaming at the mouth, I would have given it an interested chew. Alas, my refined palate betrayed me. I could no more eat this excuse for a meal than I could play ugly.

  Some things just run bone deep.

  I hoped that the clearance of the bowls would offer a chance for me to escape this hellish captivity. The guards may have found it easy to push the containers underneath the bars, but it would be a different matter to get them out of there. While I watched my cellmates pace the floor in front of their cages opposite, I lay at the back, muscles tensed and waiting.

  Let my captors think that I didn’t care about extracting myself from this new predicament. If they lulled themselves into a false sense of security, that was their look out.

  Alas, my cunning didn’t extend to my prison guards indifference to my living situation. They didn’t come along to clear away the bowls at all.

  My ire was raised. Was I dealing with complete heathens?

  As the daylight tracked across the floor, I had to admit that this was probably the case.

  I remembered skiting to Fat Bobby that it didn’t matter if the council caught me. My human would come to rescue me, while he would suffer a different fate.

  As the long hours of the day dragged by, I started to realize that I might have been wrong to assume the things I had. Although I’d never been incarcerated inside one of these death houses, my mother and siblings had. A happy accident had spared me a similar fate, though it didn’t seem fortunate at the time. To be thrust into a solo life before my time felt like the worst punishment that a cruel devil could dream up. I’d survived, but the cost had been high.

  It wasn’t often that my thoughts turned in the direction of my long-lost family. Too much pain lay there—it was restricted access, senior staff only.

  Now, I couldn’t help but dwell on the fate that had lain in wait for them. With a horrified gasp, I realized that my own end might soon be reached, the same cruel hand dealt out to me. All the time that passed between had just been a fleeting glimpse at a life that should never have been mine to live.

  Gloomy, dull thoughts twisted through my brain. A fish hook tugging at the meat of my mind and tearing dark paths of ruination through my attempts to hope. To dream.

  “Oh, Daddy. Look! There’s a little kitty with big ears!”

  The high voice cut through the facility like a jackhammer. I don’t understand how humans can put up with the little creatures they produce. Aside from the squealing, there are the sticky fingers to worry about.

  I shuddered, wondering what the little human was talking about.

  Feet came to a halt in front of my cell. One pair of a similar size to my human, the other smaller and in a startlingly bright shade of pink.

  I looked up and saw that a girl had a finger pointed in my direction. With a loud indrawn breath, I realized she meant me.

  Big ears? BIG EARS!?

  The cheek of the child, considering that the pair of fleshy globules that hung off either side of her head was twice the size of my dainty appendages.

  I sat back and licked my paw, smoothing down my ears and making sure that they hadn’t mysteriously grown in size while I wasn’t paying attention. Nope. Perfectly proportioned as usual.

  I should have felt sorry for the girl, although I didn’t. Apparently, her eyes needed testing.

  “Can I pick him up, Daddy?”

  I frowned out of the cage at her. “No, you can’t,” I said slowly and loudly. “I’m not a toy for you to poke and prod about.”

  Once again, the humans either didn’t comprehend or weren’t prepared to listen. Just as I finished talking, the father squatted down by his daughter and said, “Of course, you can.”

  I closed my eyes and shook my head. What was the world
coming to when a man would just give in to the demands of his youngster? If a parent cat gave in to every mewling kitten, when would they have time to sort out their own needs?

  I glared at the human for giving parenting a bad name, then took a step back and ducked my head to think.

  If the girl wanted to touch me, I could stay well away from the bars. Then, the only way she’d get her wish was to open up the cage door.

  Oh, ho. I was so clever.

  I beamed out my cuteness at full power, dazzling the tiny human and enticing her further into my lair. When she gave another high-pitched squeal, I gritted my teeth and staunchly sat through it. Just open the cage door, love. It’ll be all right.

  Heavier footsteps approached, the man with the deceptively kind voice coming back to open up the same door that he’d slammed shut just a few hours before. I couldn’t contain myself. I jumped to my feet and paced back and forth, showing off all the attributes of beauty in my arsenal.

  The child squealed again—this time high enough to start a row of dogs from further back in the slammer barking. Their joyful howls at the sounds that even I could barely hear had the added attraction of pasting a frown over the council worker’s face.

  “Shut up back there,” he yelled as if a stray puppy could understand his strange language. Even with my advanced feline skills, it had taken a while to master the intricacies of human speech—most of those poor, brainless canines didn’t have a shot.

  “Stand back now, Lucy. You don’t want to get too close to the cage in case it’s aggressive.” The father’s warm tones didn’t seem to invoke the required degree of care in his daughter.

  Lucy just gave another squeal and started to pulse her fingers—splaying them wide out then bunching them into fists. The energy contained in her small human package was almost obscene.

  “Be very careful at first,” the fake-kind council worker warned, adding his voice to the mounting ledger of caution. “Even though it looks like a normal house cat, these strays can be very excitable. It may not mean to harm you, but that doesn’t mean it won’t accidentally get you with his claws.”

  Accidentally? Who did this man think he was speaking of? I’ve never ‘accidentally’ hurt anybody or anything in my life—every blow and scratch that I’ve dealt out was done with full knowledge and intent.

  I shook my head in sorrow at the misunderstandings of these ape creatures. They wouldn’t learn my language, and now it seemed they wanted to malign my actions. Next, they’d be attributing their own wants and desires to my behavior!

  Never mind, I consoled myself. Indignation could wait until after I was freed to be expressed. I strutted and posed, looking as good as any cat ever had or ever would.

  Lucy waited impatiently while the worker put his brutish hands into the cage and lifted me out. I didn’t try to escape under his arm, though I think I had the speed to duck through the gap. No. I’d already measured the distance and didn’t see a good return on investment for me scampering toward the door past three humans with who knows how many more just around the bend.

  The door to the slammer would be closed to a cat. No matter how intelligent, physical limits apply to us all.

  I needed to bide my time until a pathway was clear, not just out of the cage but out of the entire building. So, I stayed meek and quiet while the worker lifted me bodily and dumped me into the waiting child’s arms.

  Lucy didn’t heed the warnings. Of course not. I doubted that this young one had ever learned the first thing about consequences. After all, her father was squatting beside her, coming down to child-level to make the conversation easier for the child. I’d never seen such a rampant display of enablement.

  Although her hands were far too squeezy for my liking, I lay still and compliant in Lucy’s arms. When she stroked me roughly from stem to stern, I bore it without even wriggling. When she held me up by my shoulders to look me in the eye, I obediently stared at her rather than looking away.

  “Can we take him, Daddy?” Lucy asked, her shrill voice pleading. “I love him.”

  What cat wouldn’t feel a thrill of pride at that sentiment? I relaxed even further into Lucy’s arms, accepting the accolade as my due reward for being good. And handsome. And having perfectly shaped ears.

  After some hemming and hawing—looking to me like it was more for the council worker’s benefit than an attempt to forestall his daughter—Daddy did indeed agree that she could have me.

  Just once, it would have been nice if they’d bothered with the pretense of asking my opinion. I’m old enough to know it wouldn’t be for real, but sometimes just going through the motions would be nice.

  There was some strange ritual at the front desk. Another warning was added to the list—something about shots and vets, nothing that I needed to concern myself with. Soon afterward, Lucy gave a delighted squeal and headed toward the door, squeezing my midriff ever tighter. Her shoulder pressed against the entrance to the outside world, nudging it open.

  I confess that I didn’t even wait for her to exit before struggling free and jumping down and out of her pinioning arms. Not polite, no. Still, to my credit, neither did I scratch a single mark on her rosy pink skin. Even when I pressed my back feet into her chest to use it as a springboard to my new found freedom. My claws were retracted. I didn’t harm the girl the slightest bit.

  Chapter Four

  Once through the garden outside the animal shelter, I kept close to the wall and ran back down the side. A drain led to a brick window ledge that in turn led to a trellis, then the roof. The workers who ran out after me would look for my fleeing frame down the street to either side. They wouldn’t look up.

  Humans never seemed to understand that up and down were directions that could be utilized as a means of escape. Not unless they were educated to, and these bozos weren’t trained. Not even close.

  From the way the pursuit died off after a half-dozen running steps, I needn’t have tried so hard. The fear had driven me to a state of over-caution, but these men were employees looking to make a target or a quota—they didn’t care that I’d gotten away. Not really.

  I waited until they went back inside and counted off a few minutes more. Now that I’d started with heightened caution, I might as well continue in the same vein.

  I let myself down in the back of the building, leaping across to the fence, then into the neighboring backyard. Not a house but a shop, selling something non-food related. I didn’t bother to sniff through the garbage cans they had piled to the side of the building. Nothing in them had ever been wrapped around a hot burger or soaked up the grease from a fried meal.

  I jumped from yard to yard until I was four properties down from the animal shelter. Only then did I poke my nose out onto the main road and venture down the sidewalk like a typical cat. Residual fear lent a tremble to my legs—even the steady trot as I covered the miles back to the township center couldn’t eradicate it completely.

  As I moved, I put together a list of things that I needed to do—or rather we, since I hoped Fat Bobby had gathered up the troops as he promised. Because the unexpected detour of my morning had eaten up a considerable chunk of time, I skipped over the walk to One-Eared Whitey’s and the plea for mercy.

  It would take too long to reason with the cat, then plan how he could communicate that logic to his owners. Dumb and dumber would require a lot of talking to—a luxury I couldn’t afford.

  Plus, I didn’t enjoy putting my head into the tiger’s jaws. Another tick in the ‘don’t bother’ column.

  Fat Bobby wasn’t in his usual haunt, perched out in front of the main strip in the township. I sniffed at the ground in case he’d left a trail to follow but couldn’t find a thing. My heart started to beat much faster in my chest as I scanned the horizon, wondering whether it was worth chasing him up, or if I should just ditch the help and go it alone.

  If it was the latter, I was out of luck. I didn’t have an address for my first port of call, nor know of another cat who’d be a
ready source for the information.

  I trotted into the shade of a late-opening shop window and prepared myself for quite a wait.

  The gods of all that is heavenly and lamb chunky must have been smiling down upon me for the first time. No sooner had I settled my butt down onto the ground than Fat Bobby slunk around the corner, keeping to the shadows as he scanned the square with his one good eye.

  My heart sank to see that he was alone, then started to pitter-patter with excitement as I understood my first impression was wrong. The cautious cat had apparently ordered his troops to stay undercover until he gave a signal. Just as I was about to approach him, Fat Bobby jerked his tail, and a dozen felines ran across to join him, flanking him on either side.

  The motley crew was causing worried looks from the early morning human shoppers, but my overjoyed yowl probably made up for that. Fat Bobby raised his head high, acknowledging the praise I ladled out upon him. A good job should be recognized, and I had no trouble doing just that.

  But we couldn’t stay out in the open for long before someone would dob us into the council. One stay in the big house was more than enough for a lifetime—I didn’t want to end up there twice inside one day.

  “Follow me,” I ordered the troops and scampered off before I checked to ensure they’d obey. Either the urgency in my tone convinced them, or Fat Bobby meekly falling in behind was enough to make up their minds.

  I ducked in behind the central row of shops, preferring the cover of the back alleys to the eyeballs we got out front. In a few minutes, I trotted us close to the edge of the shopping precinct—from here on a row of houses would offer shelter. The appearance of cats out in a residential area wouldn’t raise as many eyebrows.

  I turned to face the crowd, not to give a speech—just another hasty instruction. “Once we get into the line of trees at the edge of Dog Stream Track, I’ll tell you the plan. Until then, just stick close in behind.”