Cat Shining Bright

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  McFarland, stepping over to the driver’s window, put a hand on Clyde’s shoulder. “CHP has cleared a path around the wreck, there against the hill. Wait until our units are through.” He scowled at Clyde. “Though I’d rather you turned around and went home. We don’t know what we have, up at Voletta’s.”

  “Kate sounded pretty worked up,” Clyde said. “Sounded scared.” He didn’t mention that Scotty was there; their personal life was their business. He guessed Kate was frightened, if even tall, capable Scott Flannery wasn’t enough backup. “Whatever’s happening,” he told McFarland, “Kate asked us to come, and that’s where we’re headed.”

  McFarland sighed. “Take the main road to the shelter, up above Voletta’s road. Stay off her place, and keep out of sight. Stay at the shelter with Kate, stay out of the way, Clyde.” No more was said about the two prisoners who were headed for jail. And McFarland said not another word about hitchhiking felines.

  20

  The five cats sat on the desk in the shelter office, their noses pressed to the window, watching the spotlighted farmyard below. The old place had once been a farm. The house, and the barn half hidden by eucalyptus woods, showed little change from their distant past except for the absence of crops and useful livestock. A once productive piece of land now dry and sour. Overhead the night sky had turned from black to the color of wet ashes. The cats’ tails were splayed out on the desk behind them, Dulcie’s striped tabby tail very still; Courtney’s orange, black, and white appendage twitching with interest; tortoiseshell Kit’s broad, fluffy flag flipping with her usual excitement. Pan’s orange-striped tail was curled around him, Pan himself rigid and predatory—as was Joe Grey as he joined them.

  Across the way, Clyde and Ryan, Kate and Scotty, and Wilma stood in the shadows of the mansion’s open walls watching the cars lined up on the weedy gravel yard, the men and Lena milling around as if waiting for someone, perhaps waiting for more drivers.

  Beside the desk Rock reared up, paws on the windowsill, wanting badly to bark; Dulcie had already silenced him twice, receiving that reluctant, I’m bigger than you look. Now Joe shut him up—Rock knew to mind Joe Grey.

  “Where’s the PD?” Kit said. “Where’s McFarland? Where’s Dallas, and the chief?” They had thought the law would be there by now, would already have these men surrounded, would be shackling them, locking them in squad cars. There wasn’t a cop in sight. “If they get those cars away, if they head up the coast . . .”

  “Not to worry,” Joe said, twitching a whisker. “Dallas just called Clyde. There won’t be any cops, they’re letting them go.”

  “Letting them go?” They all stared at him. “They can’t let them go,” Dulcie said. “With all those cars . . . They can’t just . . .”

  Kit’s yellow eyes blazed. “Why would . . . What is Dallas thinking, what did he say?”

  “They’re not coming here,” Joe said. “They’ll tail the cars as they turn onto the freeway. He has eight men following for backup, in four unmarked cars, those older, used cars with police radios. They’ll follow them, with two sheriff’s backups way behind and three CHP units up ahead. They’ll see where they take the cars—chop shop, dealer, who knows? They’ll let them pull in and get on with their business, then nail them. Maybe I could just slip into one of the—”

  “No you don’t,” Dulcie said, her ears back, her dagger paw lifted. “I’ve had enough scares for tonight.”

  “I didn’t say you’d be . . .”

  She just looked at him, her green eyes blazing.

  Joe didn’t like that she was scared for him. But then he thought, maybe he did like it, maybe he liked that fierce female caring—maybe she was thinking about the kittens, about the safety of their father. Below them, the entourage, apparently deciding Egan and Randall weren’t going to show, began pulling out. Two of the five men who had arrived earlier were pulling the trailers with clamped-on hitches behind their stolen cars, the trailers loaded up with a Lexus and a Porsche, both nearly new. Leading the entourage was a short, fat man in a black Audi. Eight cars, and each would bring a nice piece of cash—and two more cars that should be following, left behind in the barn. Bringing up the rear, Lena drove her old white Ford station wagon. This would be their return vehicle, once they’d dumped the stolen cars. “I’m surprised,” Pan said caustically, “that Voletta isn’t driving.”

  “I’m surprised,” Joe said, “that old woman allows this. She has to be part of it. From what Ryan and Kate say, she’s cranky as hell, but no one thought of her as a crook.”

  “And sweet little Lena,” Dulcie said, “with her little-girl voice. Was she using this place, or letting them use it, before she ever moved in with her aunt? That Randall Borden is her husband, then? The dark-haired man headed for jail? You heard Egan.” She looked at him, scowling. “This is where Egan and Randall were headed, they’re the two missing drivers.”

  “Just a cozy family business,” Joe said, smiling.

  Lena had shut the barn door where the two cars remained, had left them in a dark corner next to the tired-looking stack of baled hay. There wasn’t much else now in the big, hollow building. A few hanging tools, shovels, two ladders propped against a blank wall, a cardboard box on the floor, pushed back into the empty space where the trailers had stood. As the cars left Voletta’s property, one could follow their parade by the faint reflections of lights up the trees, and the fine layer of dust rising against the slowly lightening sky.

  The cats watched from the window as their human friends left the mansion, heading back for the shelter, Scotty and Kate lagging behind. When Scotty leaned over and kissed Kate on the forehead, the cats smiled. Courtney cocked her head with interest.

  “I wouldn’t speak of kisses,” Dulcie told her. “They’re very shy about this new relationship. New,” she said, “but maybe thinking of marriage? We’ll know in time.” Oh my, Dulcie thought, how much I have to teach our kittens. Courtney didn’t ask questions, she only grew more thoughtful; behind that solemn little face, was she seeing fleeting visions of weddings from lives past, was she putting incidents together?

  The entourage of stolen cars was gone a long time, but Scotty’s phone didn’t buzz, there was no word from Dallas. Kate and Wilma made breakfast in the tiny kitchen, scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast—just about the last scrap of food in the apartment, and the last of the coffee. No one wanted the remainder of the store-bought cookies. “When the shelter volunteers get here,” Kate said, “I’ll make a grocery run.” They sat crowded around the tiny table, the five humans comfortable on the two kitchen chairs, the desk chair, and two wooden boxes. The cats had the desk to themselves, their plates laid out on newspapers. Rock lay in the doorway sighing because he never got human food, because he hadn’t been allowed to bark and protect the property, because he felt ignored. When they’d finished breakfast and Wilma had done up the dishes, still there was no word from Dallas; Dulcie fell soundly asleep on Kate’s bed, tired from a long night. Kit and Pan went off up the hills to hunt. Joe Grey, waiting for the call, began restlessly to pace, passing back and forth where Courtney lay deeply asleep on the desk. Before the call finally came, three unlikely events stirred the morning.

  Young Courtney pretended to nap until everyone was off on their own business, Clyde walking Rock, Wilma helping Kate and the volunteers, her mama sound asleep in the bedroom. When Joe Grey quit pacing and left the shelter to be near Scotty and his phone, Courtney opened her eyes, leaped to the floor, and eased the outer door open with stubborn paws. Slipping out, pulling the door closed behind her, she was off on her own adventure. She could hear Scotty and Ryan and their two carpenters at work, could see Joe sitting atop Scotty’s truck. She could see Clyde far up the hills taking Rock for a run. Quietly she headed through the tall grass behind the Pamillon mansion, into its tangled gardens, fallen stone walls, its vine-invaded rooms, into the magical places where the feral cats lived.

  Crossing the grassy berm she kept glancing back, but she was qu
ite alone. She prowled the little courtyard where, Kit had said, Wilma and Charlie had dug up that valuable book, the book that Wilma had later burned. She knew nothing of the exact location and circumstances of that amazing find. It was the courtyard with its shadowy, overgrown bushes, walled on three sides by the old house, that drew her, a tangled garden mysterious and appealing, that smelled of the feral cats.

  Leaping onto a boulder facing the patio, she sat as tall and straight as a small princess, looking into the old garden with its masses of roses and vines. In that fairy-tale world she watched for the feral, speaking cats, praying they would come out, praying they would be curious and acknowledge her.

  She had waited a long time when a pale tabby appeared quite suddenly from the bushes beside the house. He leaped to a windowsill, his cream coat blending with the light stone. That was Sage, she knew from Kit’s description. Kit and Sage had almost been lovers, had almost become a pair—until Kit rejected him. Oh my, she thought, such a handsome cat. Farther along the wall Willow appeared, her bleached calico fur, too, matching the colors of the rock-walled house. Both cats watched Courtney, not with hissing confrontation, but with a look of amazement; both gave her ear gestures of greeting and a flicking of tails.

  Should she come down off the boulder and approach them, or would they come to her? She felt shy and then bold. She was filled with awe at these cats who must know so much more than she of the history of their own race, more than Kit or her parents had ever told her. Willow approached first.

  Willow knew, watching her, that this kitten had a secret. Whether the kitten herself knew, was another matter. A secret larger, even, than her heritage of speech. She is the image of the young queen, Willow thought, the once queen. And Sage was thinking the same.

  The two cats came close through the grass, approaching the stone where she sat. She shivered at their look of intensity. They reared up and sniffed noses with her, they purred for her. They looked carefully at her markings of orange and black laid artfully across her white patches, they looked a long time at her three black bracelets.

  “Joe Grey and Dulcie’s child,” Willow said. She said no more. Whatever she was thinking, Courtney was silenced by the wonder she saw in Willow’s eyes.

  Willow was thinking of the Netherworld where she and Sage had traveled with the band of ferals, the hidden land that was part of the speaking cats’ past—and that was part of this kitten’s heritage. Though Willow would never tell her—that was for her parents to reveal, if they even knew. Much more of the speaking cats’ history, and thus Courtney’s history, lay in times and countries far more distant than the caves below this coast, lay in medieval lands in ancient times.

  But, Willow thought, Kit and Pan know about the lower world, they have seen the old, old pictures there of a cat who looks like Courtney—pictures, Kit says, the same as the paintings and tapestries in books in the village library. Has Courtney seen those pictures? As young as she is, does she remember anything of those long-ago lives?

  Sitting on the rock with Courtney, Willow licked the kitten’s ears, as she had mothered so many of the feral clowder. Then she and Sage led the young cat among the ruins, showed her secret dens and hiding places. But at last when they heard someone shout from below and heard a car take off, Courtney, frightened and expecting a scolding, streaked for Kate’s apartment, where she was supposed to be asleep.

  21

  The morning was growing bright and warm as Joe Grey slipped into the cavernous barn, but inside it was cool and dim. The vast space was high ceilinged and hollow, its distant rafters festooned with cobwebs as dirty gray as rotting lace curtains. The noise from within intrigued and puzzled him: a clawing, tearing sound.

  Slipping into the shadows, he froze in place.

  Across the barn was the giant of all rats. A monster rat chewing and clawing at a cardboard box, making so much noise it didn’t hear him, so preoccupied it didn’t see him in the darkness beside the door.

  The box stood near the pile of baled hay, some of the bales so blackened with age they were unfit to feed any animal. But what matter, when Voletta let her donkey and goats graze on the neighbors’ gardens? The two stolen cars that remained were parked beside the hay, half hidden against the barn wall—a big gray Lincoln Town Car and a tiny black Mini Cooper left over from last night when Egan and Randall hadn’t shown up to drive. Beside the cardboard box, bubble wrap and white Styrofoam packing spilled out, littering the floor.

  Was this the box from the BMW? Had the men tossed it aside thinking it was worthless? Joe could see where it had been slit open then taped closed again by human hands. Now the rat had opened it once more and was at it tooth and claw.

  The rat himself looked almost as big as the Lincoln, Joe had never seen such a beast—bigger and heavier than Joe’s nearly grown kittens and looked a thousand times tougher. Where it had torn away one side of the box, scattering the wrappings, tiny white flecks shone on the dirt all around, like fallen stars, and led in a path under the Lincoln. What was in its simple mind? Nest making? Was it making a nest in the Lincoln? With its back to Joe, busily clawing and chewing, it still didn’t know it was watched—didn’t know it was stalked until Joe Grey, slipping up behind him, leaped on his back, dug all his claws in, and bit hard into his throat, expecting the beast to gurgle and fight for breath.

  Lightning fast the rat flipped Joe over. Now it was on top and somehow, despite Joe’s teeth in its throat, it managed to grab Joe’s face. Its teeth were like razors. Joe bit deeper. The rat choked and tried to squeal. Joe raked him in the belly, and bit harder. They flipped again, now Joe was on top and then on the bottom—blood was flying when something grabbed the rat. It screamed once and went still and limp.

  Someone pulled the rat’s teeth gently from Joe’s face, pulled the rat away. Clyde. Clyde knelt beside him, his handkerchief stanching the blood, his own face white with shock. Rock, his mouth bloody, picked the rat up again where Clyde had dropped it, stood with it in his mouth once more like any good retriever, his ears up, his short tail wagging. How can a dog smile with a dead rat in its mouth? Shakily Joe stood up, put his face up so Clyde could clean it more easily. How could he let a rat get the best of him? He was ashamed and embarrassed and mad. “How bad is it?” Would he be marred for life? Or maybe infected with some horrifying and incurable disease? Joe and Dulcie never listened when Clyde warned them about the foolishness of hunting rats.

  “It’s not bad,” Clyde lied. “Just bloody, must have hit a vein.” Reaching in his pocket for his phone, he called Ryan. “Bring the Jag down to the barn. Can you leave your work? We need to go to the vet. It’s not serious, but . . . Bring soap and water and towels from the shelter. And a heavy plastic bag.”

  Ryan didn’t ask questions. “On my way,” she said, feeling shaky. Quickly she collected what he wanted from the little dispensary by the office and jumped in the Jaguar. Within minutes she was pulling the barn door wider to brighten the dim space.

  They cleaned Joe up as best they could. Ryan dampened a washcloth from the water bottle she’d brought, squeezed on soap from a dispenser and washed Joe’s torn face, then bound the wound with gauze. “Thank God they’ve had their rabies shots.” She scowled up at Rock. The big dog still held his prize, wanting her to praise him. Instead she said, “Give.” She had to say it twice before he dropped it on the ground. She wet a clean towel, soaped it, washed Rock’s face then opened his mouth and washed it out, the poor dog backing away, gagging.

  When they were finished, Ryan dropped the towels in the bag. She laid one towel over the rat, lifted it into the bag, tied the bag shut and handed it to Clyde. She started to pick Joe up but, “Now that I’m bundled up like a mummy,” the tomcat mumbled, hardly able to speak, “take a look in that box.”

  Carefully Ryan pulled the wrappings back, revealing a delicate saucer and cup. There was a whole set, each piece secured separately in bubble wrap and packed among Styrofoam crumbles. One cup was broken, where the rat had knocked
it from the box. When she held a piece up, it was so thin that light shone through around the hand-painted decorations: acanthus leaves, flowers, and in the center a little fox laughing at her. She held several pieces for Joe to see. “It’s not china,” she said, “it’s porcelain, worth ever so much more.” Gently she turned over a saucer. “Worcester, 1770.” She studied the delicate tea set, then unholstered her phone and called Kate.

  “Could you and Wilma come down, and bring a big, strong box, like a big cat food carton? Better drive down, this will be cumbersome to carry. We think Joe found the box from the stolen BMW.

  “It contains old, delicate porcelain. I’d like to leave it packed, but put its box into the larger box. I think we’ll leave the torn wrappings, and the little white flecks of Styrofoam, for Max or Dallas to deal with. The box will be safe in the house until he picks it up.”

  While they talked, Clyde had wrapped a towel around Joe’s head where he was bleeding through the gauze, had gotten the tomcat settled in the car. Ryan grabbed the bag with the rat in it, signaled Rock to get in the back. They took off for Dr. Firetti’s just as Kate and Wilma pulled up; Ryan held Joe close as she phoned ahead to the clinic.

  Kneeling by the box, Kate looked at the broken cup, then unwrapped an equally delicate saucer with three hunting dogs spaced around the circle among the floral design. She unwrapped a cup, then another. She looked at each then secured it again in its bubble wrap. One cup showed a long-legged bird, maybe an egret. The next, a prancing horse. The third cup featured a cat. Kate drew her breath, her green eyes widening. The cat was a calico. A perfect image of Courtney, the exact same markings, three soft calico ovals saddling her back above a white belly. The white and calico patterns on her face were the same—as were the three dark bracelets around her right front leg. She held the cup for a long moment, wishing Dulcie were there to see—but maybe not so good for Courtney to see? How much self-glorification did the kitten need, to play on her ego?