She stood once more and picked up the bag and started to open the door. "That is, of course, if you will follow me inside. I'm not going to force…"
He pushed in before she could change her mind, slinking carefully around her thin legs.
The house was dim and cool, with heavy curtains draped over each window. It was perfect for a cat's eyes, and the curtains were parted just enough to allow for basking beams of sunlight throughout the day. It was as neat and tidy as the yard outside. The only knick-knacks he could see were all on shelves protected by glass doors. Other than a few heavy objects, every flat surface was bare. As his eyes tracked around, he quickly realized why.
Two bolts of furry lightning streaked through the foyer and into the formal living room. They leapt up onto a sofa-back and tore along it before turning halfway across to leap and skid over the coffee table, launch up to the fireplace mantel, and along a series of shelves cleverly arranged in steps up the wall to a wide ledge that ran the perimeter of the room. The smaller gray one led the way and was followed closely by an orange-and-white. The orange-and-white had a noticeable three-legged gait, but that didn't slow him down. When they finally stopped on the highest perch and stared down at him with fascination, he saw that the gray one was missing most of one ear.
"That's Piper, the gray one," the woman said, nodding toward the pair. "And the orange boy is Trips. They've only been here a couple of months. And I'm Ms. Holly, by the way."
His eyes darted back to her, surprised. He wasn't sure a human had ever actually introduced themselves to him before.
She continued through the house to the kitchen, introducing him to two more cats along the way. TomTom was a large orange tabby whose only response to a stranger entering his domain was to switch the end of his tail and then go back to sleep. Queenie, a white Persian mix jumped down from the kitchen counter and sauntered over to inspect him from nose to tail. He returned her sniffs politely. After assuring herself that he was no threat, she wandered over to TomTom and began to bathe the top of his head.
"Where's Lemon Drop?" Holly asked of no one in particular.
As if on cue, a hiss came from the top of the refrigerator.
Holly looked down at the shadowy stranger at her feet. "I told you so."
A solid black head poked over the edge of the fridge and stared down; golden eyes gleamed and pearly fangs flashed with another hiss.
"Everyone! This is…" she paused and gave him a thoughtful look with pursed lips. "This is…Mr. MacFluffypants."
He froze, mouth falling open. Mr. MacFluffypants?!? What happened to Lancelot? He was the knight in furry armor, the savior of damsels and slayer of two-legged dragons!
"We'll call him Mac, for short."
Mac chuffed with indignation and might have gotten on with a good pout if the inky-black Lemon Drop hadn't suddenly landed beside him and cuffed him upside the head.
"Nuh uh!" Holly scolded and gave Lemon Drop a gentle push with her foot to separate the two. "Give him a chance. He's been a good boy so far, and you should have seen the way he handled those street-toughs. He saved your mama."
Mac looked back and forth between Holly and the other cats. He'd heard humans talking to their animals as if they were people, but he'd never seen anyone take it quite so far as Ms. Holly did. She must have been alone with her cats for a very long time.
TomTom remained placid under Queenie's massage. Lemon Drop gave him one more glaring stare and then turned her rump to him with a flick of the tail and stalked away on stiff legs.
Soon, he was wolfing down a bowl of the best kibble-n-wet he'd had in ages. She'd gotten the ratio of the mix perfect. Later, after a thorough explore of the entire house, he settled down into what smelled like the least occupied corner of a cozy chair. He didn't want to offend anyone by taking up a favorite spot. Before he realized it, he was purring himself to sleep with drifting thoughts that Mac wasn't such a bad name…
Dreams chased him through the dark woods with terrifying reality. Old scars ached, hidden beneath dense gray and black fur. Claws swiped at him from a paw that was bigger than his head, bowling him head over tail. Huge teeth sank into his shoulder and shook him like a rag, then tossed him up into the air. He was a mouse being thrown by a cat at play. A huge cat unlike any he'd ever known. He knew the smell of the local cougar, bobcat, and even an elusive lynx. This had been none of them. But he was cat, too, and he did not freeze like a terrified mouse. He ran. He'd been running ever since, his life changed in ways he could never possibly have dreamed. He was no longer just cat.
The familiar dream chased him in circles until a soft thud woke him. His body remained perfectly still, but his eyes popped open and his ears tilted this way and that, trying to identify the sound and where it had come from. The house was dark and quiet. Holly had gone to bed after giving him a decadently thorough brushing. Maybe one of the kits, Piper or Trips, had knocked something over. That seemed unlikely, as Holly had carefully kitten-proofed her home.
A shadow darker than the rest of the house moved across the room. Lemon Drop glared at him and then turned to face the front door. Another thud sounded, as if something solid and wet had smacked the door. It was quickly followed by several more.
Lemon Drop paced nervously but seemed reluctant to move toward any window that faced front.
Mac felt no such reluctance. He hopped down and padded across the room to nose aside a curtain, only to flinch back as an egg slammed right into his face. At least, it looked as if it had. It smashed against the glass and slid down in a yellow and white gooey mess. Footsteps creaked over the porch boards and he could hear furtive whispers and malevolent giggles and the sound of hissing air punctuated with metallic rattles.
Anger coursed through him and he wanted out. He didn't pace like Lemon Drop, but ran from room to room, looking everywhere for a way to escape. Holly did not believe in cat-flaps or allowing her precious charges to wander the dangerous outdoors, but in one of the back bedrooms, he found a window left open for ventilation. It had a screen to keep cats in, and bars to keep thugs out, but it would be no match for Mac, the slayer of two-legged dragons.
Furiously, he clawed and chewed at the screen. A beam of bright moonlight sifted between the leafy branches of a tree in her small backyard. The moon. He glanced at it with mute appeal. It was waxing, but still days away from full. He needed it to be full tonight. Right now. But it was not, so he was stuck with teeth and claws that felt pathetically small against the sturdy screen.
He growled with frustration and continued to attack it, until he felt a bit of it give way. Once it began to tear, it would go easier, he knew. This wasn't his first escape through a screened window. Not that escape was his mission this time.
Suddenly, two small bodies landed on the windowsill on either side of him. Piper and Trips nudged at his work with curiosity. He hissed and gave Piper a hard shove with his shoulder, but the precocious kit was unmoved by the threat. What would these two do if Mac got a hole in the screen large enough to get his bulk through? They would follow him. Outside. Outside where neither of them had any business being.
Defeated, he turned and dropped to the floor. He had to get out! But how? It would be days before he had the height and the thumbs to open a door.
He ran back to the front of the house and poked his head around a curtain once more. Four young men were busy spraying something on the front of the house while a fifth watched from the yard. Height and bandages around his neck identified him as the leader of the punks from the alley. Mac trembled with rage and could not stop the low growl from rumbling deep in his throat, but the boys outside were too intent on their work to notice his small face in the window.
The leader in the yard turned to look down the street, then gestured with urgency. "Time to go!"
With one last flourish, they tossed their cans onto the porch and leapt over the railing to trample her flower beds on their way across the yard and down the street.
Mac turned to see Holly
standing in the hallway, a pale, flowered bathrobe clutched around her. Tears shimmered in her eyes but did not spill over. She looked equal parts mad and sad.
"Why?" She muttered to herself. "Why would they do this to me? I've never done anything to them." She shuffled over to the window and looked carefully to make sure they had gone. With more confidence than she should have felt, she opened the door to step out and see what damage had been done.
Mac darted out the door and streaked down the steps, across the yard and out into the street where the punks had gone. He heard Holly's small cry of dismay and was surprised at how much it stung his heart. But he'd be back. First, there was business to take care of.
He found them back at the little shopping mart, loitering near the parking lot at a couple of cement picnic tables off to the side. The store was shut tight behind a roll-down metal door, but someone had produced a bottle of cheap booze and they were passing it around and laughing at the night's antics. Mac slid along the wall of the store and settled down at the corner in the deepest shadow he could find. He watched with slitted eyes to reduce the risk of a chance reflection catching their attention.
"Wish I could see the look on her face, man."
One snorted and struck a dramatic pose of a woman in distress, patting his heart and fluttering one hand in front of his face.
The tall one with the bandages around his neck passed on the bottle and turned to one that Mac had not seen before. This one was older and looked meaner.
"How long do you figure it'll take?" The tall one asked.
Older Man shrugged. "Guess it'll depend on how stiff she is. Some old ladies is tougher than you'd think. Maybe just a couple weeks, but probably more like a couple'a months. It'll be worth it, though. With a house like that, we can rule the hood. Scare her off, keep the outside tagged and tore up, without doing any actual damage. That'll keep it from selling…not that anyone's buyin' around here anyhows."
Tall Boy nodded sagely, as if he'd played some masterful role in this grand scheme.
"Hey!" One of them protested. "Stop hogging it."
A brief tussle over the bottle revealed the other thug Mac had attacked before he'd been called Mac. One side of his face was covered with a bandage being held in place by a dirty white cloth wrapped around his head like a cartoon character with a toothache. Mac chuffed the cat-equivalent of a snicker.
"I need this more'n you," he pouted and held the bottle away from grasping hands.
"Yeah, 'cause you got your ass kicked by a cat!"
They all laughed, except for Tall Boy. "That was one big-ass mutha of a cat," he said.
"It weren't no mountain lion," someone sneered.
"You weren't there, so shut it!" Tall Boy said. "We cain't kill the old bitch, but I'm gonna kill that cat. Count on it."
"We could kill a bunch of cats. She's got like…twenty of them in there or something. Whole place probably smells like cat piss."
Older Man looked thoughtful at that comment, nodding slowly to himself. "Yes, that could do it. Kill a few of her cats and that'll take the wind right outa her. We could get that house fast that way. Real fast…" His voice trailed off and he stood abruptly. "I've got us a plan. What do you boys think of a little full-moon ritual? Go all devil on her ass with pentagrams and chanting and dead-cat-waving. We'll curse her right out of that house."
Mac shook as the gang wandered off, making their plans. He hadn't been in this neighborhood long, but he'd seen others like it. The police had more to worry about than one old lady's house getting vandalized. And it's not like Mac could walk in and tell them what was going down. He had to do something. But what? What could one cat—even a not-just-cat like him—do against a gang of at least six? Maybe there would be more? And they would be looking for him. Death at their hands would be an ugly death.
He could leave. He didn't owe Holly anything. He hadn't needed human company for more than two years…not since his life had been turned inside out. He could live without it now. And he'd never fit in with her little pride of cats, nor did he particularly want to. Why had he interfered in the first place? The last thing he needed was to get caught up in human affairs and trapped inside a human house. What if the full moon came and she had the house locked up tight with him inside? What if she saw…? He couldn't risk it.
Making certain the gang had left the area, he stood and shook the dust off his coat, then trotted into the night.
The following morning found him asleep on the windowsill of Holly's back bedroom, blocking the hole in the screen with his body so the silly kit twins couldn't find their way out.
"Well, thank you, Jesus!" Holly exclaimed when Mac slinked into the kitchen at the sound of breakfast kibble hitting small porcelain bowls. "Where on earth did you come from? How did you get in?"
Looking suitably ashamed, he turned and trotted back to the bedroom, glancing over his shoulder to make sure she was following. He didn't want that hole left for anyone else to escape through.
She paused in the doorway, stunned, as he jumped up onto the windowsill. After a moment, she shook off her surprise and moved to close the window. "Well, well. Aren't you a very clever boy?"
He arched his back under the long caress of her hand and gave her a little bump with his head.
"Hungry, dear?"
At that, he raced back to the kitchen with about as much dignity as any properly hungry cat.
It was only two more days until the full moon. Mac explored the house, nosing his way into cupboards in search of anything that might inspire a plan of attack. Or defense, he supposed, but attack was the only way to put a proper end to the threat. If Holly managed to merely defend herself, they'd simply come back later with something worse.
Lemon Drop followed him everywhere, watching him with her golden, glowering eyes. She hadn't tried to hit him again since that first swat that had been meant to show him who was boss of the household. He'd offered every peace overture in his repertoire, but she wouldn't have it. Resigned, he kept a respectful distance, but he couldn't escape her suspicious stalking.
With her being a solid black cat, she'd be the perfect candidate for the ritual…
Mac shook off the unworthy thought and slipped into Holly's bedroom while she was out front nursing her bruised flowers and scrubbing egg off the windows. He studied the clothes hanging in her closet. There were mostly dresses and blouses, with only a few pairs of dress slacks on hangers. Her casual pants must be folded in a drawer he could not open. From what he could see though, she was about the right size. A little smaller than he'd like, but not too small.
Poking his head into the small bathroom attached to her bedroom, he found a clothes basket about half full and waiting to be laundered. Jackpot. Laying right on top was the pair of slacks she'd been wearing when he met her the first time in the alley. They still smelled of beer, but that was ok. He hoped she wouldn't miss them. Grasping them in his teeth, he dragged them out of the basket and through her room, into the back bedroom once more. The room had a daybed made up with an oversized quilt that hung down to the floor. Under the daybed was a perfect hiding spot for his cache of treasures. He added the pants that he would soon need. Human bodies were so ridiculously vulnerable.
Lemon Drop watched it all, but Mac had no fear of her tattling and knew it would never occur to her to steal back any of his stolen items. Besides the pants, he had three small, sharp knives he'd nicked from the kitchen, a bottle of hairspray he'd rolled haphazardly from her bathroom, the candle-lighter from beside the fireplace, and a bag of marbles he'd unearthed in an old toy chest saved for grandkids that apparently never came to visit. Those had been the hardest. That bag had been heavy and awkward and loud when it clunked on the hardwood floors. But he'd managed it all under the watchful eyes of Lemon Drop.
It wasn't much, but it was what he had.
He wished he had some way to warn her, to tell her to leave the house for that night and take the other cats with her. He didn't want to see any of them hurt…
not even the black witch. But he'd done all he could do.
The evening of the full moon finally arrived. Mac was certain of it because he felt the familiar nausea and fatigue that always came with it. He'd been half-afraid that the punks would come a day early. The moon had looked full the night before, but tonight was its true fullness. He figured they'd needed an extra day to prepare because he was sure they weren't smart enough to recognize which night was the true full moon. Maybe they wouldn't even come tonight. Maybe it had all been bluster and bluff to make themselves sound tough to each other. But he didn't think so.
Holly fussed over him when he refused dinner. He was too sick to eat. Sick with the phase of the moon, and sick with worry over what he was about to do. He'd never put himself at so much risk of being seen before. The punks would never know…but Holly would. He would be trapped in the house with her and she would see. He'd considered trying to find a way to make her sleep deeply, but even if he'd been able to, he decided it would be too risky. If things went wrong, he wanted her to be able to get out of the house.
So what if she saw him? What's the worst she could do? Kick him out? He hadn't planned on sticking around anyhow. Not for so very long, in any case. Would she tell on him? Who would she tell? Who would believe her? Nobody and nobody. So…what? Why did the thought of it make him sick? Did it matter? He chalked it up as just another minor mystery in a life full of much bigger ones.
Finally, he retreated to the back bedroom. When the kit twins tried to follow him, he gave them a low, rumbling growl that brooked no arguments. They could go play somewhere else. Lemon Drop watched him go, but for once, did not follow.
Hellcats: Anthology Page 33
