Dropping down onto the low roof of a jutting bay window, he watched John Firetti step into the van. The vehicle was unmarked by the veterinarian’s name or the name of the clinic, just a plain white Dodge van that was almost a hospital in itself, equipped inside with cupboards, drawers of medicines and bandages, animal stretchers and cages enough to handle most emergencies, to care for sick and hurt animals while transporting them to the clinic. Joe watched Misto leap to the abbreviated hood of the van and stretch out against the windshield. He watched John, in the driver’s seat, unscrew the cap on his thermos, and he smelled the aroma of rich coffee. Joe remained still and apart for some time before he scrambled down a jasmine vine, trotted across the little road and leaped up onto the hood beside Misto.
Together they watched the traps that were just visible among the tall, yellowed grass, just as John was watching. Joe had thought, coming across the roofs, that someone had been watching him, but it was only a feeling. He saw no one, and now that sense of another presence was gone.
They watched the grass twitch and shiver as the two young cats peered out. In the cab, John Firetti was very still, not a movement, no smallest sound, only the smell of coffee, no different than if it had come from the nearby cottages. The trapping took as much patience as watching a mouse hole, patience not only to trap the cat but to care for him, doctor him, prepare him for a new home or, if he was feral, to notch his ear and release him again into his own wild world. The only changes in the cat’s life were that he would be healthier, and that he’d miss all the fun of making kittens.
Now, the two young cats slipped out from the grass, nervous and wary but yearning toward the smell of tuna. The pale silver tabby was maybe a year old, the scruffy black kitten half that age. They crept belly down toward the reek of tuna, easing toward the cages, sniffing eagerly through the mesh walls. Once they dodged away, then crept close again. Impetuously, the black kitten skittered into the nearer cage; she paused just inside, shivering. When nothing bad happened she crept toward the back where the tuna waited. The silver tabby started to follow her but tonight something alarmed him, made him draw back.
For a week, the two had been taking their supper in the traps, the tabby always wary, slower to enter the bungeed trap but at last following the black. They would clean up one bowl together, then move to the other cage and do the same. They had no notion that at every meal they walked over an inactivated trigger—cats know nothing of triggers. The kitten had no clue that tonight, before she reached the tuna, the door would spring closed behind her and . . .
Snap. It slammed down as loud as a gunshot. The kitten bolted into the wire mesh, stepped in the cat food, bolted away into the closed door and then into the side again, throwing herself at the wire, clawing frantically at it as Firetti swung out of the van and ran to drop a big, dark towel over the cage.
At once the kitten quieted. The terrible thudding stopped, all was still within. A trapped creature, a feral cat or raccoon, a bobcat or cougar kitten, will fight an uncovered cage until they are so badly cut and wounded they will die or must be killed. Even domestic cats will do the same, terrified, wanting out. They can see outside, and they fight to get out there. Only the dark cover, blocking their view, will calm them.
The pale tabby had disappeared back among the grass and poison oak, where he would be peering out. John was sorry not to have caught him—now he’d be twice as hard to capture. Carrying the covered trap, and opening the side door of the van, Firetti didn’t see, behind him, the silver tabby come out to follow him. Only Joe and Misto saw.
The young cat approached nervously, bravely following his friend. Above him, Misto looked through the windshield, back into the van, and caught John’s eye. He twitched an ear toward the tabby. John looked, and froze.
For a while, he stood immobile. Then silently he lifted the cage up onto the floor of the van and backed away.
It took a long while for the silver tabby to approach. He looked up at Misto and Joe, but seemed unafraid of them. Misto, taking a chance, dropped down from the hood, padded casually to the open door, and leaped into the van. He lay down a few feet from the cage and stretched out, purring.
The tabby, watching him, crept closer; but every muscle was tensed to run. He looked in at Misto, then at the cage. Looked up through the windshield at Joe. Looked back at John, who stood far away.
At last he hopped up into the van. Misto remained stretched out, limp, as the silver tabby nosed under the towel, where he could see the kitten. When he had made sure she was all right, he settled down halfway beneath the towel, his rear end sticking out, his striped silver face pressed against the wire, close to his young friend. This was not a feral cat, the beautiful tabby had been someone’s pet. Slowly Misto strolled out of the van, dropped to the ground, and John eased the sliding door closed.
It was now, behind them, that a shadow moved across the street among the tall bushes, a thin figure, watching them.
“Someone’s there,” Joe said softly. As John turned, the figure stepped out of the shadows. A woman, bone thin and tall, deeply tanned, dressed in ancient jeans and colorless T-shirt. The cats could see, down the street, the bumper of her battered green Chevy where it was angled into someone’s drive, half hidden by a wooden fence.
She approached the van, studying John’s face. She was just about his height, her brown hair slicked back in an untidy bun, her sun-browned face wrinkled and leathery. She peered past John, trying to see in through the van’s tinted window. “Where are you taking them? What did you mean to do with them? Those are my kittens, I’ll take them now.”
“Why would I give them to you, after you’ve abandoned them?”
“I couldn’t help it. I thought they’d be safe here with the other cats, I know you feed those cats. I live in my car, you can’t leave cats in a car, the heat would kill them. What did you mean to do with them? Who are you? Open the door, they’re mine.”
“I mean to feed them and care for them,” John said. “You haven’t done that, you abandoned them. The little one needs defleaing, and they need their shots. Kittens—”
“They’ve had their shots.”
“Which shots? Which vet? There are only two clinics.”
“Dr. . . . I don’t remember his name. The one on Ocean, behind the Mercedes agency.”
“Firetti’s Clinic?”
“Yes, that’s it. Ask them, they’ll tell you.”
“Which doctor?”
“I don’t remember. Dr. Firetti, I guess.”
“That clinic has only one doctor. I’m John Firetti.”
She looked at John a long time, her face crumpling, a dampness welling in her brown eyes. “You were going to take them somewhere that would put them down.”
“I wouldn’t take them to a shelter that kills unwanted cats. But these kittens aren’t ferals, they shouldn’t be abandoned and on their own.”
“You’d take care of them?” she said, not believing him.
“Of course I would.”
“You’d keep them safe, and I can come for them when I find another place? I lost my job, I couldn’t pay my rent, I have no place to keep them.”
How many abandoned strays, Joe wondered, was John Firetti already sheltering at the clinic? Actually, the woman looked worse off than the kittens, half starved, badly used by the world.
“What’s your name?” John said. “How do you manage, living in your car?”
“I’m Emmylou Warren. I was renting a shack on the Zandler property, there along the river, one of the old workers’ cabins. I lost my job bagging groceries. Well,” she said crossly, “my neighbor could have let me stay with her until I found a place, even if she does have only the one room.” Her anger made Joe uneasy, or maybe it was her mention of workers’ cabins along the river, though he couldn’t think why. Dropping to the ground, he caught Misto’s eye, then glanced away toward her car; both cats were of one mind as they slipped away through the shadows of the darkening street to where the nose o
f the Chevy stuck out among the bushes.
The windows were open. The interior of the battered Chevy smelled of banana skins, crackers, damp clothes, and still smelled of the two young cats. When Joe leaped in through the back window, he sank alarmingly among a mass of bulging plastic bags and folded blankets. Misto followed, scrambling over the sill, descending carefully down among the clutter.
Beneath the bags and blankets were cardboard boxes of canned goods, paperback books, and pots and pans. Stretching up to peer out the back window, making sure Emmylou wasn’t headed their way, Joe dropped down again among the detritus, sniffing at the tied plastic bags, pawing into the boxes. He didn’t know what he was looking for. He wanted to know more about the woman, to know why she made him uneasy. “She’s living in her car, all right. Her blankets could stand a good washing.” Pawing into a box among paper plates and kitchen utensils, he unearthed a padded brown envelope, the kind lined with bubble wrap. There was something hard inside, making it bulge. No address on the envelope, no writing at all. It wasn’t sealed. He peered in, reached in with an inquisitive paw. At the same moment Misto hissed like a den of snakes and Emmylou’s thin shadow came soundlessly along the side of the car, approaching the driver’s door. The cats exploded through the opposite window, hit the sidewalk in a gray and yellow tangle, scorched into the bushes as Emmylou opened her door.
They listened to her start the engine, watched her pull away. She had no clue they’d been in the car—but what would she care, they were only cats. Behind her, another pair of headlights blazed on and the white van came down the street, moving slowly as John Firetti looked for them. When his lights flashed in their eyes he pulled to the curb, reached over and opened the passenger door.
“What was that about?” he said softly, having apparently watched them toss the car. The cats padded out of the bushes grinning with embarrassment, and Misto hopped up into the van. They both looked down at Joe.
“Headed home,” Joe said, not wanting to explain his nosiness. Just curious, he thought. Just . . . something about Emmylou Warren, he thought, puzzled. He watched them pull away down the street, the pale van melting into the darkening evening, its red taillights growing smaller as they ferried their two little captives home to a good meal, a flea bath, a session with the hair dryer, and a nice warm bed.
Then, scrambling up a pine and up the shingles of a steep roof, Joe galloped away across the rise and fall of the crowded peaks, across heavy old oak branches that embraced the village houses, racing for home himself, wondering if the soft staccato of his thudding paws startled the occupants below, made them think they had rats in the attic.
5
It was two days later, just at dawn, that Joe woke in his rooftop tower to a bright red sunrise flickering up against the clouds above. Flickering? He leaped up from his cushions, saw flames licking and dancing among the eastern hills. Fire, running wild just where the Harper land lay along the crest. He reared up, staring, praying it was down the hill below their pastures, not their barn or house afire. He bolted in through his cat door onto the rafter, dropped to the desk below shouting, “Fire! Fire!” then realized no one was there. Remembered hearing both the car and truck drive away before ever it was light. Clyde had headed up the coast to look at a client’s 1920 Rolls-Royce that had inexplicably quit running, and Ryan left even earlier to trap one of the feral cats; the night before he had watched her tuck her cages and cat food into the pickup among her ladders and wheelbarrow.
Spinning around, he hit the phone’s speaker and pawed in 911, his heart pounding.
Were the Harpers’ horses trapped in their stalls, helpless? Had Max already left for work? Had Charlie seen the blaze or had she, too, left early, out with Ryan and Hanni, trapping strays? The day before, half a dozen more homeless cats had been called in, and already the three temporary shelters were full. He was still shouting at the night dispatcher when he heard a siren whoop. Quickly he broke the connection, raced into Ryan’s studio, leaped on the daybed where he could see out the east windows, reared up slamming his sweating paws against the glass.
The sky was barely light, streaks of gray and silver, the hills still dark except for the lick of orange flames rising up mixed with smoke darker than the heavy dawn clouds. If the flames reached the Harper land, reached the Harper barn with the horses still inside . . . Even if they had already been turned out they’d be at danger, terrified by the fire, running blindly into the fences. A panicked horse could injure himself so badly that, sometimes, he had to be destroyed. Leaping for the phone on Ryan’s desk, he punched in the Harpers’ number, shivering with nerves.
When Charlie didn’t answer he tried her cell phone. “Come on! Come on!” He was trying to calculate just how far the blaze might be from the Harpers’ pasture fence when he heard the shriek of a police car following the fire trucks. He prayed it was the siren on the police chief’s pickup, prayed Max was on the way.
Charlie had left the ranch long before daylight, she was up above the village, kneeling in the side yard of a small clapboard cottage among a mass of scratchy holly bushes, setting a trap for an old black cat who had been hanging around the vacant house. She was about to put the bait in when a work crew pulled up in front, a truck laden with ladders, lawn mower, gardening equipment. Pretty early for a gardening crew to be coming to work.
The driver was a handsome Latino boy she didn’t know, and there was no logo on the truck indicating any of the usual village gardening services. A car full of Mexican workers pulled up behind, parking at the curb. She watched the driver crimp the wheels in the wrong direction, assuring that if the brakes failed, the vehicle would careen backward down the hill clear to the bottom or until it crashed into a house or car. Five Hispanic men got out. They were dressed in jeans and sweatshirts, but something about them was off, they didn’t look like garden workers, they were too focused on the house, too quick yet wary in their movements. Quietly she picked up the cat food, closed the cage door, and headed away. This stray wouldn’t come around now anyway, until these men had left. It was only a few days since the department had raided a meth house just two blocks over, and maybe she was extra wary. Or not, she thought. The meth raid had been a nasty shock to every one of the few families still living in the small neighborhood. She was wondering if she should set the trap up the street, wondering how far this cat roamed, when her phone vibrated. Picking up, she spoke quietly.
Joe’s voice came loud and clear, shouting with a mewling panic, “Fire! Fire below the ranch, below the north pasture. Fire trucks on the way.”
She grabbed the empty trap and rose, had hardly hung up when the phone vibrated again. “Fire below the ranch,” Max said. “Where are you? Can you help get the horses out?”
She ran, swung the cage into her SUV, and headed for home, punching in the single digit for Ryan’s cell phone as she barreled down the hill. Ryan was out trapping, too; Charlie had talked with her once and she already had one young stray safe in her truck. Ryan answered in a whisper, “The cat’s approaching, I’m in my truck. Can I call you back?”
“There’s a fire below the ranch, I’m going to get the horses out. Come when you can.”
For an instant, Ryan hesitated. The cat was so close. A black-and-white shorthair, a tuxedo, very thin, his fur all awry. If she scared him off, it might take weeks to lure him back again. But the horses . . . She held her breath as the cat stuck his head in the trap, but then he paused. She’d give him a minute longer. He must be starving. He hesitated, sniffing the smell of freshly opened tuna, then something spooked him, he spun around and took off.
Half defeated, half relieved, she threw the cage in the backseat of her king cab and took off fast for home, pausing for tourists and for stop signs so the few blocks seemed to take forever. Skidding into the drive, she ran in hauling the one covered cage, and shut it in the guest room. The cat would be all right for an hour or two. Racing back out, she could hear Rock pawing indignantly at the back door. She left him in the yar
d, she didn’t need an excited Weimaraner racing among the frightened horses. Maybe it was those old shacks below the pastures that were burning, those ancient workers’ cottages from years ago when the river delta was farmed for artichokes. She thought they were rented now, though how much rent could you charge for an old wooden cabin that let the wind whistle through? The three places were tinder, that was sure, dry as a bone. She could see thick gray smoke ahead, rising over the lower hills, hiding the Harpers’ pasture.
Turning up the hill beyond the village, speeding up the narrow two-lane, she watched the fire licking up below the north pasture. She had to slow to pass a dozen cars that were pulled over to the side, their drivers rubbernecking. Why did people do that, why did they feel compelled to get in the way, slow down the firefighters and police? She was nearly to the Harpers’ turnoff when she heard Joe scramble up from the backseat, felt his paw on her shoulder. “Can’t you drive faster? Those poor horses.”
“I can drive faster and get us both creamed,” she said, glaring at him. At home, when she’d settled the cat cage in the guest room, she’d called out for Joe but there was no answer, and that had been worrisome. Racing out to the truck, she’d prayed he hadn’t gone galloping up into the hills alone headed for the fiery canyon, had told herself Joe had better sense, that he wouldn’t do that. She turned, scowling at him. “Now that you’ve made your presence known, would it do any good to ask you to stay out of trouble?”
“Does anyone live down there?”
“An old woman, I think. I’ve heard she’s a pretty heavy drinker, maybe she accidentally started the fire. And her grandson—Billy’s a nice kid, he works for Max and Charlie sometimes, feeding, cleaning stalls. I guess Hesmerra’s the only family he has.” She sped up when she’d passed the gawkers, turned left onto the Harpers’ gravel road. No point scolding Joe for slipping into the truck, no point telling him he’d be in danger around the fire, it would only make him bolder. She parked on the shoulder where the lane was blocked, where Charlie had shut the gate to the yard. She got out and slipped through the gate, Joe Grey trotting beside her. Ahead, Charlie was leading her sorrel mare and a boarder across the yard at a trot, toward the south pasture. Already Ryan’s eyes stung from the smoke as she went to halter two more horses.
Cat Telling Tales Page 4
