Fear on Four Paws

by Clea Simon

  “Home? What is home?” She might be a house cat, but she wasn’t dumb. I looked down into her green eyes.

  “You know ‘home.’” I pictured the house I had just left—and waited. “Don’t you?”

  “That’s not…” She blinked, and I lost her. “Predators.” Even a house cat has a sense of what’s out there, which was my cue.

  “Let’s go then.” She emerged and let me slip one hand under her, hefting her to my chest. “Your person is going to be so relieved.”

  “Predators.” The word echoed in her mind as she strained to see over my shoulder—back into the woods. And it occurred to me, that while she was relieved to be going back inside—what intelligent domestic animal wouldn’t be?—she wasn’t totally comfortable. The cat in my arms was still nervous about the predators out there. Either that or she feared that the dangers of the wild were going to follow her into that cozy house.

  Chapter Four

  I left the happy reunion feeling rather satisfied with myself. The old lady didn’t have to know that my special sensitivity had helped me find Reina—or Marmalade, as she insisted on calling her. As did Tillie, who appeared to be roughly the same vintage as her partner, although a head taller, and who’d rushed in after us, slightly breathless, with a ream of now-unnecessary posters. I figured this was what they call a teachable moment, and I used it to educate the longtime couple about feline habits. And when I suggested that their precious pet was too regal for a name like Marmalade, the purr I got from the orange tabby made me feel like I’d earned her approbation too.

  But as I did a quick shop and then began the drive home to my own feline housemate, an odd fragment of doubt began niggling at me. “Predators,” the cat had said. That made sense. Despite her years of indoor pampering, Reina’s instincts had informed her of what was out there. What I didn’t understand was why she seemed to think that being indoors wouldn’t be an adequate defense, almost as if she had left the house for a purpose. As if she needed to protect her people. Granted, feline vanity could explain that—no self-respecting queen wants a stranger to see her as weak. But, like I’ve said, I don’t really hear what animals say to me, so much as what they feel. No, Reina really believed that whatever was out there was threatening her home or the old couple who loved her so.

  Well, maybe the cat had a point. Those old ladies probably wouldn’t last long out in the woods either, and Beauville could be mean, especially to newcomers who so clearly had more money. Or maybe it was simply that all that orange and white fur hid the intellect of a day-old kitten. At any rate, I’d done my duty, and so I then did my best to put the thought aside as I pulled up the pitted gravel drive of the old house I called home.

  “And you thought I’d be insulted by the comparison?”

  As soon as I walked in the side door, Wallis jumped to the floor. She’d been watching for me out the kitchen window, of course, alerted to my approach by the familiar vibrations that precede even scent. Now she twined around my ankles in a manner that looked very much like a typical house cat. Except, of course, that she was using the contact to better plumb my thoughts and memories, which explains why she was mentally grilling me even as she leaned in.

  “You really think we’re all alike?” A paw reached up. To an observer, Wallis would appear a supplicant—an affectionate kitty begging for treats or attention after a day alone. I knew better. I could feel the needle-sharp claws piercing my jeans.

  “I’m sorry.” I knew better than to deny it. Wallis has always found it easier to read my thoughts than I hers. I just wasn’t aware of this until after my awakening. “It was that what she was thinking bothered me. I took her too seriously, is all.”

  The bit of flattery had a core of truth: Wallis was an exceptionally acute observer. That was probably one reason it worked—that, and the half a rotisserie chicken I fetched from my bag. Wallis was still a cat, after all.

  “Bird.” Maybe I was picking up her ravenous appetite or maybe it had just been a long day for me, too. But when I ripped the cooked carcass in two—knives and forks seemed overly fussy at that point—we both fell on our meals like the beasts we were, and all conversation fell silent.

  Only after, when Wallis was busy cleaning her white mittens and I the few dishes that had accumulated since the previous night, did she bring the topic up again.

  “Why do you concern yourself?” The thought surfaced in my mind with the taste of fur.

  “Wallis.” I could growl too. The tabby knew how her grooming while we conversed discomfited me.

  “You splash all over when you bathe.” Her nonchalance couldn’t hide the tiniest edge of apology. “An individual could get….wet. But why?”

  “It’s my job,” I responded. Her silence showed me that she knew I wasn’t being totally honest. “Okay,” I added. “I was curious. I mean, it seemed odd to me. Doesn’t it to you?”

  A twitch of her black-tipped ears—a quick back and forth, the feline equivalent of a shrug. “We worry about you,” she said. “Especially the clueless ones. We’re not…heartless.”

  “No, I know.” I dried my coffee mug and hung it beneath the cabinet, next to my mother’s old favorite. I’m not sentimental, far from it, but I did experience a pang. When I’d first moved back—ostensibly to take care of my mother in her final illness—I’d revolted against her orderly ways. But with the hospice nurses handling most of her daily care, I’d found myself falling into old, observed habits. When someone is lying there, waiting to die, an act as simple as washing a cup can be comforting.

  “And you wonder why I groom?”

  “What do you have to be anxious about?”

  She didn’t answer, which could have been because she was now twisted around, meticulously licking the base of her tail, where her herringbone fur joined into dark rings.

  “And it’s not like I get involved in everyone’s life.” I paused. My mother suffered horribly from the town busybodies, the cliquish mavens who blamed her for my father’s alley-cat ways, and I didn’t think they’d be much kinder to a pair of same-sex newcomers, seeing any divergence from the norm as an affront that had to be punished. Those nasty neighbors—along with my mother’s rigid clampdown of a response—were behind my fleeing this town all those years ago. That and the knowledge that I was more like my old man than my mother, or so I’d thought.

  “I’m not,” I said aloud. An image of Albert came to mind, slovenly and inept.

  “Prey animal.” Wallis was even less sentimental than I am, but in this she was right. Left to his own devices, Albert would be eaten alive. It was only because he’d grown up here, drinking and fishing with so many of our town’s more respectable citizens, that he had the title of animal control officer. There’s no actual list of qualifications for the position, and his predecessor had been a glorified dog catcher, more or less. Of course, in the decade or so since Albert had inherited the position, the standards for what constituted animal control had grown and changed—and that was where I came in.

  “I couldn’t leave him out there.” I put the last of the dishes away and reached for a tumbler. “I mean, he gives me work. And odds are, he’d have survived—it’s already pretty warm out—and I don’t need him pissed off at me.” I didn’t mention Frank. Wallis had strong feelings about the ferret.

  “Prey,” was all she said, and I know enough to let her have the last word.

  Besides, I had other things on my mind—and men other than Albert. Creighton, specifically. Despite our testy exchange earlier, we’d become something of a steady thing over the last year. Maybe it was the tension between his boy scout ways and my own bad-girl tendencies, but I was anticipating an evening’s recreation with my favorite officer of the law.

  But after a long hot bath and a second tumbler of Maker’s Mark, I was beginning to think I’d been stood up.

  “Springtime.” Wallis leaped to the sofa, where I was sprawled
pretending to read. “Time for roaming.”

  “Creighton’s not—” I stopped myself. I’d been the one to resist my beau’s push toward monogamy. Not that I had anyone else lined up, not anymore. But Wallis wasn’t talking about the sandy-haired cop. “Who else in this dump of a town would you have me take home, Wallis? One of the crew at Happy’s?” I occasionally still drank at our local dive.

  “Huh.” She dismissed the idea with a little bark-like cough that made me wonder if a hairball was in the offing. “There are other alpha males around.” She circled, settling the cushion to her liking. “Or we could go back to the city.”

  “That we could,” I said. I’d given up arguing with her. And after I drained the last of the bourbon, I gave up on my date, too, and dragged myself upstairs to bed.

  Chapter Five

  The call, when it woke me, was not going to be an apology. I knew that even as I saw the familiar number glowing on my cell in the first morning light. I may not have Wallis’ instincts, but I had enough sense to know that if Creighton was calling this early, it was official.

  “Morning, sunshine.” That didn’t mean I couldn’t rib him a little. I’m an early riser—a holdover from my breakdown, when I didn’t sleep for nearly a week straight—but the sun was only just breaking through the new foliage. “How’re they hanging?”

  “Pru, I need you to come by the office.” As I’d suspected, his voice was all business.

  “I need you too,” I teased, even as my curiosity grew. “But you know I’ve got my morning rounds.”

  “After, then.” He was not in the mood. “Right after, Pru. This is serious.”

  He hung up, and so it was with piqued curiosity that I dressed and prepared to start my day. I made myself a pot of coffee, which I drank black and hot. If I could have, I’d have girded my loins. Most of what I do isn’t onerous. I like working with animals. Prefer them to people, in most cases. And when I can help them out—whether that be alerting the state warden to a bear in distress or locating that frightened cat—I feel pretty good about it.

  But some jobs are barely worth it. I was thinking, of course, about my first gig of the morning—walking a little ball of fluff named Growler. That was his private name, of course. Like Reina—aka, Marmalade—the petite bichon frisé had been given a much less dignified name by his human. She called him Bitsy, for which he’d never forgive her. She was pretty rude to me, too, of course, but I didn’t have to live with her.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Horlick.” Even having taken time to caffeinate, I was early, and the harridan at the door was not pleased. She’d be in the same stained housecoat all morning, I suspected, though, at some point she’d touch up the lipstick that caked in the corners of her mouth like so much dried blood. Still, she eyed me with eyes closed to slits. The look was supposed to express disapproval, I reckoned, or maybe disdain. I figured it was just as likely the smoke from her unfiltered Marlboro that made her squint so. At any rate, I had as much control over one as the other, and about as much personally invested. And so I conjured up my most fulsome morning cheer and, plastering a big smile on my own face, sallied forth. “Is Bitsy ready to go out?”

  My blatant disregard of her scorn wasn’t just a petty bit of revenge. It was also Animal Training 101: Don’t respond to bad behavior. Any response may be seen as a reward, even a response you might deem a punishment. Better to ignore the unwanted behavior, as most animals will come around in order to get the attention they crave.

  “Bitsy.” She flicked the ash off her burning butt and then picked a fleck of tobacco from her lip. “Amazed you’ve got time for any dog at all, the way you run that man ragged.”

  The smile on my face stiffened, but I held my tongue. My little romance was fated to be common knowledge in a town this size. That didn’t mean I had to like it.

  “Getting him to do God-knows-what.” Behind her rough caw, I could hear the scrabbling of claws and a muted plea. “Out! Out, please. Out!”

  “I think I hear Bitsy.” I craned to see past her—difficult, as she had planted her worn carpet slippers in the doorway. “I hope he doesn’t have an accident.”

  “Please!” The short sharp bark was more protest than plea—the little dog had more self-control than his mistress. But it worked, as without another word, old Horlick turned back into her house. As she padded toward the basement door, I made my silent apology, hoping Growler would see my ploy for what it was.

  “No funny business.” As the white pup scurried toward freedom, his person’s eyes remained on me. “I hear what you get up to.”

  I managed to keep my smile in place as I reached up for the lead that hung inside the door. Funny business? Some secrets I didn’t want to get out.

  “See you soon,” was all I said as she closed the door in my face.

  “Come on, walker lady.” The fluffball’s voice sounded gruff in my head as he waited for me to attach the leash, but his snowy puff of tail was wagging furiously.

  “At your service,” I responded, my voice soft. We’d reached a comfortable understanding, Growler and I, over the time that I’d been walking him, but the leash was part of the pantomime we both had to play, at least while we were still in view of the Horlick house. “Where will it be?”

  “River!” In his succinct bark—and the more articulate telepathic command behind it—I heard the longing of a great spirit stuck in a miserable situation. Tracy Horlick might feed the tiny beast and house him, but she had no idea how proud a spirit existed inside the cute toy. Even her hiring me was, I suspected, more about her own need to dominate—and to have a direct line to the source of some of Beauville’s juiciest gossip—than about caring for Growler. She might still be trying to figure out my connection to animals, but she knew I’d fled town years ago, and that my return—and my subsequent romance with Creighton—was the source of speculation. Still, the bichon in her custody had made some kind of peace with his situation. He’d also learned to make the most of our daily excursions into the outside world.

  “Oh, Donald!” The toy’s snuffling translated to words in my head as his wet leather nose sniffed a curbside tree with interest. “You’ve got to stay out of the garbage.”

  I smothered a smile as he left his own mark on the poor maple and moved on, “reading” each pit stop as avidly as Tracy Horlick did the gossip pages.

  “No!” The yelp stopped me short. Had my charge been bitten by something? But those black button eyes said it all. “Not the same. Not!”

  “Of course.” I responded immediately. “I’m sorry.” I was. For all that I might find Growler’s cataloguing of the neighborhood dogs’ escapades amusing, these daily rounds were more than entertainment. Although Tracy Horlick released him into her fenced-in yard for nightly relief, his outings with me were how Growler stayed in touch with his community—his real peers and colleagues. Despite my sensitivity, I could never hope to replace other dogs in his life.

  “Carson, you dog…” I got a sharp image, almost as if it were my own memory, of a shepherd-pointer-lab mix, big as a small horse and full of fun. The big rescue had had been by this morning, I gathered, and I could almost taste the tennis ball in his mouth. Just then, another shape came into the picture, her glossy brindled coat flecked with red and brown and warm from the sun and play. “Squeeks, huh?” I started. Growler usually had less interest in females. I didn’t know if it was the Boxweiler’s association with Carson, or her own inquisitive nature that had made her stand out.

  The image faded as Growler moved on, a little quieter and, I thought, a tad lonelier. Those two dogs had been having fun in real time, while he was left with the traces of play. No wonder my assumption—that he was a gossip like his human—had insulted him. I knew he’d find my pity worse, and so I kept my thoughts carefully shielded as we continued around the block. It was a technique I was slowly learning—Wallis said a week-old kitten could do better—but I figured at l
east it showed respect. By the time we reached the edge of the old development, Growler’s internal “voice” was back to its unselfconscious volume and that stub of a tail was vibrating madly again. When he stared up at me, eyes bright, I knew my efforts had been worthwhile.

  “River?” I didn’t have to offer twice. With a quick glance around to make sure we weren’t seen by any of my human colleagues, I bent and unsnapped the lead. Growler took off like a pint-sized rocket, bounding over the leaf loam and damp moss like a white superball. Carson and Squeeks—Roxie, I gathered, was her real name—loved to frolic in the water, and their recent visit added a piquancy to Growler’s lone romp. I followed as closely as I could—I knew how important this free time was to him, but still, he was a small dog and, as the bear yesterday had reminded me, neither of us were the most ferocious creatures out there.

  “Took you long enough.” Tracy Horlick squinted down at her pet on our return, almost an hour later. After our romp by the river, I’d had to spend some time brushing Growler’s coat, but I was pretty confident she wouldn’t see anything to complain about.

  “It’s spring.” I offered in return. “Bitsy’s a healthy dog, and he needed a good run.”

  “Huh.” She used her cigarette as a prop, drawing on it as she turned her gimlet eye up to me. “You’re not getting any extra, you know.”

  “All part of the service.” By my shin, I felt the thrumming of that little tail. Thanks enough, in my book.

  “Might have thought you were running off with him.” She narrowed her eyes once more, though that could have been because of the smoke. “Maybe that’s how you’re hoping to stay out of trouble.”

  I didn’t know if she had her own psychic powers or if she was simply looking to cause trouble. But I handed her back the lead at that and, with a silent farewell to the bichon, made my way back to my car. I hadn’t forgotten my appointment with Jim Creighton. For forty-five minutes, though, I’d relished my freedom as much as Growler had.