Many of his clients consisted of elderly women and decrepit gentlemen nearing the end of their lives. Since they could afford the expensive equipment that would give them a few more years of assisted living, they generally dwelled in comfortable surroundings, surrounded by decades of accumulated doodads (some of them quite valuable, and many now quite forgotten).
Bliss never made the mistake of underestimating the ability of law enforcement, by performing an “entry” immediately after his initial face-to-face contact with his clients in their homes. No, he always let six to twelve months drift by, and then he’d make a follow-up call to those still surviving, and (with an assumed Spanish accent) ask how they were doing, and eef there was aneethin’ that Get-Well Ltd. could do to asseest them further. He always scheduled these calls just before the health company was due to revisit their clients anyway—since Bliss never made those trips.
No, his later visitations were always at night. He loved working with the CPAP patients. Those who’d managed to adapt to these machines (and found their breathing—and sleeping—much improved) had their hearing obscured by the soothing buzzing of the equipment while it granted them near-eternal rest; and since many of them could hear none-too-well to begin with, that gave him a distinct advantage.
Of course, the elderly also often had pets. Cats were no problem—they didn’t care who invaded their domain, so long as they themselves were not bothered—but those snippy little dog-runts could wake the dead with their barking. Chihuahuas were the worst: they already possessed a vision of themselves as princes and princesses of the doggie universe. He’d learned to stay away from that canine crew!
Mrs. Buldger was the ideal client: an octogenarian, CPAPian, and devoted cat lover—what he called an “animal cracker.” She’d gone absolutely nuts over the kitties. Her house was full of pussy-decorated mugs, throw cushions, carpets, wall posters, feeding bowls, and poopy-pots, not to mention a fair number of the wee critters themselves. Her entire abode resonated with the miaows of her “children” (as she called them), and was filled with the pungent, unmistakable odeur of kittie pee-pee.
No matter: her late husband, the well-known Eastern European business mogul, Sylvane Buldger, had collected oriental figurines, many of them carrying significant price tags, for which Mrs. B. cared not a whit. Bliss doubted she’d ever even opened the many display cabinets following her spouse’s unfortunate demise while jacking off to a porn video. On his one previous visit to set up her sleeping machine, a year earlier, he’d spotted several priceless Ming Dynasty pieces that would easily fetch $100K each on the black market—no questions asked! And if he carefully rearranged the contents of several of the display areas, he was convinced that she wouldn’t even notice the missing images. After all, he’d only take a few.
He picked the early morning of Friday, October 31, the time of the next new moon, as D-Day. Her house was shaded from the street in any case by several untrimmed trees, and she always turned off the porch lights before going to bed. By one A.M., he figured, she’d be dead to the world.
He dressed completely in black, and smudged his face and hair to reduce any potential reflective spots. He parked several blocks away, and quietly trekked down the back streets, carefully dodging the direct light of the streetlamps, until he reached her fenced yard. The barrier was no obstacle to someone as experienced as he. He tiptoed around the outside of the house to her bedroom, and placed a stethoscope up to the window. Good! He could quite clearly distinguish the purr of the CPAP.
Then back around to the front door, which he unlocked without difficulty; a quick trek to the alarm console, which he disarmed with the code he’d seen her input twelve months previous; and then tiptoed down the passage from the living area to the dining room—the “treasure room,” he called it, because that’s where Mr. B. had shown off his artistic purchases to a small coterie of carefully invited guests.
Bliss knew exactly what he wanted. He flashed a low-intensity penlight quickly around the room to make certain of his bearings. Then he unslung the knapsack from his back, and, one by one, removed and enwrapped and entombed the Ming masterpieces in his small, carefully-configured storage compartments. The entire process took him all of ten minutes, even proceeding with the utmost care. To cover his tracks, he moved several of the remaining untouchables slightly to mask the lacunae left by his thievery, and refastened the doors of the cabinets. Q.E.D.!
He was beginning to make his quiet way back down the short corridor toward the living room when he first noticed something odd. It was a faint sound, to be sure, but…he stopped abruptly in mid-stride, trying to hear whatever it was that had raised the hairs on his neck. Silence!
He shook his head: he must be getting old, he thought, to be imagining such things. Things! Because as soon as he started moving again, he heard the shoosh-shoosh-shoosh emanating around him. Again he stopped—again, silence!
Something very strange was happening here. It was as if he was being stalked. But if so, by what? By whom?
He turned around. He stalked the several paces back to the entrance of the dining area, and gazed intently into the room. A hundred, a thousand points of light shined back at him out of the darkness. He flicked the penflash at one wall, and saw the shadowy figures of the cats—more than he could count—all sitting straight up, staring intently back at him. Several licked their chops.
Bliss swallowed the bitter bile that threatened to shoot from his mouth, and without thinking, without feeling anything, in fact, except a surge of instant fear, hurried back down the corridor, following by the sounds of little cat feet pacing alongside.
As he entered the enshadowed living room, he could see—just barely—the outlines of the feline critters gathering in leaps and bounds on all sides, effectively blocking his way to the door. And then, just then, he heard the creak-creak-creak of an old rocker, somewhere off in the far corner by the fireplace.
“Tee hee hee: you didn’t think, did you, my boy, to get away that easily, did you, Master Bliss?”
As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could barely make out the shrouded figure of old Mrs. Mösza Buldger, rocking slowly back and forth in her equally ancient chair.
“No one, no one, does he steal from me,” she said, her Eastern European accent more pronounced than he’d ever heard before. “Not without he does pay the price.”
“Wh-what price?” he asked. “I didn’t mean to.…”
“Oh, I think that he did,” she said. “What do you think, oh my children?”
The felines began to mewl, slowly at first, and then almost in concert, as their miaows quickly gathered strength, until the intensity of the sound forced the thief to cover his ears.
“I do agree,” the old lady said, continuing her endless rocking.
“Wait,” Bliss said. “Wait!” He unfastened the knapsack from his back, and carefully laid the container down on the rug. “Here, take them. Nothing has been changed. They can all be put back whence they came.”
“The sanctity of this place, it has been damaged,” came the response. “This man, he cannot return what has been stolen, can he, my lovelies? What is the price for breaching the inner sanctum of this place of potency?”
The miaows turned to hissing and spitting.
“Yes, yes, YES!” she said, her voice rising. “He must pay!”
“I’ll, uh, I’ll gladly pay you whatever amount you think appropriate,” Bliss said. “Just let me go, please. After all, I did help you adjust to your CPAP machine.”
“But that was his job, sweetums, a piece of work for which he was amply compensated. And he, he used the trust he generated here to violate the soul of this place, this holy place of the cats. What price must he pay?”
Now the replies became cries of anger, moving up the scale in a crescendo that could only have one end. Bliss reached down, grabbed the knapsack in one hand, and swung it at the pussies standing between him and the door, sending several of them flying. Back and forth the makeshift weapon
swished as he bulled his way to the exit, grabbed the doorknob, bolted through the now-open aperture, and slammed the barrier tight behind him.
“Thank God!” he exclaimed, chuckling to himself at his narrow escape. “And I even saved the goods! What a fucked-up night!”
He headed quickly down the path toward the gate, until suddenly he realized that something was wrong—dreadfully wrong—with the vista in front of him. The grass was moving, rising up, alive with the bodies of leaping, bounding cats heading his way. He started to run, but he could never outpace the felines hunting him. One, then two, then ten, then twenty, leaped on his back, his legs, his belly, his throat, his eyes!—and he fell to the turf by the walkway, writhing as the claws and sharp teeth did their damage.
It’s not right, it’s not fair, were his last thoughts, as he screamed his final cry of frustration and pain.
* * * *
Two teenagers making out in a car parked across the street looked up from their smooching.
“What was that?” the girl said. “I thought I heard someone yell.”
“Just Mrs. Buldger’s damn cats again,” her beau replied. “They’ve about overrun the neighborhood, and my Dad says that he’s going to call Animal Control about them, if she doesn’t start keeping them in her own yard.”
“But they’re just sweet little kitties,” the girl said. “Why, they’re not doing anyone any harm.”
CALVIN, by Charles Dudley Warner
Calvin is dead. His life, long to him, but short for the rest of us, was not marked by startling adventures, but his character was so uncommon and his qualities were so worthy of imitation, that I have been asked by those who personally knew him to set down my recollections of his career.
His origin and ancestry were shrouded in mystery; even his age was a matter of pure conjecture. Although he was of the Maltese race, I have reason to suppose that he was American by birth as he certainly was in sympathy. Calvin was given to me eight years ago by Mrs. Stowe, but she knew nothing of his age or origin. He walked into her house one day out of the great unknown and became at once at home, as if he had been always a friend of the family. He appeared to have artistic and literary tastes, and it was as if he had inquired at the door if that was the residence of the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and, upon being assured that it was, had decided to dwell there. This is, of course, fanciful, for his antecedents were wholly unknown, but in his time he could hardly have been in any household where he would not have heard Uncle Tom’s Cabin talked about. When he came to Mrs. Stowe, he was as large as he ever was, and apparently as old as he ever became. Yet there was in him no appearance of age; he was in the happy maturity of all his powers, and you would rather have said in that maturity he had found the secret of perpetual youth. And it was as difficult to believe that he would ever be aged as it was to imagine that he had ever been in immature youth. There was in him a mysterious perpetuity.
After some years, when Mrs. Stowe made her winter home in Florida, Calvin came to live with us. From the first moment, he fell into the ways of the house and assumed a recognized position in the family—I say recognized, because after he became known he was always inquired for by visitors, and in the letters to the other members of the family he always received a message. Although the least obtrusive of beings, his individuality always made itself felt.
His personal appearance had much to do with this, for he was of royal mold, and had an air of high breeding. He was large, but he had nothing of the fat grossness of the celebrated Angora family; though powerful, he was exquisitely proportioned, and as graceful in every movement as a young leopard. When he stood up to open a door—he opened all the doors with old-fashioned latches—he was portentously tall, and when stretched on the rug before the fire he seemed too long for this world—as indeed he was. His coat was the finest and softest I have ever seen, a shade of quiet Maltese; and from his throat downward, underneath, to the white tips of his feet, he wore the whitest and most delicate ermine; and no person was ever more fastidiously neat. In his finely formed head you saw something of his aristocratic character; the ears were small and cleanly cut, there was a tinge of pink in the nostrils, his face was handsome, and the expression of his countenance exceedingly intelligent—I should call it even a sweet expression if the term were not inconsistent with his look of alertness and sagacity.
It is difficult to convey a just idea of his gaiety in connection with his dignity and gravity, which his name expressed. As we know nothing of his family, of course it will be understood that Calvin was his Christian name. He had times of relaxation into utter playfulness, delighting in a ball of yarn, catching sportively at stray ribbons when his mistress was at her toilet, and pursuing his own tail, with hilarity, for lack of anything better. He could amuse himself by the hour, and he did not care for children; perhaps something in his past was present to his memory. He had absolutely no bad habits, and his disposition was perfect. I never saw him exactly angry, though I have seen his tail grow to an enormous size when a strange cat appeared upon his lawn. He disliked cats, evidently regarding them as feline and treacherous, and he had no association with them. Occasionally there would be heard a night concert in the shrubbery. Calvin would ask to have the door opened, and then you would hear a rush and a “pestzt,” and the concert would explode, and Calvin would quietly come in and resume his seat on the hearth. There was no trace of anger in his manner, but he wouldn’t have any of that about the house. He had the rare virtue of magnanimity. Although he had fixed notions about his own rights, and extraordinary persistency in getting them, he never showed temper at a repulse; he simply and firmly persisted till he had what he wanted. His diet was one point; his idea was that of the scholars about dictionaries—to “get the best.” He knew as well as anyone what was in the house, and would refuse beef if turkey was to be had; and if there were oysters, he would wait over the turkey to see if the oysters would not be forthcoming. And yet he was not a gross gourmand; he would eat bread if he saw me eating it, and thought he was not being imposed on. His habits of feeding, also, were refined; he never used a knife, and he would put up his hand and draw the fork down to his mouth as gracefully as a grown person. Unless necessity compelled, he would not eat in the kitchen, but insisted upon his meals in the dining-room, and would wait patiently, unless a stranger were present; and then he was sure to importune the visitor, hoping that the latter was ignorant of the rule of the house, and would give him something. They used to say that he preferred as his tablecloth on the floor a certain well-known church journal; but this was said by an Episcopalian. So far as I know, he had no religious prejudices, except that he did not like the association with Romanists. He tolerated the servants, because they belonged to the house, and would sometimes linger by the kitchen stove; but the moment visitors came in, he arose, opened the door, and marched into the drawing-room. Yet he enjoyed the company of his equals, and never withdrew, no matter how many callers—whom he recognized as of his society—might come into the drawing-room. Calvin was fond of company, but he wanted to choose it; and I have no doubt that his was an aristocratic fastidiousness rather than one of faith. It is so with most people.
The intelligence of Calvin was something phenomenal, in his rank of life. He established a method of communicating his wants, and even some of his sentiments; and he could help himself in many things. There was a furnace register in a retired room, where he used to go when he wished to be alone, that he always opened when he desired more heat; but never shut it, any more than he shut the door after himself. He could do almost everything but speak; and you would declare sometimes that you could see a pathetic longing to do that in his intelligent face. I have no desire to overdraw his qualities, but if there was one thing in him more noticeable than another, it was his fondness for nature. He could content himself for hours at a low window, looking into the ravine and at the great trees, noting the smallest stir there; he delighted, above all things, to accompany me walking about the garden, hearing t
he birds, getting the smell of the fresh earth, and rejoicing in the sunshine. He followed me and gamboled like a dog, rolling over on the turf and exhibiting his delight in a hundred ways. If I worked, he sat and watched me, or looked off over the bank, and kept his ear open to the twitter in the cherry-trees. When it stormed, he was sure to sit at the window, keenly watching the rain or the snow, glancing up and down at its falling; and a winter tempest always delighted him. I think he was genuinely fond of birds, but, so far as I know, he usually confined himself to one a day; he never killed, as some sportsmen do, for the sake of killing, but only as civilized people do—from necessity. He was intimate with the flying-squirrels who dwell in the chestnut-trees—too intimate, for almost every day in the summer he would bring in one, until he nearly discouraged them. He was, indeed, a superb hunter, and would have been a devastating one, if his bump of destructiveness had not been offset by a bump of moderation. There was very little of the brutality of the lower animals about him; I don’t think he enjoyed rats for themselves, but he knew his business, and for the first few months of his residence with us he waged an awful campaign against the horde, and after that his simple presence was sufficient to deter them from coming on the premises. Mice amused him, but he usually considered them too small game to be taken seriously; I have seen him play for an hour with a mouse, and then let him go with a royal condescension. In this whole matter of “getting a living,” Calvin was a great contrast to the rapacity of the age in which he lived.
I hesitate a little to speak of his capacity for friendship and the affectionateness of his nature, for I know from his own reserve that he would not care to have it much talked about. We understood each other perfectly, but we never made any fuss about it; when I spoke his name and snapped my fingers, he came to me; when I returned home at night, he was pretty sure to be waiting for me near the gate, and would rise and saunter along the walk, as if his being there were purely accidental—so shy was he commonly of showing feeling; and when I opened the door he never rushed in, like a cat, but loitered, and lounged, as if he had had no intention of going in, but would condescend to. And yet, the fact was, he knew dinner was ready, and he was bound to be there. He kept the run of dinner-time. It happened sometimes, during our absence in the summer, that dinner would be early, and Calvin walking about the grounds, missed it and came in late. But he never made a mistake the second day. There was one thing he never did—he never rushed through an open doorway. He never forgot his dignity. If he had asked to have the door opened, and was eager to go out, he always went deliberately; I can see him now, standing on the sill, looking about at the sky as if he was thinking whether it were worthwhile to take an umbrella, until he was near having his tail shut in.
The Second Cat Megapack: Frisky Feline Tales, Old and New Page 49
