The Barker Street Regulars

by Susan Conant

  From Ceci! Scrounging everywhere for a home for the damned little cat, I’d offered it to Ceci on the night Kimi had served as Hugh and Robert’s supposed tracking dog. Just before leaving Ceci’s, I’d stopped in at the house to thank her for her hospitality. In passing, I’d mentioned the cat. She hadn’t been interested. Had I said anything about the torn ear? I’d been trying to foist off the cat, hadn’t I? It would have been unlike me to stress its bad points. I must have described it as needy. I’d probably focused on what a wonderful home Ceci could provide for it. In my eagerness to place the cat in what really would have been a perfect situation, could I have gotten carried away to the extent of comparing it to the gorgeous gray cat in the television commercial? I didn’t think so. But I just might have told someone at the Gateway about the big, handsome TV cat. A few of the people Rowdy and I visited preferred cats to dogs. I’d definitely discussed cats with Helen Musgrave, Althea’s roommate. Althea could have been listening. There was a television mounted high on a wall in Helen and Althea’s room. I constructed a little scenario. The TV is on. Ceci is visiting Althea. The cat-food ad appears. Catching sight of the beautiful gray cat, Ceci exclaims and gushes in characteristic fashion. Althea remarks that Holly, too, is enamored of the commercial’s captivating feline star. Improbable? Yes, but less improbable than what I wanted to view as the outright impossible—mental telepathy.

  I just had to know. I’d never talked to Ceci on the phone before. The musical tone of her voice had escaped me. She sounded happy to hear from me and asked about Rowdy and Kimi. She seemed in no rush to find out why I was calling.

  I said, “I’ve had an odd experience.”

  “Oh,” she said merrily, “you’ve been to Irene Wheeler!”

  “Yes. I am really quite—”

  “Unnerved!” She made the sensation sound marvelous. “I was myself.”

  “What I’m wondering is …” I faltered. “Do you happen to have seen a cat-food commercial on TV? With a, uh, beautiful gray cat with big amber eyes.”

  “I usually watch Channel Two. Or Forty-four.” Those are our local PBS stations. “I am positively addicted to ‘Wall Street Week in Review.’ If the truth be known, I have a mad crush on Louis Rukeyser! Oh, and the evening news, but most of the commercials are for, well, not at all what I care to contemplate anywhere near dinnertime and, really, not the sort of thing that has any place in a public forum, and, well, by comparison, cat food would be appetizing. So if the commercial was on, I might not have been watching, although a dog might have been another matter—that would certainly have caught my eye!—because, as you know, I am essentially a dog person—it’s a matter of the solar plexus—not that I have anything against cats, naturally, or anyone or anything else, for that matter, except this cold-blooded murderer whom Jonathan attempted to apprehend during the course of what would otherwise have been an armed robbery, and I find it very difficult to forgive myself for the unkind thoughts I had about poor Jonathan before I knew, although all is now forgiven, of course. And Jonathan is extremely sorry for the terrible things he said to Irene. Like most of the world, he simply did not understand.”

  Ceci’s nonstop delivery had the odd effect of making me hold my breath until she paused, as she did not do until she’d finished. Her lungs, I reflected, must be extraordinary. Could she have had operatic training? Recovering from my anoxia, I asked, “A robbery?”

  “Oh, yes. Althea didn’t tell you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, an attempted robbery it was. Both Irene and Jonathan have made that crystal clear. Objects, you see, speak to the gifted just as our seemingly mute creatures do, and the supposedly inanimate beings with whom we share the cosmos forget nothing, because, you see, time is meaningless to them, all is eternal, past is present is future, and it occurs to me that it must be terribly frustrating for them, poor things, to have so much to say and so few beings eager to listen, unless, of course, do they converse among themselves? I must ask Irene. In any case, after I retired, Jonathan heard a noise outdoors, you see, a sort of scraping sound, exactly the sort of sound a burglar might make, by mistake, naturally, not on purpose, and so Jonathan decided to investigate, because when all our neighbors installed these noisy alarm systems, well, Ellis said that a big dog was the best deterrent on earth, besides which pets, you know, are forever accidentally triggering those alarms, and then the police come, and it’s really such a great nuisance that most people end up leaving the alarms turned off and … Where was I? Oh, yes, so Jonathan, surreptitiously, you see, went and got his parka and crept out through one of the French doors to investigate and sprinted after the burglar and finally nabbed him right by the sundial, where he did his best to subdue the man, but tripped, and was himself subdued.” Sounding pleased with her turn of phrase, she added, “From a temporal perspective, it seems unfortunate that I had the bad judgment to leave the shovel lying there, but Irene assures me that far from being my fault, everything occurred as it was meant to occur, you see, and there was nothing anyone could have done to prevent it. Irene has reminded me that if fate had decreed otherwise, I might have been murdered in my bed.”

  “Has, uh, anyone said anything about who this burglar was?”

  In dire tones, Ceci said, “A stranger.”

  “Anything more specific?”

  “No, except that he is now far away, and I must say that I am extremely annoyed with him, whoever he is, because he went and frightened Simon away just when we were making such wonderful progress, and frankly, I am not pleased to have Irene diverted by this business of communicating with stones and fences and crocuses and blades of grass. After all, what’s done is done, and we know what happened, and we know that it was meant to be, don’t we? So, with Simon out there waiting, what do I care about listening to stones? I care nothing whatsoever for blades of grass. Simon is there, and I want him back here now!”

  “I understand,” I said inadequately. Selfishly switching back to the point of my call, I said, “So, I don’t suppose you and Irene have ever discussed the gray cat.”

  As if explaining everything, Ceci said, “It has nothing to do with me.”

  “I just wondered.”

  “I’ve never heard of this cat before,” Ceci said, “but clearly the animal has some sort of special meaning for you, which is, I must tell you, precisely the sort of thing that instantly communicates itself to Irene. I hope I’m not prying, Holly, but I must say that you sound rather upset, which is perfectly natural at first, I felt the same way myself, but really, when you think about it, haven’t you known all along? Your own dear dog, for example. I’ve forgotten her name.”

  “Vinnie.”

  “Well, haven’t you known all along?”

  “That …?”

  “That she still exists? That her essential being did not simply vaporize?”

  “This is completely different.”

  “Irene,” declared Ceci, “loses sight of the effect she has on those who are unprepared.” It hit me as a ridiculous statement to make about a clairvoyant, but Ceci went on unperturbed. “I see it all now. You had this gray cat in mind, and Irene’s telepathic powers came as a shock to you, so naturally you are grasping for some sort of everyday explanation.”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “There is none,” Ceci said. “And if I may be so bold as to advise you, I would suggest that you stop wasting Irene’s powers on trivia. As you have discovered for yourself, Irene has great gifts. Don’t you long for contact with your Vinnie?”

  I made a soft noise.

  “I assure you that you can tell Irene absolutely everything. I have done so myself, and I have found her utterly trustworthy. Holly, my dear, I can hear that you are frightened, but you really need not be. There is nothing at all to fear from your Vinnie, is there? Or from Irene, either. In your heart, haven’t you known all along that your dear dog still loves you and aches to be with you?”

  In a way, what Ceci said was true. I had never lost the magical se
nse of Vinnie’s presence. During her existence in this sphere, she had behaved as if she read my mind. As if? Had she actually done it? Could she do it still? And Rowdy and Kimi? Were they, too, blessed with telepathic powers? I have to admit that I was crazy about the possibility. Dreams fulfilled! Nothing, I realized, would make me happier than knowing for certain that dogs could read my mind. It was simultaneously clear to me that I loathed the idea of having even one human being do the same. And if it had to be one human being, I didn’t want it to be Irene Wheeler. I called her. We had a brief, businesslike conversation. I made an appointment with her for the next day.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  IN WHAT I VAGUELY sensed as a skirmish in the battle of the psychic’s powers against mine, I sat at the kitchen table to plot my strategy for training Rowdy, Kimi, and the ill-tempered cat. My plan had everything to do with positive reinforcement and nothing to do with mental telepathy. Pushing aside the new issue of The Malamute Quarterly, I grabbed a pad and a pen, and started planning on paper. I devoted one page of yellow legal pad to the dogs and one to the cat. At the top of the dogs’ page, I spelled out my goals. Did I want Rowdy and Kimi to love the little pussy cat? No. My goal was to teach them to ignore the cat. I broke the goal down into steps, and the steps into behaviors that I could reinforce: looking at anything except the cat, holding still, moving away from the cat, displaying relaxed ears and lowered hackles, doing nothing at all in the presence of the cat, displaying any behavior incompatible with attacking the cat or totally unrelated to the cat, first from a distance, then very gradually from closer and closer. On a fresh sheet of paper I rearranged my notes about training the dogs in a pyramid-shaped diagram. The goal was still on top. On paper, it looked easy to reach.

  At first, the task of outlining a behavior-modification program for the cat stymied me. My goal, I admitted to myself, was not a trainable behavior: I wanted the cat to go away and live with someone else. Failing that, I wanted her to become a gorgeous gray feline TV star with huge amber eyes. Better yet, she could transform herself into a dog. And failing all that? The answer required a fresh sheet of paper. This sheet was for my behavior. The goal for myself was to establish a relationship with the cat, which in the language of behavior training meant a reinforcement history. So far, our relationship consisted of a negative history. To her, I meant the pillowcase, the stone, the approaching hand that scared her off the cozy mouse pad on my desk. To me, she was hisses, scratches, and the unwelcome message that here was one animal that didn’t want me around. Within five minutes of taking in a stray dog, I’d have given it a name. The first step in breaking the negative cycle with the cat was to decide what to call her.

  Cambridge places a heavy burden on anyone who sets out to name an animal. The expectations are dauntingly high. A respectable name for the cat, I feared, would allude to a character in some famous work of literature I’d never read and wouldn’t want to. Hidden in an Icelandic saga or a Persian folktale was undoubtedly a maiden who’d suffered trauma to an ear and had six fingers on each hand. My cousin Leah would know, but it would defeat my purpose to get Leah to name the cat. In my entire life, hadn’t I ever read anything sufficiently highbrow to enable me to name a Cambridge cat? Ah-hah! Sherlock Holmes! Somewhere in the Canon there had to be a cat. References to dogs sprang from every page. In “A Study in Scarlet,” Watson, as a prospective roommate, warns Holmes that he keeps a bull pup. The pup never reappears, but other dogs do. Indeed, in the same story, in a passage I’d almost forgotten and didn’t want to reread, Holmes actually kills a dog to test some poison, a dog, if I remembered, that was dying anyway. Even so! But in addition to canine characters are zillions of images of dogs. Lestrade is like a bulldog, and something or other—a dark mass?—is like a Newfoundland dog. Wasn’t there a single kitty-cat in all Sherlock Holmes?

  As kitty crossed my mind, it overturned a mental object that crashed with a thunk. In the aftermath of the fall, a sinister inner voice with an affected English accent whispered dark words: “He is everywhere!” There was indeed a Kitty in the Canon. She appeared in “The Illustrious Client.” She was Miss Kitty Winter, of all things, the hurler of vitriol. But damn it, Sherlock Holmes or no Sherlock Holmes, and even if your name is Winter, here in Cambridge you just cannot call your cat Miss Kitty! The cat had caused me enough trouble already. She was not going to turn me into a social outcast. Damn her! And damn the abusive would-have-been cat murderer and his ugly bulbous forehead! Why couldn’t fate have let me rescue a dog? Preferably an Alaskan malamute.

  A second mental object tumbled after the first. This one, however, landed with what sounded remarkably like a familiar woo-woo-woo that seemed simultaneously to sing from the open pages of The Malamute Quarterly. On the right-hand page was an ad for the young show dog who’d taken the championship points at Saturday’s show, Kaila The Devil’s Paw. Kaila, I am relieved to report, has nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes, at least so far as I know. It’s the kennel name of Chris and Eileen Gabriel, the breeders and owners of the dog, Narly, and of his illustrious grandsire, the late Tracker, Ch. Kaila’s Paw Print. Inspiration at last! The nomen omen! I would name the cat after an Alaskan malamute, and not just any malamute, either, but a legend, a champion, a dog I’d admired at shows for years and years. The original Tracker, the famous dog, like my gourmet cat-food star, just so happened to have been big, gray, and gorgeous, and also happened to have been what this cat was not but should have been: an Alaskan malamute. And Paw Print? Arguably the most famous line in the Sacred Writings: “Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound.” So you see? The ad, the cat, the devil, big, gray, and gorgeous. The original Tracker, the show dog, admittedly, had correct malamute eyes, dark, not amber, and his color was dark wolf gray. Even so! My cat: Tracker. I said it aloud. “Tracker.” Then I said, “My cat, Tracker.” Then I tried, “My cat, Kaila’s Paw Print.” I cheated: “My cat, Champion Kaila’s Paw Print.” Modestly, I added, “But she’s called Tracker.”

  So I’d attained my first goal: Tracker had a name. And I’d broken the cycle of negativity. Tracker was a champion. She was a gorgeous gray legend with Holmesian connotations. She was virtually an Alaskan malamute. Fired up by the successful christening, I outlined a systematic-desensitization program designed to convince Tracker that I was a wonderful human being and to remind me that she was all but a champion Alaskan malamute. Then I put the program in operation. I entered my study and calmly took a seat on the floor. Tracker hissed at me. I showed no response. She remained on my mouse pad. I thought loudly and silently, You, there, Tracker! You won three Best of Breeds at specialty shows, you have multiple group wins and placements to your credit, two awards of merit at National Specialities, AND you went Best of Breed twice at Westminster! Tracker was unimpressed with herself. I admired her humility. After five minutes, I quietly left the room. At a later stage, I’d need help in training the dogs. Steve, I was certain, would cooperate by holding Tracker at a safe distance from them, but still in sight. For today, I settled for rewarding calm canine behavior outside the door of my study. I made a start.

  Only when I was congratulating myself on relying on my own rational methods instead of Irene Wheeler’s mind reading did I recall in a sort of verbal rush that it had been Irene Wheeler who had insisted that the cat was frightened, that the cat needed more attention than she was getting, that the dogs were curious about the cat and about my attitude of alarm, and that they were used to being given guidance about the behavior I wanted from them. In other words, in applying my own rational methods as carefully as Holmes applied his, I’d done precisely what Irene Wheeler had suggested. The damn thing was this: The psychic had been absolutely right.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  A GREAT SPIRIT,” PRONOUNCED Irene Wheeler. After examining the photograph, she’d kept her eyes shut for a long time. I’d stared at her lids to see whether she was cheating, but had seen no sign that she was peeking at me to gauge my response. My eyes had been damp. Th
e muscles around my mouth had twitched.

  “Vinnie,” I said, “was perfection itself.”

  Vinnie could answer the telephone. If canine anatomy hadn’t impeded her, she’d have issued a polite hello. She was as reliably and zestfully obedient in daily life as she was in the ring, where, I might add, she earned consistently high scores. Oh, and she loved cats. Introduced to Tracker, Vinnie would have played nursemaid by licking the poor creature’s wound. In our obedience work, I’d slaved to deserve her. Was she flawless? Whenever she encountered a rotten fish on the beach or a decomposing squirrel in the woods, she’d flop down and wiggle in wild delight; her favorite perfume was Eau de Dead Thing. She carried herself with an air of moral superiority; she was an unreformed teacher’s pet. Ours was not a relationship of equals: I was the teacher, and she was the pet. Steve’s skill and my mercy spared her the last agony of cancer. She died in my arms. Now, I made no effort to hide my feelings from Irene Wheeler. If you want proof of cannibalism, the bait to offer is your own flesh.