Kittens and Killers

by Diana Xarissa

  “I never would have called the police for something like that,” Jack said.

  “I wouldn’t have a year ago, but things have been different since I’ve been here.”

  “Yes, well, since I’ve been here, I’ve been caught up in a murder investigation myself, so I suppose I see your point. Are you entirely sure that the island is a safe place to live?”

  “It’s very safe. Bad things can happen anywhere.”

  By the time Fenella parked and helped Jack get his bags into the building, it was nearly time for him to board his flight.

  “Please go straight through to security,” the girl at the check-in desk told him. “We’ll be boarding shortly.”

  Fenella walked with Jack to the security area. “I can’t go any further,” she told him.

  “I had a lot of things I wanted to say to you before I left, and now I’m late and flustered and I can’t remember any of them,” Jack told her. “Always remember that I’ll always love you.”

  “I’ll always love you, too,” she replied. “Call me and let me know that you got home safely.”

  He nodded. “I enjoyed seeing the island. I may come back one day.”

  “I’ll be here if you do.”

  “I’m counting on that.”

  He pulled her into a hug and then kissed her with far more passion than she’d expected. It was a pleasant enough kiss, but it was missing the spark of chemistry that Fenella always felt whenever Donald or Daniel kissed her. When Jack let her go, she found that she was even more certain that she’d made the right choice in ending their relationship.

  “Take care of yourself,” he told her.

  “You, too.”

  A single tear trickled down her cheek as she watched him walk away. While she knew she’d made the right decision, she was going to miss him and the feeling of security that being in a relationship had always given her. Dating, especially at her age, was not fun.

  She drove back to Douglas with the top down, in spite of the cold January weather. After parking the car back in its space, she made her way up to her apartment.

  “We might be getting some temporary guests,” she told Katie.

  “What have you done now?” Mona asked. “I saw you with Daniel on the promenade. I was sure you’d found another body.”

  “Winston started barking at something in the storage shed. It turned out to be a mother cat and four kittens.”

  “And you’ve agreed to let them stay here?” Mona sounded appalled at the idea.

  “Just for a short while. The mother had been a fight and needed treatment. The kittens are too small to leave her. Mr. Stone didn’t think a shelter would be good for them, all things considered.”

  “So you’re going to be running a kitten nursery for the next month,” Mona sighed. “They won’t be litter-trained. They’ll want to chew on everything. My beautiful furniture will be ruined.”

  Fenella frowned. “I hadn’t thought of that. Katie is very good about everything, but I think I’ve been lucky with her.”

  “I’ve spent many hours talking with Katie about her behavior. She’s a very well-mannered little creature, really. I’m not sure a stray cat will have the same manners.”

  “Mr. Stone was going to see if his assistant could keep them. I’ll just have to cross my fingers that she will.”

  “She won’t,” Mona predicted, “not if Mr. Stone tells her you volunteered. I’m sure they both end up taking home far more animals than they should as it is. If they have someone else who is willing, why wouldn’t they let you take them?”

  “I need to get back to Mr. Stone’s office and find out what’s happening,” Fenella said. “We’ll worry about the rest later.”

  “She’s a tough little thing,” Mr. Stone told Fenella a short time later. “I’ve stitched up the ugly gash in her side and did my best with her paws. They may not look perfect once they’ve healed, but they should be reasonably serviceable.”

  Fenella looked at the cat who was lying on her side on a large bed. She looked tired and a bit anxious. The small cone around her head would prevent her from undoing Mr. Stone’s hard work, but it did make the animal look slightly ridiculous.

  “And the kittens?”

  “They’ve all been given some milk and some extra vitamins. Their mother should be able to feed them herself by the time they get hungry again. They’re ready to start on kitten food, as well, but they’ll still want milk. I suggest you put them together for a short space of time when the kittens are hungry and then separate them again after they’ve eaten. I don’t want the kittens playing with my stitches. They should be fine overnight together, but during the day, when the kittens are active, try to keep them separate if possible.”

  “I’m taking them, then?” Fenella asked.

  Mr. Stone nodded. “My assistant is currently keeping her father’s puppy while he’s on holiday. A rambunctious puppy isn’t the best companion for an injured cat.”

  “You’d better give me a full list of instructions, then,” Fenella said, swallowing a sigh. She had volunteered, after all. This was her own fault.

  Mr. Stone put the mother cat into one carrier and the kittens into another. He insisted that she take the cat bed that the mother had been using, and gave her a huge bag of food especially for mother cats and another for kittens. He supplied two new litter boxes and a huge bag of litter, too. Even with him carrying things, it took them two trips to get everything back to Fenella’s apartment.

  “You have my number,” he reminded her after the final trip. “Ring me anytime, day or night, if you need me. Bring them all in on Tuesday so I can check on them.”

  Fenella nodded and then locked the door behind him. When she turned around, she found Katie curled up in the new cat bed.

  “That isn’t for you,” she said sternly. “You have your own bed in the other room.”

  Katie ignored her, so Fenella opened the carrier and gently helped the mother cat climb out. Katie took one look at the new arrival and yowled angrily. The mother cat hissed, her fur standing on end.

  “My goodness, what a noise,” Mona said. “I don’t think this is going to work.”

  Although Fenella did everything she could think of to try to help the two cats get along, an hour later she was forced to admit defeat.

  “Okay, this isn’t going to work,” she sighed as she put the mother cat back into her carrier. “I need another plan.”

  “Put the new arrivals in the house on Poppy Drive,” Mona suggested. “The furniture there isn’t nearly as nice.”

  Fenella thought about it and then nodded. “I’ll move there with them,” she said. “Shelly can keep Katie for a few days.”

  “I think I’ll let Max take me on that holiday he’s been suggesting,” Mona said. “Just don’t get yourself involved in anything interesting while I’m away.”

  “Daniel wants to talk about a cold case,” she reminded her aunt.

  “Okay, well, then just don’t solve it until I’m back. What am I saying? You’ll need me to solve it, I’m sure.” Mona laughed and then faded away, leaving Fenella with two angry cats and four hungry kittens.

  3

  Shelly was happy to agree to keep Katie for a few days. “Smokey and I will love having her,” she said.

  Katie had walked into Fenella’s apartment right after Fenella had arrived on the island. The kitten had quickly made herself at home, and within days Fenella couldn’t imagine life without her. Only a short time later, Shelly had decided to adopt a kitten of her own. When she’d visited the nearest shelter, however, she’d ended up falling in love with an older cat she’d named Smokey. Katie and Smokey had regular playtimes together. Katie’s kittenish antics seemed to amuse the older animal, and Fenella could only hope that some of Smokey’s maturity might wear off on Katie.

  “I’ll come by to visit every day,” Fenella promised. “I don’t want to leave the kittens alone at the house for very long, though, at least not before I’ve seen how they’ll
behave.”

  “Good luck,” Shelly laughed. “Katie can be hard work. I can’t imagine how much trouble four kittens will manage to cause.”

  She helped Fenella load the animals and all of their things into Fenella’s sensible car and then rode with Fenella to the house on Poppy Drive.

  “This is really nice,” Shelly said as she helped carry everything inside. “This is exactly what John and I would have wanted if we’d ever had children.”

  When Shelly had been widowed, she’d sold the small house that she’d shared with her husband and bought the apartment next to Mona’s. The two had quickly become close friends, as Mona had helped Shelly work through her grief. It was Mona who’d convinced Shelly to fully embrace life. For Shelly, that had meant wearing bright colors to celebrate every day. Today she was wearing a bright red skirt with a floral print sweater on top. On anyone else it might have been too much, but Shelly’s exuberant personality seemed to go perfectly with the outfit.

  “It’s far too much house for just me,” Fenella replied. “I suppose it’s perfect for me and five cats, though.”

  “I never knew Mona owned a house like this. I can’t see her ever living in it, of course,” Shelly commented.

  Mona and Max had started their relationship when Mona had been only eighteen. He’d moved her into a room in one of the hotels that he’d owned and Mona lived there for many years, spending much of her time hosting lavish parties in the hotel’s grand ballroom. When Max decided to convert the hotel into luxury apartments, he’d had the largest one designed and decorated for Mona, gifting it to her when it was completed. That was the apartment where Fenella now lived, and Fenella couldn’t imagine her aunt even visiting the rather ordinary family home that she’d owned on Poppy Drive. “It isn’t really her style, is it?” Fenella laughed.

  “I hope you don’t start to think that it’s yours,” Shelly told her.

  “I love my apartment on the promenade far too much to ever move here for good,” Fenella assured her. “Once mommy cat is recovered and the kittens are a bit older, they can all go to a shelter. I’ll be back in my apartment that same day, and I’ll have Doncan get this house rented out straight away so I can’t do anything as dumb as offer to keep a family of cats again.”

  Shelly laughed. “From the way you’ve told the story, you offered to keep them before you even thought of moving them here.”

  “Yeah, that’s true, but I’m a lot smarter now.”

  Fenella drove Shelly back to their building. It only took her a few minutes to pack a small bag with everything she thought she would need for a few days and nights on Poppy Drive. After a short debate with herself, she decided to drive Mona’s car to her temporary home. The house had a garage, but it wasn’t very large. Mona’s car would fit far more easily than her larger one.

  “You be a good girl for Shelly,” she told Katie, “You could have been more welcoming to our guests,” she added.

  Katie narrowed her eyes at her and then walked away to stand by the front door. Fenella grabbed her bag and then followed the animal.

  “I know you’ve been very good about Winston and Fiona every time they’ve come to visit. I would have thought you’d be even more welcoming to another cat,” she said to Katie as she knocked on Shelly’s door.

  “There’s my new little lodger,” Shelly laughed when she opened the door a moment later. “We’re going to have so much fun while you’re here.”

  Katie purred in Shelly’s arm for a moment and then wiggled to get down. As soon as Shelly set her on the floor, she dashed off and started chasing Smokey around the room.

  “Maybe she was just horrible to our guests so that I would let her stay with you for a while,” Fenella said.

  “I could keep her and you and the other cats could stay in your flat,” Shelly suggested.

  “I don’t think I want five cats in my apartment,” Fenella told her. “I offered to have them without thinking it through. They won’t be litter trained and they might chew on the furniture. All of Mona’s things are antiques. The stuff at the house on Poppy Drive is much less valuable.”

  “I’m going to miss having you next door. With whom will I go to the pub?”

  “Tim?”

  Shelly blushed. She and Tim Blake had been seeing one another for a few months now. He was an architect who played with a local band. Fenella thought they seemed very happy together. “He’s going to London for a few weeks,” Shelly said. “He has some sort of work conference to attend. He suggested I might want to come with him.”

  “Do you?”

  “Maybe. No, but yes,” Shelly said, shaking her head. “I simply don’t know. He’d be working all day, which means I’d be on my own in London. I’ve never been on my own anywhere, really, not in a very long time, anyway.”

  “You might find that you like being on your own.”

  “Or I might be too terrified to leave the hotel room. That’s another thing, though. I’m not sure about sharing a hotel room with him. Our relationship hasn’t progressed to that point yet, and I’m just old-fashioned enough to think that if I’m going to sleep with a man I should have a ring on my finger.”

  Fenella nodded. “You should tell Tim what you just told me.”

  “I know, but it all feels awkward. I think I’m just going to tell him I can’t go because I’m looking after Katie.”

  “Don’t do that. I can make other arrangements for Katie. I don’t want you to miss out because I was dumb enough to volunteer to babysit a family of cats.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Shelly said. “You should get going. The kittens could have caused a great deal of mischief while you’ve been gone.”

  Fenella frowned. “They were all asleep in their carrier when I left. I opened its door for them, but I was hoping they would all still be asleep when I get back.”

  “Good luck with that,” Shelly laughed.

  Fenella said a quick goodbye to Katie and then headed for the garage. She pulled into the driveway of the house on Poppy Drive a short time later. While there was a garage, there wasn’t any automatic door opener like she’d been used to in the US. It seemed to take ages to park the car, climb out, unlock the garage, and then wrestle the door open. She pulled the convertible inside and then left the door open. She’d close it later, after she’d checked on the kittens, she decided.

  The house felt ominously quiet as she let herself in through the door that connected to the garage. The mother cat was lying on her cat bed, seemingly fast asleep. Fenella peered into the other carrier. It was empty. She looked around the house’s living room with a frown on her face. Where were the kittens?

  Fenella walked through the house as quickly as she could, doing a quick scan for the animals. She finally spotted one in the largest of the bedrooms, hiding under one of the beds. She scooped the tiny animal up. “How did you even get up the stairs?” she demanded.

  The kitten mewed softly. Fenella carried her back down to the living room and put her on the cat bed with her mother. “Now stay there while I look for your siblings,” she said sternly.

  After a few steps, she glanced back and was relieved to see the kitten settling in to eat. Maybe that would keep it busy while Fenella did some more searching.

  She found another kitten chasing a spider under the dining room table. “Where were you five minutes ago?” she asked as she picked up the animal and squashed the spider.

  Finding the first kitten still in the cat bed when she dropped off the second was a pleasant surprise. The house had an open plan, which meant there were no doors on the ground floor, only spacious doorways between rooms. There was no way for Fenella to keep the animals in the living room while she looked for the others.

  “Maybe you could just call them,” she suggested to the mother cat as the second kitten snuggled in for a drink.

  The cat looked at her and seemed to shrug. Fenella sighed and then tried to think like a kitten. Where would I want to explore, she asked herself. The tiny bat
hroom next to the front door caught her eye. The door was half shut. Fenella had glanced inside on her first trip around the house. Now she switched the light on and took a better look. A kitten was behind the wastebasket, fast asleep.

  “You’ll be more comfortable with the others,” Fenella told it as she picked it up and carried it back into the living room.

  That left only one lost kitten. Perhaps if she left it long enough the missing animal would simply wander back on its own.

  A knock on the door startled her. She smiled at Daniel when she found him on the doorstep.

  “I saw your car,” he explained, nodding toward the still open garage.

  “I forgot to close the garage,” Fenella replied. “I may have to go back out anyway. I think I need some sort of fencing or something to keep the kittens in one place.”

  “Should I ask why the kittens are here?”

  “It seemed a better place to bring them than my apartment,” Fenella explained. “Everything here will be easier to replace if the little family goes on a rampage.”

  “Is that likely?”

  “I certainly hope not, but I’ve already lost the kittens once.”

  “They seemed too little to wander too far from their mum.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you,” Fenella sighed. “I found one upstairs.”

  “How did he or she get up the stairs?”

  “I’ve no idea. Anyway, as of now, I’m still missing one kitten.”

  Daniel laughed. “Do you want me to come in and help you find it?”

  “I’m sure you have better things to do.”

  “It’s Sunday,” he reminded her. “It’s my day off, unless I get called in to deal with dogs barking at random sheds.”

  Fenella flushed. “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s fine. I’d rather you rang me and it turned out to be nothing than ignore it and later found out that there’s a real problem.”

  “I’ve completely lost track of time, and I don’t remember having any lunch,” Fenella said. “We were going to have dinner together.”