Cat Bearing Gifts

4

IF EVER KIT cursed her small size it was now as she raced across the slide to Pedric. Diving under the twisted delivery truck, its metal cab tilting over her, loose rocks shifting under her blood-slippery paws, she heard the coyote yodel again, high above her, and then go ominously still. Pedric lay in a pool of blood beside the crumpled pickup, his forehead running blood. Hesitantly she pressed her paw against the gash where it flowed hardest, telling herself that head wounds always bled a lot. Soon she was pressing with both paws, with all her weight, but still the blood pooled warm beneath her pads, mixed with her own blood. She tried not to think of the billions of cat germs she was sharing with Pedric, that might harm him, and about the gravel her paws had collected, that would become embedded now in his open wounds. He was conscious, but only barely, whispering vague little love words to her. The only other sounds in the empty night were the tick, tick of the settling vehicles, the voice of the waves far below, and the dripping of some liquid nearby that she prayed wasn’t gasoline. Well, she didn’t smell gas, so maybe it was oil or water.

Her paws grew numb with the pressure, but soon the bleeding did ease, and when the coyote yipped again she wondered if he smelled Pedric’s blood on the rising sea wind. Pedric said, “Don’t let me sleep, Kit, keep me awake. I need to stay awake.” He talked vaguely about a concussion, then rambled on from one subject to another that had no connection to what was happening at that moment. When he went silent she nudged him and made him talk again. Once, as she shifted her weight over him, he startled and tried to rise, looking around fearfully as if expecting another blow from the tire iron.

“He’s gone, those men are gone. Lie still.”

“Lucinda? Where’s Lucinda?” he said, pushing her aside, straining to get up.

“She’s fine,” Kit lied, trying to press him down. “She’s only hurt a little, she . . .” She went still, listening, her heart quickening. She could hear, far down the mountain, the faintest echo of sirens whooping, she heard that thin ululation long before Pedric did. “They’re coming,” she said, “the cops, an ambulance.” Rearing up, she could see lights flashing far down the mountain, red and blue lights disappearing around the curves and appearing again, accompanied by the approaching whoop whoop and scream of emergency vehicles that put the coyote’s cries to shame. Now Pedric heard them, and he lay back, dragging her onto his chest, hugging and loving her.

But soon again he rose on one elbow looking past the turned-over truck, searching for the reflection of the Lincoln’s lights that had been angled up the cliff, lights that would mark the wreck on the other side, for the approaching cars to see. “Lucinda,” he said, struggling up. “They won’t see her. I left the lights on . . . Did she shut them off?” He rose further, looking. “Where . . . ? Kit, where’s the Lincoln?”

She looked at him, puzzled. Hadn’t he seen and heard the Lincoln drive away? “It’s gone,” she said softly. “They took our car, those men took it.”

He struggled up, the blood gushed harder again. “Lucinda. Where’s Lucinda?”

“She got out before they took the car, she’s fine.” She nuzzled him, but as the sirens drew near she spun and raced away again, under the cab of the big truck and across the rockfall. Surely they’d see Lucinda lying there. How could they help but see her? The sirens blared, approaching up the steep highway, soon their lights would blaze along the side of the cliff. But Lucinda seemed so small, lying there unprotected and alone. In just a second they’ll be here, the world will be filled with their bright, swinging lights, they’ll see her, there’ll be uniforms all over the place, they’ll see Lucinda and help her and comfort her. They’ll help Lucinda and Pedric, cops or sheriff’s deputies or whoever come, they’ll have spotlights, they—

Oh, she thought, but what will they do with me?

Or try to do, if they could catch me?

They sure wouldn’t take her in the ambulance, that was probably against the rules, to contaminate their germ-free rolling hospital with kitty fur and dander. Maybe they’d try to lock her in a squad car, drop her off at the nearest animal rescue to be kept “safe” in a locked cage until someone claimed her, like a piece of baggage lost at some lonely airport.

And, if no one claimed her soon enough, if no one thought to look for her there, what, then, would they do with her?

No way! No one’s taking me to the pound.

She found Lucinda several feet higher up the rockfall than she’d left her, lying huddled into herself, the phone abandoned beside her, her face white with the effort it had taken to climb just that far. She licked Lucinda’s cheek and nosed at her worriedly. She prayed to the human God or the great cat god or whoever might be listening, prayed for Lucinda, and then the cops were there, the flash of colored lights, the last whoop of the sirens, the powerful shafts of spotlights sweeping back and forth. Patrol cars skidded to a stop, cops spilled out, the flashing strobe lights blinded her, strafing the highway and the fallen rocks, picking out Lucinda and the two wrecked trucks. Lucinda clutched at her, attempting to hold her safe. Kit ducked beneath Lucinda’s jacket, trying to decide what to do.

The thought of strangers’ hands on her, even the kindest of cops, the thought of barred cages that she might not be able to open, of being locked in some shelter all alone, the thought of possible clerical mistakes where she’d be put up for adoption before anyone could come to fetch her, or consigned to a far worse fate, was all too much. Cops knew how to care for needful humans, but that might not extend to a terrified cat. Snatching up Lucinda’s phone between her gripping teeth, she scrambled out from under the jacket and ran.

“Oh, Kit, don’t . . .”

She didn’t look back, she fled straight up the cliff, dodging between rivers of sweeping light, gripping the heavy phone; it nearly overbalanced her as she scrambled up the sheer wall of stone. Only tiny outcroppings offered a claw hold until, higher up, an occasional weed or stunted bush kept her from falling. The phone grew heavier still, forcing her head away from the cliff. Twice she nearly fell. Scrambling in panic, she veered over into the rock slide where she had more paw hold, though the rocks were wobbly and unsteady. Moving up over the loose stones and boulders, she was afraid the whole thing would shift and go tumbling again, hitting her and raining down on Lucinda, who lay now far below her. Higher and higher she climbed, dodging away whenever a slab shifted, breathing raggedly around the phone through her open mouth, her heart pounding so hard that at last she had to stop.

High up on the lip of the slide, she laid the phone down on a stone outcropping. Below her, portable spotlights blazed down on Lucinda and two medics in dark uniforms knelt over her. Two more medics, one carrying a stretcher, the other carrying a dark bag that would be filled with life-saving medical equipment, were headed across the slide to Pedric. Young men, strong and efficient looking. The very sight of them eased her pounding heart.

Where will they take them? What hospital? I have to tell Ryan and Clyde, but what do I tell them? A hospital somewhere in Santa Cruz, that’s where we were headed. They’ll know the hospitals, they’ll call CHP to find out, Ryan and Clyde will know where to come, and they’ll come to get me, too, she thought, comforting herself. But how soon? Soon enough, before those coyotes up there find me, soon enough to save my little cat neck?

Maybe she should go back down, slip into the medics’ van while they were busy, and the cops were all working the crash scene. She watched another set of headlights coming down the mountain on the other side of the slide, watched a lone sheriff’s car park beyond the wrecked truck. A lone officer got out and started across to join the others. The back doors of the white van stood open. In a flash she could be down the cliff and inside, hiding among the metal cabinets and oxygen tanks and all that tangle of medical equipment. I could hide in there close to Lucinda and Pedric and, at the hospital—a strange hospital, a strange town—I could hide in the bushes outside and watch the door and wait for Ryan and Clyde or maybe for Charlie to come, and then . . .

Oh, right. And if those medics spot me in their van trying to catch a ride, they’ll try to corner me in that tight space. If they shut the doors, and surround me, and I can’t get out and one of them grabs me, what then? They’ll lock me up somewhere, to keep me safe? One of the cops will shut me in his squad car? No, she was too upset and uncertain to go back. Taking the phone in her mouth again, she moved from the top of the slide on up into the bushes that stretched away to the edge of the dense pine woods, damp and dark and chill. There she laid the phone down among dead leaves and pine needles and pawed in the single digit for the Damens’ house phone. Crouched there listening to it ring, she watched the lighted road below as the medics slid Pedric into their van, working over him, attaching him to an oxygen tank. Lucinda sat on a gurney as the other two medics splinted and taped her shoulder and arm. The phone rang seven times, eight. On the twelfth ring, she hung up. Why didn’t the tape kick in? The Damens’ answering machine, which stood upstairs on Clyde’s desk, was so incredibly ancient it still used tape, but Clyde wouldn’t get a new one, he said it worked just fine, you simply had to understand its temperament. Right, Kit thought, with a little hiss.

She tried Wilma Getz, but she got only the machine. Where was everyone? She left a garbled message, she said there’d been an accident, that she had Lucinda’s cell phone, that it was on vibrate so the cops wouldn’t hear it ring. She hung up, disappointed by the failure of the electronic world to help her, and worrying about Lucinda and Pedric. What might happen to them on their way to the hospital, some delayed reaction that would be even beyond the medics’ control? Or what might happen in the hospital? If ever a cat’s prayers should be heard, if ever a strong hand were to reach down in intervention for a little cat’s loved ones, that hand should come reaching now. This was not Lucinda’s or Pedric’s time to move on to some other life, she wouldn’t let it be that time. Punching in the Damens’ number again, she was crouched with her ear to the phone when she realized that, down on the road, Lucinda had awakened and was arguing with the medics, her voice raised in anger. Kit broke off the call, and listened.

“You can’t leave her, you must find her. If I call her, she’ll come to me. I won’t go with you, neither of us will, unless you bring her with us.”

The two medics just looked at her, more puzzled than reluctant. The taller one said, “You can’t find a runaway cat, in the dark of night, it’ll be scared to death, panicked. No cat would—”

The dark-haired medic said, “We’ll send someone, the local shelter . . .”

“No,” Lucinda said fiercely. “I want her with us. You can’t take us by force unless you want a lawsuit.”

Oh, don’t, Kit thought, don’t argue. Let them take care of you. But then she realized that Lucinda, in her anger, sounded so much stronger that Kit had to smile.

But stronger or not, Lucinda didn’t prevail. Kit didn’t know what the medic said to her, speaking so quietly, but soon she went silent and lay back again on the gurney, as if she had given up, yet Kit knew she wouldn’t do that. She knows I’ll call Clyde and Ryan, Kit thought. She knows I can take care of myself. She watched them wheel Lucinda to the van, her tall, thin housemate straining up against the safety straps, trying to look up the cliff. Lucinda was so upset that Kit thought to race back down and into the van after all, but before she could try, before she knew what was best to do, they had shut the doors, two medics inside with Pedric and Lucinda, and the other two in the cab. The engine started, the van turned around slowly on the narrow and perilous road, and moved away down the mountain, heading for a strange hospital where no one knew Lucinda and Pedric, where there was no one to speak for them.

Two black-and-whites followed them. The other two sheriff’s deputies remained behind, one car parked on either side of the rockfall. Kit watched them walk the road in both directions, setting out flares, and maybe waiting to meet the wrecking crew that would haul away the truck and pickup, maybe to wait for the tractors and heavy equipment that would arrive to clear away the tons of fallen rock from the highway.

When those earthmovers start to work, when they start grabbing up boulders with those great, reaching pincers—like the claws of space monsters in some old movie—I’m out of here. Again she punched in the Damens’ number. Come on, Clyde, come on, Ryan, will you please, please answer! Crouched in the night alone, she looked behind her where the forest of pines stood tar-black against the stars. The coyotes were at it again, two of them away among the trees yipping to each other. When the machines come to move the wrecked trucks and clear the road, I’ll have to go higher up in the woods away from the sliding earth, I’ll have to go in among the trees, where those night runners are hunting. She looked up at the pines towering black and tall above her, and she didn’t relish climbing those mothers. The great round cylinders of their trunks had no low branches for a cat to grab onto, only that loose, slithery bark that would break off under her claws. And what if she did climb to escape a coyote, only to be picked off by something in the sky, by a great horned owl or swooping barn owl? This was their territory and this was their hour to hunt. She thought of great horned owls pulling squirrels from their nests, snatching out baby birds with those scissor-sharp beaks. The world, tonight, seemed perilous on every side.

She called the Damens seven more times before Clyde answered. “We just got in. I guess the tape ran out.”

A temperamental machine was one thing. A run-out tape was quite another. Now, on the phone, Kit didn’t say her name, none of the cats ever committed their name to an electronic device. They might use man-made machines, but they weren’t fool enough to trust them. Anyway, Clyde knew her voice. She pictured him in his study, his short brown hair tousled, wearing something old and comfortable, a frayed T-shirt and jeans, worn-out jogging shoes. She started out coherent enough, “Lucinda and Pedric are hurt,” but suddenly she was mewling into the phone, a high, shrill cry this time, in spite of herself, a terrible, distressed yowl that she couldn’t seem to stop.

“I’ll get Ryan,” he said with a note of panic. She heard him call out, and then Ryan came on, maybe on her studio extension. Kit imagined them upstairs in the master suite, Rock and the white cat perhaps disturbed from a nap on the love seat.

“What?” Ryan said. “Tell me slowly. What happened? Where are they? Where are you? Slowly, please!”

Swallowing, Kit found her sensible voice. She tried to go slowly, to explain carefully about the wreck and to explain where that was. But try as she might, it all came out in a tangle, the kind of rush that made her human friends shout, made Joe and Dulcie lay back their ears and lash their tails until she slowed, but she never could slow down. “. . . boulders coming down the mountain straight at us and I thought we’d be buried but Pedric hit the gas pedal and the Lincoln shot through and the whole mountain came thundering down behind us and when the slide stopped the road was covered with boulders and rocks and there was a pickup on the other side crashed into the mountain and into a big delivery truck lying on its side and the driver was dead and . . .”

“Slow down,” Clyde and Ryan shouted together. Ryan said, “Tell us exactly where you are. Did you call 911? How badly are they hurt? Did you call the CHP? Where . . . ?”

“I called,” Kit said. “They took Lucinda and Pedric away and Pedric’s head was bleeding and Lucinda was conscious sometimes but then she’d fade and I think her shoulder is broken and the medics took them in the ambulance and I was afraid to hide in there because if they found me they’d take me to the pound and take the phone away and I could never call you to say where I was and if I couldn’t work the lock on the cage . . .”

“Stop!” they both yelled. “Where?” Ryan said patiently. “Where are you, Kit?”

“Somewhere north of Santa Cruz but south of Mindy’s Seafood where we had dinner. When the tractor gets here and starts moving the boulders . . .” She wanted to say, I won’t be able to yowl and cry out to you, there are coyotes up here and owls who can hear everything. She wanted to say, When I’m up in the woods I’ll be scared to make a sound. She said, “Can you bring Rock? To track me? Joe can find me, but Rock’s bigger and . . . and there are coyotes and I love you both but humans are no good at scenting . . .” And she prayed that, this one time, no one was listening in on her call.

“We’ll bring Rock,” Clyde said. “We’re leaving now. Be there in an hour or less, with luck. Please, my dear, keep safe.”

Kit hit the end button, feeling small and helpless. She wasn’t a skittish cat, she’d spent plenty of black nights prowling the dark hills above Molena Point and farther away than that, hunting and slaughtering her own hapless prey, but tonight the wreck and her fear for her injured housemates, and then the hungry cry of the coyotes, had taken the starch right out of her. She thought about her big red tomcat traveling all alone down this very coast, making his way from Oregon down into central California, Pan traveled all that way and he wasn’t scared, so why should I be? But she was. Tonight she was afraid.

Pan had come to Molena Point following little Tessa Kraft, nearly a year after Tessa’s father threw the red tomcat out of the house. Tessa’s mother didn’t want him, either, she didn’t like cats. Pan hadn’t returned, but he had watched the household. He knew when Debbie Kraft moved to Molena Point, and he followed the family, tracking his little girl and, as well, looking for his own father.

He could only guess that Misto, when he vanished from Eugene in his old age, might have returned to the shore of his kittenhood where he’d grown up among a feral band of ordinary cats; no other speaking cat among them, that Pan knew of, but the place was Misto’s kittenhood home. And Pan had been right, he had found the old yellow tomcat there, and he had found Tessa. And he found me, Kit thought. That’s where we found each other.

Where is Pan now, right this minute? Could he be thinking of me and know I’m scared, the way he senses me when we’re hunting, the way he knows where I am even when he can’t see me? Or is he crouched in Tessa’s dark bedroom, as he so often is, whispering to her, ready to vanish if her mother comes in?

Pan isn’t scared of Debbie, but if she catches him there’ll be trouble for Tessa. Probably right now he’s whispering away and laughing to himself because Debbie doesn’t have a clue that he’s anywhere near Molena Point. But no matter how Kit tried to distract herself, thinking of Pan, all she could really think about was that she was all alone and scared clear down to her poor, bloodied paws.