Cat In The Dark

9

AT THREE O'CLOCK on Tuesday morning across the moonlit village nothing stirred, no hush of tires on the damp streets, no rumble of car engines beneath the cloud-veiled moon; the tangle of cottages and shops and sheltering trees was so still the village might have been cast beneath some hoary wizard's hundred-year enchantment. The white walls of Clyde Damen's cottage and its ragged lawn were patterned with the ancient scriptures of tree shadow as still as if frozen in time. But suddenly a shadow broke away, racing across the mottled lawn and up the steps and in through the cat door, his white paws flashing.

Tracking mud across the carpet, Joe Grey trotted through the sleeping house accompanied by comforting and familiar sounds; the creak in the floor as he crossed the hall, Clyde's irregular snoring from the bedroom, and beyond the kitchen door, old Rube gently snuffling his own doggy snores. Joe pictured the Labrador sprawled on the bottom bunk in the laundry, among the tangle of cats, all sleeping deeply. The four household animals had slept thus ever since Barney died, dog and cats crowding together to ease their loneliness for the elderly golden retriever.

Joe missed Barney, too. The old golden had been a clown, always into something, dragging Clyde's Levis and gym equipment all over the house, huffing and growling in the kitchen as he goaded the white cat to knock a pack of cookies off the top of the refrigerator.

Moving swiftly down the hall, Joe's nostrils were filled with the stench of human sleep laced with beer and garlic. Loping across the bedroom's antique rug, he sprang onto the blankets inscribing muddy pawprints, avoiding Clyde's stomach by leaping over his housemate. Kneading the empty pillow, he stretched out across it and began to wash.

Around him, the room was a montage of twisted tree shadows, as dense as if he resided in a jungle-though the thought of jungle irritated him, reminded him of the invading torn. As he washed, Clyde stirred and moaned-and woke, leaning up to stare.

"What the hell are you doing? You're shaking the whole damned bed."

"How could I shake the bed? I was simply washing my face. You're so sensitive."

Clyde snatched up the digital clock. "It's three A.M. I was sound asleep."

"You wouldn't want me to go to sleep unbathed."

"I don't care if you never take a bath-if you call that disgusting licking bathing." Clyde flipped on the bedside lamp, scowling at him.

"My God. I might as well have a platoon of muddy marines marching across the sheets. Can't you wash outside? When I go to bed, I don't drag half the garden in. And I don't do all that stomping and wiggling."

"You have hot and cold running water and a stack of nice thick bath towels. All I have is my poor little cat tongue."

Clyde sighed. "I presume the hunting was successful, by the amount of blood on your face. And by the fact that you are not out in the kitchen banging around clawing open the kibble box, ripping through the entire supply of cat goodies."

"When have I ever done that after a night's hunt? Of course the hunting was successful. Was, in fact, very fine. The full moon, even with clouds streaked across it, makes the rabbits wild.

"It's the lunar pull," Joe told Clyde, giving him a narrow leer. "Oh, the rabbits danced tonight. Spun and danced across the hills as if there wasn't a cat within miles. Lovely rabbits. Such tender little rabbits."

"Please. Spare me your feline sadism."

"What we do is certainly not sadism. We are part of a complicated and essential balance of nature-a part, if you will, of the God-given food chain. An essential link in the necessary…"

Clyde snatched up his pillow and whacked Joe. "Stop talking. Stop washing. Stop shaking the bed. Shut up and lie still and get the hell to sleep."

Joe crawled out from under the pillow, his ears back, his head ducked low, and his bared teeth gleaming sharp as knives.

Clyde drew back, staring at him. "What? What's the matter? I hardly tapped you."

"You didn't tap me. You whacked me. In all our years together, you've never hit me. What's with you? How come you're so irritable?"

"I'm irritable? You're the bad-tempered one-I thought you were going to take my arm off." Clyde peered closer, looking him over. "You and Dulcie have a fight?"

"You're so witty. No we didn't have a fight. I simply don't like being hit. Fun is one thing, but that was real anger. And why would Dulcie and I fight? For your information, I left Dulcie on Ocean Avenue staring in the window of that new Latin American shop, drooling over all that handmade stuff they sell. And why are you so edgy? You and Charlie have a fight?"

"Of course not. She…" Clyde paused, frowning. "Well she was a bit cool."

"And you're taking it out on me. Venting your bad mood on a defenseless little cat. What did you fight about?"

"Nothing. She was just cool. She's been cool ever since Sunday morning. Who knows what's with women?"

"Bernine," Joe said and resumed washing his paws.

"Bernine what?"

Joe shrugged.

"You mean she's in a bad temper because Bernine's staying with Wilma? But why get angry at me?"

"You figure it out. I'm not going to draw pictures for you. I don't suppose you would want to get up and pour me a bowl of milk. I'm incredibly thirsty."

"You're not saying-Charlie's not jealous. Jealous of Bernine Sage?"

"Milk is good for the stomach after a full meal of raw game. A nice chilled drink of milk would ease my mood, and would wash down that cottontail with just the right dietetic balance."

"Why the hell would she be jealous of Bernine? Bernine Sage is nothing-a bimbo, a gold digger. Doesn't Charlie…? Bernine doesn't care about anything but Bernine. What's to be jealous of?"

"If you would keep a bowl of milk in the refrigerator where I can reach it, I wouldn't have to ask. It's demeaning to have to beg. I have no trouble opening the refrigerator, but without fingers and a thumb I really can't manage the milk bottle."

"Please, spare me the details."

"And have a glass yourself-it will help you sleep."

"I was asleep, until you decided to take a bath. And now you want me to get up out of a nice warm bed and freeze my feet on the linoleum, to…"

"Slippers. Put on your slippers. Put on a robe-unless you really enjoy schlepping around the kitchen naked, with the shades up, giving the neighbors a thrill."

"I am not naked. I have on shorts. I am not going to get out of bed. I am not going to go out to the kitchen and wake up the other animals, to pour you a bowl of milk. I can't even describe the rudeness of such a request-all so you can wash down your bloody kill. That is as barbaric as some African headhunter drinking blood and milk. The Watusi or something."

"Masai. They are not headhunters. The Masai are a wise and ancient people. They drink milk mixed with the blood of their cattle to give them strength. It is an important Masai ritual, a meaningful and religious experience. They know that milk is nourishing to the soul as well as to the body of a tired hunter. And if you want to talk disgusting, what about those Sugar Puffs or Honey Pops or whatever you eat for breakfast with all that pyridoxine hydrochloride and palmitate, to name just a few foreign substances. You think that's not putting strange tilings in your stomach?" Joe kneaded the pillow; its springy softness gave him the same sense of security he had known in kittenhood kneading at his mother's warm belly. "There's a fresh half-gallon of milk in the refrigerator, whole milk."

Clyde sighed, rose, and began to search for his slippers. Joe watched him for a moment then galloped along past him to the kitchen.

And as Joe drank milk out of his favorite bowl, which Clyde had placed on the breakfast table, and below him on the floor the other animals slurped up their own hastily supplied treats, Clyde sat at the table drinking cold coffee left over from the morning before.

"I hope you killed that rabbit quickly and didn't tease it. I don't like to think of you and Dulcie tormenting…" Clyde shook his head. "For two intelligent beings, you really ought to show more restraint. What good is it to be sentient, to be master of a culturally advanced language, and, supposedly, of advanced thought patterns, and still act like barbarians?"

"The rabbit died quickly. Dulcie broke its neck. Does that make you happy? It was a big buck-a huge buck, maybe the granddaddy of rabbits. It clawed her in the belly, too. For your information, a rabbit can be as vicious as a Doberman when you…"

"Wouldn't you be vicious if someone was trying to flay you for supper?"

"We're cats. We're hunters. God put rabbits on the earth for cats to hunt-it's what we do. You want we should go on food stamps?"

Finished with his milk, he dropped to the cold linoleum, Clyde turned off the light, and they trucked back to bed again. But, getting settled, clawing his side of the blanket into a satisfactory nest, Joe began to worry about Dulcie.

When he had left her in the village, not an hour before, he thought he glimpsed a shadow moving across the rooftops. Probably a raccoon or possum had climbed to the rooftops to scavenge bird's nests. And even if it had been Azrael, Dulcie would be in control; she was quite capable of bloodying Azrael if he got fresh.

Or, he hoped she was.

The moon's light cast the sidewalk and shops into a labyrinth of confusing shadows, but the street seemed empty, and Dulcie heard no sound, nor had noticed anything moving except, high above her, the little bats darting and squeaking. Her attention was centered on the shop window against which she stood, her paws pressed to the glass, the bright colors of weavings and carvings and clay figures softly illuminated into a rainbow of brilliance. Oh, the bright art drew her. Pushing her nose against the pane, she sniffed the exotic scents that seeped through, aromas no human would detect; the faint drift of sour foreign dyes, of rare woods and leathers, the heavy stink of sheep fat from the handmade wool rugs and blankets. Studying the bold Colombian and Peruvian patterns, she thought that their strange-looking horses and deer and cats were closer akin to mythological animals than to real beasts.

Closer akin to me, she thought.

The notion startled her, shocked her, made her shiver.

The idea must have been playing on her mind without realizing, from the myths she had read-the notion that she was strange and out of sync with the world.

It isn't so. I am real flesh and blood, not some weird mythical beast. I am only different.

Just a little bit different.

And stubbornly she returned her attention to the bright and foreign wares.

She had, coming down the street, paused at each shop to stand on her hind paws and stare in, admiring handprinted silk blouses and cashmere sweaters and handmade silver jewelry, her hunger for those lovely embellishments making her purr and purr with longing.

Now, dropping to all fours, she slipped into the garden that ran beside the shop and trotted along to the back, staring up at the transom above the back door.

She did not intend to steal-as she had, in the past, stolen silky garments from her neighbors. She meant only to get nearer the lovely wares, to sniff and feel and enjoy.

Swarming up a purple-blooming bougainvillea vine that climbed the shop wall, forcing up between its tangle of rough, woody limbs, she clung above the back door, clawing at the narrow transom until the hinged window dropped inward. It stopped halfway, held by a chain.

Crawling through on the slanted glass, she jumped down to a stack of packing crates, then to the floor.

She was in the shop's storeroom. It smelled of packing straw and the sour scent of the raw mahogany crates that had been shipped from South America.

Trotting into the big showroom, she was surrounded by primitive weavings and carvings and paintings, was immersed in a gallery of the exotic, every tabletop and display case filled with unusual treasures. Leaping to a counter, she nosed at straw figures and clay beasts, at painted wooden animals and medieval-looking iron wall hangings and applique pictures made from tiny bits of cloth. Lying down on a stack of wool sweaters as soft as the down of a baby bird, she rolled luxuriously, purring and humming a happy, half-cat, half-human song of delight.

It had been a long time since she'd coveted anything so fiercely as these lovely creations.

Choosing the softest sweater, a medley of rust and cream and black that complemented her own tabby coat, she forgot her good intentions. Dragging it between her front paws-like a leopard dragging an antelope-she headed across the floor to the storeroom. There she gazed up toward the high window, her head swimming with the heady pleasure of taking, all for herself, something so beautiful. She was crouched to leap when a sharp thud made her spin around, bristling.

She could smell him before she saw him. In the inky gloom, he was a whisper of black on black, his amber eyes gleaming, watching her. Sauntering out of the darkness, he smiled with smug superiority. "What have you stolen, my dear?"

She crouched, glaring.

"My, my. Would you report me and Greeley to the police, when you're nothing but a thief yourself? Tell me, Dulcie, where are you taking that lovely vicuna sweater?"

"I'm taking it to nap on it," she lied, "in the storeroom, away from the display lights. Is there a law against that?"

The tomcat sat down, cutting her a wicked smile. "You don't steal, my dear? You have never stolen from, say, your neighbors? Never slipped into their houses and carried away silk underwear, never stolen a black silk stocking or a lace teddy?"

Her heart pounded; if she had been human, her face would have flamed red.

"My dear Dulcie, I know all about your little escapades. About the box that your Wilma Getz keeps on her back porch so the neighbors can retrieve their stolen clothes, about Mr. Warren's chamois gloves that were a present from his wife, about Wilma's own expensive watch that was 'lost' under the bathtub for nearly a year."

She watched him narrowly. Where had he heard such things? All her neighbors knew, but… Mavity. It had to be Mavity-she could have heard it anywhere. She'd probably told that cute little story to Greeley, having no idea she would hurt Dulcie.

"Mavity thinks you're charming," Azrael told her, "dragging home the neighbor's underwear."

The tomcat twitched his whiskers. "And Greeley, of course, was most fascinated by your display of, shall we say, perspicacity and guile."

He looked up to the shelves above them, drawing her gaze to a row of ugly black carvings. "Those figures up there, my dear, those ugly little feathered men-you do know that those are voodoo dolls?"

"So?"

"That dark voodoo magic is of great importance." His smile was oily.

"It is that kind of darkness in you, Dulcie, that entices you to steal. Oh, yes, my dear, we are alike in that.

"You know the tales of the black cat," he said softly, "of the witch's familiar. Those are the tales of the dark within us-that is the darkness that invites the joy of thieving, my dear. That is the darkness speaking within your nature."

She had backed away from him, her paw raised to slash him, but his golden eyes held her, his pupils huge and black, his purring voice drawing her, enticing her.

"You and I, Dulcie, we belong to the dark. Such magic and passion are rare, are to be treasured.

"Oh, yes, the dark ways call to you, sweet tabby. The dark, voodoo ways." He narrowed his eyes, his purr rumbling. "Voodoo magic. Black magic. Shall I say the spells for you, the dark spells? The magic so dear to your jungle brothers? Come, my Dulcie…" and he slid close against her, making her tremble.

She spun away from him hissing and crouched to leap to the transom, but he blocked her way. She fled into the showroom. He followed.

"In the jungle, my dear, the voodoo witches make dark enchantments, such exotic and exciting spells-spells to sicken and waste your enemies-and love spells, my dear…"

She leaped away but he was there pressing against her. When she lashed out at him, his topaz eyes burned with amusement and his black tail described a measured dance.

"My dark powers fascinate you, sweet Dulcie. My cunning is human cunning, but beneath my black fur, my skin is marked by the spots of the jungle cat.

"I have teased jungle dragons as big as two men and have come away unscathed. I have hunted among constrictors twenty feet long, have dodged snakes so huge they could swallow a dozen cats." And the tomcat's words and his steamy gaze filled her with visions she didn't want.

"I have hunted in the mangrove trees, dodging hairy beasts with the faces of ghosts, creatures that hang upside down among the branches, their curving claws reaching as sharp as butcher knives, their coats swarming with vermin." The black torn purred deep in his throat. "I have witnessed human voodoo rites where an image of Christ is painted with goat's blood and common cats are skinned alive, their innards…"

"Stop it!" She twisted away, leaping to the top of a cabinet- but again he was beside her, his eyes wild, her distress exciting him. "Come run with me, Dulcie of the laughing eyes. Come with me down the shore under the full moon. Come where the marsh birds nest, where we can suck bird's eggs and eat the soft, sweet baby birds, where we can haze the bedraggled stray cats that cower beneath the docks, the starving common cats that crouch mute beneath the pier. Come, sweet Dulcie…"

His words, frightening and cruel, stirred a wildness in her, and the torn pressed her down, began to lick her ear. "Come with me, sweet Dulcie, before the moon is gone. Come now while the night is on us." His voice was soft, beguiling, dizzying her.

She raked him hard across the nose and leaped away, knocking sweaters to the floor, tipping a tall wooden man that fell with a crash behind her as she fled through the storeroom and up the pile of crates and out the transom.

Dropping down the vine to the mist-damp sidewalk, she fled up the side lane and across Eighth, across Seventh and then Ocean past the darkened, empty shops, never looking back, her heart pounding so hard she couldn't have heard a dozen beasts chasing her, certainly couldn't have heard the soft padding of Azrael's swift pursuit.

But when, stopping in the shadow of a car, she crouched to look behind her, the sidewalk and street were empty. Above her, along the rooftops, nothing moved.

What had happened to her back there? Despite her anger, she had been nearly lost in a cocoon of dark desire.

Pheromones, she told herself. Nothing but a chemical reaction. His sooty ways have nothing to do with real life.

Shaken with repugnance at herself, she spun away again racing for home, speeding past the closed shops and at last hitting her own street, storming across Wilma's garden, trampling the flowers, up the back steps and in through her cat door, terrified of the dark stranger and terrified of herself.

Crouching on the linoleum, she watched her door swinging back and forth, unable to shake the notion that he would come charging through.

But after a long time when the plastic door grew still and remained pale, without any looming shadow, she tried to calm herself, washing and smoothing her ruffled fur and licking at her sweating paws.

She felt bruised with shame. She had for one long moment abandoned Joe Grey-for one moment abandoned the bright clarity of life and slipped toward something dark, something rancid with evil.

Azrael's twisted ways were not her ways.

She was not an ignorant, simple beast to whom a dalliance with Azrael would be of no importance. She was sentient; she and Joe Grey bore within themselves a rare and wonderful gift. With human intelligence came judgment. And with judgment came commitment, an eternal and steely obligation and joy from which one did not turn away.

In her gullible and foolish desire, she had nearly breeched that commitment.

There would never be another like Joe Grey, another who touched her with Joe's sweet magic. She and Joe belonged to each other; their souls were forever linked. How could she have warmed, for the merest instant, to Azrael's evil charms?

Pheromones, she told herself, and defiantly she stared at her cat door ready to destroy any intruder.