Cat on the Scent

2

The slanting rays of the afternoon sun spilled across the meadows of Harry's farm. The hayloft door, wide open, framed a sleeping Mrs. Murphy, flopped on her back, her creamy beige stomach soaking up the sun's warmth. The cat's tail gently rocked from side to side as though floating in a pool of sunlight.

Simon the possum, curled in a gray ball, slept at the mouth of his nest made from old hay bales. A worn curb chain glittered from the recess of his den. Simon liked to carry off shiny objects, ribbons, gloves, even old pieces of newspaper.

Below, in the barn's center aisle, Tucker snoozed. Each time she exhaled, a tiny knot of no-see-ums swirled up, then settled down again on her shoulders.

May, usually the best month in central Virginia, along with colorful Octobers, remained unusually cool this year, the temperature staying in the fifties and low sixties. One week earlier, the last of April, a snowstorm had roared down the Blue Ridge Mountains, covering the swelling buds and freezing the daffodils and tulips. All that was forgotten as redbuds bloomed and dogwoods began to open, lush white or pink. The grass turned green.

This afternoon the animals couldn't keep their eyes open. Sometimes an abrupt change of season could do that, wreaking havoc with everyone's rhythm. Even Harry, that engine of productivity, dozed in the tack room. She had every intention of stripping and dipping her tack, a monotonous task reserved for the change of seasons. Harry had gotten up that morning in an organizing mood but she had fallen asleep before she had even broken down the bridle.

Alone—if one counts being divorced but having your ex much in evidence as “alone”—Harry ran the small farm bequeathed to her by her deceased parents. Farming, difficult these days because of government regulation, made enough money to cover the taxes on the place. She relied on her job at the Crozet Post Office to feed and clothe herself.

In her thirties, Harry was oblivious to her charms. Her one concession to the rigors of feminine display was a good haircut. She lived in jeans, T-shirts, and cowboy boots. She even wore her cowboy boots to work. Since the Crozet Post Office was such a small, out-of-the-way place, she need not dress for success.

In fact, Harry measured success by laughter, not by money. She was extremely successful. If she wasn't laughing with other humans she was laughing with Mrs. Murphy, wit personified, Tucker, or Pewter, the cat who came to dinner.

Pewter, curled in Harry's lap, dreamed of crème brûlée. Other cats dreamed of mice, moles, birds, the occasional spider. Pewter conjured up images of beef Wellington, mashed potatoes, fresh buttered bread, and her favorite food on earth, crème brûlée. She liked the crust thin and crunchy.

In the distance a low purr caused Mrs. Murphy to flick her ear in that direction. The marvelous sound came nearer. She opened one eye, casting her gaze down the long dirt road dotted with puddles of water from last night's rain. She stretched but didn't rise.

The throaty roar sounded like a big cat staking out territory. She heard the distinctive crushing sound of tires on Number 5 gravel. Curious, she half raised her head, then pushed herself up, stretching fore and aft, blinking in the sunlight.

Pewter lifted her head as well.

Tucker remained dead to the world.

Mrs. Murphy squinted to catch sight of a gleaming black car rounding the far turn.

“Company's coming.”

No one below paid attention. She leaned forward, sticking her head out the second-story space as Harry's nearest neighbor, Blair Bainbridge, cruised into the driveway behind the wheel of a black wide-body Porsche 911 Turbo.

Tucker barked. Mrs. Murphy laughed to herself—“Dogs!”—as she sauntered over to the ladder. She excelled at climbing ladders and at descending them. The latter took longer to learn. The trick was not to look down.

She scampered across the dusty center aisle and out to Blair. Harry woke up with Pewter licking her face. Tucker, sniffling about interrupted sleep, emerged into the sunlight.

“Hello, Mrs. Murphy.” Blair grinned.

“Hello.” She rubbed against his leg.

“Anybody home?” Blair called out.

“Be there in a minute,” a foggy Harry replied.

The tiger cat walked around the low-bodied, sleek machine. “A cat designed this.”

“Why?” Tucker viewed the car without much enthusiasm, but Tucker never had much enthusiasm when awakened.

“Because it's beautiful and powerful.”

“You don't like yourself much, do you?”

Harry walked out, then stopped abruptly. “Beautiful!”

“Just delivered.” Blair leaned against the sloping front fender. “Makes all the crap I do worthwhile.”

“Modeling can't be that bad.”

“Can't be that good. It's not . . .”—he paused—“connected. It's superficial.” He waved his hand dismissively. “And sooner or later I'll be considered over-the-hill. It's ruthless that way.”

“I don't know. You're too hard on yourself. Anyway, it got you this. I don't think I've ever seen anything so beautiful. Not even the Aston Martin Volante.”

“You like Aston Martins?” His dark eyebrows rose.

“Love 'em. Not as much as horses, but I love them. The Volante is a sleek car, but you need the mechanic to go with it. This is more reliable.”

“German.”

“There is that.” She smiled.

“Would you like a ride?”

“I thought you'd never ask.” She spoke to the two cats and dog. “Hold down the fort.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mrs. Murphy grumbled. “I think we should all go for a ride.”

“No room,” Tucker sensibly noted.

“I don't take up much room—unlike you.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” Mrs. Murphy raised her tail straight up, sashaying toward the house as Blair backed out. Mrs. Murphy thought the baritone perfect, not too deep, yet velvety.

“Only one hundred Turbos made for the U.S. market each year,” Blair said as he straightened out the wheel.

Pewter waddled toward the house. She gave the $110,000 internal-combustion machine barely a look. “Don't go so fast,” she chided her cohort.

To torment her, the tiger cat bounded gracefully onto the screened-in porch, pawing open the unlatched screen door.

“I hate her,” Pewter muttered.

“Me, too.” Tucker walked alongside the gray cat. “The biggest show-off since P.T. Barnum.”

“I heard that.”

“We don't care,” Tucker replied.

“You're bored.” Mrs. Murphy ducked through the doggie door in the kitchen.

“Did she say I was boring?”

“No, Pewter, she said we were bored.”

“Nothing ever happens in May.”

Mrs. Murphy stuck her head out the magnetic-flap door. “Blair Bainbridge bought a Porsche Turbo. I count that as an important event.”

Pewter and Tucker, walking more briskly, reached the screen door. The corgi sat while the cat opened it.

“That doesn't count.” Pewter flung open the door.

Mrs. Murphy ducked back into the kitchen. Pewter dashed through the animal door first.

“What would you like to happen?” Mrs. Murphy inquired.

“A meat truck turns over in front of the post office.” Tucker wagged her nonexistent tail.

“Remember the Halloween when the human head turned up in a pumpkin?” Pewter's pupils widened.

“Yech!” Mrs. Murphy recalled the grisly event that happened a few years back.

“Yech? I found it. You didn't.”

“I don't like to think about it.” Mrs. Murphy fastidiously licked the sides of her front paws, then swept them over her face.

She noticed the side of the barn facing north, the broad, flat side where the paint was peeling. A painted ad for Coca-Cola, black background underneath, peeled out in parts.

“Funny.”

“What?” Pewter leaned over to groom her friend, whom she loved even though Mrs. Murphy often irritated her.

“How the past is bursting through—all around us. That old Coke sign—bet it was painted on the barn in the 1920s or '30s. The past bursts through the present.”

“Dead and gone,” Tucker laconically said.

“The past is never dead.”

“Well, maybe not for you. You have nine lives.”

“Ha-ha.” Mrs. Murphy turned her nose up.

“I bet the past wasn't as boring as today,” Pewter moaned.

“Things will pick up,” Tucker advised.

Truer words were never spoken.