Cat Playing Cupid

40

IN THE ALLEYWAY of the Harper stable, Kit and Sage sat side by side on a bale of hay watching Charlie saddle the buckskin gelding. It was two weeks since Sage had run away into the woods, more than three since Willow had first taken him to Charlie. His cast had been removed, and he sat up straight and alert. Dr. Firetti had told him he could go home, but must take it easy. He said Sage had healed quickly despite the trauma of his second accident. Almost, Charlie thought, smiling, as if his need to be away from closed rooms and humans had driven him to a fast recovery.

Though now, despite his eagerness for the open hills and freedom, the young tom looked up suspiciously at Bucky, understandably wary of making this journey on horseback. He had insisted he could go on his own, but Firetti disagreed.

Charlie was taking Bucky because he was reliable and steady. Her own sorrel mare was moodier, and liked to shy at the swift, small shadows they might encounter. Redwing was sure to snort and sidestep if the clowder cats came slipping around them through the woods.

Cinching up her western saddle, which she preferred when the cats rode with her, she looked over at Sage. "How will we find them, Sage? The clowder could be anywhere."

"They have favorite places," Sage said. "You can call out and if they see me, I think they'll come-Willow will come."

Charlie doubted that would have been true while Stone Eye was alive. She led Bucky forward to make him let out the air he always hoarded, tightened the cinch again, and tied her jacket across the saddle, snugged up against the horn to make a little pillow. Picking up Kit, she settled her there, then eased Sage down beside her.

Swinging up, she headed Bucky out behind the barn and into the woods. The last time she'd entered these woods, it had been black night. She thought of the coyotes, and shivered.

But this morning was bright and crisp, and the only movement ahead was shadows shifting from the blowing trees. Beneath Bucky's hooves, the earth smelled loamy and rich. Heading through the dense stands of oaks and pines, Charlie had no idea, when they found the clowder, what Kit would do. No idea whether the tortoiseshell would stay with Sage and become his mate, as he wanted, or would return to Lucinda and Pedric. Kit had told Charlie nothing. But if Kit remained in the wild, racing off with the clowder to vanish among the hills, she would break Lucinda's and Pedric's hearts.

Kit hadn't said good-bye to the Greenlaws. When Charlie asked her why, she wouldn't talk about it.

As they emerged from the woods onto the open hills that rose vast and green above them, Sage's small body went rigid with anticipation. Charlie held him securely as Bucky made his way up through the tall grass toward the high woods.

Within an hour they were on the little trail that led along the edge of the cliff between the pine woods and the sea. Far below, the sea crashed against the rocks, foaming and pounding, stirring the smell of iodine. Then, when at last they turned away from the sea into the woods, the smell of new spring grass came sharply again, crushed under Bucky's hooves. Nothing stirred among the woods; no bright eyes watching them, no shadow of a cat, not even a tail-flicking squirrel. She urged Bucky in deep among the trees, then pulled him up, letting him snatch at mouthfuls of grass though Max wouldn't have allowed him to do that. Around them the woods were silent. Snuggled before her in the saddle, the cats looked and looked, but they saw none of the clowder. Kit, leaping down into the carpet of leaves, began to search for scent. Sage crouched to follow, but Charlie held him back.

"You don't want to jump so far on that newly healed leg." She looked down at the pale-colored tom. "You'll be taking care of yourself now. You'd better do what the doctor said, Sage. If you give that leg time to heal fully, it will grow strong again. Otherwise, you'll cripple yourself. You don't want to live all your life lame, unable to run or hunt properly."

Sage scowled deeply at her. He'd had enough of being bossed by humans. But then, he'd had enough, too, of being crippled by the cast, and he remained obediently still.

They watched Kit circle where the clowder had often sheltered at night when she had run with them, the dense stand of blackberry brambles offering a safe haven from predators. Working in ever widening circles, Kit stopped suddenly and reared up, looking around her.

"They were here," she said. "Call them, Charlie. Call Willow."

Softly Charlie called. And warily she watched the woods, hoping some unseen hiker wouldn't emerge and wonder what she was doing. Again she called, and again.

"Louder," Kit told her. "Call louder."

She called, watching the dappled sun and shadows beneath the blowing pines. Every shape seemed to change and move in the shifting light, yet nothing really moved at all.

She called three times, then three times more. Bucky pulled at the reins, reaching to snatch at the sparse grass. Her voice, out of place in the silence, seemed to her a rude invasion of the wild woods. She was answered only by silence, and by the distant crash of water breaking against the cliff. Below her, Kit stood up on her hind legs again, like a little rabbit, watching the woods and listening. But when Kit looked up at her, Charlie couldn't read the expression in the tortoiseshell's yellow eyes. Agitated. Unsettled. A look that could mean anything.

When after a quarter of an hour there had been no response, no faint and distant mewl, no stealthy shadow approaching through the blowing-tree shadows, Charlie said, "I don't think they hear us. Can you track them away from the bramble?"

In her lap, Sage fidgeted, wanting down, wanting to search, too, but still she held him. If they had to hurry away from some danger, Kit could leap to the saddle or could vanish as swiftly as a bird. But Sage's weaker leg would slow him, nor should he make a flying leap.

Kit, after a long search nosing into zigzags among the brambles, leaped to the top of an outcropping of granite boulders, a hill of tumbled stones that rose against an oak. There she reared up tall, staring into the treetops. Loudly she mewled, and mewled again. A strange, wild cry that made Charlie shiver; then Sage's voice joined her, their cries eerie in the empty woods.

And suddenly the woods weren't empty. Cats appeared all around them slipping out from among the far trees and from beyond the boulders and descending from the highest branches, down the rough trunks. They paused and stood looking, their ears forward, their tails twitching; none approached too close. Only Willow came to them, trotting up to Bucky.

Quietly Charlie dismounted, holding Sage against her. She knelt before the bleached calico lady, and put Sage down.

Willow licked the young tom's face, then turned to look at the clowder cats. And now all the cats came around them and rubbed against Sage and licked his ears and made over him. But all the while, ready to bolt, they watched Charlie and the big buckskin.

Then Willow's mate appeared, the white tom Cotton, racing out of the far woods, his friend Coyote beside him. The white tom and the dark tabby tom strode forward boldly to inspect Sage.

IT TOOK A while to tell Sage's story. Charlie, sitting on the grass among the cats, told the story alone; Sage and Kit had wandered away. Willow and the two toms sat close to her, listening, the shy clowder cats gathered behind them in a ragged half circle. Like children, Charlie thought, children gathered at story hour, their faces filled with wonder at Sage's ordeal, with amazement as Charlie described the hospital and how Sage had been helped by humans. And, like children, most of the cats believed her but a few did not. These five, their expressions skeptical, turned to look away toward the rock hill where Sage and Kit sat together.

Charlie could see that the two were arguing. She couldn't hear their voices-but with the sudden dropping of ears and lashing of tails, she could clearly read Sage's beseeching, and Kit's short, willful temper, and it was hard to keep her mind on the story. Then Sage reared up as if his patience was at an end, and smacked Kit hard in the face-a businesslike blow that made Charlie catch her breath.

All the cats were watching. Cotton growled, and Willow's surprised intake of breath was followed by her whispered, "Oh, my." And this was the moment of decision. Would Kit stay with him, now that he'd shown some tomcat macho? Was that what she'd been waiting for?