Cat Playing Cupid

6

AFTER THE BLOODLETTING, as Joe Grey thought of his stress-filled donation of vital bodily fluids, the tomcat lay safely on the couch in Dr. Firetti's private office snuggled among Dulcie, Kit, and Charlie, listening to the doctor's voice from the surgery and the occasional sound of instruments clicking against the metal table-and thanking the great cat god that he was out of there.

"How did it go?" Charlie said, gently stroking him. "You seem a bit pale."

Joe glared up at her. "How can a cat look pale? You can see beneath my fur?"

"Your expression is pale. Wan," she said. "Inside your ears is pale."

In truth, he felt pale. Felt wiped out. His paws were still sweaty, and he could still feel the cold metal table under him, where he'd lain half blinded by the harsh hospital lights reflecting off the table and the bright metal instruments and glass tubes; he could still feel that huge needle going into his little cat vein-he'd tried to be macho when his foreleg was shaved, his sleek gray fur stripped away to pale, naked skin and blue veins and then that huge needle was plunged deep in and his lifeblood drawn from his body into a syringe big enough to bleed a cart horse.

How could a heretofore kind and caring doctor cold-heartedly remove all his life-sustaining juices? As Firetti had drawn the plunger back farther and farther, extracting more blood than any cat could have inside him, Joe had resisted a terrible urge to claw and tear at the doctor. In fact, though, with the needle in him, he'd been afraid to move at all and cause himself further damage-but then, when he'd glanced across at Kit expecting to see her trembling and cowering, what he saw had shattered him.

There she lay on the next table, calmly purring while she was shaved and the needle was inserted and her blood burbled out into the vial. Purring. As mindlessly relaxed as a stuffed teddy bear-her cool nonchalance had left him furious and shamefully embarrassed.

The fact that Firetti had said he'd take less than sixty cc's had no meaning for Joe. And it wasn't Firetti's blood.

At least Dulcie hadn't seen his cowardice, she hadn't been in the operating room; she'd been out here with Charlie lounging in Dr. Firetti's office, supplied with catnip, a bowl of turkey tetrazzini gourmet cat food, a cuddle toy, and a soft blanket.

Now, listening to Firetti's and his assistant's voices resonating softly from beyond the closed door against the harsh sounds of metal on metal, he pictured scalpels and other sharp cutting instruments, and he felt sick and hurting for poor Sage-every alarming TV show he'd ever seen featuring veterinary surgery came back to him. Why had he ever watched that stuff? He vowed never to watch again. He was glad Clyde and Ryan's taste in TV ran to turning off the set and snuggling before the fire or opening a good book. Beside him, Charlie was still fussing over him, stroking him way too gently.

"You want more custard, Joe, to get your strength back?"

"I've had three."

"I expect Kit seemed braver," Charlie said, as if reading his mind. "I expect she seemed more stoic in the matter of blood and needles?"

Joe stared coldly up at her.

"Human males are the same," Charlie said. "It's in the genes, that sudden weakness at the sight of blood."

"Cops can handle blood," Joe said irritably, wishing she'd mind her own business.

"Cops get used to it early, they have to. Anyway, you don't shrink from mouse blood."

"Mouse blood is not my blood."

Beside him, Kit had begun to squirm, as nervous as a rat on a hot stove, pawing the blanket one minute and deadly still the next. She didn't take her eyes from the inner door to the surgery. Her tortoiseshell ears were sharply forward, picking up every faint sound, her whole being focused on the young tomcat lying in there under the knife. Joe had seldom seen her so distressed; he watched her uneasily.

"You and Sage were kittens together?" he asked.

"Ever since my momma abandoned me where the clowder roamed. I remember her taking me there, carrying me by the nape of my neck swinging and jiggling through the tall grass. She laid me where the clowder would find me then she went away again and I think she was sick. I guess she died," Kit said sadly. "I followed the clowder, but they kept chasing me away. Sage was little, too, but he was Stone Eye's nephew, he belonged with them. I was an outsider, they didn't want me. Stone Eye didn't want me, and they all did as he told them. He didn't want any kittens besides his own. Sage was the only one who liked me, and he would sneak away to be with me. I was terrified of Stone Eye, but I needed to stay with them, I was only small and I needed the safety of that big band of cats. I didn't know how to hunt, and there were foxes and raccoons and coyotes in the hills.

"Sage stood up for me against the other young cats, and then one day Stone Eye mauled him real bad for being my friend. You can feel the scars under his fur."

She pricked up her ears at a new sound from the surgery, as if a table had been rolled across the room. Then all was still except the doctor's voice, too soft to understand.

Charlie said, "What happened after Stone Eye mauled Sage?"

"After that, Sage didn't fight for me anymore, but he still slipped away so we could be together. He helped me hide from the others and sometimes he'd lead the bullies away. And he brought me scraps from a kill or a garbage dump."

Kit frowned, her ears back, her whiskers flattening against her cheeks. "But still he thought Stone Eye was a good leader. He said we needed to be ruled by a strong paw. I never understood that, I never believed it had to be a cruel paw. When I got older, we argued a lot," Kit said, staring worriedly toward the closed door.

"Sage wouldn't run away from the clowder when I did, when I found Lucinda and Pedric up on Hellhag Hill and knew we were meant to be together. He was afraid to leave the clowder, he said only Stone Eye could protect us. He didn't trust Lucinda and Pedric, he had no faith in humans. I'm surprised he let you touch him, Charlie."

"He had no choice," Charlie said. "He was too hurt and weak to run. And Willow was right there, telling him to be still."

Joe looked at Kit for a long time, wondering. Earlier, when Charlie had first carried her into the surgery, when she'd first seen Sage, she had looked sick with fear for him, had let out a wailing mewl of shock and distress at how broken and weak he was. Even after they'd had their legs shaved and blood drawn for Sage, and Dr. Firetti had carried them in here to his office and to Charlie, Kit had been so filled with pain for Sage, it seemed her little cat heart would break-and yet there was this difference between them, which so deeply bothered Kit, Sage bowing to the tyrant's oppression while Kit defied such bullying.

IT WAS MORE than an hour later when Dr. Firetti came out of the surgery wearing a clean lab coat and smelling of hand soap, and sat down to talk with them. Charlie, having left Joe and Dulcie and Kit in the office for a few minutes, had returned with her aunt Wilma. Dulcie's housemate, dressed in jeans and a red cashmere sweater, her gray hair tied back with a red cloisonné clip, sat now at the other end of the couch, holding Kit on her lap as Kit licked up a bowl of rich chicken soup. Dulcie lay behind Wilma along the back of the couch, her head on Wilma's shoulder.

Knowing the cats would be weak and emotionally wrung out after giving blood, Wilma had brought a thermos of canned soup, quickly warmed in Clyde's kitchen, and an array of party food from the buffet. Joe, at the other end of the couch, was gulping his share of shrimp canapés and little ham rolls stuffed with an assortment of cheeses, all therapeutic, of course.

"Sage did very well," Dr. Firetti said, "and is resting comfortably." Charlie smiled at the reassuring words used by most doctors. "The femur was broken in three places, so I've put in a metal plate, which is our best chance for sound healing. And I've put a pin in the one break in the tibia."

Charlie shivered. "Will he use the leg again?"

"I'm hoping he will, that it will heal as strong as it ever was. All we can do now is keep him quiet, care for him. And pray," Firetti said. "I want to keep him for a few days, to watch him. Then, Wilma, you're taking him home with you? That's closest," he said, "in case you need me at odd hours."

Charlie said, "I'll have to tell the Greenlaws that you know about the cats. And we'll have to tell Clyde and Ryan."

Firetti nodded. "Then Ryan knows, too?"

"She figured it out for herself," Charlie said. "It's a good thing she did."

Dr. Firetti laughed. "That would be an impossible situation after they're married, if Joe couldn't talk in his own house."

Joe looked at the doctor with more warmth, assessing this man who had, for all these years, known their secret and never said a word. "No one," Joe pointed out, "seems worried that I'll hold my own with those two. Ryan Flannery can be just as stubborn and smart-mouthed as Clyde."

Firetti smiled. "I wasn't worried about you, Joe. I don't think you'll have a problem."

Joe just looked at him.

"You've done all right keeping your investigations secret, holding your own with the law."

All five stared at Firetti. Wilma said, "You knew this, too? The police part?"

Firetti nodded. "It took me a while to figure that out. But I've known about the cats since long before Dulcie was born, Wilma. I was doctor to her mother.

"My father, when I was a boy, years before I grew up and went off to school and then joined the practice…he treated several generations of speaking cats. When I was about ten, a Molena Point woman married a Welshman and they resettled in the states, in Molena Point, near her family. They brought with them four pairs of speaking cats.

"They planned to breed and sell them, but of course they didn't tell the cats this. When two grew very ill, they were forced to find medical care, and they came to my dad. The way those cats responded to medication he found very strange-it took him a long time to treat them, they had lymphadenitis, but they didn't respond well to penicillin. He brought them through, but their reactions puzzled him.

"He had read tales of unnatural cats in parts of Wales and Ireland, and now, when he researched the matter, he began to suspect there might be some truth in the stories, as impossible as they seemed.

"And then, when he examined the cats' blood, he found it was not like any known type, not A or B, not AB. And of course it was not like any of the several subtypes, which were discovered more recently. AB is, in itself, extremely rare, but this blood was none of those, it was different. Confronted with this irrefutable fact, he began to believe the tales.

"He could find no medical reference to help him, not even the newest, ongoing studies-no medical research even in the British Isles, where he thought there might be more such cats. Either no other speaking cat had ever been in a veterinarian's office, at least with an illness that would stir curiosity, or any other doctor who had known the truth had kept it secret.

"Of course, his investigations were done quietly, he daren't tell anyone what he suspected. He could ask no doctor or medical facility for any kind of help, he had only the myths and folk tales-and the unrecorded blood type.

"At one point, he was inclined to diagnose himself with mental derangement, was convinced he'd lost his grip on reality. He grew so upset that my mother intervened. In her direct way, she went right to the cats.

"When two cats were brought into the clinic for nail trimming and shots, she insisted they speak to her, and she told them why. She explained how upset the doctor was, and how carefully he had kept their secret. At last one of them did speak."

Firetti smiled. "She was determined the young cat would answer her. But when he did, the experience left her deeply shaken. The cats told her that the Welsh couple, in order to get them to travel willingly, had promised that in America people would treat them like gods, that they would live pampered lives, would enjoy total freedom to come and go as they chose, and would enjoy, as well, all manner of fine foods and luxuries.

"When they arrived in the village, the couple kept them inside the house, saying they must wait until the time was right to announce themselves to the public. The cats were here, and so far were being treated well enough, though nothing like they'd been promised.

"But after many months of being shut in, they grew restless and morose, and determined to leave that place.

"They found the door and window locks a kind impossible for a cat to open. They grew more and more worried, they ceased to trust the couple, and soon they would not speak unless they were tormented and forced to.

"Then the couple sold two pairs. The other four cats were enraged, there had been no talk of selling them like common beasts. The buyers lived in the village, and when one pair of cats had kittens, which is rather rare, the buyers in turn sold them. When the cats in the Welsh house learned this, that they were indeed being treated like livestock, they wanted only to get away.

"They tipped a bookshelf over against a window, breaking the glass, and escaped. They searched for their friends, were at last able to find the four, they freed them.

"One of their descendents was your mother, Dulcie. She remained with Genelle Yardley all her life. You were born on Genelle's bed. You were the only one of the small litter that would grow up to speak." He looked from Dulcie to Wilma, then stroked Dulcie. "Genelle felt certain, when Wilma took you home to be her kitten, that if and when you did speak, Wilma was the kind of person who would guard your secret.

"But years earlier, when the captive cats were all free, they headed up into the open hills, where they soon found the lush acreage of the Pamillon Estate. The property was beautiful then, with vast gardens, flowering bushes and trees among which to hide, and there they took shelter. There were several branches of the Pamillon family living there then, in the mansion and in several guest cottages that have since become uninhabitable.

"The cats lived on the estate through several generations, and they were fed and loved by the Pamillons. My father doubted anyone knew the truth about them, doubted the cats ever spoke to anyone. But there was one daughter, Olivia, who seemed especially fond of her cats, and he wondered sometimes about her.

"I was in my second year at Davis when the Pamillons undertook some repairs and remodeling of the estate. It may have been then that most of the cats moved away, into the farther hills-there were fewer and fewer visits from the Pamillons for shots or to treat an occasional illness.

"And then, at about that time, there was some kind of dissent within the family, and gradually the extended family, aunts and uncles and their children, moved away and seemed to lose interest in the property. Olivia remained, living as a recluse in just a few rooms. She stayed active in the village for a long time, but then as she grew older she fired gardeners and housekeepers and maintenance people, and let the estate fall into disrepair. There were two cats she would bring to me for shots, but I felt sure the rest had moved on."

"Maybe," Kit interrupted softly, "maybe they traveled way south, on the coast, where I guess I was born, the place I first remember."

"Maybe," Firetti said. "I went up to the estate occasionally because I was concerned about Olivia. I didn't see any other than the two cats that stayed with her. I always thought the family held on to the property simply for the increasing land value. It's a big, sprawling family, all scattered now, and apparently at loggerheads with one another. The estate has been divided and redivided, with numerous deeds and trusts and wills drawn in such a way that no one can sell his share without approval from the others. I know one attorney who did some work for the Pamillons, and he said the titles and legal entanglements were almost impossible to sort out and set straight, with so many conflicting restraints and demands.

"It was knowing about the speaking cats," Firetti said, "that started me feeding and trapping the stray cats of the village, as my father had done. He fed and trapped all the feral cats around the wharf and the village, and continued to do so long after he retired. He spayed and neutered them and gave them shots to keep them healthy and then turned them loose again." He laughed. "That might have been the first TNR program.

"He made very sure, of course, that none was a speaking cat. Not much chance, they were too clever to be trapped. He would have sheltered such a cat if it so chose, would have brought a speaking cat here to live, if the cat wanted such a life.

"He was already gone when I met Joe and Dulcie." Firetti looked down at the cats, sitting on the couch listening so attentively. "You were only a tiny thing, Dulcie, when Wilma brought you for your first shots. Though I knew who your mother was, the talent is not passed on to all the kittens in a litter. But from what Wilma told me about you, from your stealing of the neighbors' pretty clothes, for instance, I suspected that you were special and that one day you would discover your talents.

"And then you arrived on the scene, Joe. In the beginning, you and Clyde were just as clueless about who you really were." Firetti smiled, his blue eyes crinkling. "I knew when you and Dulcie discovered the truth. I would see you around the village, see the changes in your relationship, see your looks at each other.

"And then, strange things happened in the village. When the owner of the car dealership was murdered, the way the police captured the killers was odd. I was fascinated by the details of that investigation-and I began to see what you two cats were up to.

"From then on, I paid attention to crime in the village. I listened to the sometimes puzzled remarks of one officer or another about cats showing up near a crime scene. And when you came to live with the Greenlaws, Kit-and I heard Officer Brennan's story about a cat jumping from a roof onto a burglar's head, didn't that make me laugh."

"I kept it all to myself," Firetti said. "All this time, I've just enjoyed the ride."

Charlie studied Firetti's smooth, oval face, his direct gaze, and was warmed by his quiet kindness. But then she thought, would nothing in the world make him tell what he knew?

There would be huge money in revealing the cats' secret, in bringing speaking cats to the attention of the world-the attention of avaricious promoters and the hungry news media.

But that was insane. John Firetti had been silent for so many years, when he could have sold out the cats at any time. Why wait until now?

No, despite money or power, here was one man who would remain true. John Firetti, like Max and the few other men she most admired, would not suddenly turn corrupt, would not deliberately use the innocent for financial gain. Here was one man who would not reveal this most hurtful of secrets, Charlie was certain of that.