Cat Striking Back

16

LUCINDA AND PEDRIC Greenlaw paused in their steep climb to sit down on the stone wall where they so often rested. They had ascended at a lively pace, employing their carved walking sticks to help them up the rocky ground. At eighty-something, though the couple was lean and spry, a little help from a good stout cane didn’t hurt. Below them the fog had rolled in fast over the village rooftops; above them it blew in dense scarves toward the upper hills and fingered into the narrow valleys. They sat enjoying the misty evening, unaware of anything strange or threatening among the few scattered hillside houses-though neither hiker was unprepared for surprises. Pedric had grown up well aware of human nature. And Lucinda, though her life had been more sheltered, had learned quickly, when the couple had been kidnapped last year, how to take care of herself.

As for their companion, the tortoiseshell cat didn’t worry much about life’s dangers, Kit met trouble with her sharp claws and her strong teeth or, if she must, by escaping into the treetops. In between, she enjoyed every moment. Coming up the path she had raced ahead lashing her fluffy tail, enjoying the world with every ounce of her wild little soul. Now, leaping to the wall beside Lucinda, she stood watching fog transform the hills and valleys-but she was looking for someone, too. Looking intently up among the hills though she said nothing to her companions. She watched and watched, and suddenly she saw her-a speck so small, so pale within the mist that at first Kit thought it was only a stone.

The two humans, watching where she looked, frowned in puzzlement. “What?” Lucinda said softly. The old woman stared for some minutes before she made out a pale little cat poised high among the fog-shrouded boulders. “Oh!” she said, seeing Kit’s excitement. “Who is that?”

Kit glanced at her housemate but didn’t answer, she didn’t know quite how to explain. Coming up the hills she had sensed the buff-colored cat somewhere up there above them, or maybe she’d only wished the little waif would be there. Now she’d appeared from out of nowhere, just as Kit had hoped.

Kit didn’t know what drew her to the pale cat. She knew the young feline was Sage’s mate or soon would be, but this had nothing to do with Sage. In this small cat Kit saw her younger self looking back at her, in a wild and curious mirror image, and Kit wanted to talk with her. She wanted, perhaps foolishly, to be friends. This cat was feral, they lived in two different worlds, and Kit knew it would be best to leave the matter alone. But she wouldn’t, she was too curious.

TANSY HAD BEEN on the hills since before dawn, at first hunting with Sage-that was when she’d seen the three cats hunting lower down in the hills and had seen the tortoiseshell one. She knew about Kit from the other clowder cats, knew how Kit had escaped the clowder and run away from the leader Stone Eye. Stone Eye was dead now and the clowder was free again, but Kit hadn’t returned.

It was the other cats’ talk about Kit and how she lived among humans that helped Tansy remember that she, herself, had not always been with the clowder, that once she had lived with humans. She had been very small when, as a kitten, she’d been thrown away by humans.

Before that terrible time, she’d known a good life chasing dust mice under the furniture; digging her claws into the bright, thick rugs; and swinging on the curtains though she got scolded for that. Little as she was, she had slipped away sometimes into the neighbors’ gardens, and even ventured blocks away where the shops began and looked at all the wonders in the bright windows. And once, when the woman wasn’t watching her, she had climbed right up a stickery vine to the roof where she could look down on all the world. When she lived with humans she had slept on a soft blanket and awakened to good smells in the warm house, and at suppertime the woman always gave her some of what they ate, even when the man complained-but then the man and woman had a fight over her; the man called her dirty and said she made him sneeze. He yelled at the woman, and the woman cried, and even though Tansy was just a little kitten, the man grabbed her and held her too tight to get free, and he shut her in a box. When the woman tried to stop him, he hit her so hard she fell.

Closing the box tight, he’d put it in his car. She remembered the engine roaring and the car moving sickeningly, and though she clawed and screamed, she couldn’t fight hard enough to break free. He drove a long way up into the hills, until she could smell fresh grass and eucalyptus trees, and there he’d stopped and put the box out on the ground and then driven away, leaving her alone there shut inside the box. She mewled and cried, but he didn’t come back and no one answered her; she’d heard no sound but the roar of the car growing fainter until it was gone.

It took her a very long time to tear through the cardboard. When at last she could stick her nose out, panting, she gulped fresh air. She was very thirsty. It took longer, then, to make the hole big enough so she could crawl through, but at last she was out. She had huddled against the box, weak and frightened.

She had hidden among some boulders until dawn, then had wandered uncertainly. She wasn’t sure how long she was alone, but several nights came and went. She caught and ate some beetles, and drank muddy water from a ditch. And then one morning, just as the sun was coming to warm her, a pale calico female found her, and that good cat had washed her and warmed her and had hunted mice to feed her.

She had gone with Willow to live in the clowder, and that was where she began to talk. She had never dared speak among humans, though she had understood them. In the clowder there was no one to think her strange and different-everyone talked. Clowder life had helped her to forget the cardboard box and the human who had betrayed her; clowder life made her forget for a little while the rich world of humans that was so full of excitement and color and music and soft beds and delicious things to eat.

But then as she grew older, the wonder of that life began to fill her dreams. She would wake thinking about bright store windows and high rooftops, and she began to long for that world. It was not many months until she found the courage to leave the clowder and make her way down the hills and into the village again. The time was early spring. She had gone where there were tall gardens to play in, in the yards of humans. She had let a human discover her, she had made up to the woman shamelessly, rolling over and purring.

She had lived with that human and then with another, lived among humans in half a dozen houses; but each time she found a home, someone would move or go away for many days and forget to feed her. Then another couple “took her in,” as they called it. The woman was nice, but then the man had moved away, and then the woman left, too. Left her there alone and, heartbroken, she had crept away from that house and left the village and returned to the dull but safe life of the clowder, to a world without fickle humans.

But she knew humans weren’t all alike, and soon she again missed that life. She missed the places of humans, she missed the excitement and color and always something new to intrigue her. Sage didn’t like her to miss those things. He’d told her to forget the human world, just as he’d told the tortoiseshell cat to forget it. Sage called the human world wicked, he wanted her to forget her dreams, he said a cat had no business with dreams. This morning when he saw her watching Kit, he’d said she must stay away from those village cats. He said she must obey him, and they’d argued and fought. She said she wasn’t his slave, and at last he’d stalked away scowling, his ears back, turning to look at her coldly. That was when she’d fled from him, had raced down the hills to an abandoned barn she knew of. She’d stayed there prowling the empty barn and lashing her tail, wishing the tortoiseshell would find her.

But the barn and the hills had remained empty. She’d stayed there all day. She’d had a nice nap and then caught four fat mice. She was royally feasting on mouse when a yellow car came bumping down the narrow road that wound through the hills, and a dark-haired man and a beautiful, dark-haired woman got out to wander through the barn and outbuildings. She’d hidden from them, but she’d seen another man following them; he stopped his car high above them, beneath thick trees, and sat looking. He was a mean-faced man; he watched the couple the way a coyote watches a little cat.

When the couple left at last in the yellow car, she was sure they didn’t know he was there in the trees above them, or that again he followed them.

She’d sat for a long time in the old barn, licking up the last of the mice and feeling uneasy, wondering what that was all about. And then when she’d scrambled up onto the roof of the barn, she’d seen the yellow car parked farther down the hills. She didn’t see the white car, but she looked at the big pile of dirt in that yard and the blue blanket over the roof and she was so interested and curious that she’d trotted down to have a look.

The time was late afternoon. She knew it would be dark when she got home and Sage would be angry, and she didn’t care. She’d sat concealed in the tall grass thinking that maybe she wouldn’t go home at all. There was a narrow canyon between the hill she was on and the place where the house stood, and another hill rose to its right, dense with heavy, dark trees. The man and woman had gotten out of the yellow car and were talking to a redheaded man. She was watching them when she glanced up the hill and saw the white car hidden there among the trees. The mean-faced man had gotten out and stood watching them in a way that made her fur crawl.

It was much later when the yellow car went away. She stayed where she was, waiting and watching as that man came down the hill and walked around the house and looked in, then went in the garage. He was in there for a long time, it was becoming dusk and the fog was settling in over the hills and still he hadn’t come out. As she looked down the hill again, past the house, she saw a tall, thin couple coming up the road-and there was Kit, racing ahead of them.

She watched as the couple sat down on the stone wall and the tortoiseshell leaped up beside them. Kit stood very still, looking up the hills, looking straight at her. Tansy reared up, too, so Kit would see her. What would it hurt to go down there? What harm to sniff noses, and talk a little? What harm would that do? She and Kit looked through the fog at each other, and looked and looked, and suddenly they were running, Kit streaking up the hill and Tansy pelting down, both cats running so fast their hind paws crossed beneath their front paws like racing rabbits.

They met nearly head-on, skidding to a stop in the wet grass of the steep hill. At first, neither spoke. Kit’s yellow eyes were wide, and she was laughing; they both were laughing, and Tansy knew she’d found a friend.