Cat Striking Back

4

HAVING PARTED FROM Joe Grey before dawn, the two lady cats had followed the elusive scent of the band of feral cats that they’d detected during their hunt, had followed their trail and then followed the faint sound of the cats’ voices softly laughing and talking, these cats who were like themselves.

This was the clowder in which Kit had grown up, the band whose leaders had so tormented her. The band she had left the moment she was big enough and brave enough to go out on her own-and the moment she discovered a pair of true friends among some very special humans. Oh, that had been a change in her life, to come to live with humans she soon learned to love, to live in a warm house with wonderful food, and music, and with all the joys of the human world.

Kit did love her life, and surely she loved her housemates. But still, sometimes, she missed the clowder. Sometimes, despite all her domestic pleasures, she felt strongly drawn back to that wild life. When, this morning, high up in the hills near the ruins of the old Pamillon mansion, she and Dulcie saw five wild, speaking cats slip up over a nearby crest and pause to look down at them, Kit had felt a thrill clear down to her paws. Watching those members of her old clowder, she’d reared up, staring at them-and staring straight at the tomcat who had once been her love, and from whom she had parted.

It had been only a few months ago that Sage, badly wounded, had been brought into the village where Kit’s human friends cared for him-and where he asked Kit to be his mate. She had refused him, had realized that she loved him more like a brother. But now, watching Sage, whom she had so painfully rejected, she considered intently the small, buff-colored female who crouched beside him.

Was this Sage’s new love? This scrawny, bleached-out, nondescript young cat as thin as a sick rabbit? Kit stood tall on her hind paws, looking. Did she even remember this waif of a young cat from among the clowder? For a moment, despite the fact that she had jilted Sage, Kit was riven with jealousy.

But then she thought, startled, had she seen that scrawny cat in the village? Had she seen that little cat among humans? Oh, but that wasn’t likely. The clowder cats never went there unless in a terrible emergency. And then it was only brave Willow who would come seeking human help. Certainly that scrawny, nervous young cat would never come down into the human world.

As she watched, the pale cat reared up, too, and opened her pink mouth, staring down at them, intently interested in Kit and Dulcie, her thin little face filled with excitement-until Sage nuzzled her and pushed her away.

But even as Sage bossed the little buff-colored cat and demanded her attention, she ignored him and continued to stare-and Kit could see clearly the younger cat’s wild yearning. She seemed to know at once that cat’s dreams.

She’s like me! Kit thought with surprise. Not just that she can speak, we’re all alike in that. She feels the same hungers that I do, she wants to understand the whole world the way I always did, she wants to know everything. She isn’t content in the clowder, she wants to see and smell and taste everything in the world, she wants to know more than she’ll ever learn running with the clowder, she wants to know human ways…

The words of an old English tale filled Kit’s mind. “…A pretty little dear her was, but her wanted to know too much…” And Kit’s heart had gone out to the young cat. She’s like me when I was her age, she wants to know what it’s like to live among humans and hear music and ride in cars and have more wonderful adventures than a clowder cat can ever know. And Kit yearned for the young cat as she would yearn for the ghost of her own younger self.

Beside her, tabby Dulcie watched the silent exchange, saw Kit’s jealousy but then, far stronger, Kit’s fascination with the buff-colored cat. Dulcie had been a grown cat when she and Joe found Kit up on Hellhag Hill. Kit had been just as thin and scrawny and half starved as this little waif-and as full of dreams. Kit was grown now, but that spirit still burned in her, that often irrepressible kindling of curiosity and joy, so much joy that sometimes Dulcie thought the little cat would explode.

As Kit and the pale cat silently regarded each other, Sage’s look made Dulcie uneasy. Clearly he didn’t want Kit’s flighty and irresponsible ways to infect his sweet new lady, he didn’t want his chosen mate to be a dreamer. He wanted her to be an obedient wife, he wanted a family, he wanted a steady female cat who could give him kittens, a stolid, matronly cat, a cat he could understand and who would understand him. How sad, Dulcie thought, that he had chosen this cat who seemed not like that at all, who seemed so like Kit. Another dreamer, another impetuous rebel he might never be able to make happy? Sage had tried to change Kit, and had failed. Did he think, now, that he could force this little scruff to his wishes?

Dulcie didn’t think so.

As the buff-colored cat reared up to look at Kit, as the two stood staring at each other across the blowing grass, Sage fluffed himself up to twice his size and lashed his tail, his ears back, his eyes narrow, and growled fiercely at his lady.

Kit looked startled, then turned away so as not to make matters worse, and headed down the hill, her glance at Dulcie hurt, and very sad.

The pale cat remained where she was, looking after Kit longingly. But at last, at Sage’s prodding, the bony little waif turned away and obediently followed the bleached calico tomcat back up the hill toward the fallen walls and crumbling mansion of the old and ruined estate.

Dulcie, hurrying home beside Kit, down the hills through the rising dawn, had no idea where this meeting of the two young females would lead, but she knew a friendship had been formed-and, she thought uneasily, knowing Kit, she wouldn’t be surprised to see this meet ing turn to trouble. To some kind of trouble, as the tortoiseshell’s enthusiasms so often led.

They were halfway down the hills, were just passing a newly framed house, skirting its skeleton of raw timbers, stepping carefully to avoid dropped nails, when Kit said, “I’ve seen her before. When Lucinda and Pedric and I walk up here, sometimes I see a pale little shadow slipping away among the broken walls. Once, for a second, she stood atop a wall looking down at me, but then she turned and ran.” Ever since the weather had turned warmer, and the tourists were returning to crowd the shore on nice mornings and late afternoons, Kit’s two housemates had abandoned walking the beaches and sea cliffs and taken to tramping the hills. Tall, slim, eighty-something Lucinda Greenlaw had always been a walker. She had, during a long and abusive first marriage, escaped from her pain at the hands of a philandering husband by indulging in solitary rambles over the Molena Point hills. Now she was wed again, this time happily, and Lucinda and Pedric were both enjoying the world anew, including their long and pleasant rambles accompanied by their tortoiseshell companion.

But Joe and Dulcie, too, sometimes glimpsed the clowder cats as they hunted, saw them like swift shadows flicking away among the hills or into the ruins. Because of the dry weather, the clowder had moved back within the walls of the old estate, wanting the water that ran in springs there and wanting to be safe in its shelter from the coyotes that had drawn closer to the village to quench their thirst-ever since the weather turned hot, Dulcie and Wilma, her human housemate, tucked up in bed at night, could hear coyotes on the hills, ever closer to the village, yipping and yodeling.

Some people called their noise singing. Dulcie and Wilma, knowing how dangerous the beasts were, called those cries bloodcurdling. When the yipping was near, neither of them slept well. The three cats, until just this past week, had kept their hunting to the daylight hours. When sporadic rains had begun, leaving puddles for the wild creatures among the far woods, and the coyotes had moved away once more, the cats began their night hunting again, though they stayed near the scattered houses or near boulders where they could race for shelter.

Now, descending the hills, suddenly Kit broke into a run, wildly circling Dulcie then skidding to a stop inches from the older cat’s nose, Kit’s yellow eyes blazing with laughter. “Free,” she mewled. “I’m free!”

Dulcie puzzled over this, as she so often did over Kit’s behavior. Had Sage, taking a new cat for his mate, cut the last painful thread that bound Kit to him? Did she no longer feel responsible for having hurt him, having spoiled his life as she had once thought?

But then, just as suddenly, Kit sat down in the tall grass, looking so sad that Dulcie thought she might weep.

“She’s not the one,” Kit said, looking forlornly at Dulcie. “She feels as trapped as I did. She wants…Didn’t you see? She wants…Before she settles down to raising tangles of kittens, she wants to see what the rest of the world is like. Oh, I feel so bad for her. Didn’t you see…?”

“No,” Dulcie said crossly. “I didn’t see anything! Leave it, Kit! Leave it alone. It isn’t any of your business.”

“But-”

Dulcie faced Kit, her ears back, her teeth bared. This would never do. Kit’s concern screamed of trouble. “Leave it alone, Kit. You will not entice her away. They’re happy, Sage is happy.”

“She’s not happy, she-”

Dulcie raised an armored paw to slap Kit. “You will not ruin Sage’s life again! Why would you do that?”

“Because…,” Kit said miserably, “because…” She glared at Dulcie, and turned and trotted away, tears running down her tortoiseshell nose. Dulcie shouldered her to a stop, her teeth gently in the nape of Kit’s neck. For a long moment they stood looking at each other, Kit so upset that if Dulcie let go, she thought Kit would fly at her with all claws bared.

But at last Kit backed away. “She won’t be happy,” she said grimly, “thinking about all the wonders she’s never seen. And so, Sage won’t be happy.”

Dulcie said nothing. She moved away, heading on down the hill. They were quiet for a long time, padding toward the village, Kit’s sadness like a weight that pressed on Dulcie, too. But then suddenly, Kit came to life again.

“I know what to do,” she said, leaping away. “I know exactly!” And she raced like a mad thing through the gardens of the first scattered houses, skidding to a stop beneath a porch, looking back at Dulcie.

Padding under the porch beside her, Dulcie said not a word. She didn’t want to hear Kit’s harebrained idea, she didn’t want to contemplate what kind of trouble this would stir to life.

Seeing Dulcie’s look, Kit didn’t offer an explanation. She licked her fur and her dusty paws, and they went on at last, in a tense silence. The rising morning smelled of rain, the clouds overhead throwing changing shadows across the crowded cottages and shops.

Coming down into the village, the two cats took to the rooftops. Below them, early cars were on the street as locals and tourists set out to attend church and then Sunday brunch or, despite the threat of rain, to play golf or to hike along the coastal cliffs. Soon they parted, both cats, having hunted all night and feasted on rodents, heading for their own homes and housemates, longing, now, for “people” food, for a little something to settle a cat’s digestion. Dulcie’s Wilma had promised a rich quiche, and Kit looked forward to Pedric’s paper-thin Swedish pancakes with Lucinda’s mango syrup, which was, in Kit’s opinion, the best breakfast that a cat ever licked from her whiskers; and for the moment, the plight of the pale little feral was set aside, at least in Dulcie’s mind. Whatever Kit was thinking, she kept to herself.