Cat Telling Tales

17

The U-Haul was headed slowly through the jammed-up traffic of downtown San Francisco when Pan reared up against the passenger window and began to yowl and paw against the glass.

“What?” Denise said, scowling over at him. “You can’t get out here, in the middle of the city. You out of your mind? You have to go? I knew I should have fixed up a sandbox. You’ll have to hold it, tomcat. There, there’s a Chevron station up ahead, bound to be some dirt, a patch of garden or lawn.”

Pan hissed at her, turned back and continued to paw the window, peering out at the busy city.

Denise saw nothing out there that a cat should get excited about. A white passenger bus traveling alongside them in the slow lane, the driver signaling that he wanted to get over, maybe wanted to make a left. Slowing, she let him in. The bus was full of older women, frizzed hair, long faces and round faces, all as wrinkled as old apples. All of them seemed to be talking at once, gabbing away having a good old time. Some kind of senior outing, she guessed, maybe a group from some retirement home. The script on the bus’s white side said MOLENA POINT FOUNDATION, whatever that was. The driver gave her a wave as he cut over and made a left, into the Chevron station. She pulled in behind him. The minute she did, the tomcat settled right down, for all the world as if he knew she’d pulled in so he could take a leak.

Smartest cat she’d ever seen; she was already thinking of him as her cat. She’d picked up an unusually handsome and intelligent stray, and she surely meant to keep him. At the first Target or Walmart she passed, she’d pick up some decent cat food, a cat bed and sandbox, all the supplies to make a cat comfortable. She was wondering what to call him, what name would fit the big red tom. He’d do well on her acreage outside Stockton, he was bold and strong and looked like he’d be a good mouser. Her last two cats had died of old age and she was more than ready for a new companion.

Beyond the three rows of gas pumps and the office and restrooms was a patch of scruffy lawn and a bed of ragged pink geraniums barely surviving in the dry sand. She pulled over there, parked, and because he had come right back into the truck on previous stops, she let the tomcat out. He bolted out in a hell of a hurry, straight into the geraniums. Smiling, she swung out herself, and went to use the women’s more private facilities.

When she came out, the cat was gone. He wasn’t in the cab, where she’d left the door open. He wasn’t in among the geranium bushes. She searched the paved gas station area, the open bay with its two lifts, and the surround. She called him, sounding foolish shouting, “Kitty, kitty.”

Afraid he might have been hit by a car, she walked the edge of the highway and then the access road, looking carefully. Returning to her U-Haul, she talked with other drivers who had stopped, but no one had seen him. Finding no clue to where he’d gone, she borrowed some paper and a stapler from the cashier and put up half a dozen signs, on the posts and trees, giving the cat’s description and both her cell number and her Stockton phone number. She went on after several hours, praying for the tomcat and sick with the loss of him.

Maybe he’d turn up, maybe someone would find him and call her, but she didn’t hold much hope. Moving on through the city, she pulled onto the Bay Bridge with a heavy heart. Why had he vanished like that? There’d hardly been time for someone else to pick him up. Could that cat have had his own agenda and left her on purpose? Was he traveling maybe to rejoin his family, as in some of the strange stories in the paper or on the Web? Cat gets accidentally locked in a truck and carried off, a year later has found his way back home again?

Whatever this was about, she had lost a friend. Even as short a while as she’d known him, it would take her a long time to get over his loss. She didn’t think, after traveling with this handsome tomcat, there would be another cat in the world who could mean anything to her, who could touch her heart as he had, in that short drive down from Oregon. Heading inland, she made sure her cell was on, in case anyone did call.

That was the last Denise Woolsey ever saw of the big red tomcat. The last she ever heard of him, though his objective, single-minded destination wasn’t sixty miles, as the crow flies, from her own new home.

The women on the bus talked nonstop, they were worse than a yard full of chickens announcing their egg-laying scores. Pan, crouched out of sight on the dusty, rough-riding floor, wedged between a bulging cloth shopping bag and a shoe box that smelled of sausages, tried to shut out the shrill voices that had already begun to pound like hammers in his head. Twenty-three women, all of them marathon talkers. Peering out from beneath the last seat, riding practically over the rear wheels and bumpy as hell, he counted two dozen conversations rambling on all at once. A woman sitting right up in front was quizzing the driver querulously. “When will Tom be back? He’s our regular driver. Did you say he’s your cousin? Then you’re Wallace, nice to meet you, Wallace. I hope Tom’s not sick, we all enjoy him, he’s such a riot.”

The driver didn’t answer, just kept his eyes on the road, as if this shepherding of loquacious women wasn’t his preferred portion of the job description. All Pan could see of him was his gray uniform, wide shoulders, and protruding ears beneath a gray cap. The woman behind him, talking with her face inches from his ear, wore a black slouch hat pulled down as if to hide a bad haircut. Three rows back, two women exchanged a look between them and began to whisper, glancing up at Wallace, then drifted into a discussion of the funniest television shows, a subject that would have put Pan right to sleep except for all the other women talking and giggling among themselves. Too bad he hadn’t spotted a busload of men headed for the same village, at least men’s voices were lower. By the time Wallace had put the city traffic behind them and they were out on the highway rolling along, Pan was wild for solitude, for the restorative peace of the woods and fields that he had left behind him. But then four of the women began to talk about Molena Point, and he came wide awake and alert.

“We’ve worked on that auction for months,” said a frail little brown-haired woman as bony as a wren. “We’re hoping to bring in at least fifty thousand, maybe more.” At mention of that amount of money, Wallace came to attention, too, his hand tightening on the wheel, his shoulder and head shifting as he positioned himself to hear better. “Fourteen local artists have given work,” the little wren was saying, “four of the nicest hotels have donated luxury weekends for two, and—”

“That much money?” interrupted a big woman across the aisle. She was dressed in a jacket embroidered with pink flowers, her white-blond hair arranged in an elaborate knot, the white roots showing around her face. “I can’t believe that much money for a bunch of stray cats.” She shook her head, her long gold earrings jangling. “That kind of money should go to fight disease or help starving children. Cats can take care of themselves.”

“The cats were abandoned,” the wren told her. “They’re house cats, they don’t know how to fend for themselves. Little frightened animals dumped by cold, uncaring people without any feeling,” she said pointedly, “thrown away like garbage.”

A woman with long dark hair turned around in her seat to stare at the round, complaining woman. “I’m fostering five of the rescue cats. They’re so dear, I don’t know if I’ll want to part with them at all. As for the auction, I’m helping out, and I’m certainly going. I have my eye on one of Charlie Harper’s etchings. There’ll be a mob, I mean to get there early.”

“What’s troubling,” said a tall, skinny woman in a white sweater and cream-colored slacks, “the auction’s on Sunday, and the banks won’t be open. All that money they take in, a lot of it will surely be in cash. What will they do with it until Monday morning?”

“Surely no one would steal from a charity,” said a woman whose black hair was so thin you could see her scalp, like spaces in a poorly made bird’s nest. “Surely not from a charity for homeless animals.” Pan thought about the abandoned cats who’d started showing up around Eugene as the economy faltered, hungry, pitiful cats who’d never been on their own. He thought about the Animal Friends’ rescue truck setting out traps, which he had watched with a fierce ambivalence.

On the one hand, those cats didn’t know flip about hunting. Pan himself had hunted for a few of them, but they were frightened and shy, even of him. Sometimes he’d thought, They’re better off in a shelter, but then he’d think, They’re better off trying to learn, better off taking the challenge to survive or die, and he’d argued with himself, back and forth, until he didn’t know what he thought. Sometimes he’d dreamed of starving cats, too, thin and scruffy cats that lived in ancient, rough villages, centuries past, cats from the stories his pa had told when he was just a kitten. His pa’s tales of other times had frightened him, the cruel life among the wattle and stone cottages that crowded close along dirty, cobbled streets. Pa told of rats bigger than a kitten, as big as a dog, lurking in the thatched rooftops, of stinking sewers slimy with offal, of thin, shaggy donkeys straining so hard to pull their overloaded carts that they collapsed, lay untended until they died.

As he grew older, those stories made him think a lot about staying alive, himself. This world was better now, but in a way, it was more dangerous, the machines and fast highways, a world not built for a cat’s survival. Especially when you hitched rides with humans, folk who might truly care about a lone cat—or might only take him in to torment him.

Well, he was traveling south, and these women were harmless enough. He could only pray this bus was going to the right destination, to Pa’s rugged cliff along the sand, with its little caves and fishing dock, tall pines and crowded cottages, to the shore his daddy had painted for him with such longing.

At last the women ceased arguing and settled down to nap or read, looking up now and then as the tall bus was buffeted and rocked by a rising wind blowing from the west, carrying the smell of the sea and of coming rain. He woke twice, thirsty and hungry. He eyed the shoe box that smelled so enticingly of sausages, but it was taped shut all around the edges, and tied with heavy, knotted string. What did the owner think, that someone would try to tear into it and rob her of her sausages? He considered the matter, but he would make too much noise ripping the tape off. He tried to force himself back to sleep, to avoid thinking about food and water.

He woke fully when the bus slowed and turned off the highway, descending a residential hill. Below, small cottages crowded close together, a tangle of shops among pines and cypress trees, that already looked familiar. A misty rain veiled the village, and the wind smelled briny, too, deeply of the sea. As tree branches swept across the bus windows, the passengers stirred and began to gather up their belongings. Bags and bundles and jackets, scarves and water bottles. When the round, gray-haired woman waddled to the back and pulled her shoe box of sausages from his lair, Pan pressed under the seat against the wall, hiding himself from her view.

He waited until the bus had parked, the engine died, the doors opened, and the ladies had all filed out, then he slipped out on their heels. The minute he hit the ground, the rainy wind swept at him and the smell of the sea came stronger. Overhead, a gull screamed, making him smile. He could hear the breakers crashing, but as he reared up, drinking in the smells, a passenger spotted him.

“A cat! Oh, look, a little cat! It can’t have been on the bus with us!” When she dove to pick him up, he headed away fast down the sidewalk, dodging shoes and pant legs and leashed dogs that lunged at him, their barks echoing between the crowded shops.

He evaded them all and soon left them behind, leaving the main street for a side street, trotting down a less crowded sidewalk past small and charming shops built of stone, adobe, stucco. Tubs of flowers by their doors, the smell and the hushing of the sea ever stronger as he wove past shop doorways and their bright gardens; the crashing surf ever louder, and the smell of brine stronger, and the sure sense this was the right village.

There—the first gleam of choppy water, and a wide white beach. He reared up, looking, then headed fast for the sand, dodging humans and dogs, slashing a lunging nose, and racing on.

Only a few people on the shore, a few hardy children running, chasing their unleashed dogs. To his left the land rose up, big houses sprawled up there behind a grassy meadow. The meadow stopped suddenly in a steep cliff that dropped straight down to the sand. The view was familiar from Pa’s words, and from Debbie’s photographs, too. This was his father’s place, this was Pa’s first home, he was sure of it.

As he hurried up the steep cliff, the sea was soon below him. To his left beyond the meadow, the handsome houses stood, built of stone, of brick set in fancy patterns, of pale stucco with roofs displaying richly curving shingles. Between the houses and the meadow ran a narrow street, lined on his side with spreading cypress trees.

Not many cars were parked along the street, and those were spaced far apart where the cypress branches didn’t hang so low. An old battered sedan was nosed in between the trees, its back door open and a thin woman leaning in rummaging in the backseat among a tangle of paper bags and boxes, her jeans worn pale and threadbare. Thin, knotty legs. Worn jogging shoes. A short-sleeved T-shirt clinging so he could see her spine. A whiff from the car smelled of cat, but he saw no cats. He wasn’t sure what made him stop to watch her, but he eased deeper into the tangle of grass, held by an amused curiosity. Maybe the old woman and her cats would lead him to the cats his pa said lived on this shore. Maybe he’d even find cats who knew his pa, maybe elderly cats as lanky and lean as this old woman herself. Maybe, he thought, hardly daring to think it, maybe somewhere here, on this strip of shore, he would find his pa.