Cat Telling Tales

2

The rising sun fingered in through the glass walls of Ryan Flannery’s upstairs studio, and a fire burned on the hearth against the dawn chill. The brightening room smelled of fresh coffee from the pot on the big worktable where Ryan and Clyde sat surrounded by stacks of real estate ads and flyers. The lingering scent of frying bacon and waffles had drifted upstairs, too, mixed with a whiff of Joe Grey’s breakfast kippers. He lay purring, stretched out across the mess of real estate come-ons, his hind feet anchoring a pile of foreclosure notices, his front paws idling with a stack of price lists and specs the couple had been collecting for weeks. Licking a bit of maple syrup from his whiskers, he marveled at the propensity of his two favorite humans to complicate their lives—they needed another falling-down cottage to renovate like he needed a bed full of hungry fleas.

Ryan had pulled a sweatshirt on over her jeans, its white fleece setting off her dark, tousled hair, her sea-green eyes and high coloring. Her Latino and Scots-Irish heritage had blessed her with the delicate beauty of both races—as well as the volatile temper of both, which, most of the time, she kept pretty well reined in. Across the table, Clyde looked a bit shabby this early morning in ancient, faded jeans and a colorless, threadbare T-shirt that, in the gray tomcat’s opinion, had long ago been ripe for the ragbag. Beneath the soft lamplight, both were examining eagerly the color ads for the small, neglected houses spread across the table, as if each cried out to them with the insistent voice of temptation: Buy me, remodel me, make me beautiful again.

Clyde and Ryan had been married just a year next week, but nearly from the moment Clyde slid the ring on her finger and engulfed her in a bear-hug kiss, they’d celebrated their marital bliss by throwing themselves into buying run-down houses, taking advantage of the falling market to launch into the small but challenging remodel projects that were a sideline for Ryan, turning each dilapidated shack into a bright little home so appealing that, despite the economic downturn, it sold often within days of being listed. This, on top of her full schedule of new-house construction, indicated a form of insanity that could beset only the human mind.

Though maybe, Joe thought, Ryan’s creative inner fire was, after all, somehow akin to the same burning drive that made a cat stalk, capture, and kill; maybe, indeed, the same single-minded kind of obsession and commitment. Looking around him at the studio Ryan had designed and built atop their home, he did have to admire his housemate’s talents: The heavy wood beams of the studio and its three tall glass walls had turned what could have been a dull second-floor addition into a treetop aerie, the space skillfully tied into Clyde’s adjoining study and the master bedroom beyond. Those two rooms, she had built some months before they were married, expanding what had been a poky one-story cottage into a spacious and imaginative environment.

As the sun lifted, the glass walls of the studio seemed to melt away, the surrounding tree branches to become even more a part of the airy room, mingling their shadows with the oak worktable, the computer desk and old drafting table, the long, antique storage cabinet with its wide, thin drawers that held Ryan’s drawings and blueprints. In the far corner, two campaign chairs, fitted with deep blue canvas, faced the blue daybed where Ryan’s big silver Weimaraner lay on his back, his four gray legs in the air, snoring, his upside-down rumbles soft and rhythmic. The little white cat slept curled against his shoulder, safe and trusting. Rock was Snowball’s guardian, she felt deliciously secure under the big dog’s stewardship.

Ryan, having given up her small apartment when she moved in with Clyde on their wedding day, had started constructing the studio the minute they arrived home from their honeymoon. Frantic for a place to work, she’d been just a bit cranky as she tried to complete the designs for two new houses and four remodels, place orders for materials, do her invoices and bookkeeping, all in the downstairs guest room where she’d crammed in her office furniture, while at the same time starting construction on the studio, and supervising three building crews. Those first months of marriage she had, in short, not been your typical lighthearted bride. Thank God Clyde could cook. Or life might have degenerated into an endless round of frozen dinners for the humans and, too disgusting to contemplate, canned cat food for Joe himself.

Now, since she’d moved into her comfortable new studio, you’d think she’d take a break, but no way. She and Clyde had bought and completed two remodel prospects and were burning to buy more. Joe tried to keep his opinion, and more scathing remarks, to a minimum; he made no comment now as they passed real estate ads back and forth, discussing the possibilities of each little house, its charms versus its drawbacks and weaknesses. Rolling over, he edged into a patch of sunlight that shone down through the clerestory windows; the bright shaft streaming past him picked out, as well, the carved antique mantel with its hand-painted tile insets, each bearing the image of a cat—cats whose history often perplexed Joe, their uncertain origin an aspect of life that sharply unnerved the tomcat, that told him more about his own ancestry than he cared to dwell on.

Ryan and Clyde had found the mantel while on their honeymoon up in the wine country northeast of San Francisco, in a musty antique shop, and of course they had to bring it home. They’d left for their wedding trip driving a borrowed Cadillac Escalade. Two weeks later they arrived home with Ryan hauling a trailer behind the SUV, and Clyde following in a large, rented U-Haul truck, every available inch of all three vehicles loaded with dusty relics unearthed from junk shops all along their way: six antique mantels, twelve stained-glass windows, old hand-hewn lumber, detritus from people’s basements and attics and torn-down houses that fit right in with Ryan’s remodel designs. Amazingly, Clyde had been just as hyped as Ryan over their cache, the onset of feverish love apparently affecting his mental health, generating this new obsession that replaced his erstwhile preoccupation with antique cars. Oh well, such was love, and the tomcat had settled in, to adjust to household changes that, while frenetically busy, were far cozier and more charming than the careless environ of their austere bachelor pad.

Now as the sun rose higher, its warming rays touched not only the cat tiles of the mantel, but the letter that stood on top, a small pink envelope propped against a stack of architecture books. A letter that seemed to Joe as insistent as a blinking neon sign, awaiting Ryan’s attention, a missive he found both repugnant, and worrisome.

When the letter first arrived, in the regular afternoon delivery, he’d had no idea of the dilemma it would cause. The small, note-sized envelope, addressed in a clumsy and unskilled hand, seemed unimportant, hardly worth noticing as Joe pawed idly through the mail Clyde had left on the coffee table. The writing seemed to be a woman’s, someone who had plodded through grammar school at a time when the teaching of cursive was out of fashion, a woman who had apparently spent her entire adult life still laboriously printing her awkward little messages.

There was no return address, and the postmark was too blurred to make out the point of origin. The envelope was directed to Ryan in her maiden name, Flannery, which she still used professionally, and not to Mrs. Clyde Damen, but it did not appear to be of professional content; it didn’t have the polish of a business letter concerned perhaps with the design and construction of a new house or with the proposed requirements for some costly and extensive remodel. When Ryan had come in from work in her jeans and boots, and opened it, when she scanned the letter, her green eyes narrowed to a frown. She’d stood a moment rereading it, as if to make sure she’d gotten the message straight, her dark, short hair windblown and sprinkled with sawdust like the sparkles from some children’s party. At last, making no comment to Joe or to Clyde regarding the contents, she’d turned away, carried the letter upstairs and left it on her studio mantel where it now resided, the open note folded atop the envelope, the corner of a photograph visible underneath. As if the message wasn’t exactly private, but she didn’t care to discuss it. Of course the tomcat had followed her and, when she went on about her business, had leaped up and read it for himself.

The message carried an aura of disaster, of bad karma, if you will, that made his fur twitch and his paws tingle with sharp misgiving. The fact that Ryan didn’t want to talk about it was sign enough that the request was going to screw up their lives. What was really worrisome was that, though she’d set the letter aside, she hadn’t ignored it to the point of laying it facedown and slapping a book over it, or dropping it in the round file. This unsolicited bid for bed and board would, sooner or later, require her dutiful response. Joe knew what answer he’d give, but he guessed Ryan wouldn’t follow his advice. Social courtesy is a human trait that most cats don’t consider of much value. Except, of course, when that courtesy is toward the cat himself.

Now he watched Ryan select a dozen real estate ads, and lay them out beside him. He flattened his ears when she propped three ads rudely against his gray flank as if he was some kind of cute copyholder. She gave him an innocent green-eyed look and scratched under his chin until his ears came up again, of their own accord, and he felt a purr rumbling. That was the trouble with Ryan, her charm got him every damn time.

Some of the little houses were so cheap the brokers hadn’t bothered with flyers or color pictures at all, had simply placed small black-and-white newspaper ads. Some were tiny old guesthouses, behind larger dwellings, which had apparently been sectioned off into their own lots. Two of the cottages were foreclosures, three were bank sales, all had suffered dizzying drops in price, as the economy fell. But in Molena Point, even the bottom of the barrel was still of value, every bit of land on the central coast was at a premium, and oceanfront lots were as dear as gold, even the smallest parcel worth as much as some Midwest mansions.

But that didn’t mean Ryan and Clyde had to snap them up like a cat snatches mice from the cupboard. Rising impatiently, Joe sent the ads sliding off his side and across the table. Ryan gave him a look, and picked them up. “You needn’t be so grumpy.”

“You’re collecting economic disasters,” he said coolly, “gambling on a collapsing market, just begging to lose your shirts with these expensive toys.”

“Market’ll pick up,” Ryan said gently. “You’re just not big on patience.”

“I’m patient on a mouse hole.”

“You are patient tracking a felon,” she said, reaching again, to scratch his ears. She always knew how to get to him. “I’d like to know who’s bought up so many of these old places, though, grabbed them before the listings even hit the street.” While expensive homes and estates had taken a tumble, it was the small vacation cottages and the homes of those who worked at the service trades that had been hardest hit.

But then suddenly many of these had been purchased overnight, including three of the cottages that Ryan and Clyde had badly wanted, that would have lent themselves to just the kind of renovations they enjoyed working on. And then after the houses went off the market so quickly, they had stood empty for months. No resale signs, no renters, no work crews making repairs to put them back on the market at a quick profit. They simply sat. Empty and uncared for, the weeds growing tall, the lawns turning yellow even with the early spring rains, the old paint peeling like the skin of an onion. This was not like Molena Point, where most of the cottages were carefully maintained, their paint fresh, their front gardens lush with bright blooms and flowering trees and bushes.

In two cases, in the very neighborhood where Ryan and Clyde had made their last purchase, the neighbors had begun to see hushed activity late at night around the neglected houses, soft lights behind drawn shades, strange cars pulling quietly into the drive and soon slipping away again.

And now here they were this morning, still looking at that blighted neighborhood despite the neighbors’ unease and the whole country’s worry over the real estate market—as if nothing here, in this village, could stay down for long.

But as the two diligently sorted through the ads, forever optimistic, Joe was more interested in the problem of the moment. In the letter on the mantel that needed decisive action before their happy home was invaded by some strange young woman in the throes of a divorce, with two cranky-looking kids in tow, a woman severely driven by a sudden lack of a home and income. If this Debbie Kraft gained a foothold, if she moved in with them as she was pushing to do, she might linger for months, as persistent as a bad case of mange.

Leaping from the table to the mantel, he read it again, looking pointedly at Ryan. This, not pie-in-the-sky real estate investments, was the dilemma facing them right now. He looked at the photograph of Debbie herself and the two little girls that she had enclosed hoping, perhaps, to charm an invitation from the Damens. There wasn’t much charm apparent. She was a scrawny young woman with an angry scowl on her face, long, dull hair hanging loose down her back, her ankle-length denim skirt sagging at the hem, both children clinging to it like baby possums grasping their mother. The kids were maybe four years old, and twelve, both as ragged as their mother. The older child’s expression was as sour as her mother’s, too. The younger girl didn’t look at the camera but stared at the ground, huddled into herself, perhaps in a fit of shyness, or perhaps fear. The best-looking one of the group was the cat, and even he didn’t look too happy.

The older child held the big red tabby awkwardly in her arms, squeezing him so tight the cat’s ears were flat to his broad, tomcat head. The camera had caught his ringed tail blurred, swinging in an angry lash, the cat obviously practicing great restraint in not slashing his juvenile captor. Debbie’s letter didn’t mention the cat, until the very end.

Dear Ryan,

It’s been such a long time since our art school days in San Francisco. I tried to write to you at your old address. When the letter came back, I called your husband’s office. What a shock that you’d divorced, and then he died. Well, I managed to wiggle your address out of them, anyway.

My situation has changed, too. I have two little girls, and now Erik has left me, so I guess men are all the same. He took all our savings. I have no money, even to pay a lawyer to try to get the child support he isn’t paying. He stopped paying rent, so of course we were evicted, he did that to his own children. I have to be out by next week and I have nowhere to go. I have nothing, and no one who cares, but you. I have no job, and don’t know what I’ll do until I can get some money out of Erik.

He’d never dream I’d come to Molena Point, he knows I don’t have anything to do with my mother, and that I don’t see my sister. Of course he and Perry Fowler still own Kraft Realty and he’s right there in the Molena Point office, that’s all the more reason he won’t expect to see me, he’ll think I’d go far away from him. But I don’t know where else to go, except there to you, there’s no one else to help me, only you and Hanni, you and your sister are the only real friends I have. I’m glad Erik doesn’t know about you, at least I kept some things to myself. I’m leaving Eugene the end of the week, but the drive down from Oregon will take longer with the kids, they always have to eat and go potty. Here’s our picture that my neighbor took last year, the girls were cute then but they’ve gotten so gangly now. In the picture, Tessa is four, Vinnie is eleven. We don’t have the cat anymore, Erik used to throw things at it, so I guess it ran away. A neighbor said it hung around the nursing home up the street, that they took it in, but then that burned down. The kids won’t stop whining after it, so stupid. I’ll see you soon, I do hope you have room for us, otherwise I don’t know where we’d go.

Your friend and eager houseguest, Debbie Kraft

This was just great, just what they all needed, a whining houseguest with two kids, one that looked like a royal pain—and practically on Clyde and Ryan’s anniversary, which they’d planned to spend having a quiet dinner with close friends. Joe looked again at the picture, focusing on the red tomcat, a handsome young fellow with wide, curving stripes. There was a certain look about him, a sharp awareness in his wide amber eyes that made Joe wonder, that made him pause with a keen curiosity. Debbie didn’t seem to care that he might have died in the nursing home fire, in a shocking and painful death. Had she even bothered to look for him? Or was a child’s lost cat like a lost hair ribbon, of only passing note and no value?

But the strangest part was, they had lived in Eugene. There was the home of Misto, the old yellow tomcat who had left Oregon before Christmas, hitting the highway to begin his journey south to Molena Point, searching for his kittenhood home. Both cats were from Eugene, both had the look that Joe knew well, that was not the look of any ordinary feline.

Misto had left three grown-up offspring somewhere in Eugene, he had lost track of all three as they ventured out on their own into the world.

Could this cat be Misto’s son? The picture was taken a year ago. Now, was he even still alive? There was no one to ask, no one to know his fate or to care. When Joe looked down from the mantel, Ryan was watching him. “Stop frowning, Joe. She’s not staying here.”

Joe wasn’t so sure. Ryan might be a no-nonsense businesswoman, but she had a soft spot for the less fortunate that, Joe feared, would make her cave right in, would let that woman move on in and take over their happy home.

Clyde said, “Why can’t she go to her mother? What’s that about? She’s broke. No job. Two kids to feed. Let her go to her mother or her sister. The Fowlers are loaded, why can’t she stay with them?”

“How can she?” Ryan said. “Perry Fowler’s not only her brother-in-law, he owns half of Kraft Realty, he and Erik are co-owners. He’d be sure to tell Erik she’s here.” She shook her head, perplexed. “I don’t know what the estrangement’s all about, Debbie was always secretive, often for no reason at all. She told me once, years ago, she and her sisters would sneak around, sneak out at night. That she married Erik to get away from the village and from her mother, but she didn’t tell me why. They ran off before she finished Molena Point High. Later, when she moved up to San Francisco, she was in some of my classes in art school, and in some of my sister’s. Hanni couldn’t bear her, no one could. She’d hang around on the edges of a group, pushing in, interrupting whatever you were talking about, always with a problem of her own that was far more important, always a dilemma she wanted someone else to solve for her. She’d borrow tubes of paint, lengths of expensive canvas, never return anything. She’d say she forgot, then say she didn’t have the money. She cheated on tests, begged for rides even when it was miles out of everyone’s way. Tag along if we went out for lunch, and then never have the money to pay for hers. She was just there one summer semester, she never graduated, and she never did much with what she did learn. Hanni was one of the gifted ones, and Debbie tagged after her. As if, if she stayed close, Hanni’s talent—or her grades—would rub off on her.”

After listening to Ryan’s description, Joe considered packing his figurative suitcase and moving out for the duration—he knew Ryan wouldn’t refuse this woman. He could move in with his tabby lady, take refuge with Dulcie and her housemate. Wilma Getz spoiled Dulcie worse than Ryan spoiled him, she’d serve up fillet, salmon, anything he asked for. The imminent descent of Debbie Kraft, with one kid who looked mean as snakes and another who was as yet an unknown quantity, made his head hurt and his skin twitch. If Ryan and Clyde wanted kids, they’d have some of their own. Looking again at the photo, he could find sympathy only for the cat.

“I always wondered,” Ryan said, “what could possibly be so bad between mother and daughter, that Debbie never even phoned her, never wrote to her? Well, I guess any number of things could, but I can’t get my head around it.” Ryan’s own mother had died of cancer when Ryan was small. They had been a close, happy family. The idea of hating your mother was foreign to her, and repugnant.

“Letter’s dated eight days ago,” Clyde said. “It’s only a two-day drive down from Eugene. She says she has nowhere else to go, so where is she?” He glanced away in the direction of the street as if she might materialize, standing out there looking up at him. “Even the cheapest motel,” he said, “the cheapest restaurant, is expensive if you’re flat broke and have two kids to feed.”

Joe said, “We could pull the shades. You could pull the cars on through the carport into the garage, pretend we’re out of town.”

“Quit worrying,” Ryan repeated. “They’re not staying here.”

“Where, then?” Joe and Clyde said, together.

“Maybe the Salvation Army has room,” she said, referring to the army’s charity shelter.

“Did she write to Hanni, too?” Joe asked hopefully.

“She did. You know Hanni has no room, with their two boys.” Ryan smiled. “Hanni said she wasn’t inviting Debbie Kraft there to lift the good silverware and trash the house.” Ryan’s sister Hanni was among the best-known interior designers in the village, a glamorous woman with striking prematurely white hair, a penchant for bizarre and beautiful costumes, fabulous jewelry, and sleek convertibles—but with an even deeper attachment to old jeans, a fine hunting dog, and a good shotgun, an indulgence that, these days, she got to enjoy only rarely.

Ryan said, “Don’t even suggest Charlie and Max. Though,” she added with a wicked smile, “it would do Debbie good to live in a cop’s house for a few days.” The Harpers lived up among the green hills, happily alone except for their dogs and horses. Joe could just imagine the havoc two unruly kids could create among the defenseless animals, not to mention the danger, leaving gates open, letting the horses or dogs out onto the highway. And of course getting themselves stepped on by a hard hoof or snapped at by a usually patient mutt, and then blaming the Harpers. Charlie Harper worked at home, she didn’t need the frustration of nosy houseguests underfoot. A published writer and a successful artist, she had commission deadlines, publishing deadlines, and had neither the time nor the patience for such an intrusion. Restlessly Joe dropped off the mantel. “Going for a little hunt,” he said impatiently. “You two can work out the logistics—just send her somewhere else.”

Trotting from the studio into Clyde’s office, he leaped to the desk and up onto the nearest rafter. Padding along beneath the ceiling, he pushed out through his rooftop cat door into his tower, into his hexagonal glass retreat that rose atop the roof of the master bedroom. This was his private place, daytime suntrap, nighttime lookout beneath the scattered stars—and now suddenly a trap for inexplicable nightmares that, he sincerely hoped, would not return.

Pausing among his sun-faded cushions, he nibbled at an itchy paw then pushed out a window onto the roof of the master bedroom. With the rising sun warming his sleek gray coat, he leaped away across the shingles into a tangle of oak branches and across these onto the neighbor’s roof, then the next roof and the next, heading for Dulcie’s house. He needed Dulcie to talk to; needed a good run with his lady by his side, needed to stalk and kill a few rats and work off the unease. The woman hadn’t yet arrived, and already he was clawing for fresh air.