Curiosity Thrilled The Cat

2

Carry Tiger to Mountain

For a moment Owen perched on top of Easton’s head, tail twitching, like some sort of kitty Davy Crockett hat. Before any of us could move, he leaped over to the top of one of the bookshelves, shook himself and gave us a wide-eyed stare. What was he doing at the library? How the heck had he gotten into my bag with my noticing?

Easton bellowed a word I’d heard before but never in a library, and swiped at his head. “Miss Paulson, your library is infested by vermin! I have been attacked by a rodent!”

“That’s not a rodent. That’s a cat,” Susan pointed out, oh, so not helpfully.

“Mr. Easton, I’m so sorry,” I began. I wasn’t sure whether to check his head for claw marks or rescue Owen from the shelf and stash him in my office.

“A cat?” Easton roared. He glared at Owen. “No wonder this building has vermin. If you believe that mangy, unkempt creature is capable of controlling an infestation of rodents, well, look at that—that thing!” He jabbed his finger in Owen’s direction.

Big mistake. Owen let out a loud yowl of indignation. He hissed at Easton and spat for good measure. Then he jumped to the floor, flicked his tail at the conductor—what I guessed was the kitty version of giving the finger—and stalked away. I needed to get him back in the bag and into my office as quickly as possible, but first I needed to deal with Gregor Easton.

I glanced at Susan, who wouldn’t meet my look. Her lips were twitching. Oh, Susan, please don’t laugh, I thought. It was going to take a lot to soothe Easton’s ruffled feathers without Susan giggling and making things worse. His face was an alarming shade of red and his thick hair was standing on end. I couldn’t see any scratches, so I hoped that meant Owen had kept his claws sheathed.

“Miss Paulson!” Easton’s voice boomed around the small space. “This library is woefully inadequate. Your service is simply not acceptable. There is no Internet connection, despite its being promised. And your selection of major newspapers is lamentable.”

Our newspaper selection? Where had that come from?

He continued. “And you have a vermin problem that you have tried—unsuccessfully, I must point out—to conceal by bringing in an obviously inbred alley cat, which probably spends most of its time rutting with the town population of female felines.”

I took a deep breath. Owen didn’t spend his time chasing female cats. He spent most of his time chasing the birds in the backyard and chewing the head off Fred the Funky Chicken. Information I probably shouldn’t share with Easton. I thought of what my mother’s advice would be in this situation: “Act it, darling. Act it.”

I stepped forward. “Mr. Easton, you have my profound apologies.” He wasn’t the only one who could sound pretentious. “Owen is my cat and he must have climbed into my bag before I left the house. I had no idea. I assure you he wasn’t chasing anything. We don’t have a vermin problem here at the library.” Well, not anymore, we didn’t.

I looked past Easton’s shoulder. There was a blur of movement over by the windows. Please let that be Owen, I prayed silently. Behind me Susan made a sputtering sound like someone trying to siphon gas from a car. So she’d seen it, too.

The conductor let out an exasperated breath. “Be that as it may, Miss Paulson, in the short time I have been at your library I’ve been denied basic service and attacked by an out-of-control animal. This was not what I was expecting when I agreed to rearrange my schedule and step in to help your little music festival at the eleventh hour.” He smoothed a hand back over his hair, but one clump continued to stand at attention.

He really was a condescending old goat. An old goat I needed to placate. “And the entire town is grateful that you agreed to step in at the last minute,” I said. Just saying the words made my teeth hurt. I took a step backward, lowering my heel slowly onto the toe of Susan’s right shoe, easing some of my weight down as a warning to her not to say anything, and especially not to laugh at my blatant sucking up. “Again, Mr. Easton, I’m so sorry for what’s happened here.” Susan wiggled her shoe under my foot. I pressed down a little harder. “Please allow me to send breakfast to your suite in the morning to make amends for this evening.”

He twisted a gold pinkie ring around his finger. The upright piece of hair bobbed at me. I kept the pressure on Susan’s foot. “Please, Mr. Easton. It’s the least I can do.” Well, that part was honest.

“Very well, Miss Paulson,” he said, “but it doesn’t excuse what happened here.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I said, trying not to look at his hair, which seemed to have a life of its own now and was waving merrily at me.

I moved forward again and took Easton’s hand, sandwiching it between mine. “Thank you for your understanding.” I walked him toward the entrance as I talked.

He paused at the doors. “Miss Paulson, most people would make an issue of this. I, however, am not most people.”

“I appreciate your graciousness,” I said, smiling sweetly at him.

He pushed through the doors and disappeared down the stairs.

I sagged against the wall. I hated this kind of thing, charming and flattering people to defuse their anger.

“‘I appreciate your graciousness?’ ” Susan laughed behind me. “I’m going to use that on the preschool teacher the next time the twins glue themselves to the top of the monkey bars.”

“Okay,” I said. “Easton may be a bit of a pompous . . .” I hesitated.

“Windbag? Twit? Horse’s rear?” Susan asked.

“Person,” I said. “But he is right about the computer room. It should be ready by now.” I straightened and walked to the back of the library. “And he didn’t deserve to have my cat pounce on him. Where is that fur ball, by the way?”

“Did you see the man’s hair?” Susan asked. “It was like a little flag up there, waving in the breeze.”

I rubbed the space between my eyebrows with the heel of my hand. “That reminds me. Would you call Eric and ask him to send breakfast to Easton’s room tomorrow?” Susan’s husband, Eric, owned Eric’s Place, a café near the marina. He used local fruits and vegetables, and made everything in the café’s kitchen. “Ask him to send the bill to me, please. Not the library board. And could you ask him to make it . . .” I waved my hands in the air. “Make it elegant, please.”

“Will do,” Susan said. “Why did you bring the cat with you, anyway? Were you going to ask me to babysit—I mean cat sit?”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t bring him on purpose. He just somehow snuck into my bag. I don’t know how,” I finished lamely.

“Owen? Where are you?” I called, walking back to the computer area. I looked behind a stack of boxes. A low murp came from the wall of windows. I pushed my way around a stack of chairs. Owen sat on the window ledge, seemingly looking out at a sailboat passing on the lake. He was chewing something. I looked around for a head or a corpse of some ill-fated rodent, but found nothing. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

“You are in so much trouble,” I told the cat as I picked him up. He gave my chin a gentle head butt, his way of pointing out to both of us that he really wasn’t in that deep. “Do you realize who that was?”

Owen yawned.

“I think he does,” Susan said. “Hey! I have half a tuna sandwich left. Would he like it?”

Owen’s ears twitched at the word “tuna.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” I said. “Maybe he’d stay in my office if he had something to eat, and I could still get to tai chi.”

I carried Owen upstairs, and Susan got the leftover sandwich from the refrigerator up in the staff room. Inside my office, with the door firmly closed, she unwrapped the waxed paper and set the half sandwich on the floor behind my desk. Owen sniffed the bread, then carefully licked the filling. His back end did a little wiggly dance of joy. “Thanks,” I said to Susan.

“Oh, that’s okay,” she said. “I like cats.” She watched Owen hold the bread with a paw so he could lick out more of the tuna filling. “I thought your cats didn’t let anyone but you touch them. So how come this one jumped on the maestro?”

“They don’t,” I said. “But I don’t think Owen meant to land on Mr. Easton’s head. I think maybe he was startled. He jumped and he just miscalculated.” I grinned at her. “Or, heck, maybe from his vantage point on the top of the cabinet, Easton’s head looked like the back end of a squirrel.”

Susan snickered. “You know, I didn’t even notice the cat,” she said. “Suddenly there he was on the maestro’s head. It was almost like one second he was invisible and the next he wasn’t.”

I felt my face getting warm. Before Susan could notice, the phone began to ring down at the circulation desk.

“I’ll get that,” she said.

I dropped into my desk chair as the door closed behind her. “Saved by the bell,” I said to Owen, who had managed to pull the bread apart so he could get at the rest of the tuna, pickle, and mayonnaise. My cheeks were burning. Because the thing was, for a moment, just a moment, I thought Owen had been invisible.

Which wasn’t possible.

I leaned down closer to him. “You have to stop doing whatever it is you’re doing,” I said. “Someone’s going to see you. Or not see you.”

The cat didn’t even waste the energy it would have taken to look up at me. I wondered what Susan would have said if I’d told her I thought maybe the cat actually had vanished for a moment. Probably looked to see if I was lining the inside of my sun hat with aluminum foil.

Okay, so, here was the thing: This wasn’t the first time I’d thought I’d seen the cat disappear. The first time had been about six weeks ago. I’d been in the swing in the backyard. Owen had been at my feet, watching the birds. And then he wasn’t. I’d looked for him, certain he’d darted away to stalk some unsuspecting robin. Then he’d appeared again, about ten feet away and in midair, in midleap over a tiny black-and-yellow finch.

“Owen!” I’d shrieked. Startled, the finch had flown away, I’d fallen out of the swing and the cat landed on the grass, legs splayed, looking very undignified. He’d shaken himself and come across the lawn, making pissed-off cat sounds in his throat.

I’d gotten in the swing again and he’d jumped up beside me. We’d swayed slowly back and forth and I’d decided I hadn’t really seen him disappear and then reappear. The sun had been in my eyes. My mind had been wandering.

Okay, I didn’t drink. And this was not one of the signs of a stroke they’d been talking about during the commercial breaks of Gotta Dance last night on TV. Was I having a breakdown or maybe a very freaky hallucination?

“Owen, do that again,” I’d said. He’d stared at me. “C’mon. Disappear.” I had slid my hand up and down in front of my face. I’m not sure what I had been expecting; maybe some sort of slow fade-out, the way Alice’s Cheshire Cat had disappeared in Wonderland, until only its smile was left. The cat had looked at me like I’d lost my mind. And then he’d disappeared.

Of course, he’d only disappeared behind the red chokeberry bush.

Cats could not become invisible. It was that simple. Right? Right. Still, I’d been watching him since then. Afraid—or excited?—that something unusual would happen again, no matter how often I told myself what I’d seen was impossible.

Owen had finished eating his tuna and was licking the waxed paper. So I thought I’d seen him disappear again. (So much for those multivitamins.) I was still tired and stressed and there were still problems with the work on the library. So what if once in a while my eyes played tricks on me and it seemed like my cat could make himself invisible? Back in Boston there had been a very nice man on the bus with an invisible friend.

I could still make class if I left right now, I realized. “Okay, you,” I said. “I’m going to tai chi and I’m going to lock you in. Stay here.” The cat started chewing at something stuck to his paw. “No yowling at the door. No disappearing and no jumping on people’s heads. I’ll be back in an hour.”

I got Owen a dish of water from the staff room and locked the office door. “I’m going to tai chi,” I told Susan as I passed the desk. “Owen’s in my office. Please, please don’t let him out.”

“Okay,” Susan said. “See you later.”

It was Rebecca who had originally invited me to come to tai chi. In the few months I’d been in town I’d spent almost all of my time at the library. I’d decided to try the class because I was afraid I was going to turn into one of those crazy cat ladies who spent her evenings watching TV with her kitties and acted like they were people. Okay, so technically I was already doing that.

Classes were on the second floor of the artists’ co-op building, downtown across from the river walk. The main floor of the co-op was a craft store. On the second floor were two rooms used for yoga, meditation and tai chi.

Maggie, the instructor, was a mixed-media artist and potter—jugs, mugs and vases all shaped like zaftig naked women. Maggie herself was tall and slender, with green cat eyes and close-cropped blond hair. We’ve been friends since the evening I arrived early for class and found her online at the Gotta Dance Web site, voting for Matt Lauer.

The class was just beginning the warm-up. I changed my shoes and took my place in the circle next to Rebecca. She wore a sea-green scarf with her white T-shirt. The color looked good with her silver hair and fair skin. “Welcome home,” I whispered. Rebecca, who had retired from hairdressing a couple of years ago, had been out of town for the last week. I’d been taking in her mail and watering the plants. Knowing her, she’d probably gotten Owen another Fred the Funky Chicken.

“Thank you,” she whispered back.

“Kathleen, bend your knees,” Maggie called.

I blew my bangs out of my eyes and bent my knees a little more. Across the circle Violet smiled at me. Her form always looked so smooth and fluid. Like Rebecca she was in her midsixties. She was tall and slim and the only time she didn’t wear heels was in class.

Next to me Roma Davidson was already starting to sweat. I envied her dark hair cut in a smooth bob that never seemed to fall in her face. She gave me a sly smile and mouthed, Bend your knees just as Maggie said it again. Roma was the only vet in Mayville Heights. It struck me that I should ask her about Owen’s catnip addiction, just to be sure he wasn’t going to turn into a little kitty junkie. As far as his hypothetically invisible antics, I’d keep those to myself.

By the time class was over Maggie had told me to bend my knees at least half a dozen times. I was more awkward than usual and my hair kept flopping in my face. At one point Maggie had passed behind me and touched the back of my head with two fingers. “Empty your mind, Kath,” she’d whispered.

Easy for her to say. If I emptied my mind where was I going to put everything?

We always ended with the complete form. Only Maggie and Ruby can do all 108 movements. One by one the rest of us moved to the side to watch them. When they were finished Maggie gave a slight bow and said, “See you all on Thursday. Practice.”

Ruby stretched both arms out to her sides. She painted huge abstracts and she was the most flexible person I’ve ever seen. She had more piercings than anyone I’ve ever seen, either.

Ruby always had a couple of historical romances among her books on organic gardening and back issues of Mother Earth News. A woman of eclectic interests. She was also in the festival choir. “How’s practice for the final concert going?” I asked.

“Okay, considering the world-famous conductor is a creepy old perv,” she said. She stretched her arms up over her head, then bent forward and put both hands on the floor. “And he’s not that great a conductor,” she added, turning her head sideways to look at me. “I’ve had twelve years of voice and I know the difference between an okay conductor and one who can really feel the music.” She walked her hands out away from her feet, the tips of her spiky hair just brushing the floor. It was blue this week.

I couldn’t help thinking that if I were in that position it would sound a lot like someone deboning a turkey.

“And worst of all, he’s a feelie.”

“A what?” I said, pulling at the neck of my T-shirt. I was sweating.

“A feelie. You know, he has to put his hands on your shoulders to fix your posture. He has to put his hands on your diaphragm to check your breathing. A feelie.” Ruby laughed, which sounded more like a snort because she was upside down. “I had to put my elbow in his diaphragm a couple of times. To check his breathing, of course.” She began walking her hands back to her feet again. “If I were Ami Lester . . . boy.”

Ami Lester? Right. A pretty strawberry blonde who’d borrowed all of Diana Gabaldon’s books from the library. She was one of the summer interns at the Stratton. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“Ami has two solos,” Ruby said. She pulled her head in against her tanned legs, and her voice was slightly muffled. “Easton likes her. I don’t mean holy-crap-can-she-sing likes her. And yeah, she can. I mean, he’s-a-dirty-old-man likes her.”

She slowly unrolled so she was standing up again. “I told her if it were me, he wouldn’t be a baritone anymore. He’d be singing soprano.” She grinned, shrugged and then walked over to the table in the corner where Maggie kept the cups and tea.

There was a noise at the door. Rebecca was standing there. She bent to pick up the shoe she’d dropped. I walked over to her. She watched Ruby choose a mug and take a chamomile tea bag from the box before she turned to me. She looked tired.

“Thanks for taking care of the house for me, Kathleen,” she said.

“Anytime.” I pushed my hair back and sighed in frustration. Why had I cut it? Oh, right. Because I’d changed; new place, new job, new life, so new hair.

Rebecca reached over and ran her fingers through my straggly layers, lifting the hair and letting it drop. Her hand trembled a little and her scarf brushed my cheek. “You have lovely hair, dear,” she said. “It’s grown down over your ears now, which is the hardest part. Come over this weekend and I’ll shape it up a little.”

I smiled. “Thank you. I will.” She went out to the bench to change her shoes.

Maggie walked over to me, carrying a mug of tea. “Matt’s ahead in the voting,” she said with a grin.

“There’s no way you can know that,” I told her.

“He is going to win the coveted crystal-globe statue,” she said.

“Never going to happen.”

“I suppose you think that would-be superhero in a loincloth is going to win,” Maggie said.

“Mr. Kevin Sorbo is not a would-be superhero. He was the very yummy Hercules, and he can dance Matt Lauer under the table.”

She just rolled her eyes and shook her head at me.

“I have to get back to the library,” I said. I looked around and lowered my voice. “Owen’s in my office.”

“Was today Bring Your Cat to Work Day?” Maggie said. “I thought that was next week.”

“Very funny,” I said. “He climbed into my bag. I didn’t know until we got to the library and he jumped out.”

“Not on the checkout desk, I hope.”

I tugged at the hem of my T-shirt. “No,” I said. “That would have been all right. He jumped onto someone’s head.”

She really did try not to laugh. “Owen jumped onto someone’s head. I wish I’d been there.”

“No, you don’t. The someone was Gregor Easton.”

Maggie almost choked on her tea. “You’re kidding.” Then she saw my face. “You’re not kidding.”

I shook my head. “I’m sending breakfast over to his suite. I hope that’s enough.”

“Poor Owen,” Maggie said. “He’s probably traumatized.”

“I’m traumatized,” I said. “I better go. I’ll see you tomorrow night.” I started down the stairs, then stopped half a dozen steps down and turned back to Maggie. “Veggie sticks or brownies?” I asked.

“Brownies,” she said.

Of course.

“And don’t try to sneak any pureed prunes in these, either,” she called after me.

I walked back to the library as fast my achy legs could move. Susan was at the desk. “How’s everything?” I asked.

“Not a meow out of anyone,” she said with a grin.

I hurried upstairs and unlocked the office door, wondering what I was going to find. Owen was sitting on my desk chair. “Hey, fur ball,” I said. “I didn’t figure you’d stay on the floor.”

I opened my bag and pulled out my shoes. “C’mon,” I said, offering him the empty case. Owen jumped onto the desk and walked across to peer inside. He looked up at me as if to say, What—you expect me to get in there?

“You came down here that way and that’s how you’re going home.” I gave his backside a gentle nudge. He meowed what I was fairly sure was a swear word in cat and climbed in. I left the zipper partway open.

It was almost dark by the time we’d walked up the hill to the house. Now that it was August I could see the days getting shorter. I turned on the lamp in the living room and let Owen out of the bag. He glanced at me, shook himself and sauntered in to the kitchen. I sat on the edge of the black leather chair and picked up the phone. I knew the number for Will Redfern, the contractor on the library renovation, by heart. The call went to voice mail. Calls to Will always went to voice mail. I couldn’t decide if the man was avoiding me or the job, or if he was just a totally disorganized person. I left my name and number and wondered what excuse he’d use for not getting back to me. He’d already used Dead Grandmother twice.

Hercules twisted around my legs. I picked him up and went out to the kitchen. “Do you know what your brother did?” I asked him. Herc tipped his head to one side and looked at me quizzically. I told him what had happened with Owen, and he made sympathetic meows every time I paused.

I put him down on the floor and he watched while I poured a glass of milk and made toast with peanut butter. Then I sat at the table, feeding bits to Hercules and Owen, who had appeared the second the toaster popped.

“I need that computer room set up,” I told them. “If the rest of the carrels and the chairs were put together I could at least unpack one computer and get it up and running.” I broke off another couple of bites of toast, one for Owen, who immediately dropped it on the floor, and one for Hercules, who licked off the peanut butter while I held the bread.

“Redfern’s not going to call me back, is he? He’ll say a raccoon stole his phone or his tools fell off the back of his truck.” I slumped in my chair. “Should I call Everett?” Everett Henderson had hired me to supervise the library renovation. He was financing the entire project. His gift to the town for the library’s centennial.

“Merow!” Owen didn’t even stop chewing.

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m supposed to deal with this kind of thing, not Everett.”

Hercules pulled the soggy bit of toast he’d been licking from my fingers and dropped it on the floor. Owen looked at him, whiskers twitching. Herc nudged the bread toward his brother, then went around the table and sat in front of the refrigerator.

“What? You don’t like peanut butter anymore?” I asked.

“Merow!” Owen yowled, louder than the last time, again without even bothering to stop eating.

Hercules looked over his shoulder at the other cat. Why did I have the feeling they were talking about me?

Then suddenly Herc jumped, swiping his paw at the Gotta Dance magnet on the refrigerator door. The magnet went skittering across the tile in one direction and the scrap of paper it had been holding floated to the floor at my feet.

“Hercules!” I shouted. “What did you do that for?” The paper had Oren’s address. I bent to pick it up.

Oren. Of course.

“Oren could get everything put together,” I said. I swear I saw the cats exchange a look. I’d started talking to them just to have someone to talk to, but pretty quickly I’d realized that they seemed to be listening. Not that I told anyone that. “He’s working on the stage setup at the Stratton. He’ll be there early in the morning. You know Oren.”

Herc looked up at me. “Is that what you were trying to tell me?” I said. He had a dab of peanut butter on the end of his nose. I reached down to wipe it off. He batted my finger away with a paw.

“That’s what I’ll do,” I said. “I’ll go see Oren first thing. And I think I’ll take him some of those banana muffins.”

The toast was gone. Owen yawned and so did I. Hercules began to wash his face. Nine thirty on a Tuesday night and here I was, sitting with my cats, ready to go to bed. I definitely was the crazy cat lady.

Owen woke me up at quarter to six the next morning, just before the alarm went off. He put one paw on the edge of the mattress and his face about an inch away from mine. He had a very bad case of morning breath. I wondered if Listerine made a version for cats.

By six thirty I was on my way to the Stratton with four banana muffins in a brown paper bag. I didn’t see Oren’s truck in the staff parking lot at the back of the building. Maybe he was in the main lot on the other side. I tried the stage door. It was unlocked. I stepped inside and followed the hall to the side stage entrance. Something was spilled on the wooden floor. Paint, maybe?

“Oren!” I called. “Are you here?” I pushed through the heavy red curtains and came out onto the stage proper. There was a tiny charm on the floor in front of me, a musical note hanging from a circle of silver. I picked it up and caught sight of someone at the piano, upstage. “Oren, are you all right?” I called again. “It’s Kathleen.”

I crossed the stage to the piano. The person slumped over the keyboard wasn’t Oren. It was Gregor Easton. And he wasn’t okay.

He was dead.