The Black Cats

The Black Cat

THE BODY HANGING FROM the tree spoiled our glorious constitutional. While Eddy and Sissy abhorred the discovery, it enraged me, filling me with desire for revenge. During my last adventure, I’d become accustomed to the transience of human life, perhaps too accustomed, developing a relationship most informal with Death. So much so that when our neighbor, Mrs. Busybody, swallowed her false teeth and expired last winter, my whiskers barely registered the passing. But this morning’s butchery shocked me more than the ones that plagued Philadelphia last fall. Why? Because a fellow cat had been murdered.

I shuddered at the black tom overhead, at once suspicious of our new neighbors. Eddy had insisted on moving, and I, fulfilling my role as feline companion and muse, had followed him on his quest for new air. We’d settled apparently, in the darkest, cruelest part of the city. Though I had no idea how dark and cruel when we set out this morning.

Shortly after breakfast, Sissy, the lady of the house, summoned Eddy to the kitchen and uttered one of my favorite phrases. “Let’s go for a stroll,” she said to him. “I am in need of a breeze, and from the snap of bed linens on the clothesline, God has provided one. The market would be lovely today. Besides, Mother’s out of rosemary.”

Eddy rested his fingertips on the windowsill above the sink and looked into the side yard. I hopped to the table for a peek myself. Muddy lingered near the clothesline with a basket of laundry and a mouthful of clothespins. One by one, she removed the little wooden teeth from her lips, using them to peg the sheets. “I suppose your mother will be busy for a while,” he said. “Join us, Catters?”

He meant me, of course. Eddy seldom used my full name, Cattarina. I wasn’t sure of his question, so I gave an all-purpose meow that meant both yes and maybe at the same time. Catspeak is not without subtlety.

Once Sissy changed into her rose-print town dress, we left to marvel in the ripe delights of summer. Such a merry prelude to murder! In this new and strange part of the city, Spring Garden Street unbuttons down the center into an outdoor market filled with fish, hot corn, pickles, gutted pigs, fish, paper whimsies, tobacco products, tin wind-up toys, and fish. Yet I grieved for the wide-open fields of Fairmount. Nothing could replace the tickle of Indian grass beneath my paws.

Entering the market before Eddy and Sissy, I wound this way and that between their legs, guiding them without suspicion while they chatted. When humans are preoccupied, directing their actions is mere kitten’s play. So it took little effort to steer them to the appropriate stall. “Get my fish! In yer dish!” the monger shouted. “Shad enough to grant yer wish!” His sign held the usual marks: FISH. From my tenure with Eddy—a preeminent man of letters—I knew these squiggles communicated something. But I doubted they adequately described the striped bass, walleye, and catfish heaped on the counter, their scales glistening in the sun. Flies, too, had arrived in great number to admire the merchandise.

Sissy waved them from her path with a copy of the Gazette she’d brought along. She opened the newspaper and examined the contents. “Three thefts, two beatings, and not a single murder,” she said.

My ears swiveled at murder—just one of the many human words I knew. Some, like breakfast, lunch, and dinner, could stir me from the deepest slumber; others, like no, out, and that damnable cat, had little effect on me despite their obvious meaning. And while a great many remained beyond comprehension, murder had clawed its way into my vocabulary. I found a piece of discarded fish skin and chewed it thoughtfully as I listened to Sissy’s voice. When she spoke, her words came out in a whisper. I imagined them floating from her lips like dandelion puffs.

“It’s been so hot lately,” she said. “You’d think the heat would send someone on a killing spree.”

“Peace and tranquility are most troubling, aren’t they?” Eddy said.

“I am reading the news for your benefit, dear husband, not mine.” She folded the paper into a fan and waved it to cool herself. “I know how you love crime stories. I could scarcely keep you from that wretched eye business last October.”

“Am I the only one with an interest in murder?”

Sissy pursed her lips and fanned harder, fluttering the strings of her bonnet.

Murder, the liveliest, most oft-discussed topic of the Poe household. After I nabbed the Glass Eye Killer last autumn, my deeds inspired Eddy to write “The Tell-Tale Heart.” He then penned “The Gold Bug,” a second tale for which I take full credit. I am still not sure how Muddy found my beetle collection between the couch cushions. Now, with the passing of the seasons, life had dwindled to a predictable series of events for this tortoiseshell: breakfast, nap, lunch, nap, dinner, nap, repeat. How I longed to chase human quarry again! Alas, murderers were not as plentiful as mice.

Sissy took Eddy by the arm and led him from the fish and flies. I shadowed them, pausing to smell the cat spray on a nearby lamppost: male, geriatric, failing kidneys. Fiddlesticks. This was no way for a huntress to live. We stopped at a table stacked with herbs and assorted cut flowers where Eddy bought a spray of rosemary from a roundish woman in an apron. She rolled the green twigs in a cone of old newsprint and secured the bottom with a piece of twine. Once finished, she presented the bundle to Eddy, who in turn presented it to his wife with a flourish. “For you, Sissy,” he said to her. “May our love be ever green.”

She smelled the herbs and coughed into her handkerchief.

Moving from western to eastern Spring Garden District to sample new air had not been therapeutic enough for Sissy. Eddy’s health had declined these last few moons, too. Was it any wonder? How disheartening to know that despite one’s best efforts, one’s beloved had no chance of surviving. And while Eddy’s appetite had only recently resumed, his thirst for spirits had remained steadfast through the winter. I turned and licked my shoulder, biting at a gnat. In truth, I blamed the drinking more than Sissy’s ailment for his malaise.

I pushed through their legs and headed for the gate, cutting our ramble short. Eddy had spent the dawn hours sipping black tea and pacing the floor—a preamble most familiar. He needed to write, not parade about the market. The humidity, too, had taken a toll on Sissy’s lungs. I turned and paused, fixing Eddy with a stare he could not ignore. The slight downturn of his mouth told me he’d received my message.

He touched Sissy’s arm. “Let’s leave for home, dearest.”

“But we were having such a grand time,” she said. “I thought we might stop by—”

He took the makeshift fan from her and laid it on a nearby stall. “You need to rest, Virginia. Your cheeks are positively flushed.”

She offered no resistance, and we retraced our steps to North Seventh, turning left on Minerva in front of our home. Before we could enter the front garden, voices rang out near Franklin, the neighboring intersection to the west. Eddy led us down the street toward the commotion. We rounded the corner to find a pawful of men in front of Mr. Fitzgerald’s hardware store. Rather, they’d gathered in front of its sprawling sassafras. The colossal tree grew in the unpaved courtyard between his shop and the next, rising up and obscuring the buildings behind its canopy.

“I say!” Eddy called to them. “What’s the trouble?”

“Someone’s hung a cat!” said one of the men.

“God in Heaven,” Eddy said under his breath.

Naturally, with the mention of cat, I thought they referred to me. When we arrived, however, I realized they spoke of a different feline: an unfortunate with matted black fur. The tom swayed from a limb, a rope strung round his neck, one eye gouged from its socket. The Glass Eye Killer came to mind, yet Constable Harkness had locked that murderer in Eastern State Penitentiary. I sat on my haunches and studied the gruesome sight with equal parts anger and sadness, my tail tapping a pattern in the dust. I don’t know what devastated me more—the senseless death or the sullying of my favorite, nay, my only climbing tree. Furthermore, someone had nicked the bark in several places. The marks looked like failed attempts to chop the tree down.

“It’s horrible!” Sissy cried. The spray of rosemary trembled between her hands.

Eddy held her by the arm, steadying her. “Look away, my love. Look away.”

Mr. Fitzgerald, the latest entry on my list of tolerable humans, scratched the top of his balding head as he considered the scene. He’d run from his shop without a jacket and stood before us in his waistcoat and bare sleeves. I hadn’t realized before how thin a frame he possessed. I’d seen fatter scarecrows.

The wind blew, swaying the carcass like a bell clapper, disturbing the flies that circled. I dug my claws into the earth. Was the victim my old pal, Midnight? I circled the trunk and examined the fur on the cat’s chest. It held no white mark like his. Their eyes were different, too. Midnight’s irises were buttercup yellow, much lighter in color than the tom’s lone eye. I purred with relief.

“Who has done this?” Eddy asked the man next to him.

The gent wore all black like Eddy and carried a book, which he held to his chest. “The supernatural is at work here,” he said. “I fear we’ve been visited by the devil.”

The word devil sent a murmur through the crowd. Strange. The only deviling I’d encountered had been that of an egg, and with delicious results. I scaled the trunk, casting bits of bark to the ground, and walked along the branch in question to the knotted piece of rope. A unique piece of workmanship, the cord had been coiled from lengths of brown and tan jute, the former dyed with a bitter solution that smelled of walnuts, the latter left au natural. I sniffed the air. Decomposition—a distinct and unmistakable odor—had not set in. One had only to keep an expired mouse too long beneath Muddy’s bed to understand these things. So the cat had been murdered this morning. I turned to the scents on the rope, learning two things: the killer was male, and he wore a nauseating amount of cologne. If humans bathed as often as cats, there would be no need for copious amounts of lavender and citrus oils.

On the hunt for more clues, I cast my gaze upon footprints below. The courtyard had not been paved, and loose dirt preserved the marks. These prints traveled from the sassafras’s trunk to the steps of Fitzgerald Hardware then disappeared into the alley between his shop and Tabitha Arnold’s cobbler shop next door. I cocked my ears at the curious sound arising from her establishment. Brush, brush, brush. Brush, brush, brush.

Eddy handed Sissy off to the man in black before addressing the crowd. “If anyone knows who committed this atrocity, please step forward. You will face no quarrel with me.”

“Or with Constable Harkness,” someone shouted. “If you can wake him from his nap!”

The crowd tittered with uneasy laughter.

I settled on a higher branch away from the dead cat and the flies. Just thinking about the cruelties my fellow feline suffered churned my stomach. I watched the men through the mitten-shaped leaves. Having moved here three moons ago, I’d encountered most of the humans in the neighborhood and recognized all but the gentleman soothing Sissy. He patted her shoulder and said, “Take comfort in Isaiah. Woe unto the wicked! It shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.” I lifted my head and peered between the leafy branches to spy another unfamiliar face—an old man with a bent spine. He scratched his rear then his elbow then his long, white beard. Fleas. I made a note to avoid him in the future. He loitered between the buildings, away from the turmoil.

“Come now,” Eddy said, “surely one of you saw something?”

Brush, brush, brush.

“Not me,” Mr. Cook said at last. A blustery fool who lived around the corner, his large protruding eyes reminded me of peeled onions. “Ask ol’ Eakins. Cats are his business.”

At Mr. Cook’s utterance of Eakins, the flea-ridden oldster scurried the way of the footprints and disappeared between the shops. Not a soul noticed—not a human soul, at any rate.

“Eakins?” Sissy asked. She’d recovered from the earlier shock and stood near her husband. “I don’t recall anyone by that name, and I’ve met most everyone on our street.”

“He stays to himself,” Mr. Cook said, “for our comfort as much as his.” He surveyed the diminishing crowd. The onlookers had begun to wander. “He was here a minute ago,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”

When the street had emptied of everyone except Mr. Cook and Mr. Fitzgerald, Eddy drew Sissy and the two men to the threshold of the hardware shop to discuss the event, speaking the phrase “killed the cat” more than once. Every so often, Sissy would glance at the tree and shake her head. Soon, the talk turned to lighter subjects, for the men began to chuckle and gesture with their hands. That was when Sissy left their company for mine, the dear girl. She stared up at me with a mournful expression, the rims of her large eyes wet. “Who would do such a thing, Cattarina? And why?”

From the lilt in her voice, she had questions for which I had no answers. Though I could not comprehend her speech, more than a language barrier prevented my response. The brutal killing of the tom had stripped me of reason. Who could have harmed the noblest of creatures? The finest, cleverest, handsomest of creatures?

“Well, we can’t leave him up there, can we? There has to be some dignity in death.” She laid her rosemary aside and reached for the rope around the cat’s neck. But the dear girl was too short to grasp it. So she tried to knock the cat’s body down with a slender branch she found near the roots. The more she twisted and turned the corpse to free it, however, the tighter the noose grew. Overcome by failure, she tossed the stick, leaned against the tree trunk, and wept into her handkerchief.

Eddy did not notice.

Brush, brush, brush. The sound from the Arnold’s shop would plague my dreams tonight. I joined Sissy on the ground and rubbed along her skirt, doing my best to comfort her. The cat’s death had upset her more than I had imagined. Throughout our previous adventure, I had grown to…respect Sissy—yes, respect, that was the right word—and it pained me to see her in such a state.

She touched the tip of my tail, her fingers wet with tears. “No one should die in their prime, Cattarina. No one.”

While the black cat’s death presented me with another killer to catch and another story to inspire, it also filled me with dread. A murderer and torturer lived in our new neighborhood, and I, for one, would not sleep until the scoundrel was caught.