Читать книгу The Hemingway Kittens and Other Feline Fancies and Fantasies - A. R. Morlan - Страница 7

THE HEMINGWAY KITTENS

Some people may say that cats and bookstores don’t mix, that small beasts with claws and the occasional ability to spray have no place among shelved books which reach from the floor to near-ceiling…but answer me, is there anything more appealing than the sight of a cat curled up next to an opened book? With is softly pointed chin resting on the creamy-white printed pages?

True, initially I began shutting cats up inside my bookstore to take care of a minor mouse problem before it became a multiple mice problem, but after the first time I approached the store minutes before opening time, and saw that small crowd of people standing before the shop’s display window, cooing and oohing over the sight of Chatty and Muffin curled up into tiger-and-white commas next to the shiny-covered copies of the latest Stephen King novel, I realized that I was on to something. I hadn’t seen people react like that since I’d last been in New York City during the winter holidays, when Macy’s set up its annual Christmas window displays—and that had been the year they’d done the Little Women scenes, back in 1979.

The connection with the name of the store didn’t hurt, either—Barrett and Browning’s did have that “couples” connotation, and the fact that Chatty was a she and Muffin was a he (even if he was smaller than she was) only seemed to enhance the store’s image. Pretty soon, customers started asking where “Barrett and Browning” were, and if I could coax those two sleepy felines out among the shelves during regular store hours, it usually meant a few extra dollars in the till, especially those small—but expensive—items like bookmarks or protective covers for paperback books…all of which I managed to order in cat designs.

Long after the mouse problem was solved, I still kept cats in my shop. Luckily, Muffin wasn’t a sprayer, and neither he nor Chatty was wont to rend their claws along the exposed spines of the shelved books (both the new ones I kept out front, and the used section toward the back of the narrow rectangle of a half-store), so as long as their litter pans were scooped clean, and their bowls of food and water were kept full, my two feline salespeople did their jobs well…so well, in fact, that within a couple of years, I found that I needed help in the store. Initially, Barrett and Browning was little more than a hobby for me; after my husband passed away, I’d leased the building with my insurance money, knowing full well that I’d never really be able to compete with the “big guys”—the chain outlets with their coffee stands on the side, and plug-ins for computers, and couches, and tee-shirt-cap-coffee-mug concession aisles—but I was content with being a niche market, one where a person might be able to find just the right book, at maybe not-quite-the-right price, but nonetheless it would be the right book, right in their neighborhood.

Muffin and Chatty were both getting on in years when I hired Rik (no “c” between the “i” and the “k”), to the point where he’d have to go hunting among the back shelves for them whenever a customer demanded to see “Barrett and Browning,” then carry them up front. He never seemed to mind, even after that time when one of Chatty’s claws got caught in one of the half a dozen earrings Rik wore and he almost lost the earring and a good chunk of the right earlobe. At the time, he was fresh out of high school, and working afternoons while taking morning and evening classes at the University over in St. Paul. I didn’t know what he was majoring in (aside from getting holes punched in his ears, and bleaching the top layer of his usually brown hair a sort of sickly orange), but he was good with the customers, and even better with the cats, so I considered him to be a good “hire.”

And he understood how to best arrange the books—especially the used ones—so as to make them more enticing for the customers. None of that orderly, library-like themed progression of books sorted by author, subject and so on…he understood that much of the fun of searching for a book was exactly that—the search. What he did do with the rows of used, slightly tattered volumes was to arrange them by color—black spines segued into deep blues and purples, which merged with the greens, then the garish yellows (usually reserved for self-help tomes), before dipping into the sunset hues. That way, the mix of paperback and hardcovers seemed to flow naturally before the eye, thus encouraging the browser to really hunker down and study each book, each row, then each shelf. And the longer one looks, the more one sees…and, it can be hoped, buys.

Rik also knew how to create cozy spots on each shelf for the cats—deliberately bare spots where a feline could curl up, or stretch out, without the fear of knocking books off the shelf itself. And it was at his urging that I began to add cat artwork to the store per se—a framed reproduction of Charles Wysocki’s “Frederick the Literate” with that lovely sleeping tabby draped around dozens of cat-themed books and bird knick-knacks, plus sets of nesting cats, and a sweet-faced white and gray van cat pencil holder next to the cash register.

By the time Chatty and Muffin had gone on to the ever-full bowls of milk and eternally clean litter-boxes of feline heaven, Rik had brought me their replacements…Oscar and April, a pair of strays from a local downtown shelter. At first, their gray striped fur and white feet-and-faces contrasted oddly with the warm browns and beiges of the shop’s interior, but Rik (who himself was now sporting streaks of stark white in his straight dark hair) came to my visual rescue once again—telling me, “Once you see what these two do, you’ll understand,” he replaced the sun-stippled brown-into-bone swatch of material I’d had resting along the bottom of the window display with a brightly hand-dyed piece of canvas, adorned with an ombré of reds, pinks and corals. And sure enough, by the next morning, Barrett and Browning’s window had attracted another small crowd—Oscar and April were lovebirds of a feline variety, and when she wasn’t tucking her wedge-shaped face under his chin, he was licking the top of her head.

The only problem was, Oscar and April were so utterly devoted to each other, they failed to notice when a few mice got into the store during a particularly blustery February storm…it wasn’t until the mice had found an unopened box of used books I’d taken in trade the week before that I realized that love didn’t conquer all…especially when it came to getting rid of mice.

“They have to go,” I told Rik, when I confronted him with the remains of what had been several vintage 1950’s Robert Heinlein paperbacks, now gnawed and chewed and clawed into fluffy mice mattresses. “I realize that Oscar and April are adorable, but I don’t think either of them would know what to do with a mouse if it came up and blew a juicy raspberry in their muzzles.”

“That I’d like to see,” Rik laughed, until he took a good look at my expression, and became serious…or at least as serious as someone sporting three hoops per ear can look. “But the customers really do like them…couldn’t we set traps? One of those no-kill—”

“And let the customers see that? Once word gets out that a bookstore has a rodent problem, there go the customers to the Big Guys. And I’m sure they sell mouse motels emblazoned with their logo—”

“No, I think that’s the coffee guys,” Rik smiled, before glancing over at the display window, where our resident Garfields were washing each other’s faces, their combined purrs loud enough to be easily heard by Rik and me as we stood by the cash register ten feet away.

True, there were a wonderful couple—April was a little over half of Oscar’s size, and their markings were almost identical, even though he was several years her senior. You couldn’t imagine a better-suited pair of cats…although I could picture just about any other cats in the world doing a better job of de-mousing my bookstore.

“Suppose we keep these two on as window-dressing, and get some real mousers? Ferals, maybe? My room-mate’s dad has some live-traps,” Rik offered, all the while watching my face as he spoke. By that time, he’d been working for me long enough to get a bachelor’s degree—even though I still had no idea what he was actually studying at the university—and knew how to “read” me. My face must have said “Yes’ before my brain was able to react, for he smiled, and said, “I know a place near a mall where lots of cats hang around…maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll get some young ones.”

“Not too young,” I admonished, realizing that Oscar and April might not make for the best surrogate parents, not the way they literally followed each other into the litter-pans, in their effort to stay close.

Rik was always such a self-confident young man, it didn’t seem out of the ordinary for him to say, “No, these will be old enough to take care of themselves…and the bookstore. You’ll see.…”

* * * *

I didn’t realize that Rik had come in late the next day until he backed into the store, his arms bent akimbo, and said over his shoulder, “Have I got the right cats for a bookstore—Hemingway kittens!”

It had been such a busy morning ( a few days before Easter) that I hadn’t really had the time to think, let alone remember our conversation from the previous afternoon. For a moment, I was unable to figure out what Rik meant by “Hemingway kittens”—until I remembered those pictures of the writer’s place down in Florida, of all those many-toed cats running around. Polydactyl cats, with the bifid paws that resembled a splayed-out human hand—

“Ugh!” I blurted out, thinking of how the customers might react to seeing mutant kitties in the window, then Rik turned around, showing me the pair of kittens he’d zipped into his brown suede jacket.

The female was a tortie, long-haired, with a narrow face, while the male was a tuxedo with the characteristic stripe of white dividing the black patches over his eyes. He was long-haired, like his companion, but obviously bigger, so he probably wasn’t a sibling—

“You caught two of them? In one live-trap?” Years ago, when my husband was alive, we’d tried to catch some stray cats living under our porch before winter set in, and it was slow-going at best; if we caught one, it might be days before any of the others would venture into that noisy springing trap, even if we baited the rectangular cage with sardines. Ferals were as wary as they were smart.…

“Uh-huh,” Rik grunted, as he hurried over to the counter to deposit the kittens near the cash register. I started to wave him away, saying, “No, no…they might have fleas or who know what—” but he shook his head of bi-colored hair and assured me, “Oh no, I check them over…they’re clean. No ear mites, nothing. Believe me, they’ll be fine—”

Before I could continue my protests, he’d unzipped his jacket and spilled out the kittens on the counter next to the register. The female sat there in a bundle of brown ombré fur and too many toes, looking up at me with close-set greenish-yellow eyes, while the other one—also soft-furred, and remarkably clean-looking—darted off the counter, and ran between my booted feet (it had been a busy morning, so rushed I’d not had the time to take off my boots) toward the rear of the sore. He’d made a perfect four-point landing on his many-toed fuzzy paws, then scurried off in an undulating ripple of patchy black-white long fur-and-feet.

“What the—”

“Don’t worry about Scooter, he’s like that. Loves to run. He’s just getting the lay of the land—he’ll be back.”

“Not like The Terminator, I hope…don’t tell me he’s already litter-trained,” I added, as I wondered how Rik had managed to not only find me a male/female pair of kittens, but true literary oddities, genuine Hemingway kittens, all within the space of less than twenty-four hours of our conversation about possibly getting some new store-cats.

“Well…Jake and I left them in the bathroom with a litter-pan, and they’d used it come morning. Maybe they were dumped?”

Hoping that they’d used clay litter, and not shredded paper (I didn’t want them associating any kind of paper with going to the bathroom), I turned my attention to the female cowering on my counter. “So, what’s her name?”

Gently scooping her up in his many-ringed hands, Rik slid one of his fingers under her right paw, and showed off her hand-shaped toes, saying, “Mittens…I know it’s rather mundane, but I couldn’t think of anything else on short notice. Cute, isn’t she/”

Mittens avoided my stare, but she didn’t jerk away or grow when I patted her head. Certainly not feral.

“They couldn’t been dumped…I suppose some people don’t know what a Hemingway cat is. Yes, she’s cute,” I lied, giving her smallish head another pat, before I asked, “Don’t you think you’d better find Scooter? Before he finds those boxes of books I bought on Tuesday?”

“Scooter wouldn’t go in those…he’s too smart for that,” Rik said a little too confidently, as he shucked off his jacket and made for the back of the store, leaving me with the stoically silent Mittens.

When Rik was out of earshot, I leaned down and whispered to the kitten, “I just hope he didn’t pay too much for you two…you didn’t crawl into any life-trap, did you? I’ve seen ferals, and you two don’t fit the bill.” Mittens looked up at me as I spoke, then ducked her head off to one side as I finished, as if she couldn’t bear to look me in the eye. You know, don’t you? I thought, then dismissed it; the kitten was just shy. I’d spent too many years working in a shop whose living mascots were routinely anthropomorphized by my doting repeat customers, I decided; even if she had been purchased rather than live-trapped, there was no way she could understand what I’d just said. Not with that tiny little walnut-sized brains of hers—

“Why don’t you take a break, show the new arrivals around?” Rik was carrying Scooter in his left arm, cradling the kitten like a baby, so that all four of the animal’s over-sized paws were extended toward me. The pads were soft, shell-pink and that grayish oxblood color, and as I reached for the kitten, I realized that those paws hadn’t been in contact with asphalt, concrete or any other outside surface in all of Scooter’s life—which looked to be perhaps three or four months so far. And his fur was deliciously soft and smooth—he was definitely either a pet store or possibly a shelter kitten.

He’d been so active so far, squirming, scooting and wiggling around, that I hadn’t gotten a good look at his face—but when I finally held him in my arms, and looked into those clear leaf-green eyes, I was enchanted. While I thought that most cats were beautiful (save, perhaps, for those hairless Sphinx kittens, which had originally hailed from a Minnesota farm cat), Scooter was special—it wasn’t just the way his eyes shone, or that “smiling” expression of his, but he was simply unique, above and beyond his mitten-like paws, or, as I noticed when he nestled into my arms, his twisted, truncated stump of a tail. He just had…it, that spark of pure personality that leaps out through the eyes, and touches a person to the core. Like finding a genuine first edition in among a box of book-club reprints.

And, as if to prove to me just how special he was, he placed one of his wide paws on my arm, just above my watchband, and blinked up at me, giving me “kitty kisses” as one cat-breeding customer of mine called them.

“Here, take Mittens in the other arm—there—now you can show them the store,” Rik said, before sliding behind the counter in anticipation of the post-lunch crowds. What he was suggesting was rather silly, me, showing them the store, when all they really needed to know was where the food and water dishes, as well as the litter-pans, were located, but somehow, after the was Scooter had regally placed one paw on my arm like that, it didn’t seem all that ridiculous to show the kittens my store. It was going to be their home, after all—

“Ok, guys, here’s the bestsellers rack…a case of each title, stacked alphabetically. Positioned close to the cash register because I’m too cheap to buy one of those surveillance cameras, and bestsellers cost too much—am I doing ok, Rik?” Behind me, he laughed, “Ok—fine…they’re smart kitties, aren’t you guys? Just listen to the Boss-lady,” before turning his attention to the door as it jingled open with our next customer. Not wanting to show the kittens off too soon, I hurried down the aisle, toward the middle of the store, saying softly to the kittens, “And this is the place where bestsellers that aren’t end up…the remainder rack. Followed by the place I like best, the used books. You smell the other kitties on these, don’t you,” I found myself saying, as the two kittens leaned forward, their pointed faces seemingly scanning the hundreds of mixed paperbacks and hard-bounds, their moist pink noses working vigorously. I supposed that the smell was enticing to a cat; all those hand-oils rubbed on the worn, cracked spines, not to mention the hundreds of other things which had either rubbed onto the books, or had been spilled on them at one time or another…perhaps they’d even made contact with food. Plus the previous bookstore cats had undoubtedly rubbed against them, maybe even (even as I hoped they hadn’t!) sprayed them. The layers of scent here had to be akin to cat heaven for them.

But as they sniffled the rows of books as I walked slowly down the aisle, I found myself trying to look at the store through their eyes—I’d read up enough about cats to know that they probably did see all colors, albeit not as intensely as humans, so I wondered what they made of Rik’s color-coded filing system, that flowing sweep of blues into reds. Perhaps they noticed the unexpected highs and lows of paperbacks standing next to hard-covers and vice versa, the pleasant undulation of assorted books nestled close—but not so close that you’d have to pry the books off the shelf—for row upon row. Did they notice the abrupt gaps on some shelves, where he’d left some space for the other cats? Or were they merely sensing the traces of old odors on the books?

I did find myself wondering how high a five-foot tall bookcase might seem to a young kitten—would they want to climb from shelf to shelf, seeking the lofty flatness of the top of each bookcase, or would they scurry in fear between the aisles? I also wondered what would happen when Oscar and April finally noticed that they had feline company—I could picture the kittens puffing out like blowfish, rising high on their toes, before backing away from the older gray tabbies…but then again, the lovebirds seemed to have eyes only for each other, so perhaps they might not notice the kittens at all. They certainly hadn’t noticed the Heinlein mice.…

Acting almost as one, the kittens suddenly wanted out of my arms, and jumped down before the lone bookcase positioned along the far narrow wall of the store, close to the back room where I kept the food and litter-pans, as well as whatever incoming books I hadn’t sorted yet. I seldom had customers wanting children’s books, so I routinely placed those titles in the back.… I supposed these books were the most highly-scented, especially since children are wont to try to eat and read at the same time, for Scooter and Mittens were all over the books, rubbing against them, standing up on their hind paws to smell the exposed spines of each book, then batting at them with their mitten feet. “No, no, bad kitties…don’t tear the books,” I said, and they actually stopped. As one, both of them sitting in place, merely staring at the books, before looking up at me with that ubiquitous “Who, us?” cat stare.

Yet, there was something eager about them, apart from mere kitten high spirits. As if they couldn’t wait to explore the bookstore—

“—a nice day,” Rik was telling the departing customers, as I hurried to the front of the store, taking backwards glances every couple of steps to make sure the kittens weren’t following me. They seemed content to sit near the lone children’s shelf.

“”Rik, I think they’d be better off locked in the back room, until you leave this afternoon. I’d hate to have them run out into traffic—”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that…they know they’re supposed to stay here. Jake as in and out of the apartment all this morning, and they stayed put there—”

“‘There’ isn’t here, though. And your apartment opens out into a hallway, right? That’s not like the street—”

“Not to worry…they’ll stay put,” Rik persisted, while cupping the head of my white and gray cat pencil holder with his be-ringed left hand—with every other word, his rings clanked against the ceramic head of the holder. Nerves?

“Well, I’d feel a lot better if they slept in the back, for the first couple of days at least,” I persisted. “Even if they are alley kittens, now that they’re here, they’re the store kitties, and I’d hate to think of anything bad happening to them so soon. Remember how sad all the regulars were when Chatty and Muffin passed on?”

“Not just the regulars.” Rik kept on clanking his rings on my poor ceramic cat, until I figured out a way to get him out from behind the counter. “Rik, come here…look down that aisle—”

The Hemingway kittens were both studying the spines of the children’s books before them, their heads moving in unison as they scanned the vertical titles one by one. Even if they weren’t littermates, they had to have spent time together before they were caught or bought or whatever Rik did to obtain them. Their behavior was so similar.…

“That is so adorable…and so strange,” I found myself whispering, as if I were in a library, and not my own store.

“They’re just smart,” Rik said a little too quickly, then added, “Probably trying to figure out which ones say ‘Food’…just kidding. I do wish I had a camera—”

“We do,” I said, remembering the disposable one we’d found in the back book racks last summer, with only a couple of frames of film exposed. No one had come in for it, and I’d almost forgotten it was sitting on a shelf behind the counter—

“Here, let me,” Rik whispered, taking the camera from me and slowly advancing the next frame forward, before crouching down and waiting for the instant flash to warm up, then clicked the button and snapped one shot…then, when the kittens didn’t move, he duck-walked closer to them, and took another picture.

I could just imagine what the picture would look like—two, perfectly posed kittens, their beautiful pointy ears at attention, as they seemed to peer at the books before them, while surrounded by the warm, worn wooden floor, the polished wooden book shelf, and the primary-bright colors of the narrow-spined children’s books…just the sort of picture one might submit to a cat food calendar contest.

Wanting to get a closer look at them, I stepped as lightly as I could in clumpy-lumpy boots down the aisle, but the magical image was gone as the two kittens turned their heads my way, and Scooter began to yawn. Luckily, Rik was able to capture the moment; the camera whizz-whirred and there was a bright, brief flash of white light. Mittens was frightened by the light and ran off toward the back room. Sensing that this might be a good time to shut Scooter up there, too, I reached down and scooped him up, telling him, “Your sister or whatever she is shouldn’t be scared…you tell her it’s all right to be photographed, ok?”

Scooter stared at me solemnly, as if mentally digesting my words.

But when I tried to walk into the back room, he reached out with both front paws and tried to hold onto the door frame, as if to prevent me from locking him up.

“See, he wants to stay out a while…don’t you Scooter?”

Scooter looked Rik’s way, then looked back at me, his green eyes glowing. Closing time wasn’t for another couple of hours, so I supposed I could watch him until Rik was getting ready to close the store—

Rik continued to take care of the last customers of the day as I carried Scooter around the store, talking to him softly as I showed him the sets of nesting cats (some with tiny solid-wood mouse centers) stationed on some of the shelves, and the framed cat pictures, some cut from those calendars featuring famous Impressionist or Pre-Raphaelite paintings reconfigured as cat portraits.

“Too bad none of these kitties look like you,” I told him, as I snuggled him under my chin, “But this one looks a little like poor old Chatty-cat”—he and I stopped before the cat-adapted “Isabella and the Pot of Basil” with its white-gowned-and-white-pawed tiger cat—“only she was all tiger-striped. Now if these two were gray and white, they could be Oscar and April,” I added, pausing before the feline version of “The Huguenot” Sir John Everett Millais certainly wouldn’t recognize as his own work. Scooter actually craned his head forward, and reached out one thumbed-paw to touch the head of the female “lover” in the print. Reflexively, I asked him, “So that’s April?”

Scooter let out a “purrumph!” and looked up at me, his bright eyes dancing in his white and black face.

Somewhat rattled by his facsimile of a reply to my words, I set off down another aisle, moving toward that framed Charles Wysocki print of the tiger cat lounging on the book shelf. Once we were standing before the walnut-framed art print, I whispered into Scooter’s furry neck, “You won’t find any of these titles on the shelves here…but I bet you wish you could read ‘A Tale of Two Kitties’ or ‘Delicious Field Mice I have Known’, hummm?” Scooter wiggled in my arms, making meowing noises, until I asked him, “You need the litter-pan? Or some food?” He immediately quieted down, then turned his head to look at me expectantly, as if to say, So, where’s the food you promised me?

Rik was right…Scooter (and probably the shy Mittens, too) was smart. The only problem was, how did Rik figure that out in such a short time?

Once I’d brought Scooter to the back room, and opened the metal popcorn canister where I stored the cats’ dry food, I realized that he and Mittens might not be able to chew the hard nuggets, so I ran a little warm water over them, to soften them up, before setting down the bowl of food on the floor. Scooter began lapping up the watery “broth” while Mittens more cautiously crawled out from behind some boxed books, staying low to the ground as she approached the food bowl, even as she moved her head sideways to get an occasional glimpse of me—once she realized that I wasn’t going to try and grab her, she moved into place next to Scooter, and began eating. While the kittens were busy, I picked up one of the litter pans, checked to make sure that there was some water in the other dish near the kittens, then quietly shut the door behind me after flicking off the light switch.

Placing the other litter pan near the closed door (I hoped neither Oscar or April would be confused; while they were a loving pair, I doubted they had a complete brain between them), I squidge-squidged my way down the aisles until I reached the front of the shop, then quietly told Rik, “There’s some extra food in that Necco wafers tin under the counter for the lovebirds…the kittens can sleep on the folded blanket back there. Now you’re sure they don’t rip up paper?”

“They’ll be fine…oh, you did leave the light on for them, didn’t you?” A thread-thin worry line formed in the middle of Rik’s forehead.

“You mean they need a night-light? But they were living in an alley—”

“—with a street lamp nearby,” he finished my thought quickly, then added, “It’s no biggie…I can turn it on for them before I leave. I’m sure they’ll be fine in there—”

“They’d better be…and no ripping up my boxes or books,” I warned him, as I slid into my coat (which I never did have time to take to the back room that morning), and picked up my purse from behind the counter.

Rik waited to reply until I was halfway out the door, so I wasn’t completely sure I actually heard what I thought he said:

“They’ve been warned about that…no ripping, just reading—”

As I’d anticipated, Oscar and April had slept all night in the front window, a feline version of Barrett and Browning, curled into a seemingly continuous ball of white-flecked gray fur, their flanks rising and falling in sweet unison. The molasses-brown brickwork of the window frame formed a rough-hewn frame around them, and I wished I’d had that camera with me—while they didn’t seem to know a mouse from a muffin, they were a beautiful pair. But as I opened the door, and flipped around the Open/Closed door-sign, I found myself worried about that other pair of cats in the store, the ones who had to sleep with an overhead night-light.

Hoping that Rik was right about them, I nervously opened the door to the back room then peeked around the frame. The litter pan had been used, the food was gone, and the kittens…were actually sitting at attention, as if waiting for me. The only thing out of place in the room was a Richard Scary children’s dictionary, resting on the floor near their folded blanket-bed. I knew we had more than one copy of that particular book on the children’s shelf, but I hadn’t thought that we had another one waiting to be put on on the shelf…it didn’t seem like anyone had brought in any children’s books in the last few boxes of traded books—

“See, I told you they’d be good—”

“God, Rik, you scared me!” My heart was still lopping wildly in my chest when I turned around to face my afternoon-time-worker. Rik tried to hide behind a bag of take-out donuts, as he said in a don’t-hit-me voice, “I thought you heard the bell…sorry.”

“I should’ve heard it…and you brought me breakfast, too. Yes, to answer you…they were good…but where did the book come from?”

“Oh that…I took a picture of them, last night. I stopped in to check on them, make sure they had enough food. I thought it would be funny to get one of them ‘reading’ a children’s book. I forgot to put it back—” he ducked into the room, picked up the book, and carried it back to the children’s shelf, all the while holding the white bag of donuts in his left hand, just out of my reach. Behind him, the kittens watched intently as the book was lifted off the floor, and carried away from them. They almost seemed disappointed.…

On the way up to the counter, I snatched the donuts out of his hand, and said between glazed bits, “I thought you had classes at night?”

“I did…I stopped here afterwards. Oh, I almost forgot—” he dug around in the large patch pockets of his jacket, and pulled out a few cans of cat food, the tiny expensive brand I usually couldn’t afford more than once a year, as the lovebirds’ Christmas treat.

“Here’s some for the window-dressing, and the rest’s for the kittens. Work-study’s been good this year, so I thought I’d splurge. I’ll buy them some more later this week—”

“You needn’t do that…they’ll be earning their keep eventually, I hope…or don’t they ‘do’ mice?”

“Mice shouldn’t be a problem…long as they’re well fed. You know how a less-hungry cat is a better mouser—”

“Is that something they teach you at the university?”

Rik nodded as he bit into a jelly-filled donut, then said something around a mouthful of half-chewed pastry.

“What?” I licked the sugary glaze off my fingertips as he repeated, “‘Something’ like that. I work in the labs, with the animals—”

“Uhhh…not so early in the morning. I haven’t the stomach for hearing about lab animals—”

“No, these aren’t the kind that die. We—I…I work with the genetics department. Uhm, Jake does, too,” he added, realizing that I’d caught slip-of-the-tongue “we” seconds earlier.

“So…that means breeding things, like kittens, maybe?” I thought Scooter and Mittens were too tame to have come from some mall—

“Sometimes like kittens. Mostly mice and other rodents, though. Not to dissect, or feed to snakes, though. Nothing…yucky,” he added, with a smile, then turned his attention to Oscar and April, who’d finally woken up, and took turns stretching, yawning, and kneading the bright ombré canvas beneath them, before jumping down and milling around our legs. Peeling the pull-tab covers off the food, Rik knelt down and fed the cats behind the counter, giving them a can each. Taking a cue from my worker, I picked up a couple of the small tins of food and carried them to the back room…but the kittens had already left, to sit vigil in front of the rows of children’s books along the back wall of the store.

Directly in front of that children’s dictionary—

“Well if you two like it so much, it’s yours,” I said, sliding it off the shelf, and using it as a tray to carry the cans of food into the back room. I did feel guilty about not buying them any cat toys, and after Rik had bought all four cats breakfast, my guilt more than doubled. The kittens happily ate out of the opened cans, and while they noisily attacked the food, I placed “their” book next to their bedding…which was softly indented in two spots, one covered with white and black fur, the other a soft ombré of brown, tan and orange.

Glancing around the rest of the room, I didn’t see any shredded paper, nor were there any claw marks on the sides of the cardboard boxes, so I found myself saying, “If you two did come from a lab, you must be used to things being clean…just keep it that way, ok?”

I was sure the kittens only lifted their heads from their food to catch a breath of air between bits of food.…

The kittens, Rik and I settled into a new routine over the next few weeks; he’d stop by the store before it opened, to check on the Hemingway kittens, as we’d both taken to calling them, then meet me coming in as he was going out. Rik would return in the afternoon, allowing me time with the kittens—Mittens was slow to come around, far more so than Scooter, but I soon found that she loved the nesting cats…so much so that one morning I found all the solid core figures, kittens and mice alike, nestled next to her side of the blanket she and Scooter shared. Thinking that she might be getting ready to go into heat, I gently checked her teeth, but none of her adult fangs were anywhere near ready to drop down yet. Scooter’s fangs were just beginning to bud out, swelling his gum-line, so I called the vet clinic to set up a neutering appointment for him, which was scheduled for three weeks from that day.

But Rik wouldn’t have it—

“Neuter a cat like Scooter? With his smarts? And all that personality? How could you take something like that out of the gene pool?” For a college boy, he could be terribly obtuse; without trying to come across like an out-of-it old nagger, I tried to explain, “But you can see yourself that he’s defective…those paws, and that kinked tail. I’ve looked it up in all the cat books we have here—those are mutant traits. Not desirable in the least. Besides, millions of kittens are born every day…why add more to the mix?”

That narrow worry-line appeared on his forehead again, as he began patting the head of my pencil-holder cat, his rings clanging against the smooth ceramic. “But those kittens aren’t wanted…Scooter’s would be. How about we start letting the customers see him, and Mittens, to create a demand? Nothing like a pair of literary kittens to bring attention to a bookstore—”

I still wasn’t sure about letting the people see the Hemingway kittens; I was used to seeing their strange paws, but not everyone was into cats with large mitten feet. Glancing around the cat-print covered walls of my shop, I noticed that Susan Herbert and Mr. Wysocki didn’t choose to use polydactyl cats in their paintings, despite their human-like paws. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure if all my clients would realize what a Hemingway cat was…after all, Minnesota was, and still is, F. Scott Fitzgerald country.

It was almost as if Rik had read my mind, for he suddenly said, “Picture this…Scooter and Mittens in the window, with books by Hemingway and Fitzgerald, maybe even an opened copy of The Great Gatsby—it’s be a heck of a photo op, at the least. You now, free advertising.…”

College boy had me there. For more years than I cared to admit, I’d made do with a small weekly ad in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Star-Tribune, the cheapest one I could get, just enough to let readers know I was Out There. And while my “Barrett and Browning” cats attracted quite a bit of passer-by attention, I’d never been daring enough to try to create a window worthy of newspaper attention. I suppose it was being brought up during the age of Self-Praise-Stinks, the motto my parents drummed into my head almost from the cradle, but this was the Information Age, and I realized that Rik’s idea was a good one.…

It took a little coaxing to lure Oscar and April out of “their” window (plus the small canister of cat treats Rik bought helped), but Scooter and Mittens seemed to instinctively understand what was wanted of them.

Rik had done some searching on the Internet and found some pictures of the descendants of the real Hemingway cats which he downloaded and printed out in color, and I’d found some art-quality prints of both authors, which I mounted on poster-board. I knew the sunlight would bleach out all the pictures within a few weeks or less, but I didn’t plan to keep this particular display up all that long—Rik promised me that a friend of his who worked at one of the papers would just “happen by” and take a photo of the new window display, and just as Rik had managed to “find” me some new store-cats within hours of my asking about them, he made sure that his friend came through for me.

He photo ran on the front page of the Metro section of the Pioneer Press by the end of the week. A generous four-by-six color picture, showing the bottom half of the sign above the window, and all of the display itself.

Surrounded by easel-propped photos of the Florida Hemingway cats, and the prints of Ernest and F. Scott, Mittens and Scooter were lying before an opened copy of Gatsby, their distinctive mitten feet resting on the exposed pages, their heads cocked at quizzical angles as they “read” the words before them. The caption read, “Hemingway-0, Fitzgerald-2”. The rivalry between those two gentlemen may have been decades old, but judging by the reaction that photo generated, feelings for Hemingway and Fitzgerald still ran as fervent and deep as the on-going Packer-Vikings brou-ha-ha. Every copy of anything written by either of the two authors sold out within a couple of days, and when Rik and I weren’t waiting on customers, we were supervising photo ops with the kittens and cat-lovers who couldn’t wait to have their picture taken with one of the Hemingway kittens.

Since neither of the kittens displayed a penchant for ripping or shredding book spines, or honing their many claws on the edges of the shelves, we’d taken to leaving them out during the night…although with all the increased attention Barrett and Browning was enjoying lately, I did have qualms about letting people see the kittens at all hours—

“—suppose someone tries to break the window, and take them?”

“This is a low crime neighborhood…and that window is double-paned. Would take a lot of effort and make a lot of noise to break it. Besides, I think the kittens would be smart enough to make a run for it if anyone was after them—”

“There’s a difference between being personable and smart, Rik…look how they let anyone hold them. I just don’t know—”

“Did anyone try to get at Oscar and April? They’re just as good-looking, and personable—”

“They’re also fixed,” I reminded him, “While these two—” I cocked my head in the direction of the window, where Scooter and Mittens were busy “reading” an old opened hardbound copy of A Farewell to Arms “—aren’t. Although half that problem will be solved in a few days.”

Rik didn’t say anything, but that fine line appeared between his dark eyes again. Down one of the aisles, I heard the unmistakable sound of cat spray hitting something hard, and hurried to see what Oscar was doing, yelling “Bad cat! Bad-bad-bad!” There was a tell-tale puddle on the worn floorboards near the rack of children’s books—Oscar had targeted the children’s dictionary the kittens used to fancy. They’d been ignoring the book for the last few days, so I’d placed it back on the shelf, but now it was ruined. Gingerly pulling the thick book out of the stack, I noticed something odd imbedded in the top of the spine—a shed claw-cover, which gleamed softly in the center of the now-damp spine, as if the book had been pulled out by one downward-moving cat paw, from the top, the way a person might pull out a book, rather than the way a cat would to it—by raking on the spine itself, until the book wiggled free of the rest or, the shelf.

Oscar’s puddle of urine began to spread on the floor, so I ran to the back room for a paper towel, the ruined dictionary with the imbedded claw momentarily forgotten. But as I was mopping up the mess, I head Rik shout, “No, you guys, c’mere—” and I knew instantly that the kittens had escaped.

I ran, wet paper towel still wadded up in one hand, to the window, which was now a mere tableau of books and fading pictures—no more Scooter, no Mittens. Rik was outside the door, looking quickly up and down the street, but when he turned to reenter the store, I knew just from looking at his face. They were gone. And the terrible thing was, I could so easily imagine their flight—Scooter with his long side-fur rippling like a soft curtain along his hips and flank. Mittens with her small fox-like face moving quickly from side to side, both of them running fast, their legs scissoring in the spring sunlight, as they hurried down some alley-way.…

Rik tried to explain what had happened, but I was devastated. He’d been placing some new Dean Koontz books on the bestseller’s shelf, when he heard the door jingle, but no incoming footsteps—only the sharp scrabble of many claws hitting hardwood, then the door jingled shut again. By the time he’d turned around, and gone to the door, both of them had vanished. And my store was located in the middle of a side-street, which meant they could’ve gone in any direction.

On top of everything else, my front door pulled outward, being an old wooden and glass door that I’d kept because it was so antique and old-fashioned…so the kittens, if they moved as one, might have been able to shove it open.

Sick at heart, I left the store, and went searching for the kittens in the alleys near my business, calling and pleading for them to come back, but it was as if they’d never existed. All I had left of them was a framed copy of that Metro section photo, and a claw-casing stuck in the spine of a ruined children’s dictionary.

After I’d given up looking for them, long after Rik had closed the store for me (he’d left a note on the counter, which merely read “I’m so, so sorry” in his large, flowing handwriting), I went to the back room, and picked up the blanket they’d slept on for the last couple of months. It still smelled of their fur, a warm, slightly “hot” scent which reminded ever so slightly of old paperback books and binding glue. My bookstore kittens even smelled like books…but when I squeezed the blanket next to my chest, I felt something hard inside. I’d long ago put the cores of the nesting doll sets back on the shelf, so I couldn’t imagine what the kittens had shoved into the folds of the blanket, until I shook it, and a tiny bridge pencil, the kind of writing implement no bigger around then a coffee stir-stick, and only half again as long, fell to the floor.

“Where in the world did they get that?” I muttered, as April and Oscar tentatively came into the room, and began rubbing on my legs. Looking down at Oscar, I remembered the dictionary he’d sprayed, and—still hugging the furry blanket close to my heart—walked back into the store-proper, where it rested on the floor near the children’s shelf.

I began leafing through it, and soon found that some of the pages had been marked up, with random pencil scrawls that resembled that “graffiti” style of printing used for hand-held electronic notebooks. I’d seen Rik use that style of writing; according to some of the Tech sections I’d read in the Pioneer Press and Star Tribune, it was very popular with young computer-users. Looking down at the scribbles on the pages, I realized that someone had been trying to copy some of the words, printing clumsily at first, but with increasing legibility—and, if I held the book just so under the overhead lights, I could also make out thin fine scratch marks at the tops of the pages, as if someone with very long, needle-tipped nails had been paging through the book—

The possibility was so absurd, yet so…plausible, I found myself breathing hard and fast, while I rifled the pages of the book, looking for those oddly-printed letters, and, ultimately, words.

“A” “B”…all the way through “Y” and “Z”. Then, short words, “AN” “TO” “AND”…and on to the inevitable “CAT”.…

Those strange mitten feet. So much like a hand, with an opposable thumb. And that bridge pencil was small and thin enough to just fit in that narrow space between those bifid paws.

Rik leaving the light on, along with that book. Did he give them the pencil, when he visited them that night? Or had they used it in the lab?

Leaning heavily against the rack of children’s books, feeling the horizontal thickness of the shelf edge dig into my back, I paged through the dictionary, looking at the last pages of the book, and what was written there:

“BOOK GOOD. READ MORE? OPEN THE DOOR, READ MORE AT NIGHT.”

They had grammar. They had punctuation. And, I assumed, they had human genes, mixed in with feline ones. Maybe even a dash of raccoon, for additional manual dexterity.…

Rik and his roommate Jake worked in the genetics department. Not cleaning the lab, like Rik had implied. And not merely working with rodents, either. How long had he been working with me, five, six years?

It didn’t take that much time for those folks who added a bit of jellyfish DNA to a white rabbit, in order to make its fur glow green under black light, to create their living work of “art”…but it would take time for Rik and Jake and whoever else they worked with in that lab to teach a “hu-line” chimera to read.…

Or spend time letting them read, I thought, as I looked at my small literary sanctuary, my private bookdom…which was much like a school for Hemingway kittens. They had the time, and the light (be it from the backroom, or from the streetlamp which shone into my window at night), and all the schoolbooks they needed. I supposed that whatever Rik or Jake or whoever created the kittens did to them changed their eyes, made them able to read two-dimensional print even as they may have sacrificed their innate ability to see well in low light, so they needed regular light to read…and they already had the “hands” to turn a page. I couldn’t watch them every second while I was in the store, so it would have been so easy for them to surreptitiously turn a page while looking at whatever book Rik had propped open before them.

And if they could read, they could understand…the only question was, did they escape on their own, or did Rik let them out, perhaps handing them off to a waiting friend?

I’d been so insistent about getting Scooter neutered, when of course Rik couldn’t allow that—

Scooter was about five or so months old, close to teen-age years in human terms. Perhaps he was almost ready to graduate from my “school” already…and took Mittens along with him when he left, if leave on his own he did. Or, maybe he and Mittens needed to find an easier way to write, perhaps on a computer screen…if they could manage a bridge pencil, a stylus would be so easy for them to master. Or a computer mouse, or cue-cat.…

I wasn’t all that surprised that night when Rik called to say he wouldn’t be able to make it to work anymore—too many changes in his class schedule, he claimed. And he again said how sorry he was about the kittens. Before he hung up, he suggested that I have the photos in that disposable camera developed—“in case you want to do up a missing poster or something.”

I didn’t do up a poster, but I did get the pictures developed. The first two were from some Super Bowl party, people with Vikings hats and haircuts, drinking beer and eating nachos. Those went in the wastebasket. But the rest…there were Scooter and Mittens, staring eagerly at the row of children’s books. Then, the two of them reading their dictionary, as well as writing on the margins with their small bridge pencils tucked in their paws. Others showed them turning the pages of hard-bound books, their pointed faces looking down at the text below. In one shot, Rik had brought over his own e-notebook, and both kittens were studying the small keypad. Which gave me an idea—

As much as I loved the printed page, I was certainly no Luddite—I had a computer at home, and a webpage (albeit a small one) for the bookstore itself, and my web address was listed on all the major ISP’s…so, each evening, I took to carefully reading my email, studying the Subject headings, looking for a message I wasn’t even sure would ever come.…I looked for many months, long enough for the Hemingway kittens to become cats, and perhaps even parents of more “hu-line” polydactyl kittens, until it appeared. The message read:

From: <HemCats><hemcats@excite.com>

To:<Barrett and Browning>barrettbrowning@aol.com

Subject: A Tale of Two Kitties

Hello, Book-lady,

Your wish came true. Couldn’t find _­A Tale of Two Kitties_ but did read –A Tale of Two Cities _. We both like it, but it was heavy. Sorry not to have said Good-Bye last year, but there was no time. We had to avoid getting fixed. Rik says you’d understand. Look for us (Rik and Jake too) soon in all the scientific magazines, maybe the newspapers, too. The young ones are better at reading and writing than we are, and will be ready for the media soon. We tell them about the book place, what a special school it was for us, and how we practiced being parents with the wood kittens. You were a good teacher. We remember the pictures, and have looked for the originals on the net. Computers are fast and light, but books smell better. We miss the Barrett and Browning. The young ones don’t understand. They grew up on e-books. But we remember. Say hello to Oscar and April. And the shiny hard cat on the counter by the door. It never talked, but we still liked it. But not when Rik made noise on it with his rings. Rik and Jake are busy with the young ones, so we could send this. Don’t tell them we did. Just remember us. We remember you and the books.

Jay and Zelda and the young ones.

So Scooter had remembered our “conversation” about “The Tale of Two Kitties”…words I’m positive Rik never heard me utter. And Scooter—or “Jay,” as he’d dubbed himself, giving himself the name only he knew, in true T. S. Eliot style—knew that message would be the only one I’d know for certain was, indeed, from him, and him alone.

Or not so alone…if “Zelda” was Mittens. At least that caption in that Metro section had gotten it right—Hemingway-0, Fitzgerald-2.

The kittens may have been a mixture of feline and human DNA, but they were Minnesotans down to their bones.

In memory of Mittens (February, 1998 to October 8, 1998), and Scooter (February 1998 to November 22, 1998), and Little Boy (September 2000 to February 18, 2001).

“If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes 10,000 miles away.…”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

—A. R. Morlan, February 2001

AFTERWORD

As you can guess, the cats mentioned in this story were based on real pets of mine, down to the names and descriptions. The real Oscar and April died within ten days of each other—he was over eleven years old, while she was only five, but when he passed on, she literally gave up the will to live, and died of what I can only assume was a real, broken heart. Scooter and Mittens actually were littermates; they died in 1998, when I had an outbreak of Feline Infectious Peritonitis in my household of cat-children, and fourteen of them died. I was beyond heartbroken, and cannot think of that time without crying, so…I’m forced not to think too often of those beautiful babies I lost. Which robs me of their presence in my mind’s eye, which is a double loss.

But Scooter was beyond special, even though he only lived for about nine months—he was as I described him, super smart, beautiful, with many little toes on his furry paws. A part of me died when he did. I have had other cats after him, some as smart, others as beautiful, but he was unique, irreplaceable, and yet, what he gave to me while he was with me will never leave me; he was something more than a cat, something beyond words which exists only in the realm of pure feeling. His sister was sweet, timid, and also died too soon. Their loss is permanent for me.

On another note, this story was something of a lifesaver for me; I found out about it from Nancy Springer, whom I’d sold the story “That Dress!” to in 1997—she sent me a note about an anthology concerning books and bookstores in 2002, which was based in nearby Minnesota, and as luck would have it, I wrote this story, had it accepted, and received the payment (which was rather large, even for a hard-cover antho) just in time to use it to pay for repairs to my boiler. The amount virtually covered the part replacement fee plus labor. So…thanks for thinking of me, Nancy!!