Читать книгу The Second Cat Megapack - George Zebrowski - Страница 7

THE CAT WITH THE TULIP FACE, by A. R. Morlan

Author’s Note: This novelette is a prequel to my novel The Amulet, and takes place in late 1986, a year before the events in the novel.

* * * *

“When it’s time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.”

—Henry David Thoreau

Meaow.

“Kitty-kitty?” Arlene asked the humid early morning air, as she glanced up and down Wisconsin Street. Darkness welled in recessed shop doorways, and gave an inky sheen to the large display windows. The greenish-white street lamps were too far away to cast much of a glow where she stood, midway between the tacky novelty shop and the building which used to be the Ewerton Savings and Loan but was now a lawyer’s office (after the Century 21 Realty office came and went).

A fine mist settled on Arlene’s exposed face and forearms; she rolled down the plastic backed canvas sleeves on her outsized slicker and tried calling again. “C’mon, Kitty-kitty. It’s okay, I won’t hurt you.” She could hear the cat (kitten? It sounded young) crying, but the humidity in the sluggish July air made it difficult to pinpoint just where its cries originated.

Meeeaow!

Closer and louder now. Arlene walked forward slowly, heading toward the tiny diner that used-to-be-a-clothing-boutique to the north of her. In the distance she heard a truck’s many wide tires snick-splash along one of the side streets behind her. At this hour of the morning—just before four—the only things moving on the streets of Ewerton were out of state truckers, the last stragglers coming home after an all-night party held in one of those walk-up apartments nestled above the department stores, the occasional stray animal—and Arlene.

Plastic mesh shopping bags in hand, Arlene had Ewerton all to herself in the mornings. She was the Queen of Ewerton Avenue, the Owner of Wisconsin Street. And the Duchess of the Dumpsters, she often joked with herself as she leaned into the back-of-the-store Dumpsters, her fingers sensitive to the feel of aluminum cans, the odd piece of discarded merchandise, or even the past-its-due-date box or carton of food.

And stray animals. Often, she’d uninten­tionally scare a wild cat or something smaller and quicker that she wasn’t about to try to scrutinize in order to determine its species. And some mornings, she had footsore canine company for the length of a few blocks, until a slobbery tongue touched her hand in fare­well and the empty streets rang with the sound of dog nails doing a chitinous tap-dance on the concrete.

But these had been animals, hungry, tired, or just plain lonely enough to allow Arlene to pick them up and scavenge them like an alu­minum can, or an old box of breakfast cereal. Not that she thought of her pets as refuse, or cast-offs, though. Arlene treated all of her “finds” with respect, be they inanimate or animate. The aluminum cans were washed, then carefully crushed flat, prior to their stor­age in black plastic bags in the basement (and their subsequent return to the recycling truck come Thursday). The rust-dotted kitchen tools, chipped dishes, and one-left cards of kitchen magnets or corn-on-the-cob servers were diligently scrubbed, mended or matched with other odd-lot items waiting in Arlene’s already cluttered kitchen drawers.

As for the animals…Arlene was a couple years short of being able to collect her own Social Security, but what with her late hus­band’s SS checks, and the modest sum he’d left in the bank for her, she had just enough to pay her utility bills plus her considerable vet­erinarian bills. If a cat or dog needed food, she bought it name brands plus those expensive treats in the fancy little cans or boxes, while she ate weeks-old spareribs from the IGA dumpster. Should the animal need flea sham­poo, she used only a half a tablet of denture cleaner in her chopper-hopper each day. When she wrote out the checks for her ani­mals’ shots each year, she didn’t write out a check to cover the cost of her Ben-Gay and non-aspirin.

If you take it in, you take care of it. That thought alone was enough to banish any temptation to pamper herself. She had lived over sixty good years, years of plenty. And I still have plenty, she stubbornly told herself many a morning. Only difference is, I don’t have to pay for all of it. That some of her finds—the four-legged ones—ended up costing her money she really couldn’t afford to spend so freely never fazed Arlene, living alone as she did, with no children or grandchildren—or even many friends, for that matter—Arlene considered the love of her “babies” payment in full, thank you. While she knew that she’d have to make the little she had last until her own SS kicked in, Arlene had long ago decided that a life lived without giv­ing, to someone, wasn’t a life.

Her years with Don had proved that to be a fact.

So there she was, an old woman with ri­diculously thin ankles which vanished in a pair of velcro-strapped running shoes, walking briskly down the street, her good ear cocked and waiting for the next Meaow. She walked faster, both out of need and urgency. With the gradual lightening of the sky, it was urgent that she get home before the delivery trucks began to arrive at the stores, and the graveyard shifts at the sash and door and paper mill were let out. And she knew that that cat (kitten?) needed her.

Six years of combing the pre-dawn streets had taught Arlene that for a little animal, alone and scared, dawn is too late. With the coming of light come cars with drivers who speed up when they see something small and frantic trying to cross the street. Arlene had toed many a pulp-headed animal to the curb during her “normal” shopping hours.

But if she could find this cat before the coming of the light—­

Meeeaow!

That was why it was hard to get a fix on its cries—they came from above Arlene. Look­ing up, she saw the kitten sitting on the high window ledge of the dentist’s office close to the intersection of Wisconsin Street and Fourth Avenue East. That window set in the gray stone facade was a good five feet off the ground, a small window with a deep ledge, recessed enough for a tiny kitten to hunker down close to the glass.

“Aw, c’mon, kitty, you can come closer, I won’t hurt you,” Arlene coaxed, as she stood on tiptoes and reached for the kitten. At five foot four, she was just tall enough to brush the animal’s silky coat with the tips of her blunt fingers. The kitten was warm, exceptionally so for an animal which had most likely been sitting on that ledge all night. Its fur was as fine-textured as washed silk; as the kitten breathed its fur undulated like wind-whipped draperies, a most peculiar sensation.

The kitten stopped crying, and edged closer to Arlene; two huge black ears sur­mounted a mottled white and black wedge of a face. It looked to be about three months old. In the spill of the street-lamp, Arlene noticed that the kitten’s eyes were tiny, baby-like. They glittered against the surrounding white fur like pebbles in the bottom of a fish tank, all watery and rounded.

Then, as if it had sized Arlene up and found her satisfactory, the kitten jumped off the ledge into her waiting arms. Upon impact, it began to purr, a loud rumble that radiated from its chest outward, making the ribs and skin vibrate. Arlene undid the top snap on her slicker and tucked the kitten inside; as she did so, her fingers brushed against the base of the kitten’s tail. Gonads the size of large peas filled the scrotum.

As she positioned her left arm under the kitten, Arlene thought, Awfully big down there for such a tiny baby boy…must be older than I thought. Arlene’s bag of cans clunked against her leg as she walked, but soon the kitten’s purr drowned out even that noise.

By the time she was halfway to her home on Polk Avenue, the kitten was kneading her stomach.

* * * *

Not only was the kitten older than Arlene had first guessed, he was…uglier than she’d realized. When she first brought him home, she hurried past the cats and dogs winding around her legs and shoved the wiggling kit­ten into the bathroom; she dreaded having to give all ten of her animals flea baths just in case the new arrival was crawling with the little brown varmints. After dumping some food into a saucer (also scavenged, a little white bowl with a childish picture of a space­man on the moon in the bottom), she opened the bathroom door long enough to shove the food inside and slammed it before the kitten ran out. (There were litter pans positioned all over the house, including the bathroom, so she wasn’t worried about any accidents after the kitten ate.) But she didn’t get a good look at her newest find until after she’d fed her other friends, then brewed a cup of Earl Gray for herself.

While the other animals whined, scratched, hissed, and panted outside, Arlene quickly opened the door and slipped into the bath­room. The kitten was sitting on the toilet tank, in a Sphinx pose. Sitting sideways on the toilet seat, her back to the bathtub, Arlene said as she stroked the kitten’s seal-sleek fur, “Gra­cious, you are the most awful looking kitty I’ve seen yet.” The kitten blinked a kitty-kiss at her and began purring, as if she’d just said he was the most beautiful animal in the uni­verse.

The kitten’s capacity for affection wasn’t in keeping with his appearance; not only were his ears way too big, so huge they almost met in the center of his upper head, but his face was all…wrong.

The too-small green eyes were only the beginning. The kitten’s forehead and nose were all of one line, unbroken by dips, bumps, or anything. Just a straight slope from the too-­close ears down to the nose leather. Arlene’s cats, while not purebreds, were similar to each other in that their noses all dipped down par­allel to their eyes in a pleasing sloping “S” curve. Years ago, Arlene had a cat named Louie who closely resembled an Oriental Shorthair, and even his nose had had a slight dip to it.

But the kitten’s nose resembled something drawn with a straight-edge. Head-on he looked even worse, for his white face was marred in the middle by an irregular blotch which completely obscured his nose, leather and all. When Arlene glanced at him fast, it, almost seemed that he had no nose at all. And his tiny, slightly bulging eyes didn’t add to his beauty, either.

Gently pulling back the kitten’s gums, she said, “Just want to check your teeth…good boy.” Wiping off cat spittle onto her smock top, Arlene frowned to herself. This kitten had his canines. Top and bottom, almost fully grown in. Which made him.… “Hum, lemme see—I found Guy-Pie when he was about five months old, and he had his canines” (not to mention over a hundred fleas which Arlene had drowned in a jelly-jar glass) “so you’re pretty close to that age, aren’t you?”

The kitten purred in agreement. Arlene patted his sides; the ribs stood out like the tines of a serving fork held an inch above a table. Pitiful. The skin was sucked in close to his rump and guts, and his stifle bones felt like marbles under Arlene’s hard fingertips. And his all-black tail resembled a licorice whip.

Outside, from where they waited in the hallway, the other cats rattled the door by sticking their paws under the jamb, while the dog nails made staccato scrabblings on the linoleum floor. The kitten ignored them, in­tent only on Arlene, who had owned, loved, and buried enough cats to know what that look meant.

Like it or not, Arlene had a baby on her hands, a baby who had found himself a new Momma.

Suddenly, the kitten sighed, reached for her hand with one huge-toed white paw, and rested his head against the worn blue toilet tank cover. A smile worked its way onto Arlene’s wrinkled face, and stayed there. Patting the kitten’s flanks, she whispered, “Why do I get the feeling that there’s going to be a lot of jealous animals around the house, hm?”

The kitten blinked his minuscule eyes in reply, and purred louder than ever.

* * * *

Arlene knew from experience never to take an animal in to the vet’s office on a Monday; not that she had much else to fill her days, but she still hated to waste her time sitting in a noisy office full of yippy-yappy hunting dogs and poodles whose nails needed clipping.

She did call the veterinarian office (“Not another one,” the receptionist had half-joked) to make an appointment for the next day; stool test, full shots, the works. And in be­tween making sure that her other pets were given extra hugs and soft chewy treats, she spent time in the bathroom with the kitten (who had the most indelicate habit of crawling into her lap while she was seated on the toilet; she had to hold him so he wouldn’t fall through to the water in the bowl).

The more she looked at him, the less offensive his face became to her; by evening he was almost cute. The black parts of his fur glistened with delicate rainbow colors, like the wings of a cowbird or blackbird, or the surface of certain black-red petaled flowers. And the shape of his face reminded her of some­thing…by that night, when his cries pulled her from her bed, and she had to try to show him—again—how to use a litter pan (her efforts were wasted though, since he let his bladder go on the toilet tank cover, and did the other thing after jumping into the sink), Arlene finally realized what the kitten reminded her of.…a tulip. One of those bicolor ones, with the sharp points on the top of the petals, and a narrow base where the flower joined the stem.

After he finally did his duty, and Arlene scooped the b.m. into an old yogurt cup for tomorrow’s test, she came back into the bath­room and held the kitten for a few minutes before going back to bed herself.

“Thass all right,” she crooned, hugging the scrawny kitten, “Thass all right, you’re a good boy.” The kitten kneaded her shoulder; there was something odd about the way he did that, but Arlene was too tired to figure it out. She’d have to ask the vet about it tomorrow.

Morning was only a few hours away, and there was scavenging to do.

* * * *

“You know, you ought to set yourself up as an official shelter,” the veterinarian joked as she looked in the kitten’s huge ears, checking for ear mites. “That one passes inspection, let’s see the other one.” The vet’s dark­-rimmed fingers poked in the cavernous depths of the kitten’s left ear. Arlene shuddered; she knew that both the vets had to tend to area cows, and horses, which meant that no matter how often they washed their hands their nails were still stained, but dark nails always gave her pause.

“I don’t think I could stand working in a shelter. I’d want to keep all the animals,” she finally replied, as the young vet began to pal­pitate the kitten’s abdomen. As her fingers worked their way over the fine white and black fur, Dr. Hraber said, “I thought you did that already, Mrs. Campbell.”

“Only the ones I find. I don’t think I could cope with ones brought in from all over.” Talk about abandoned animals made Arlene un­easy, bringing back memories of all the cats and dogs she’d either picked up or had wan­dered on her porch. Like Guy-Pie, with his rough pads and way of grabbing whole chunks out of the food bowl and running halfway across the room with them before he’d eat. Big gentle Rowdy, her leather collar stripped of its tags and attached name-tag, just an old yellow hunting dog no one wanted on the hunt anymore. Bubba, huddled shivering next to the Coke machine at the Red Owl, chunks of cow manure stuck in his white fur, his ear tips chewed by God knew what, too beat and broken to even let out a meaow.

And those were only the animals she had found. Arlene had never answered one of those “Free Kittens” or “Puppies to Give Away” ads in the Ewerton Herald; for her, looking at them all was wanting to take them all home. True, she worried about people from labs or pit bull breeders coming to take the little animals, but as long as she didn’t see them, she wouldn’t let it pain her overmuch. She had her “children” to look after; if God saw fit to put one within her hearing or seeing, that was the animal she would take in. Just as she picked up cans or went rooting for week-­old bread in back of the IGA. There was only so much she could do. Some things, unfortu­nately, were simply out of her hands.

“—think of a name for him yet?” The vet’s question startled her. Arlene pressed her hands against the kitten’s pathetic hips, and said, “Haven’t given it much thought…nothing much suggests itself, does it?”

Across the white examining table, Dr. Hraber suggested, “Duke? He looks like a Duke’s mixture—”

“No, my Don liked John Wayne. The name would make me think of him too much.” (Arlene let the doctor assume that she didn’t want to think of Don because the memory was painful—as it was, she missed the Duke more than she ever missed Don.)

“Hummm…well, we have to put a name on the vaccination certificate—”

“Silky? His fur is so soft—”

“Sounds good to me. That good with you, huh, Mister?” The vet opened Silky’s mouth, and ran a dark-rimmed finger along his gum line. Silky endured the intruding digit pa­tiently. As Arlene watched, she remembered that she had meant to ask the doctor some­thing else about the kitten, but couldn’t re­member it now. Instead, she asked, “What kind of cat do you suppose he is? He’s different-looking—”

“What kind?” The doctor waited a beat, then, as she cupped her fingers under Silky’s chin, said, “Ugly. No, seriously, it looks like there’s either Siamese or Oriental Shorthair in there, but I’ve never seen a cat like him before. I guess something bred with something differ­ent and it looked like this. I wish I could’ve seen his parents. Sometimes different breeds don’t cross very well, do they, Silky?”

Silky looked gravely at Dr. Hraber, as if to say, Please don’t make fun of me. Arlene wasn’t the only one to notice that expression, for Dr. Hraber dropped her bantering manner and said, “The stool test should be done in an hour or so. Do you care to wait around or call later?”

Tucking Silky’s wedge of a head under her chin, Arlene walked out of the examining room and into the waiting room, saying over her shoulder, “I’d rather call later, if you don’t mind.”

Outside, after she had paid for the shots, Arlene nuzzled Silky’s head and murmured into the cat’s sweet-smelling short fur, “Nasty lady said my little boy’s ugly…we just won’t listen to her, will we? We won’t pay the least bit of attention, none at all.”

But all the way home, Dr. Hraber’s remark niggled at Arlene.

* * * *

The CAT BREEDS OF THE WORLD book was written on a junior high level (which is where the book had come from, a discard from the middle school library), but the pictures in it were excellent, so Arlene suffered through the namby-pamby text:

…the Oriental Shorthair is a very long, lean cat, with strong muscles. The body is shaped a little like a tube, with extra long hind legs. Some people think its legs look a little bit like a race horse’s legs.

The Oriental Shorthair’s fur can be many different colors, as well as colored in points like its relative the Siamese (see page 59). The fur of this Oriental breed is very short, and fine-textured, like silk.

(Arlene looked down at the cat curled in her lap and said, “At least your name fits, baby.”)

Oriental Shorthairs have big green eyes, and even bigger ears. Their faces are trian­gular and.…­

Arlene looked at the picture on the facing page, but there was only a slight similarity between the dark gray cat pictured and the purring kitten on her lap. The Shorthair’s whiskers were too long (Silky’s were an inch and a half and less), and there was at least an inch or more of space between the ears them­selves. Silky’s ears all but met in the middle of his head; there wasn’t room enough on top for Arlene’s little finger to rest. A little over a quarter of an inch at the most. And the Oriental’s eyes were huge, luminous and take-your-breath-away green. Her kitten’s eyes were a little bigger than the fingernails on her forefingers, ovals of less than half an inch at the widest point. Much less.

The bodies of the two cats were closer, but there were still differences. Silky’s hind legs, while longer than the front ones, weren’t race­horse-high. And now that she looked at his front paws, Arlene realized what was wrong with them, what had hovered at the back of her mind since the night before. Silky had no claws. He had mottled pink and black pads, and the little fleshy dew-pad on the sides, but no claws.

Sick at heart, thinking that some clod had had Silky declawed then dumped him to fend for himself, Arlene gently flexed one of his paws and turned it around, looking for the tell­tale sunken incision lines of a declawed cat. Her Beanie, many years ago, had been declawed when her neighbors gave the cat to Arlene before they moved to the Cities. That calico’s feet had felt limp around the tips of the toes, where the first joint had been removed along with the nail. And there had been those sunken ugly scars…but Silky’s feet were al­most perfect. There were the right number of metacarpals under the skin, with no empty places under the skin and fur. He just didn’t have front claws. His hind ones were there, needing trimming in fact, but the front paws were free of crescent-shaped nails. Holding the cat’s paws dose to her bifocals, Arlene saw that there weren’t even any holes where the claws could come out.

Letting go of Silky’s feet, Arlene said, “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me. I won’t let that mean old doctor make fun of you, call you a freak. She’d probably call you a mutant, or worse.”

But as she sat on the lowered lid in the bathroom, listening to her other pets mill around in the hallway beyond the closed bath­room door, Arlene hugged Silky close as she wondered, What else might be wrong with him…inside?

* * * *

Once Silky was free of the roundworms the doctor found in his stool sample, and Ar­lene was satisfied that he carried no fleas, she let him have the run of her small home. Ini­tially there was a lot of hissing, barking, pissing, and scratching, but within a week Silky had settled in beautifully. Within two weeks the older cats were fighting over whose turn it was to wash his cavernous ears, while the dogs took turns chasing an old wiffle ball around the floor with him.

Silky learned to wait with the others for breakfast, while Arlene combed the streets and alleys, looking for cans and whatever else was there waiting to be found, taken home, and utilized. Once she even found a rubber jingle ball (along with a couple of almost perfect Ekco pizza pans). And July turned into Au­gust, which turned into September (which felt like October; Arlene blamed all those space shuttles NASA sent up to foul up the jet stream and ozone layer), and Silky was now one of the family…albeit a slightly lonely member of the family.

The dogs were all over seven years old, and tired quickly, while the next-youngest cat was Guy-Pie, at five years old. At first he had been Silky’s “best buddy,” but then Arlene noticed how Guy-Pie had trouble swallowing, and even more trouble breathing. Respiratory infection, she told herself, and tried to take his temperature, but the tortoise-shell cat bucked and kicked like a bronco horse when she tried to do that, so she gave him amoxicillin drops that looked like watered-down Pepto-Bismal and smelled like cherries. (She always kept a bottle of dry amoxicillin powder on hand.)

Guy-Pie took the amoxi without complaint, but he didn’t get any better. Putting her ear to his ribcage, Arlene heard a strange hooting and whistling, and said to herself, Pneu­monia…or perhaps pyothorax. They’re always fighting over some little thing, nipping ears and tails…maybe someone bit Guy-Pie in the chest and I didn’t notice. Guy-Pie has never been a complainer.…

It wasn’t pneumonia, and it wasn’t pyotho­rax. The cat’s temperature was normal, but his X-ray wasn’t. The other veterinarian, Dr. Mertz, was as gentle with Arlene as if the old woman was his own mother.

“It’s a tumor in his upper chest. It’s press­ing against his heart and thorax. I don’t think he’s in pain, but I can give him cortisone pills for the duration. Now there’s a slight, and I do mean very slight chance that it might be an abscess, although I can’t find any healed scars on his chest wall. I have this medication, clindamycin hydrochloride—”

Guy-Pie fought this clear, bitter-smelling new medicine, but he didn’t cry or complain after Arlene squirted it down his throat twice a day. Once, he did jerk his head, and a drop of the liquid touched Arlene’s lips. It was vile, the way paint thinner or ammonia probably tasted. Making herself lick her bitter lips clean, Arlene cried, “Oh, Guy-Pie, I’m so sorry…but I have to give it the old college try, don’t I? Don’t we?” and hugged the trim dark cat with the little upturned nose and big frightened green eyes close to her flannel shirt. And as she cried into Guy-Pie’s smooth tan stippled black coat, Silky watched her from where he sat on the counter, small eyes solemn.

And for a month, then two, Guy-Pie ate, still lost weight, kept on taking his pale orange pills, yet never complained, while Arlene forsook her daily Dumpster dives, telling herself that the recycling truck only came every other week anyhow, and that she didn’t need to gather as many cans.

The older cats and dogs took turns sleep­ing next to Guy-Pie; washing his head and ears, purring for him when he could no longer purr for himself. The tumor grew; his chest swelled in either direction. Silky tried to wash his friend into activity, until he realized what was up (or so Arlene let herself believe) and merely slept next to his cobby-bodied friend, waiting.

And when Guy-Pie ate no longer, even after Arlene rubbed the soft smelly food on his ever-paler gums, she wrapped him in a blanket which she held against one shoulder, while she carried the old black gym bag she’d found near the middle school in her free hand.

She couldn’t bear to let people see her carry­ing a dead cat through town on the way home.

* * * *

November wind, sharp and silvery pure as a freshly honed blade, whistled through the little gaps where Arlene’s scarf and thin gray hair met. She was walking along the curved spur of tracks near the depot, past the place where Dean Avenue curved out in the oppo­site direction to the west, scanning the rusted tracks for the right stones. Guy-Pie was a good cat, a beautiful cat. He deserved the finest stones to cover the flattened round of disturbed earth in the backyard. Her pea-coat pockets were heavy and hung low with the rocks she’d already found. Grays, pink-grays, and jagged bits studded with shimmers of mica. (The shine of those stones reminded Arlene of the liquid green light in the back of Guy-Pie’s eyes, just before the injection—)

Not worried that a train would run over her (the Soo Line had been sold years before, and the buying company cut out the Ewerton runs), Arlene followed the gentle curve to the west, walking stiff-legged down the middle of the boards, her feet moving in a strange gait as her feet sought out each nearest plank. Tracks aren’t made for walking, a calm part of her mind thought, as an old image came back to her. Guy-Pie as a kitten, dignified even in his hunger and footsore condition, as he stood on her front porch. Such a pretty kitten, not long and scrawny like most adolescent cats, but perfectly formed and solemn. And how the other kitties had taken to him, with none of that nose-out-of-joint tomfoolery.­

(“—he’s had five good years, Mrs. Campbell, that’s the most anyone could’ve done for him. And remember, he had a re­cessed testicle when you found him, and if that had remained inside him, he would’ve been dead in a year from cancer. You gave him years he wouldn’t have had. And he was good to your other cats, and that new kitten of yours too—”)

And he’d even sat quiet while she plucked off all the fleas that survived his sham­poo. Guy-Pie was the best kitty she’d ever had, until Silky came along, at least. And while Silky wasn’t like Guy-Pie, not in a lot of ways, he was good in his own way.

It had almost done her in when she brought Guy-Pie home, and placed him on the floor, then dragged the other animals over to see him. She had read once that that was important, making sure that the other animals in a household knew that one of their friends was gone. The dogs howled and took off after seeing him, and most of the cats did likewise, except for Silky. He had reached out one white paw to touch Guy-Pie’s flank, and when his friend didn’t respond, Silky let his head hang down but didn’t leave Guy-Pie’s side.

Pausing to dry her leaking eyes (it’s the wind, cuts like a razor it does), Arlene realized that she’d walked well past Dean Avenue, all the way up to the depot. The old rust and cream painted building was aban­doned now, with the warped boards showing through fine-grained and silvery in the pale sunlight. On the side facing her were all the old wrought-iron benches bolted to the con­crete platform, and above the benches was a multicolored flutter of paper; all sizes, shapes, and shades, attached with thumbtacks, tape, and staples.

After the Soo buyout, people began to treat the old depot like the world’s largest message board, putting up layer after layer of paper which grew rust-runneled after a good rain. Shoving her chapped hands into her already full pockets, Arlene stepped across the rusted rail and made her way toward the gravel and stone studded dead grass which lay between the rails and the depot.

Some of the posters were weeks, months old, and wind-worn, while others (written on lined notebook paper, or on patterned recipe cards) were obviously, painfully new:

“Cloths made to order. Any size, any fabick.

You suply the pattern.

Call 555-8743 p.m.”

“4-Sail: One (1) used trailor top, like new.

Also almost-new RV, and new child-size RV.…”

“To Give to GOOD Home; two Persian kitties,

litter-traned and gentile—”

Arlene had to laugh at the part about the kittens being Christian, even as she mourned the ignorance of the person who wrote the message. There was an address as well as a phone number on the piece of lilac notebook paper, on 7th Avenue East, less than a two—block walk from the depot. For a few sec­onds, Arlene wavered, torn by her inner mis­givings.

On one hand, she had vowed not to take in cats that someone else might want, yet on the other hand, Silky was lonely, and needed a young cat—or cats—to run with.…

Thinking that no one would mind, Arlene tore the piece of paper off the depot wall, and stuffed it in her pockets along with Guy-Pie’s rocks.

* * * *

“I said will you shut them kids up already?” The young man pushed his long limp blond hair out of his colorless eyes (and past a whey-­colored expanse of forehead) as he yelled at his wife in the other room. The shapeless young woman in the thin cotton maternity top only shrugged in reply and shut the door connecting the living room to the sunken back bedroom. The din of the six (seven? surely the young woman had to have been babysit­ting some of them) children was muffled by the door as the sweatshirted young man went on, “That sign’s been on the depot for two weeks now. I was almost set to…you know…the kittens.” The pale man made a two­-handed gesture indicative of something being drowned, forcibly. Arlene nodded dully.

“I told my wife that she’s gotta be careful who Mr. Clean mates with, but my wife lets her out into the yard any old time—”

“I take it Mr. Clean is a queen?”

“Huh?”

“A female cat,” Arlene said succinctly, thinking, And he claims he’s breeding cats? while the young man bent at the waist to scoop Mr. Clean up as the plush red cat saun­tered by.

“The kids named her ’fore we sexed her. Name stuck. But she’s pure, I got papers somewhere,” the man lied glibly, not knowing that no cat is ever issued papers unless it has been sexed.

Arlene let his faux pas go. She couldn’t wait to pick up the kittens, be they pure Persian or not, and get out of this tiny house that smelled like old French fries and stale beer.

Rocking in place on the littered carpet, Arlene asked, “Are the kittens in the house? All my cats live indoors, period.”

Nonplussed by her pointed remark, the man pushed a stingy lock of hair behind his ear and said, “They’re in the garage. Play in among the old engines and stuff. Course we got rid of the good ones, sold the last of ’em this week. These two aren’t for breeding. They’re objectionable, y’know. If that makes a difference, I mean.”

It was Arlene’s turn to be confused. “‘Objectionable’? As in—”

The young man led her through the sunken kitchen, out a back door which con­nected directly to the garage, saying, “Their coloring. It’s red, but not the right red. They got tiger stripes on their heads, but no tiger markings on their body. Their Ma, she’s pure red. Most of the kittens were, ’cept these guys.” The man scooped up two wiggling balls of fluff crawling near an engine on blocks, and handed them to Arlene.

She let out a soft “Ooooh,” and cuddled the kittens under her chin. They were gor­geous, pure Persian as far as she could tell (although one little tail did look a tad too long), with orange eyes and pale orange pug noses. Not quite Peke-faced, but with ador­able dips in their noses, and wide flexible white whiskers. They reminded her of those little Troll dolls popular in the l960s, those pug-ugly dolls with the long manes of odd­-colored hair and flat round eyes, only Troll dolls were never this adorable.

“What do I owe you?” she asked as a for­mality, remembering that she had left her wallet at home. Luckily for her, the man shrugged and said, “Aw, let it go. Saves me the trouble of having to kill ’em. You will have ’em fixed, won’t you?”

“Certainly. I believe in prevention,” she added, realizing that the jibe would go over his head, but feeling the better for having said it.

After fitting the kittens into her pea coat (her breasts had shrunken from age and disuse), Arlene hurried away from the sorry prefab on 7th Avenue, toward her home to the south. The rocks in her pockets beat against her hips with every step, but it was a good ache.

* * * *

As she expected, Silky and the new kittens (both males, whom she dubbed Puff and Fluff) got along famously—after a few “I-was-here-first” hisses on Silky’s part. And as she patted the stones into a rough heart shape over Guy­-Pie’s grave, she reflected that maybe things just worked out for the best, no matter how painful they seemed initially. One cat died, she went to look for stones for him, and she saved two kittens from death. A minus, but followed by two pluses. She still hurt, but she would heal.

And Silky began to act like a kitten again.

* * * *

Come December, Arlene guessed that Silky had to be going on ten months old, but he just wasn’t growing. True, his body had no more hollow spots, and sleek muscle had covered the painful bone, but he just wasn’t any bigger. Even Puff and Fluff grew; they were close to his size after a month in her house. And it was too cold out to go lugging him to the vet just to have her tell Arlene that she had to expect mutant cats to be different. (Dr. Hraber al­ready called Silky “Bug-Eyes” in honor of his still-bulging eyes.)

Arlene had already held off getting Silky neutered; occasionally he sprayed near his pan, and attacked at least one of the dogs each day, hugging with his big-toed funny paws as he chewed on a big floppy ear, but Arlene kept hoping that he’d get a late growth spurt and fill out properly. Even as she knew in her heart of hearts that he was done growing. He hadn’t gained weight since November, and nothing about him had changed since Octo­ber. (On Halloween some children who came Trick or Treating spied him looking through the window and asked—albeit innocently, “Is that a Spuds Mackenzie cat?”)

Once she’d gotten over her fussing and fuming, she had to admit that Silky did re­semble the tiny-eyed dog in the beer commer­cials. But she never loved a cat more than Silky, not even beautiful, patient Guy-Pie, Lord rest his soul. Silky was always there, showing up in the oddest places; at her elbow while she rolled pie dough, on her lap when she went to the bathroom, dropping down onto her shoulders from on top the high bookcases flanking the front door, purring all the while.

Puff and Fluff took up some of Silky’s time, but not all of it; every night, he curled around her head on the pillow, strange soft paws gently kneading her thinning hair. No other cat was allowed on the pillow—on the bed yes, the pillow never—but Silky rested there as if he belonged in such a high up, exalted spot. He reached inside her and filled the hollow spot left after Guy-Pie’s passing, filled it and then some. Long after he’d chosen her for his Mama, she chose him to be her Best Boy. She still loved the other cats and dogs, in her own way, person to animal. Silky was…different. Not only in looks; she’d long ago gotten used to his looks. In spirit, in soul, he was different.

But it wasn’t until that January that she learned just how utterly different Silky was from other cats.

* * * *

Arlene was making hamburgers in the kitchen, from meat she’d found and oatmeal, onions and spices she’d bought. Knuckle deep in the gooey reddish mixture, Arlene heard the cats doing something in the living room—something noisy enough to hear, but soft enough not to be easily identified—and yelled out, “Cats, you be good, hear? Or no supper tonight!” (She never made good on the threat, but it nonetheless usually worked.)

The noise continued, a puzzling muted wooden thump (like someone pounding on a board with a wool-wrapped hammer), then a long silence, then a sound of contact followed by all of the cats running around. Quickly mashing the meat and seasonings together, then placing the bowl of unshaped hamburger in the oven—she knew better than to leave anything edible on the counters—Arlene ran her hands under the tap, and flicked off the water from her fingers as she stomped into the living room: She was about to say something, yell something, when she noticed the odd way the cats were sitting around the front door in a wide semi-circle; all facing the two book­cases flanking the door. All the cats…except Silky. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a blur of white and black; Silky bounding from the floor to the chair by the window to the top of the bookcase between window and door.

The other cats (as well as a couple of the smaller dogs) were watching Silky intently, as if they knew what was to come next. Arlene watched too, as Silky positioned himself on the bookcase, back legs tensed as if he in­tended to jump onto something higher than the bookcase then wiggled his whipcord body, tensed all over, and leaped into the air—­

—and didn’t come down on the other bookcase, but kept going up in a graceful-­beyond-imagining arc, his funny clawless feet spread until the skin was stretched taut be­tween his metacarpals, and his huge, delicate, wind-cupping ears grew large, swelling out like a windbreaker sometimes does in a strong wind, billowing out above his tiny wedge of a head like miniature sails—and he was suspended there, in the air, for what had to have been seconds, until he turned his head and changed course to a point between the two bookcases, and still he didn’t come rushing down, but floated, as easy and gentle and beautiful, oh God so beautiful, as a dandelion seed freed by the wind to drift on the invisible currents of the air.

Arlene stood numb, watching as Silky settled gently to the ground on all four feet, making only the slightest amount of noise. Just enough to have been puzzling when heard from afar. Afterward, he and the other cats ran around the room, in sheer excitement over Silky’s incredible feat. And Arlene wished that her knees weren’t knobby with arthritis; she wished she was small enough to run around in circles with her furry children, and had the right voice to bay out loud and purr and—and—she didn’t know what.

It was a sight to howl over, to screech and meaow and cluck over. No human sound, no human word, could express what she was feeling now. It was joy. It was awe. It was more than her heart could keep inside without exploding like a firecracker suspended in a hot July sky.

She bent down and grabbed Silky; painful knees or not, she and the cat danced around the living room, bouncing with giggles and purrs off the walls, the furniture. It was a mir­acle, as only new, as in brand-new life can be a miracle.

Silky wasn’t a mutant, something to be ridiculed, even if he was a mutation. He was what the Cat had been striving for through the centuries; a creature of the air, a creature dappled by the sun sliding over its warm fur as it glided with the wind. One with the land, one with the air. Matching the startled birds in their flight. Escaping the ground-bound dog effortlessly. In the back of her mind, Arlene had always wondered who could’ve been so cruel as to put Silky in that high window…but he was lighter then, with the same huge ears. Suppose he jumped up, hit an air current, and floated there?

Holding him away from her body, Arlene now understood Silky’s form, its purpose. Webbed feet, to buffer the wind. Sail ears, for the obvious reason. Strong legs, for take-off. Super-flat, super-silky fur, for low wind resis­tance. Few whiskers, so as not to interfere with the airflow. Small eyes, to keep flying dust out.

Just like the birds, she thought, or the flying squirrels. Her sudden comparison between cats and squirrels reminded her of another species-to-species comparison someone else had already made.

The Cornish Rex cat, named after the Rex rabbit. She’d seen the picture in her CAT BREEDS book.…

* * * *

When Arlene pulled out the worn book and sat down to read it, the animals and Silky quieted down too. Silky was in her lap as she paged through the book, until she came to the picture of the thin curly-haired brown cat. She scanned the next page, picking out the impor­tant facts: “discovered in 1950 by a Cornish rabbit breeder,” “Kallibunker was ‘backbred’ with his own mother, which means that in­stead of trying to mate him with another bloodline they—” “ten years later another curly-haired cat was found near an abandoned tin mine in Devon, England.”

Arlene frowned and backtracked to the part about the “back bred” situation. She didn’t like that, not at all. When Arlene was a girl, her old cat Mammajamma mated with one of her sons. Papa had had to kill the kittens, during school so little Arlene wouldn’t see it. I wonder how many times they tried this “backbreeding” business? she asked herself, as Silky gently kneaded her thigh. Arlene paged to the back of the book, to the index, where she found the heading “Spontaneous Genetic Mutations.” One of the breeds listed there was the Scottish Fold. According to the text, a kitten named Susie was born in 1961 in Perth­shire, central Scotland, at the William and Mary Ross farm. Twenty-one days after Susie and the rest of her litter were born, little Susie’s soft ears did a 180-degree flop forward and stayed that way. And a new breed was born.

The Rosses realized what they had in Susie (did you dance around the barn, making swirls in the straw?), and began to breed her, even though the British Governing Council of the Cat Fancy refused to acknowledge or li­cense the cat on the grounds that the cat couldn’t possibly hear, let alone have its ears cleaned properly. The new breed was banned in Britain as a show breed. Nine years later, the United States recognized the Scottish Fold. By that time, standards of perfection (“‘Objectionable?’ As in—?”) had been established: small, tightly formed ears. Round head with firm chin and jaw. Short nose and neck. Broad nose, large eyes. Short rounded body. Medium legs and tail. Short coat. Coats of all colors, eyes of blue, gold, or green.

Then came a passage which made Arlene hug Silky closer to her pap-like breasts, and bite her lower lip:

…breeding the Scottish Fold is very hard to do. Two fold-eared cats should not be bred together. When they are, the kittens can have tails that are too short, or stiff legs.

Another part of Scottish Fold breeding which can be tricky is knowing how long to wait until a true Scottish Fold’s ears develop the characteristic 180 degree fold. The breeder has to wait a full three weeks before the.…­

Closing the heavy book with a muted chuff, Arlene asked aloud, “And after the three weeks are up? What then…the bucket of water in the back yard, or a shoebox full of babies left for the vet to kill?” A part of her mind told her that she was being melo­dramatic; Silly, where do you think they get the straight-ear cats for them to breed with? But still, what of the kittens who weren’t right? The ones with the less than round heads, or the long tails and hind legs? What of those objectionable kittens? Surely, the breeders simply couldn’t afford to keep the mistakes around, no matter how adorable they might be.

A crinkly ripping sound made Arlene pause in her thoughts, and look down at her feet. Fluff was undoing her running shoe straps, pulling on the long strip of Velcro with his teeth. Fluff was the kitten with the longer tail, the sassy, aggressive one. Arlene wiggled her toes, and both Persians jumped on her feet, hanging on with their short legs. Cute as the Dickens…but objectionable. It’s a rotten, rotten world, isn’t it, fellows?

As if intuiting her thoughts, Silky reached with his left paw to gently caress her chin. The pad was softer than apple blossom petals, and surrounded with a tickly fringe of short fur. Arlene enclosed his paw with her larger hand, giving the paw a light squeeze. Silky blinked his ludicrously, sensibly tiny eyes and rested his wedge head on her chest.

Stroking his velvety ears with her free hand, Arlene said softly, “What’s it to be, Silky-­love? I can take you to people who know cats, who really breed them. They’d know, they’d understand. Study you, breed you. Give you a fancy name. ‘Wisconsin Squirrel Cat’ or ‘Ewerton Flyer.’ You’d be in all the cat books, next to a picture of one of your great­-great grandkittens.” Silky reached with his other paw to touch her face; Arlene pressed it against her cheek, bending her head low to his. Clear drops of moisture fell on his fur, to roll down slowly.

“But it isn’t fair to all the objectionable kittens, is it? And there would be objectionables, Silky, even from a kitty as perfect as you. Happens all the time…and there aren’t enough suckers like me running around to take them in. And I do hate waste, I hate to see things go unused, unappreciated.” Silky butted his head against hers, as if he under­stood and agreed. Maybe he does realize, Arlene thought, Maybe, just maybe, he really does.…

When Silky let go of her face and curled up on her legs, Arlene sat stroking his incred­ible fur for a few seconds, before lifting him off her lap and placing him on Dan’s old otto­man. She then walked over to the phone and dialed a number she knew by heart.

* * * *

Arlene timed it just right; she only had to wait outside the vet’s office for a few minutes, which she did while standing with her back to the fitful wind. And Silky—wiggling because he was hungry—was wrapped in enough blankets to keep him in-the-womb warm.

When the veterinarian’s assistant opened the door at eight o’clock, Arlene shifted the squirming kitten to her other arm as she walked into the half-lit waiting room. Behind her, as the assistant finished turning on the rest of the lights, the woman asked Arlene, “Did you finally decide that Silky had grown enough?”

Arlene uncovered Silky’s head; he yawned and blinked kitty kisses at her. “Yes, he hasn’t gotten any bigger since October…I guess he’s ten months old by now, don’t you think?”

The assistant pushed a strand of her black hair out of her eyes, and paused to rub Silky’s ears as she made her way behind the recep­tion desk. “He sure doesn’t look it, but maybe his momma and father were small cats. Or he might be a—”

Not wanting to hear about the other op­tion, Arlene said, “Poor Silky thinks I’m pun­ishing him…no food or drink since midnight. Had to put him in the bathroom overnight, just to keep him from the other animals’ dishes. We didn’t like that, did we?” She leaned over to nuzzle Silky’s fur with her slightly bulging nose.

“Well, he’ll be happier once he’s healed. It’s hard on an un-neutered male if he doesn’t mate—but I shouldn’t have to tell you that. You’ve had a parade of kitties in here over the years—”

Like Guy-Pie. And Bubba. And Puff and Fluff in a few months. But it’s different with you, isn’t it, Silky? Not just an end to a couple of gonads, is it, boy? But I just won’t be around to take in all those objectionables.… God forgive me, but I won’t be.

The assistant reached over the desk to take Silky from Arlene, saying, “C’mon, big boy, let’s put you in a nice cage until the doctor comes. Oh, what a good boy,” she crooned as Silky butted his head under her chin. After Arlene scratched Silky’s ears and bent down to kiss one of his extended paws, the assistant headed for the back of the veterinary clinic, saying over her shoulder, “Y’know, Silky’s really one in a million. Usually they’re either stiff as boards or clawing the walls at this point.”

And softly, so softly that the assistant never heard her, Arlene replied, “He really is at that, isn’t he?” before she left the office and walked face first into the cutting December wind.

For Sassy, with love,

And for Little Guy (1983-1988), in remembrance

Also in memory of Puff and Pumpkin. Rest in peace, sweet boys.…

—A. R. Morlan, 2010