Читать книгу Arches Enemy - Scott Graham - Страница 16

5

Rosie rounded the stone projection as Chuck and Janelle ran to her. She cradled a gray house cat with bright yellow eyes in her arms.

“Her name is Pasta Alfredo,” she announced. “I made it up all by myself.”

Janelle hugged Rosie, cat and all.

“Careful,” Chuck warned. “It’s feral.”

Janelle stepped back, eyeing the creature.

A black collar encircled the cat’s neck, resting deep in its matted fur. The feline, decidedly chubby, purred in Rosie’s arms, making no attempt to flee.

“It doesn’t look very wild to me,” Janelle said.

“It does seem pretty content,” Chuck conceded.

“She’s not an it,” Rosie corrected them. “She’s a she.”

Janelle traced the cat’s collar with her fingers. “No identification tags.” She lifted Rosie’s chin. “You shouldn’t have come up here without telling us.”

Rosie pressed Janelle’s fingers downward with her chin and gazed at the cat. “I know.” She looked up at her mother. “But you were gone for sooo long.”

Chuck rested his hand on the back of Rosie’s neck, his fingers in her curly hair. “It’s good you didn’t go far.”

He, Janelle, Carmelita, and Rosie had spent the day before last, their first day in the park, settling into the trailer and hiking to Landscape Arch. He’d made his way to the contract site yesterday, based on directions supplied by Sanford. After putting in a solid day of work at the secret site, he’d returned in the evening to the campground and a buoyant Rosie.

“Guess what, guess what, guess what!” she had announced breathlessly, grabbing his hand and swinging in a circle around him before he had a chance to take off his gear pack. “We found a cat. Cats. Kitty cats. More than one. Maybe three. Up in the rocks above the campground. Can I have one? Can we keep them?”

“Hold on just a minute there,” Chuck had said, loosing himself from Rosie’s grip. He shucked his pack from his shoulders and dropped it in the bed of the truck. “Cats? As in house cats? That’s not exactly what we came here for.”

Rosie again took his hand in hers and dragged him toward the trailer. “You made me come here. I didn’t want to. You’re making me miss a whole week of school with my friends, plus all of Thanksgiving week, where I don’t get to be with my friends either. That’s mean. You’re mean.” She looked up at him with pleading eyes. “You should give me a cat to make up for it.”

Chuck laughed. “You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?”

“I already asked Mamá.”

“What’d she say?”

“That she’d have to talk to you.”

“I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

“But they’re so cute, cute, cutie cute cute.”

Janelle met them at the trailer door.

Chuck asked her, “Rosie found some cats up on the ridge?”

At his side, Rosie nodded vehemently, her entire body rocking back and forth along with her head.

“I surfed the Net about it,” Janelle said. “Turns out pets are abandoned in national parks all the time, as if people think they’ll return to the wild or something.”

“That’s right,” Chuck said. “It’s a pain for the park service. A lot of times, dogs and cats run off from campsites, and people just leave them behind.”

Shoving out her jaw, Rosie declared, “They’re assholes.”

“Rosalita,” Janelle admonished. “You know better than that.”

“But my friends say it all the time.”

“Maybe you need some different friends.”

Rosie stomped her foot and crossed her arms over her chest. “The people who leave their pets behind are total jerks then.”

Chuck crossed his arms in solidarity with her. “Anyone who would abandon a pet is awfully selfish, that’s for sure.”

“I only saw kitties up there, no doggies,” Rosie said.

“That’s because lost dogs tend to wander along roads and get picked up and taken to shelters right away,” Chuck explained. “But cats are skittish. They know they’ll get eaten by coyotes and foxes and other predators, so they hide. Pretty soon, they go feral. The ones that manage to survive may have been somebody’s pets at one time, but not after a while. Plus, there’s plenty of food for cats in national parks—mice and birds and baby rabbits.”

Blood drained from Rosie’s face. “Baby rabbits?”

“Afraid so. Cats hunt whatever’s small enough for them to sink their teeth into. House cats kill millions of birds every year all across the country. So far, bird populations in places away from cities and towns, like national parks, are doing okay. But if too many cats get left behind in the national parks, you can probably guess what’ll happen.”

“The birdies will get wiped out in the parks, too!” Rosie clasped her hands in front of her. “Then there would be no birdies left anywhere. Or baby rabbits.” She looked at the sandstone ridge rising beyond the trailer, her brows arched. “We have to catch the cats up there. We have to.”

“How about this?” Janelle offered. “You can chase the cats around up there in the rocks all you want while we’re here. Just make sure you tell us you’re going up there first.”

“Yay!” Rosie cheered. She thrust a fist in the air. “Cat, cat, kitty cats!”

Janelle turned to Chuck. “What do you think?”

He swept the ridge with his eyes. It climbed gently to the top along its entire length. “It looks pretty safe,” he said to Rosie. “But if you come to any steep places up there, you have to stay away from them, okay?” He turned to Janelle. “I bet none of the cats will let her anywhere near them anyway. In fact, I guarantee it.”

Now, atop the ridge, Chuck squeezed the back of Rosie’s neck as she held the gray cat in her arms.

So much for his guarantee.

He let go of Rosie’s neck and stroked the cat’s matted fur. The feline laid its head against Rosie’s chest and closed its eyes, purring.

“This one doesn’t seem the least bit wild.” His hand came away from the cat’s fur gritty with sand. He wiped it on the leg of his work jeans. “Not yet, anyway.”

Rosie nuzzled the cat’s back with her chin, coating her jaw with a film of red dust. “That’s why we have to take this one with us. She’s not very wild yet, like you said. She probably just got left behind a little while ago. But if we leave her here, she’ll get fer—, fer—”

“Feral,” Chuck finished for her. “How do you know she’s a she, anyway?”

“I checked. She let me. She doesn’t have a penis, not even a little one. I’ve been learning about all that stuff from Mamá.”

“Oh, you have, have you?” He cast a sidelong glance at Janelle.

“So, Rosie,” Janelle said, ignoring Chuck, “you’ve found a girl cat named Pasta Alfredo.”

Chuck eyed the furry creature in Rosie’s arms. “Maybe she’s been reported lost within the last day or so. Maybe she’s even owned by one of the campers staying here in the campground right now.”

“That means we have to keep her,” Rosie proclaimed.

“Only until we can find her owner,” Janelle said. She asked Chuck, “Right?”

Rosie begged, “Pleeeeease.”

Chuck groaned.

Janelle cocked an eyebrow at him. “You promised none of the cats would let her near them. This is all your fault.”

“No, Mamá,” Rosie said. She puffed her chest with obvious pride. “It’s all my fault!”

Rosie skipped down the sloped rock leading to the campground ahead of Janelle and Chuck, the cat clutched to her chest. Janelle descended behind her.

Just as Chuck turned away from the crest of the ridge to follow them, a flash of movement caught his eye.