Catalyst (10 page)

“Everybody, lick one of your forepaws.”

“Why, missus?” Doc asked. “It’ll just get dirty again.”

“Just do it,” Mother said firmly.

Doc looked down at his paw as if he had never seen it before and gave it a quick lick, as if expecting it to grab his tongue and strangle him.

I did the same, giving mine as long a swipe as my little pink tongue could manage. Silvesta and Sol followed suit.

“Now, this paw will be your tool to clean those parts of you that you are unable to reach by direct licking. Pass it over your face, thusly,” she said, and demonstrated. She swiped it down over her ears and nose, licked it again and passed it over her long elegant whiskers, both the uppers and the lowers on the same side as her paw. Then she switched paws. I hoped my whiskers would be so magnificent when I was big.

Virgil got his paw stuck behind his ear when he tried. Bat would only dab at the areas in question. If I do say so myself, I did a splendid job on my first try.

Silvesta took a trial lick then began crying again. She missed Buttercup even more bitterly than the rest of us did. It was painful to listen to, and it interrupted the lesson. Mother cuffed her ears, swiping a paw across their tips to get her attention, then licking one tufted tip to take the sting out of the reprimand.

“Pay attention, my darling. You will have kits of your own to teach one day.”

Silvesta trembled with grief, for this was the sort of thing Git used to tell her and Buttercup with every lesson, but she moistened her paw and washed her face.

When Mother had demonstrated the procedure for washing each bit of ourselves—and some bits were far more awkward than others—she said, “There is a language to the bath understood by other creatures as well as cats. Even humans are somewhat attuned to the meanings of the various postures. Washing is a built-in diversion, a time-out, you might say. In the annals of feline-based literature my Kibble used to read aloud to me, a wise cat named Jennie instructs a newcomer: ‘When in doubt, wash.’ Sage advice I pass along to you with these elaborations on the language of public bathing. When conveying confusion or when you are in need of clarification, wash your face. To express nonchalance or self-assurance, wash your shoulder. To indicate that you are considering a situation, lightly groom one of your front paws. And a fine time to groom that critical area under your tail is when you wish to demonstrate your indifference to the insignificant events around you, or to demonstate contempt for an idea or individual. Grooming one’s abdomen indicates trust and should only be done in the presence of those you actually do trust. A full bath, with or without the assistance of a fellow feline, ideally should be undertaken only in privacy or in the company of one’s Kibble.”

“Or the boy,” I said. “The boy’s all right, isn’t he, Mother?” My siblings and now foster siblings murmured agreement. The boy had just saved us.

She gave a short, noncommittal purr but I thought I saw a cloud cross her great gold-green eyes.

Mother had vowed that she would continue Git’s work in teaching us to hunt, but alas, she never had the chance.

Inside that little dark room, we could only hunt each other, but even my reckless foster sibs realized that killing was out of the question.

We had only a few more days to nurse, to feed on the kibble and soft food the boy brought us, and to practice washing and pouncing before the man returned.

The boy sadly informed him of the deaths of Git and Buttercup. He frowned, shook his head, and patted the boy’s shoulders.

But all he could say was,“They’ve grown, I’m going to have to take a whole new set of pics.”

He took one of all of us nursing, then had the boy hold up each of us while he pointed the little flashy thing at us.

The boy held me close to his chest and I felt his heart thudding through it. “Don’t worry, Chester. You and me are a team. Pop said I could have a kitten and I choose you, whether he likes it or not.”

I pressed my ear to his heart and purred as loudly as I could. Of course the boy would stay with me. Why would I know everything he did and most of what he thought if he wasn’t mine? He was my Kibble in the way that Mother’s Kibble was hers, except Mother didn’t know where hers was and some tiny part of me always knew where the boy was.

Nobody could fathom the mind of the man, though. He was trickier than the canine that had killed Buttercup and Git.

W
hen she wasn’t helping Jared in the makeshift clinic in the Locksley Mall, Janina was out plastering every available notice board with flyers featuring Chessie’s ID pic and the reward for her return. She talked to everyone she could stop and told them about the fire and how Chessie was missing and asked them to look for her.

One day she stopped a woman laden with parcels, boarding a battered farm tracker.

Janina showed the woman the picture.

“Just a minute, honey,” the woman said, setting her parcels in the passenger seat and turning back to Janina. She shoved back her long dark brown hair, the plait of which had loosened during her shopping, wiped her hands on the thighs of her blue denim pants, and took the picture from Janina, glanced at it, grunted, and returned it. “Sorry,” she said. “Don’t recall seeing one like this.”

“You’d notice her,” Janina insisted. “Not only is she beautiful but she was about to have kittens when she disappeared.”

The woman shrugged and started to walk away. “Hmm, well, I’m not much for cats. But kittens, you say? When was it she disappeared again?”

The woman’s expression was both annoyed and speculative. Maybe she had a lead!

“Nearly two months ago, after the fire in the vet clinic at Hood Station.”

“Huh. Well, what a shame. That crew must set great store by her to be offering such a hefty reward.”

“Oh, yes, ma’am, and her kittens too. She’s a very valuable cat, but more than that, we love her and we need her on our ship. She’s an important part of the crew.”

The woman glanced at the flyer again, her eyes lingering on the line about the reward. “Well, I hope you find her, honey.” Then she turned back to put her parcels in her flitter.

Janina said, “Ma’am, if you see her or hear from anyone who might have seen her, please would you call me at Dr. Vlast’s clinic in Locksley? I’m working with him until the new clinic is ready on Hood Station.”

“Umm-hmm,” the woman said. “I sure will.”

Since Janina began posting the flyers, people had shown up at the clinic with cats of all coloring, ages, and both sexes, some with kittens, some without, trying to claim the reward. A few had short hair or showed the Siamese strain. Did they think the large longhaired tortoiseshell Chessie had somehow managed to don a disguise and go incognito?

Jared said it was the triumph of hope over common sense, something he’d seen a great deal.

Some of the cats were so matted they looked to be made from balls of dirty felt instead of fur, some were battered and scarred, many looked starved, and all looked frightened. Jared did what he could for the pretenders to Chessie’s throne, but ultimately they had to be returned to the arms of their disappointed bearers, though some were abandoned at the clinic. Janina made it her job to look after these and tried to find homes for them, though it was clear that most cats were not highly valued on Sherwood. Often
they were considered to be as troublesome as the vermin they hunted.

She kept hoping as she continued her rounds of cleaning and filling feeding dishes, mucking out stalls, hosing down kennels, and changing litter boxes. It was useful work and she didn’t mind it, but the familiar routine of caring for the cats tore at her heart, even though she was glad to be able to help them. They wound around her ankles and purred up at her and she patted them and spoke kindly, but they were just not Chessie. She and Chessie had been a team for ten years—more than half her life, and all of the best part. She missed her desperately and also missed the camaraderie with the crew.

Under other circumstances, the prolonged opportunity to work with Jared would have cheered her, but he was run off his feet now that the people (and their animals) of Sherwood had him all to themselves. They called him night and day to attend difficult births or accidental injuries, and he was often so exhausted he barely seemed to recognize her. When there was a lull, he spent it in his makeshift lab, preoccupied and focusing on his work.

She often found him frowning at slides and tubes of the mysterious glittery substance, which they were finding in more and more animals, but when she asked him about it, he shrugged and said only, “I’m checking it out.”

Two weeks later, she was grooming the last poor matted moggy brought in by a hopeful. He was a gray and black male who had been spitting mad when he arrived. His temper hadn’t improved much since. Jared had long red scratches running down his hands from this fellow, but the cat seemed to like females—or at least Janina—somewhat better. She was clipping one of his mats when the office door jingled.

“Nina, there are people to see you,” Jared called from his exam
room in the front of the clinic. She wished people would make appointments instead of popping in any old time with the poor im-poster cats for her inspection. Every time they did, her hopes rose, and every single time they’d been dashed. Bracing herself for another letdown, she plopped the recalcitrant tom back into his cage, washed and dried her hands, and walked deliberately into the waiting room.

She saw two people at the desk, a woman and a boy, each carrying something. She was trying to remember where she had seen the woman before when she heard the plaintive mew.

The
mew.

“Chessie?” she asked, thinking surely her ears were deceiving her. But she heard the mew again and knew she was not mistaken. “Chessie!”

“So you do recognize her?” a slightly familiar female voice asked. “You’ll not deny that she’s the very cat you told me about. The one you’re looking for?”

Hurrying toward them, Janina recognized the woman she’d spoken to in the mall. The woman peeled a blanket farther away from the beloved furry face with its long magnificent whiskers. Chessie appeared uninjured. Her tufted ears had twitched forward at the sound of Janina’s voice.

Janina reached for her. Oh, Chessie!” The bundle the woman relinquished was much lighter than the beautiful cat had been when Janina placed her in the kennel at Jared’s station clinic. “You’ve had your kittens, haven’t you?” she asked, lifting an edge of the blanket to see the rest of Chessie more clearly.

“She did but they was all lost save this one here my boy’s got,” the woman said, indicating a bright-eyed fluffball peeking out from the shelter of the boy’s arms. “And she’s been poorly he says.”

“Poorly?” Janina’s heart dropped. Was she to regain her friend only to lose her again? She hurried to the examining room door and popped her head in. “It’s her! Someone found Chessie but she’s sick. Jared, she’s light as a feather. I can feel her bones.”

“Take her in exam room two. I’ll be right there,” he said, and he sounded happier and more excited than he had since the disaster.