The Black Cats (4 page)

“Is
that right?” Mr. Jolley held onto the back of a nearby chair. “I read Mr. Clark
withdrew his support. Unless the
Saturday
Museum
prints lies these days.”

Eddy
shifted in his seat.

“Let me
get that refill,” Mr. Jolley said, hobbling away. “Good afternoon, Mr. Arnold!”
he shouted to a departing patron. “Give my best to Tabitha!”

Mr. Arnold,
the cobbler of Franklin Street, sneered in reply. A coarse man with a bulbous
nose, he slumped more than walked. One could argue that his frame had been sewn
of wet burlap. And, dear me, his sun-worn skin needed polishing more than the boots
in his shop. When he passed our table, he jerked one of the empty chairs,
startling us both. I flattened my ears and hissed. “What are you looking at?”
he bellowed. “Well? Answer me!”

“Nothing,
sir. I pride myself on minding my business,” Eddy said. He must have responded
on my behalf since Mr. Arnold had addressed me, not him.

“People
shouldn’t bring animals into public houses.” He spat tobacco on the floor near
our table. “It’s not sanitary.” His crazed laughter lasted all the way out the
door. “It’s not sanitary!” he shouted again before crossing the street.

“That fellow
is corned, Catters, from top to tail. No wonder Mrs. Arnold stays ill-humored.”

In a
fashion, Mr. Jolley brought another glass of port. Once Eddy finished it, the
old man returned with yet another, walking more briskly than I would have guessed
his age would allow.

“No,
Mr. Jolley,” Eddy said. He held up his hand in refusal. “I have had enough.”

Even
I
, humble cat that I am, understood his
answer. Mr. Jolley, however, did not, or rather pretended he did not. With a
gummy smile, he set the drink in front of my companion and left. The barkeep
gave me many reasons to hate him, but this bested them all. Josef, the server
at Shakey House Tavern, always heeded Eddy’s wishes. I’d even seen him refuse Eddy
when my friend’s gait grew uncertain or his speech slurred. Not Mr. Jolley. He cared
more for coins than people.

Eddy sipped
the blood-hued liquid and watched a couple on the street. The youngsters strolled
past the tavern windows, elbows linked beneath a shared parasol. How rosy their
cheeks; how gay their steps! The woman laughed with nary a cough and tugged her
beau toward an oyster vendor across the way. Eddy’s gaze fell to his wine
glass. When the rising chatter of patrons interrupted his contemplation, he took
the penknife from his pocket again.

As he
toyed with the blade, his expression changed from one of concentration to one
of despair, signaling the return of his melancholy. As they’d done so many
times before, clouds overtook him, dampening his spirits with unremitting
drizzle. This came as no surprise. One cannot hide from the tempest when it
resides in one’s heart. Yet changing the weather was as easy—or as
hard—as stoking his imagination. I’d learned this during our last
adventure.

“What
state of mind must a man possess to commit this morning’s atrocity?” Eddy
placed the object on the table next to me for my perusal. I sniffed it,
detecting the scent of crow—nothing out of the ordinary. “An enraged
state, an altered state…” He picked up the glass again and held it to the
sunlight, casting a dappled reflection on the table. “I still do not know how
anyone with a right mind could kill a cat,” he said to me.

Kill a cat.

Grasping
tail in teeth, I worked on a cocklebur I’d picked up in the market. Constable
Harkness wouldn’t likely jail a cat killer. But tracking down the murderer and
involving Eddy in the hunt would blow away the storm. Sissy, too, might be
cheered by our exertions. Nevertheless, one thing prevented my endorsement: the
cat cookery book. I stood and stretched, anticipating the arrival of Mr.
Jolley. To banish the pall over the Poe family, I would immerse us in the
mystery of the hanged cat.

As I
sharpened my claws on the table, I questioned whether or not I had the speed
and tenacity to bring down a human again. Winter feasting had given me a
roundish, fattish shape, akin to a lump of dough—a detriment to fieldwork.
If I couldn’t shake my sloth, I might end up on the Butcher’s plate next to boiled
turnips. The floorboards vibrated. I turned to find the old raisin nearing with
more blasted refreshment.

I
crouched.

“Here
you are, Mr. P—”

I flew
at Mr. Jolley’s face, scratching and clawing with my own set of penknives. He
dropped the glass—my objective—and held his arm aloft. This
protected his rheumy eyes and little else. With unusual vengeance, I latched
onto the limb, shredding the thin skin of his elbow like newspaper. He would not
serve another drink to Eddy tonight, maybe not even tomorrow. I withdrew and
waited by the door for a swift exit.

Mr.
Jolley slipped and skated on the bloody port pooling underfoot, unable to gain
his balance. “Get out!” he screamed. “You and that damnable cat, get out!”

The
rail yard rowdies and the gentleman laughed, united in his ridicule.

Eddy
grabbed his penknife and tucked it away. “Shall I come back tomorrow?”

“Out!”
Mr. Jolley clutched his injured arm and fell into a chair.

We departed
full chisel
, leaving Jolley Spirits behind.
Cookery book be damned. Catching the Butcher would be no problem for a cat like
me.

I ACCOMPANIED EDDY AS far as
our front garden and waited for him to enter before skittering back to Green
Street. With extreme care, I approached the house with the window boxes—a
little down, a little across from the Franklin cut-through—stopping short
at the neighboring brownstone. From the holly bushes next door, I surveyed the Butcher’s
lair. His bottom floor windows hung open, and the curtains billowed in and out
with the draft. Trim garden, new paint, clean walkway—I found nothing awry,
save for wilting petunias. The dwelling looked innocuous enough. But then, so had
the Glass Eye Killer’s, and the dangers that lurked behind his door had been
genuine.

Margaret’s
caution returned as I slunk into the open. “He makes cats disappear,” she’d
said. I dismissed it and hopped the low wrought iron fence surrounding the
Butcher’s property. A cage large enough for a parrot sat to the right of the
front door, but the contraption was empty, lacking perch, seed cup, and,
chiefly, a feathered occupant. A horse and carriage rolled by on the
cobblestones,
clackety-clack
,
startling me. When I faced the house again, a figure loomed in the window
beyond the curtain veil.

I
froze.

When my
legs could hold their position no longer, I disappeared into a cluster of
zinnias, stirring a patch of butterflies. The Butcher would leave at some point
and walk by the flower patch, giving me access to his ankle. A well-placed
strike to this area would incapacitate him. I flexed my claws. Once he fell, his
eye would be mine. I swatted the last remaining butterfly, scraping it into
paste. Street justice was a concept most familiar to an ex-feral like me. And
then I thought of Eddy and the scorn he would heap upon this act of retribution.

In the
twitch of a whisker, I’d sunk to a place unbefitting a cat of my status, a cat
who cohabitated with an esteemed man of letters. I lowered my chin to my paws. While
the Butcher deserved a punishment equal to one he’d doled out, I would bring him
to his knees and nothing more.

The hinges
cried as the front door swung open. My stomach tightened. “Heeeere kitty,
kitty,” the Butcher called. His voice cracked from strain or disuse, I could
not tell which. This much I knew: the zinnia patch had grown smaller. Or maybe I
had grown larger. Both were possible. “Heeeere kitty, kitty.” He descended the stone
steps to the garden.

The
flowers obstructed my view of his face, though from his gait I judged him to be
a man of advanced years. Considering my success with Mr. Jolley, I had less to
fear than I’d originally thought. I unsheathed my claws and lifted my paw to assault
the oldster. I would be home for tea.

“There’s
a pretty kitty,” he said. He stopped at the flower patch, casting me in a
crooked shadow. It was the man with the bent spine.

I spat
in terror, not at his outstretched hands but at the object between them—a
net.

***

The
struggle had been epic—a vicious roiling of claws and teeth and tail—and
one, I dare say, worthy of Eddy’s pen, yet it belonged to me alone. Once the Butcher
threw the net, he stood aside and let me wind deeper into the ropes until even
my whiskers could not wiggle. What a sight I must have been—Philadelphia’s
only ball of yarn with a cat inside. After I surrendered, he scooped me up and dumped
me into the large birdcage next to the front door. The
Gazette
lined the bottom of the prison, completing the indignity. What
next? A cup of seeds?

The
Butcher knelt and appraised me. A wave of white hair and beard covered much of
his face, though his eyes remained bright. The faded green of winter grass,
they shone beneath his hooded lids, suggesting a quick mind. He stood and picked
up my cage with some effort. “Oh, me, you’re a heavy thing, aren’t you? They’re
feeding you well.”

He took
me inside where he placed me on the kitchen table next to a cutting board of
diced onion and carrot. A pot of water boiled on the stove. Queasiness replaced
hunger when I realized the scoundrel meant to serve me for dinner. I imagined
myself, tied up like a pot roast, surrounded by vegetables. In a panic, I pawed
the latch to free myself.

The
Butcher bent the wire hook and fastened the cage door tighter. “Not to worry,
pretty kitty.” He chuckled. “I’ll take you out when it’s time to eat.”

I settled
into the corner of my enclosure and watched as he retrieved a leather-bound notebook
and a stick of charred wood from the cupboard. He sat down at the table,
flipped to a new page in his book, and started to sketch. I assumed
I
was the subject of his portrait since a
handsome cat with patches of light and dark fur and the most exquisite ears took
shape beneath the charcoal. To finish, he scribbled a series of notes beneath
the drawing. I could not read them, of course…I swished my tail. Great Cat
Above! I had been entered into the cookery book!

HORRIFIED BY THE CAT cookery
book, I lurched against the cage, thinking to knock it sideways and break it
open. The Butcher responded by depositing my prison beneath the table and
draping a large kitchen cloth over its top. I thumped my tail. I was a cat,
nay, a
tortoiseshell
cat, and I would
not be hidden away like a noisy parakeet. There I keened with great volume:
yoooow, yoooow, yoooow, yoooow
. I hoped George
and Margaret would heed the call since they—not Eddy—lived close
enough to hear it.

“Hush
now, pretty kitty,” he said. “Just a little longer.”

The
Butcher’s admonishment mattered not, and I continued to wail, stopping only when
he banged lid and pot together. Alarmed by the noise, I ceased and prayed for deliverance.
I imagined Eddy at the kitchen table, drinking tea and eating gingersnaps, his
shirtfront full of crumbs. With the strong connection between us, my visions
usually held
some
veracity of mood,
if not manner, so it jarred me to picture him joking with Sissy and Muddy,
giving no thought to my whereabouts. Who could blame him after my spat with Mr.
Jolley? I crouched in the corner, remaining quiet lest the Butcher bang another
pot.

Come
sundown, the Poe household would suffer if I weren’t there to help Muddy with
the leftovers, warm Sissy’s lap, or coax another page of writing from Eddy. The
Butcher tossed another log into the woodstove. Come sundown,
I
would suffer. I had but one option
left: wait until the cage door opened and come out fighting like Auntie Sass.
If the old man
were
to make a meal of
me, he would earn it.

For an
agonizing period, I listened to the clink of teacups and the clatter of
cupboard doors as the Butcher prepared for the feast. The cadence of his
footfall created music upon the floorboards that would have soothed me in
brighter circumstances. Now the vibrations jarred my muscles, plucking them like
the strings of Sissy’s old harp. Just when I’d become accustomed to his steps, they
increased in speed, traversed the kitchen, and faded from hearing. “Goodbye,
Silas! Goodbye, Samuel!” he called.

Silas
and
Samuel
? To whom did these names belong? The Butcher’s offspring? The
wondering petrified me more than the knowing.

The
front door opened and closed.

The
house fell quiet, save for the crackle of the woodstove.

Clever
Butcher. He’d said these names as a ruse to keep me inside my cage. He hadn’t
counted on my tenacity. I reached my paw through the bars to try the latch
again. The wire held fast. A second and third try yielded disappointment as
well. I’d just begun to study the lock when paws padded toward me. Silas and
Samuel? I ducked low to see beneath the kitchen cloth, but dash-it-all, the
fabric reached the floor. I sniffed through the bars, detecting toms of middle
age, perhaps from the same litter. If they supported the Butcher as I did Eddy,
crisis had just given way to calamity.

“Should
we say hello, Silas?” the first tom asked.

“It
would be rude not to, Samuel,” the other said.

Silence.

“Well,
aren’t you going to say something?” Samuel said.

“Oh, I
thought
you
were going to say
something,” Silas said.

A
sneeze. More silence.

“Won’t
someone
speak?” I said.

A large
cat ducked beneath the kitchen cloth. Dark and light gray stripes graced his fur,
and tufts of white adorned his chest and underbelly, giving his coat a dapper suit-and-shirtfront
pattern. Large did not begin to describe him. I had never seen a cat of such
grandiose proportion. And his ears! Fur tipped their ends, swooping them even
higher than mine, like those of a lynx. Had I not been scared, I would have
been envious. “Hello,” he said to me. “I am Samuel.”

“Please,”
I begged him, “let me out before the man comes back and cooks me.”

Samuel cocked
his head. “Cooks you?”

Silas joined
us beneath the cloth. His markings were almost identical to Samuel’s, save for
white-tipped toes. “Cooks you?” Silas repeated. “No, no, no. He does not cook cats.
He has another end in mind. He’s going to—”

The
front door opened and closed.

“Our Robert
returns,” Samuel said to Silas. “To the parlor, brother. At once!”

The two
toms vanished from view.

“Go?
Wait! What fate? What fate!” I shouted after them.

Two
humans entered the kitchen, one with the gait of the old man, one with a
lighter step. Splendid. A dinner party. With renewed vigor, I reached a paw
through the bars and tried to bat the lock open one last time. When that
failed, I sank my teeth into the metal. Imagine my surprise when a hand
snatched the cloth from my cage.

“There
you are, Cattarina!” Sissy said. Her face burned red beneath her bonnet. The
walk to Green Street had winded her. “I’m glad you are safe.”

Sissy,
dear Sissy! I yowled to state my displeasure. Then I yowled again, varying the
intonation to let her know I unabashedly approved of her presence. The Butcher pulled
my enclosure into the open and set it on the tabletop again. He motioned Sissy
to a chair and took one for himself, placing his leather-bound cookery book on
the table.

“I
can’t thank you enough, Mr. Eakins,” Sissy said. She untied the strings of her
bonnet and removed it. “Cattarina wanders off with some frequency, causing my
husband undue worry.” She smoothed her hair into place.

“
You
do not worry?”

“No.”
She winked at me. “Cattarina is a first-rate gadabout.”

“In any
event, I’m glad to be of service. To all cats.” He wiggled a finger inside my
cage.

It took
some restraint, but I didn’t bite him. Doing so now would complicate matters,
as it had done with Mr. Jolley. So I sniffed his hand instead. Great Cat Above!
The Butcher’s scent varied from the one on the rope, which meant he hadn’t hung
the black tom. I had been so preoccupied that I hadn’t noticed before. While
this conclusion reassured me, I had, nevertheless, drawn it from parrot prison.

“Cats
are your business, aren’t they, Mr. Eakins?” Sissy wiped a bit of sweat from
her neck with a handkerchief. “That is what I heard on the street today.”

“You
heard right.” His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Tea?”

“Yes,
please.”

Tea?
The woman had lost her faculties.
Could she not fathom my predicament? I was a captive, for kitty’s sake.

The
Butcher—or Mr. Eakins?—crossed to the cook stove and poured hot
water from the once-boiling pot into two waiting cups. He returned with their refreshments,
taking a seat once more. “I have no cream or sugar, Mrs. Poe. Please accept my
apologies. My meager income is spent on my…business, as you say.”

Sissy
took the cup from him and placed it on the table. “That’s a lovely book you
showed me earlier. The one with Cattarina’s sketch.”

“Oh,
me, yes,” he said. “It’s taken years of meticulous work.” He, too, set his
teacup aside and reached for his notebook. “Every cat I rescue gets a page. I
sketch their picture and make notes about their health, the location in which I
discovered them, any distinguishing marks, and so on before I find them a new
home. It’s quite consuming. Philadelphia is overrun with the creatures.” He
opened the book to my entry and handed it to Sissy with a shaky hand. “Now that
I’m too old to work for Mr. Lansing—I was a law clerk, you know—I
spend my days on this. It keeps me from thinking too much about Mrs. Eakins,
God rest her soul.”

“So the
cat hanging this morning…”

“Shocking.”

She flashed
her teeth. “You had nothing to do with it!”

“Dear,
me, no. In fact, just talking about it upsets my stomach. I feel partly to
blame.”

“Why?
Because despite saving so many strays you couldn’t save the one?”

Mr.
Eakins hesitated. “As I said, Mrs. Poe, I’d rather not talk about it.”

“You
have done enough good in this world. Let that be of comfort.” She thumbed
through the book, perusing a few sketches before shutting it. “Mr. Eakins, I’m
glad we crossed paths.”

“As am
I. I knew the tortoiseshell belonged to you because I saw you out with her this
morning. She’s a pretty thing, isn’t she?” He unhitched the latch and opened
the cage door.

I flew onto
Sissy’s lap, anchoring my claws into the brown checked fabric of her dress.
Sweet freedom at last! She laid her hand on my back to comfort me, and I
settled at once into the folds of her skirt, shifting to an uneasy calm. To
make my position clear, I turned my ears back and fixed the old man with a stare.
I would not suffer the cage again.

Before
long, Silas and Samuel trotted into the room, their fat tails bobbing behind
them. Sissy touched her collarbone. “Mr. Eakins, those are the largest felines
I have ever seen. They are as big as bobcats. And their tails! Why, they look
like feather dusters!” She replaced his book on the table and leaned forward to
study the pair.

“They
are from Maine, Mrs. Poe. Do you like them?” When she nodded, Mr. Eakins added,
“They are called Coon Cats. If you think they’re special now, just wait.” He retrieved
a bucket of well water from the bottom of the cupboard and set it in front of
Silas and Samuel. They took no interest. “Prepare to be fascinated,” he told
Sissy. At this, he produced a jug cork from his pocket and floated it on top of
the liquid, giving it a spin to set it moving.

To my
bewilderment, Silas and Samuel dipped their paws into the bucket and played
with the cork, batting it as one might a fish. Before long, water covered the
floor, even dampening their tails with the vile liquid. I shuddered at the thought
of it between my toes. How much grooming would it take to put them to rights
again? When my paws tingled at the thought, I licked them. Why, Silas and
Samuel might not even be cats at all. They might be— I looked again to the
brothers. I had found the Water Giants mentioned by George and Margaret. Mr.
Thaddeus Beal’s companions had been right, or partly right, about the cookery
book as well. But they had been wrong about the old man. The Butcher was nothing
more than a false goliath built of rumor and dread.

“Hello,”
Samuel said to me. He shook the water from his paws and hopped to Mr. Eakin’s
lap, engulfing his companion in a mat of fur and bones.

Sissy
and Mr. Eakins continued their conversation, which we ignored.

“Why
didn’t you tell me before that Mr. Eakins meant no harm?” I asked Samuel.

“No one
is ever in danger here,” he said. “I thought you knew that.” He looked to Silas.
The other tom had fished the cork from the bucket and was chewing it to crumbles.
“She didn’t know, brother,” Samuel said to him. “Brother?”

Silas
turned his back to us and finished killing the cork.

“Don’t
mind him,” Samuel said to me. “Once you do away with all the mice, that leaves
little else to hunt.”

“The
feeling is familiar.” I thought about telling him of my escapades but decided
against it. The City of Brotherly Love had room for only one feline
ratiocinator. “Mr. Eakins took you in and gave you a home?”

“Yes, a
very good one. We don’t leave much. He thinks it best that we stay inside. But we
sneak out on occasion. Mostly at night.”

“And
the book he keeps?”

“It’s a
record of all the feral cats he’s rescued over the seasons.” Samuel jumped to
the table and pawed the notebook open. “There are many pictures. Too many to
count.”

I
joined him and looked over his shoulder at the sketches. “And what becomes of
them?”

“He
finds them homes, of course.”

“What
do you know about the hanged cat this morning?”

Samuel crooked
his tail. “What hanged cat? We do not get out much.”

With Samuel’s
next swipe, the book fell open to the middle. A tom with luxurious fur and a
white mark on his chest stared back at me from the page, his coat the color of…
Midnight
. My old pal from Rittenhouse did
not come from noble lineage, as he’d once said. He’d been born feral, like me,
the cad.

Sissy picked
me up and laid me over her shoulder like a fox stole. “Thank you again, Mr.
Eakins. I don’t know how I can repay your kindness.”

“You
have repaid it by giving Cattarina a good home.” He showed us to front the
door.

Samuel followed,
scampering behind Sissy. “What was the black cat’s name?” I asked him. “The one
with the white mark on his chest?”

“Mr.
Eakins named him Crow because he was as black as—”

“Yes, how
fitting,” I said. This very afternoon, I would confront Midnight about his lies.
He would soon eat an uncomfortable portion of his namesake.