by Unknown
Ezra spoke first. "He'll be back tomorrow night.
"That's all right." Elijah tossed himself into his chair readjusting books and papers to sprawl casually across the arms and seat. “We won’t be here.”
Elliot gave his oldest brother a puzzled stare. "What do you mean?"
"Jazz night" Elijah reminded.
Ezra's eyes went as large as pancakes. "Jazz night? With a wolf hunting us? Are you mad?”
Elijah shrugged. "We're at least as safe at the club as here."
Elliot had to agree with Ezra. "I'm afraid I'm too worried to enjoy a performance."
"Trust me," Elijah said. "Getting out will be good for all of us."
Tables filled the enormous common room, crammed full of animals of all varieties, shapes, and sizes. Cook smoke swirled around the customers, dancing through the hearth and candlelight like ghostly vapors. Rousing music slammed Elliot's ears, making conversation impossible, to his relief. The music helped to clear his head, but his thoughts remained grounded on the big bad wolf.
Ezra nudged Elliot suddenly, nearly unseating him.
Elliot scrambled back into place, rounding on his brother. "What did you do that—?"
"Look." Ezra jabbed a hoof toward the stage.
Elliot studied the figures in the band. A brown-and white cow tapped out a beat, a saxophone hanging from a strap around her neck. Beside her, a dog clutching a trombone waved his head. A rooster flung his comb and wattles around as he slammed a ricky-ticky beat on his drum set. In the center, a dark wolf blew a trumpet solo that incorporated some of the highest notes Elliot had ever heard. Each time the wolf blasted out a shrieking pitch, the audience cheered wildly. "What...?" Elliot started, then noticed the wolf's tail. A white tip bobbed with every movement. "Is that...?"
"It might be," Ezra shouted back. "Elijah?"
The oldest brother snapped his fingers and rocked his head to the rhythm.
Elliot hunched down in his chair and hoped the wolf would not notice them.
Elliot spent the next day pacing the confines of Elijah's house and worrying. He could barely remember his last comfortable night of sleep, the last time food tasted good in his mouth. He saw no sign of the little calico and wondered where it spent the day while he and Ezra ate and took their fitful naps. He broached, the subject only once. "Ezra, do you think that jazz trumpeting wolf...?"
"It would explain a lot." Elliot imagined it would take a great amount of wind and control to play jazz trumpet with such ferocity and talent... as well as to blow down houses.
Elijah returned home at dusk to a dinner of toast and jam surrounded by a huge pile of vegetables. He walked into the house with the cat tucked under his arm and dumped her onto the chair before greeting his brothers.
Elliot could not help staring. "You bring your cat to work?"
"Just today." Elijah flopped into his chair and scooped his plate from the table. "She had a special assignment."
The calico hopped to the floor, then sprang nearly into Ezra's plate. Only a quick and sudden shift of weight rescued his food.
"What could a pet cat possibly do at—"
A hammering paw at the door cut Elliot off with a startled gasp. All three pigs put aside their food to listen.
"Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in!" Elijah raised his hooves as if conducting a band, and they all said in unison, "Not by the hairs of our chinny-chin-chins."
"Then I'll huff-"
"What are we going to do?" Elliot whispered, breaking out in a cold sweat.
"And I'll puff-" Sweat beaded Ezra's brow as well, but Elijah looked the picture of calm. The cat sprang from Ezra's lap and trotted toward the door. Elliot craned his neck around the comer to watch her.
"And I'll blow your house down!"
The cat stretched up the door until her paws tapped the bolt.
"Do you want out?" Elijah asked.
Horror stole over Elliot. "Don't open that door!" He leapt from the sofa to chase after his brother.
The wolf began sucking in a deep lungful of air, then stopped, coughing.
Elijah scooped up the cat.
Elliot grabbed Elijah's arm. "Are you crazy?"
Elijah turned, finding Elliot directly in his face. "I'm not going to open the door," he promised.
The wolf sucked in another noisy burst of air, only to lose it in an enormous sneeze.
Elliot stepped aside, and Elijah galloped past him back to the gathering room. He opened a window and dumped the cat outside. The animal raced toward the front, drawn like a magnet to the one who could least tolerate her presence.
The wolf huffed again, the sound a vast and whistling wheeze. He lapsed into a fit of staccato coughs. "I'm gonna-" He coughed. "I'm gonna-" A fit of coughing stole his words, swiftly declining to a breathless, gasping hack.
The wolf turned and staggered into the darkness while the pigs danced and laughed in Elijah's log cottage.
Elijah Pig finished examining his patient, a dark furred, brown-eyed wolf with a white tip on his bushy tail, and replaced his stethoscope around his shoulders. "You have wheezes and crackles in your lungs. Your face is blotchy, and your nose has a ton of mucus in it. I'd say you had another allergic reaction, Sylvester."
"I thought so." Sylvester sat up on the table, refastening his vest. ''The allergy shots always worked before. What do you think happened?"
Elijah looked thoughtful. "I don't know." He pulled at the stiff hairs on his chin.
"I was fine the previous night. Had a great set down at the club."
"I know. I heard you. You're talented."
"Thanks." Frustration gruffened the wolf’s voice. "But I can't play like this." He sneezed hard enough to send papers tacked to the wall awash.
Elijah continued to stroke his chinny-chin-chin. "Have you changed your diet lately? Have you been eating anything strange like ..." His eyes went dark. "... meat?"
Sylvester studied the doctor.' "I ... I mean I haven't … actually ..."
"Because meat of any kind deactivates your allergy shots." Elijah shook a vial tainted with cat dander. "I guarantee, if you so much as . . . pursue a piece of meat, you'll never play trumpet again."
"I ... understand,'" Sylvester said. "Consider me the strictest of vegetarians from this day forth."
Elijah nodded, setting down the vial. "Nurse, get me a vial of batch 1."
"I'm sorry," Sylvester said softly. "I ... didn't know. From now on, I'll save my blowing for my jazz."
The doctor smiled. "See that you do, Sylvester Wolf. See that you do."
Killer Kitty
Harding Young
Judging by all the cat-themed s-f anthologies and novels, you would think that cats are the most popular animals in science fiction/fantasy and mystery. Or with the s-f authors, at least. (And the readers, or publishers wouldn’t keep churning them out.) Catfantastic. Catopolis. Magicats. Cats in Space and Other Places. Cat Tales: Fantastic Feline Fiction. A Constellation of Cats. Novels like Tailchaser’s Song. Cat House. Catamount. The Nine Lives of Catseye Gomez. The Alchymist’s Cat. Nine Lives to Murder. The Cat. Varjak Paw. Waiting for Gertrude. The Wild Road and its sequel The Golden Cat. The Feline Wizardry trilogy by Diane Duane and the Warriors novels by “Erin Hunter” (over thirty novels so far). Whole series of cat-sleuth murder mysteries such as Felidae and its six sequels by Akif Pirinçci, Sofie Kelly’s three “Magical Cats” fantasy-mysteries (Sleight of Paw, Copycat Killing, etc.), Shirley Rousseau Murphy’s seventeen “Joe Grey” novels (Cat in the Dark, Cat Telling Tales, etc.), and the Cat Crimes and Murder Most Feline anthologies edited by (usually) Ed Gorman and/or Martin H. Greenberg and others. Stories with sapient cats go back at least as far as the comic fantasy The Professor on Paws by A. B. Cox (W. Collins & Sons, July 1926), in which the dying Professor Ridgeley’s brain is surgically transplanted into the body of his pet cat by his lab assistant, and the resulting talking cat is fought over by Prof. Cantrell, the lab assistant who wants scientific glory, and Ridgeley�
��s daughter and her fiancée who want to make a fortune with the “marvel cat” in the music-halls. (It’s not really very funny; all of the characters are too self-centered and greedy to be likeable.) And, of course, the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll’s July 1865 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Young’s “Killer Kitty”, from the original-fiction anthology Twisted Cat Tales edited by Esther Schrader, offers no pseudoscientific or magical reason why its cat is such a deadly psychopath. He just likes to kill people. He is what we fear all of our cats would like to do, if they weren’t so indolent.
I MET him on the Trans-Canada Highway. He was lying in a pool of blood on the side of the road, looking like road-kill but I could see from my car that he was still breathing. I stopped and lifted him in. I discovered that it wasn't blood. It was ketchup.
A ploy. To scam a ride.
He's a clever kitty cat.
That was just outside Kenora, Ontario, close to the Manitoba border. I'd been on the road for a day traveling west from Montreal. In a few short hours, I'd be in Winnipeg. I asked where he was heading.
"To the coast," he said, "or as close as you can get me."
He was calm and seemed well mannered. Almost... gentlemanly. But his eyes were menacing. I decided I'd take him. If nothing else, the trip would be interesting.
***
The Peg was cold and grey. It was nothing like the Emerald City it had appeared to be from a distance, towering in a glistening glow above the surrounding plains. We stopped at a restaurant on Portage, a diner type with fake wooden walls and red-checked tablecloths. The waitress wore a grey tunic, tightly wrapped over heaving breasts that bulged beneath the cloth.
"We don't serve pets," she said.
The cat looked at me and my heart skipped. This would not be a good time for him to speak.
"We don't serve pets," she said again but with greater conviction.
The cat growled softly. I knew he needed to eat and somehow Meow Mix was not going to cut it. "Bring me two hamburgers, please. Medium rare. No ketchup. On either."
"Okay," she said. "But they're both for you. Not the cat."
Her breasts bounced as she wiggled away.
Kitty's eyes moved with the sway of her thighs.
I was concealing my own erection when I realised that his eyes did not, in fact, express sexual desire or attraction. That, when considered, would be absurd. No, he'd been insulted. He was angry.
"Let it go, " I said.
"Easy for you to say," he said.
He sat under the table and I fed him by hand, slipping bits of pink hamburger between my legs. It was very undignified. Once, the waitress glared at me and I thought I'd been caught. I pretended to scratch my leg, and put another morsel in my mouth. It had cat drool all over it.
As we were leaving, he told me he'd be a moment and I should wait in the car.
I sat there wondering how exactly he would manage to use the facilities in the men's room. It seemed, though, that he would have figured it out long ago, his being so proud. He's not one for a litter box.
The car was starting to warm up when he hopped in. His face was covered in blood. It dripped from his fur and whiskers and his eyes were on fire, radiant with rage. "Drive," he said.
"But--
"Just drive."
It was real blood, by the way. Not ketchup.
***
I figured we'd make it to Regina before needing to sleep. Regardless, he slept most of the way, curled up in the seat beside me. He'd licked the blood from his fur which was now soft and fluffy, and he looked like a little pillow. A puffy little pillow with a red flea collar.
How cute, I thought.
Cute?
Yes. Cute. My cute, fluffy, adorable, homicidal kitty.
He was not like other cats. He was deadly, and it occurred to me that he would not take kindly to being thought of as cute.
And yet, there he was, purring sweetly and I wanted nothing more than to cuddle up next to him.
The car glided along the open highway in the dead of night, the headlights sweeping the asphalt. I glanced sideways at him now and then. Once, he met my eyes, and I pretended to concentrate on the road.
"What are you running from?" he asked.
"Oh, nothing really. The usual."
"The usual?" he said. "Heartache, I suppose?"
"Yeah... well... you know how it is."
"No," he said. "Of course I don't."
I felt foolish for missing the obvious, but I didn't want to explain. I'd known him too short a time to open up about something so intimate. I was unable to express the pain of my loss, and the sting of her memory. I chose not to describe the cold, heartless stare she gave me as she pointed to the door and said, "Go. As far from me as you can."
I turned the conversation back to him. "Well, then, what are you running from?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing? Then where are you going?"
"Home," he said.
***
I stood next to the car in the otherwise empty parking lot and looked over the vast, flat, endless, Saskatchewan plains. "If you started walking along this road," I told him, "I'd still be able to see you days from now."
He did not respond, except to tell me to wait before dashing into the motel office. He returned moments later with keys in his mouth. He dropped them at my feet.
"We're in room 402."
I noticed blood all over his paws, and a patch of fur missing from his tail. His flea collar was gone.
I knew it had been a mistake to let him make the arrangements.
***
The room was damp. The sheets felt clammy and germ-ridden. I didn't mind so much, because I knew it would be difficult to sleep no matter what. Kitty sat propped up on a pillow on top of the armchair, slowly and methodically licking blood from his fur and washing his face in that darling way cats do by running their paws over their whiskers. It looked so simple, so routine. A nice bath after a hard day's work.
I was still feeling rather shaken, and wanted to know more about him. "You don't know heartache? Haven't you ever been in love?" I asked.
"I'm not like you," he said. "I have different mating habits. Different rituals. Different expectations."
"But surely you must know what it's like to be betrayed, or abandoned. I mean, clearly, you're not a kitten anymore."
"Oh, yes, I know betrayal. I know abandonment. It's just not a matter of love, or anything like it. I feel hungry. Hunger is my dark side, my enemy."
"So, your entire life is just about food."
"More or less."
"I think you are suffering from heartache."
He laughed for the first time. It sounded like a cross between a yowl and the hacking of a hairball. "That hardly matters," he finally replied, when he'd regained his composure.
There was a knock at the door. We stared at each other for a long moment. This was another first, because I saw apprehension in his eyes. Not fear, or even anxiety. He looked curious.
I breathed deeply before opening the door. The man on the other side was round and frumpy. He was wearing a ratty old bathrobe, with chest hair billowing through. His hair was scraggly and tears flowed from his bloodshot eyes. He was holding up a torn, red flea collar in his left hand. More prominent, though, was the axe he had in his right.
"I'm looking for a cat," he said.
I glanced at the armchair. Kitty was nowhere in sight. I felt strangely relieved. "I don't have a cat," I said.
"He's here, somewhere in this motel. I'll find him."
A moment of silent staring passed before he fell apart
"My wife was a good woman, you know. She had this way... some folks didn't like. She was brash, see. But she had a kind heart, really."
I must have looked very confused.
"She's dead," he said.
"I'm sorry."
"Sad thing is, see, she really liked cats. Always wanted one. Was me couldn't have 'em. Allergies, you know."
"If I see a cat," I said, "I'll let you know."
"I'll find him," he said. "Sure as hell, I'll find him."
When he'd gone, I peered under the bed. I figured we'd need to act quickly and flee the scene. The place would be swarming with cops very soon. In any case, there would be too much activity for any kind of proper rest. But, he looked so complacent under there.
As I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, I could hear him purr. The rhythm of it put me to sleep.