All up and down the length of wall, the cats waited. Benson could see the scars of life from mating and from hunting the ferocious Norway rat. Ears were torn, eyes blinded or totally gone, claws, teeth, patches of hair, hunks of muscle, segments of tail were missing. They had the bleak outlook of professional gladiators surviving as long as the reflexes were fast enough, for, among the rats, even the fastest reflexes were barely fast enough. In their cat world, even mating was agony.
Just as the sun turned the windows across the river blood-red, a young female emerged from her burrow across the road in the field. Benson watched her with interest. She had six kits in the burrow four weeks old and had begun weaning them. Normally, she would have taken them hunting with her, but the rats had been unusually ferocious in recent days. A longshoremen’s strike had closed down the waterfront, creating a crisis for the animals, both rats and cats.
The usually stuffed pier sheds were empty of food. The luncheon scraps, the garbage from the sandwich trucks, other miscellaneous human leavings were nowhere to be found. The rats were already half-starved.
They had turned to one of their few dependable food supplies: the cockroaches who lived by the millions between the beams of the old piers that normally contained food. Now the rats were chewing through the massive beams to get into the old walls. As they pursued the cockroaches, the cats pursued them.
The first cat entered the pier before the sun had completely set, although it was dark inside. Mixed with the odor of cresote, machine oil, tar, hemp and dampness, the stench of the rats was strong in the fetid air, and the cats’ marvelous eyes quickly picked out their silhouettes in the near-total darkness. Their ears heard the familiar chittering. Their claws retracted, on silent, padded feet, the cats moved across the huge floor space and mounted a wall of empty packing cases. From there they looked down on the scurrying rats and braced themselves for the first pounce of the night.
The female was large for her sex, nearly ten pounds. Nearing her second birthday, she’d borne three litters. She was black with a white stocking on her left front foot. Being left-footed, this was the paw she killed with.
She remained near her burrow longer than usual, although with the kits weaning late, they were draining more milk than normal from her and she needed food, rat’s liver in particular. All eight of her breasts were sore from the kits’ urgent feeding. She peered from her burrow across the roadway at the striped tom and read his story in his swollen jaw and his eye that squinted with pain. She knew a rogue cat when she saw one. Then she peered down into the burrow at her six kits, estimating their ability to fight him off. A month-old litter in a narrow burrow would probably be more of a tussle than a rat for him, but she waited until he roused himself and followed the other cats through a break in the masonry into the warehouse.
She stayed fifteen minutes more at the mouth of her burrow, stroking her glossy black coat with her tongue, flexing her muscles and stretching her claws. Hunger tormented her belly.
She waited for a break in the truck traffic to cross the roadway, then leaped down the side of the building to the opening. Turning, she looked back at the burrow. Nothing moved near it; obediently, the kits had remained inside to wait for her.
She turned back to the opening. As she entered she smelled the rats, and saliva began to drop from her mouth onto the soft fur of her chin. The other cats were already crowded on top of the packing cases, several of them dining on their first kill of the evening.
The rats were chittering under the floor in the darkness between the beams. Evidently they were feeding on throngs of cockroaches, probably a breeding nest. Some were milling around the hole and keeping an eye on the cats above them. It would be dangerous to leap into the midst of starving rats, and the cats waited for one of them to make a mistake.
The female moved closer, only a few feet from the rats. There she waited for one of the younger, inexperienced cats to make a move. She hadn’t long to wait. A young tom extended two paws down the side of a packing crate, raised its haunches and tensed itself. More by accident than choice, his front paws slid down the side of the case and the tom dropped to the floor. He struck a rat with a front paw at the base of the skull and tumbled it, tearing a large wound in its neck. But the rat was back on its feet and at the cat before the cat could recover from his leap. Four or five other rats closed in; the tom simply cleared them and struggled back up on the packing cases again. The rats then turned on the wounded member of their pack and pursued it, chittering, into a wall, killing and eating it within minutes.
The female saw her opportunity. One rat remaining approached the hole in the floor and, as it extended its head downward, the female leaped, stabbed her teeth into the base of its neck and pulled. The rat, impaled, died with one kick. Turning, she hurried back through the packing cases and quickly, surgically, her eyes scanning for other cats, disemboweled the rat and swallowed the liver without chewing it. She quickly bit its head off and her rasping tongue scooped out its brain. Then she finished, leaving only the fur and carcass and skull. The young tom above watched her return to her post.
The old tom was far too wise to clamber up on the packing case. He was in no condition to kill a hungry full-grown rat. And, killing it, he would not have been able to chew it. He needed smaller game, either the half-eaten kill of another cat or an immature rat. He looked at his young hunting companion, sitting up on a case. He decided that the young tom was aware of his companion’s disability and, tonight, would refuse to share with him. He set off to find an immature rat.
He stole through the twilight of the building. Toward the end of the pier, he turned and with his great legs and muscles easily leaped up on a shelf.
There were baby rats nearby, practically hairless and not much larger than mice. Their pink skin glowed in the faint light. But they were well beyond the wall, and it would take a superior leap to reach them. The tom gauged the distance. If he did it right, he could kill two of them before they could scurry back into their nest hole. There were large rats nearby. He gathered himself and leaped into the darkness.
He succeeded.
He landed on his front paws, braked with his rear paws and grabbed two babies in his front paws, driving the claws into the base of the skull and killing them outright. He took the baby in his right paw and began to push it into his mouth. With one front paw free, he was able to turn and leap back up on the shelf. But his mouth was too swollen to open easily. He considered dropping the baby and leaping back up with the other in his left paw. With two, though, he could manage to get through another day until his jaw healed. He tried again and this time got the whole young rat in his mouth except for the tail. He turned to leap back up on the shelf.
He’d waited too long. A swarm of grown rats leaped on him. When he braced his marvelous back legs to jump up, he was freighted with rats, attached to him by their teeth. It was all too heavy. His leap rammed his head up against the shelf and he fell back to the floor.
Within seconds, rats from all over the building were racing toward him.
The female moved to the end of a packing case. Crouching, she peered out from the corner of the case. The moving shadows of the rats lay more than a foot away from the edge of the case. She watched them, waiting. Then, cautiously, she extended her stockinged left paw and shook it. The whiteness danced in the near darkness and a rat lunged at it, running under her belly. She stabbed her right front paw down on the base of its tail, then raked its back with her back paw. Her powerful rear leg drove the four claws into the rat and ripped it open like a slicing machine. Turning, she bit it at the base of the skull and carried it away, hurrying out of the building, still watched by the young tom. He’d not yet taken a rat.
Quickly she crossed the roadway, dodging the rushing headlights of the truck traffic, and carried the dead rat into the burrow. There she ripped it open to expose the entrails and bit off the head. The kits eagerly tore into the carcass and she hurried back out of the burrow. In a moment she was back i
n the pier shed.
When she reentered, the young tom was watching. His luck was bad. He had superb equipment. He was large and growing, with marvelous reflexes and good hunting instincts, but he’d grown dependent on the old tom and was unable to find him in the pier shed. He watched the female with interest. When she disappeared around the corner of a packing case again, he dropped softly to the floor and scurried out of the building.
The kits saw him and waited, alert. Even in the darkness he could see the six pairs of eyes, the six sets of ready young claws and teeth. They would tear his face open and rip out his eyes if he tried to enter.
He glanced back across the roadway, then sat down and placed the tip of his tail at the burrow opening. It fluttered and twitched; the kits watched it, waiting. He switched the tip back and forth along the perimeter of the opening. The boldest of the kits moved closer to the opening and watched the tip of the tail.
The kits remained still for some minutes. Finally the boldest could resist no longer. It stabbed the tail tip six times with lightning jabs of its needlelike claws, then withdrew.
The young tom winced with pain but extended the tail again and waited until the young kit struck again. This time the tom slammed its own front paw into the kit’s paw and, with a yank, plucked the kitten from the burrow.
In its inexperience, though, it had forgotten about the mother. She dropped the rat from her mouth and sprang at him with a shriek of rage. Her left paw caught him under the right ear and pulled. He was heavier and stronger, but she dragged him more than two feet, nearly removing the ear. Spinning and lunging at her, he was hit by her left claw in the face. His own rush enabled her to leap in the air and turn. She landed on his back like a saddle and stabbed her teeth into the base of his head, groping for the vertebrae that led to his brain.
The young tom surprised her. He turned over and rolled on his back, twisting his head and striking for her eyes. Caught unprepared, she released her hold to try for another. He was up and moving now, racing away from her. Despite his speed, her white left paw grabbed his thigh as he went and ripped open his leg.
She sat shaking his fur from her claw and shrieking at him as he loped along the wooden fencing, ready to hole up for the night and try to lick his cuts free of infection. His belly would punish him without respite until his wounds healed.
Benson, still sitting in his car, where he’d been for more than an hour, watched the female pick up the rat and carry it into her burrow. Then he shut his eyes and concentrated. The cat ripped the rat open for her kits and reemerged. In the middle of the field, she spun and twisted and squirmed, struggling and rolling as though trying furiously to evade something. Then she stood up and shook herself vigorously.
Instead of returning to the pier shed, she went in the other direction: into the old warehouse district. Kheim’s place was three blocks away.
Her powerful legs carried her quickly through the streets. Only the glitter of her eyes and the white of the one paw showed in the darkness as she moved.
Twice she saw a solitary brown rat. One, fat and foolish, saw her and leaped from a garbage can down into a sewer. Had she been stalking him, he would have died before reaching it. Another gazed insolently at her from the security of a small corner hole in a wooden door. She passed both without hesitation.
At the intersection near Kheim’s house, she stopped to reconnoiter. She saw none of the usual stray dogs, no cats, no rats. The streets were safely vacant.
The cobbled lane in front of Kheim’s was dimly lit by a street lamp. The walk and the cobbles were swept clean and the scrubbed white-marble step shone amid the dark bricks. The kerosene lamp glowed in the vestibule as she approached the building.
She looked up at the front windows, then prowled the alley at the side, studying the lower windows there. She smelled the strong petroleum and oxide odors from Kheim’s car behind the garage doer, then returned to the front of the building. There was only one opening, the window to the children’s sleeping quarters, and it was very high.
She backed up into the lane, took two steps and leaped for measurement. She was far short of the window. And she saw now that she was being observed by another cat: Khungh stood in his second floor window, watching intently and switching his tail.
She hurried across the street, turned and rushed the wall. She got good purchase with her front paws on the brick wall and momentarily hooked a claw on the brick sill of the window.
It wasn’t good enough. She fell back to the walk, then sat a moment and smoothed the hairs of her breast with her tongue to recover her dignity before looking up again at Khungh. He strutted, leaning against the glass, rubbing his shoulders and baring his teeth at her. He put a paw on the window and scraped his claws down the glass.
The window was plainly too high. She studied the wall and the vestibule. She stroked her white paw with her tongue, then lithely walked across the lane and gauged the distance and height before her. She gazed up again at Khungh, saw his challenging contortions in his window and looked away. She sat for a moment, languidly stretching her muscles; then, almost casually, she loped across the lane and hit the brick wall. The four claws on each of her rear paws dug into the porous bricks and mortar. Her powerful legs scrambled up the wall, lifting her in a series of smooth motions. They carried her high enough to get both front paws on the brick sill, and her deep shoulder muscles easily pulled her up on the ledge.
She arrived with pain screaming from her right rear paw and quickly sat to lick it. The taste of blood filled her mouth: she discovered that one of her claws had been torn out, caught in a brick.
She remained on the ledge, licking her paw and shutting her eyes patiently against the burning pain. The paw refused to stop bleeding, and she began to pant slowly.
Khungh scratched against the window above her, rocking the potted plants and banging his head against the pane. He was unable to see her.
Now she stood and easily clambered up and through the window to step down on the wooden sill inside. The odor of humans was strong, and in the presence of such danger she became more cautious than ever. The room, lit by one low kerosene lamp, was filled with sleeping bodies, their limp limbs dangling, faces in deep repose, the only sound the slow, long breathing of sleep. She waited, observing each figure.
When she located Renni, she leaped to the floor and crossed to the bed. Lightly, with the barest hint of weight, she jumped up on the bed and sat by Renni’s face.
Renni lay in a deep sleep, her hands tucked under her chin. The bracelet on her right wrist was exposed, and the cat licked it several times. Then she licked Renni’s cheek. Renni awoke. The cat peered deeply into the girl’s eyes, then licked the bracelet again. Renni raised herself up on an elbow and peered curiously at the cat. She watched the cat lick her bracelet a third time. The cat sat motionless now in the silent, dimly lit room and concentrated its stare on Renni’s eyes. Renni started and drew back. The cat intensified its stare.
“What?” whispered Renni. “What?”
She sat up on the bed and put her feet on the floor, staring at the cat in disbelief, her mouth hanging open. Tentatively, she touched the cat and saw it leap away.
By the door the cat saw a crib next to the mother’s cot; on a post hung a baby’s sun cap. Moving under the beds along one wall, she stepped boldly up on the bed and reached to bat the cap free. It spun to the floor.
She sat on the bed for a moment to lick more blood from her paw. Then she dropped again to the floor and put her head through the cap opening.
“What are you doing, you silly cat?”
The cat sat up with the cap around her head and looked at Pammy, who had gotten up and turned up the kerosene lamp.
“Oh, that ridiculous cat.”
Other voices began to murmur in complaint.
Pammy poked the dumbfounded Renni. “Look what that silly cat did. Isn’t that cute?”
But Renni was watching the cat with awe. She’d understood.
“Oh, g
o back to bed, Pammy,” said one of the boys.
The cat cavorted now, the cap still on her head. When Pammy approached, she easily glided out of range and into the hallway.
“How did it get in here?” asked one of the girls. “Those cats upstairs will kill her.”
“Look what she’s done. Let’s see what happens.”
Several of the others had gotten up. The old man came through the doorway of his cubicle.
“Quiet. Quiet. Everyone go back to bed.”
“It’s a stray cat.”
“It’s wearing the baby’s cap.”
Pammy began to laugh. “I think it’s so funny.”
“Here, kitty kitty kitty.”
“No, no,” said the old man. “It must go outside.”
“It’s going to go upstairs. Wearing that funny cap.”
The cat waited on the first step, waiting for Renni. As the old man approached, she jumped up several steps. Pammy tried to catch her and she leaped up several more steps, then lay on her back and gazed coquettishly at them from her baby’s cap. She stared at Renni. With eager, rising laughter, the children elbowed their way past the old man and hurried after her. None of them noticed the spots of blood on the stairs.
She led them up to the second floor, followed by the old man demanding that they go back to bed. She entered the main prayer room with its thickly carpeted floor and its few pieces of lacquered furniture. A spiral staircase led to the third floor. By the floor-length front window, a community of tall window plants grew. The Tibetan temple cats were ranged against one wall, watching her and stirring restlessly. Khungh stood among the plants and softly hissed at her, his back arched, rippling his great muscles and showing her his perfect set of teeth.
The female took a long look at Renni, rolled on the soft carpeting in her baby’s cap and flicked her tail at Khungh. She reached a paw toward him and raked it through the carpet, pulling away tufts of wool. The children giggled. Except Renni, who stood, preoccupied, turning her bracelet on her wrist.
Keeper of the Children Page 16