“Fast?”
“You’ll see.”
Diana opened the door a couple of inches, then quickly stuck her leg against the jamb. A round Tuxedo head immediately butted her boots.
“Blackjack,” Michael exclaimed with sudden understanding. The three-legged kitty was the most notorious escape artist in Catland, able to slither through an opening faster than water through fingers.
Diana nodded. “Back, back, Blackjack,” she urged, sidling sideways into the room. Michael followed her lead and squeezed through the inadequate space.
The twelve-by-fourteen-foot rectangle was crowded with cats, but Michael immediately spotted Tomato. “Has he had his medicine?” he asked, picking up the tabby.
“Right before his breakfast,” Diana promised.
Michael held Tomato against his chest, nuzzling the tiny head as his eyes swept the small area. “Aren’t there an awful lot of cats in here?”
“That’s what I want to discuss with you,” Diana said, pointing to the room’s one sofa. “Let’s sit down a minute.”
They nudged aside some of the snoozing bodies that had appropriated every available cushioned area and made themselves comfortable. A dozen cats immediately cozied onto their laps while more rubbed against their ankles, purring for attention. Michael couldn’t help but notice that they were all special-needs felines.
“We’re getting more cats from farther away because, somehow, people are hearing that we don’t kill our animals,” Diana began. “Can you believe, a couple from Salt Lake called yesterday?” She shook her head and worry deepened the furrows between her brows. “Anyway, a lot of them have problems. I’m particularly seeing more upper respiratory sickness.” Diana eased the furry mass from her lap and stood. Michael waited as she paced the small space carefully avoiding any little body in her way.
“As you know, I’ve been keeping as many as I can manage in the bunkhouse with me. . . .” Diana winced as from nowhere a silver-gray kitty landed on her shoulder and dug his claws deep into her denim jacket. “And then there’re the Blackjacks and Tongs of the world. Okay, Tong. Okay, baby,” she soothed, stroking the cat’s head.
“What’s the problem?” Michael prodded gently.
It was as if he had touched a hidden trigger. Diana lifted a pale face to his and let the tears waterfall over her cheeks. “I’ve got the feline leukemia cats in the next room. I’ve put all our upper respiratory and special-needs little ones in here together because I haven’t anywhere else, and they really need to be kept more separate from each other, and . . .” Her words coursed out jagged, erratic.
Michael quickly transferred Tomato to his warmed spot on the sofa, and went to Diana. He took her into his arms and let her sob out the frustration against his chest. Little Tong teetered on her shoulder like the last drunk out of a bar, but Michael knew that trying to remove the Velcro’d-on rider would only cause the cat to dig his talons in deeper. He cupped the pint-sized body in his palm to keep it from falling and held Diana close. “Easy kid, easy. You just need more space.”
“I want more than just space. I want to build a nice, warm house for them. With individual condos, and cubbyholes, and climbing stairs, and a little foyer so there’s a little kitty lock between them and the outside so . . .”
“So Blackjack can’t skip,” Michael finished for her.
Diana pulled away carefully so as not to disturb Tong’s balance. “Not only him. What if someone accidently leaves the door ajar and doesn’t see Timmie wander out? Look at that poor baby. It would be a disaster if he got out.”
Michael couldn’t find the little black male at first. Then he spied him behind the scratching post by the window. As always, Timmie plied his endless circumambulation, swaying uncertainly as if buffeted by a strong wind. Round and round, the undersized feline carefully placed one paw ahead of the other, milky eyes concentrating on every step of his chosen perimeter.
Timmie had a neurological disorder that stemmed from his mother having feline distemper when he was born. The brain-damaged Timmie would never walk like his peers, but he was the most affectionate cat and he always found his litter box.
As Michael watched, an enormous one-eyed gray-and-white with the longest whiskers stiff-legged over to hunker beside the diminutive Timmie. Michael had to smile. Benton could have been an actor in another life the way he played his walking-stick leg.
The portly male had been given away by a family who were leaving the area. Benton couldn’t comprehend that they didn’t want him anymore. He had wandered abroad to find his people and got hit by a car. The veterinarian thought he would have to remove the paralyzed limb, but Benton didn’t seem hindered by the impediment.
On the contrary, he used his game leg with great charm, often waving it around like a conductor’s baton. Benton got a lot of sympathy with that little display. Now he gently nudged the circling cat to the floor and proceeded to groom behind his ears. Timmie closed his eyes in quiet contentment.
Blackjack hadn’t been so lucky. He had been struck by a van, but nobody thought to call a vet, or Best Friends, for two weeks. By that time gangrene had so rotted the thigh bone that Dr. Christy had no choice but to remove the leg.
Like Timmie and Benton, Blackjack was sweet, but he did have one minuscule flaw. He was an “affection biter.” The tuxedo cat would hook an unsuspecting person by the hand and calmly bring the fingers to his mouth and chomp down. Michael had painfully experienced Blackjack’s loving feelings more than once.
“You see what I mean, Michael?” Diana dried her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “I can’t bear making do for them any longer. . . .” Her voice trailed off as Tong shuddered abruptly on her shoulder. “Oh no, he’s having an epileptic fit—but we’re giving him his Dilantin. Michael, don’t you see what I mean?” she cried distractedly, catching the cat as he fell.
With the utmost tenderness, Diana laid the puny body on the floor and crouched beside Tong. “How could anyone throw a perfectly healthy kitten into a freezing stream? For something like this to happen . . .”
Tong’s spasms lessened as Diana took him on her lap. Michael thought she looked as forlorn as the depleted creature she cuddled like a baby. As if she were a magnet, two albino cats, the lame and half-blind Benton, crippled Blackjack, five sniffling kittens, and a cat with no ears converged on the compassionate woman in their midst.
Michael eased down beside her, struggling with the outpouring of emotion within himself. More clearly than ever in his life, he “got” the bond Diana created with her damaged creatures. The affectionate nickname Best Friends had bestowed on her was more true than any of them realized: Chief Cat was emotionally united with her beloved charges: their pain was her pain, their happiness her happiness. It was from this deep, subconscious identification that Diana understood everything feline.
A sensation of yielding softness, the lightest tickle of whisker against his hand, and the music of “meows” attached themselves to the river of Michael’s mind. Yes, they were always scrambling to take care of the never-ending flow of animals that needed them—that was Best Friends’ commitment. And yes, maybe they were overextended at the moment, but that would change in time. These crippled, one-eyed, no-tail, injured felines were more than special-needs cats. They were special in their own right, deserving of the best tender, loving care Best Friends could manage. Michael hugged his knees. “I’ve just thought of a name for the new housing.”
Diana’s blue eyes met his. “That is a yes, isn’t it?”
“It won’t be fancy, but I’ll get it started today. Is that soon enough?”
The smile that suffused Diana’s strong face made her look clear and young again. She slipped a soft hand from under Timmie and laid it over Michael’s clasped fingers. “Thank you.”
“Don’t you want to know what I think we should call it?”
“Pray tell, oh wise one,” she teased happily.
“The TLC Club. You know, Tender, Loving Care.”
Diana
’s shoulders started to shake. She rocked back and forth, pressing her lips together in a vain effort to control her giggles.
“What’s so funny?” Michael said, a tad offended.
“Nothing. Aren’t laughing and crying the same release? Besides, I don’t think you realize.”
“Realize?”
“Michael, don’t you get it?” Diana was positively radiant. “TLC is the name they told me we should name their new home.”
Her delight was contagious. Michael smiled, then chuckled. The man and the woman who loved cats sat on the linoleum floor, hemmed in by the ones who needed them most, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed some more.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Puppy Mills . . . and the Wall of Triumph
Faith couldn’t understand where the winter had gone. People always said time flew as one got older, but she was barely in her forties. The theory didn’t compute.
The past few months had been quiet, but then that came with the season. When it dropped below freezing, people liked to hunker down, eat hot soup, and generally, as they say, let sleeping dogs lie.
Now that Faith came to think about it, she hadn’t had a call from dispatch all week. She expected that would change now that the first buds of spring were tentatively dressing the landscape.
The phone sounded particularly loud in the untroubled afternoon. She took another bite of her banana-and-mayonnaise sandwich and stared at the emotionless instrument. Even before she picked up the receiver she knew who was on the other end. “Hello?”
“Hi, Faith. Sure nice to feel a bit of warmth, isn’t it? Got one for you. Neighbors lodged a complaint about the smell.” The cheery female voice paused, then continued in a more serious vein. “It’s allegedly a breeding kennel for Chesapeake Bay retrievers.”
Faith was already unhappy. Chesapeakes were bred as hunting dogs. It was not only that Faith was averse to the sport; she resented that the retrievers were rarely being treated as part of the family.
Dispatch was still talking. “But from the description sounds more like one of those puppy mills, if you know what I mean.”
Faith grimaced. Puppy mills were breeding factories where bitches were forced to produce litter after litter only to have their pups taken away for quick sale, often before they were properly weaned. “Can you give me the details?”
“Can’t tell you much. We don’t have a file on the guy. He’s married with four children, and as I said, we have no rap sheet on him. Do you want to take it?”
“Is Officer Crosby around?” Ever since she had experienced a frightening altercation with a drunk one night, Faith requested an officer if she had any concerns. She had come to rely on the clean-shaven, boyish Doug Crosby, and on the official authority of his snappy tan pants and crisp blue uniform shirt.
“He’s out on a call.”
Faith pondered. A married man with four children was no guarantee that she wouldn’t have a problem. But after three years on animal control duty she figured she had a handle on most of the troublemakers in the area, and this man’s name was not on her mental “beware” list.
“I’ll take it,” Faith said.
The address was a few miles inside Kanab’s city limits. Faith drove slowly, considering her options. She had no illusions about what she would find. She had seen these places in Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York. They were invariably the same. If she could report truly horrendous conditions in violation of the health and safety code, the operation could be shut down and the dogs rescued. On the other hand, she hated to think of the suffering the animals were enduring if that were the case.
Faith could have predicted the trashed garden overgrown with waist-high weeds that fronted the man’s box-like house. She rang the doorbell and waited.
The bearded man who answered looked like he ate a lot of meat and washed it down with a case of beer. He was amiable enough until Faith explained her errand.
“Who the hell you think you are?” He hitched up his pants over his spongy paunch with his butcher’s hands, squinting at her past the broken veins in his bulbous nose. “You get the hell off my property or you’ll know what for.”
Faith wished she had waited for Doug Crosby. She enunciated carefully. “The police department has requested I make a report on your operation.”
“Who is it?” a female voice interrupted, and Faith was relieved to see a questioning face peer over the man’s shoulder.
“I’ve been sent to check on conditions in your kennels,” Faith explained. “If you or your husband have a problem with this, I suggest calling the police. They will verify my authority.”
The big man stepped toward Faith. “If you don’t get off my step, so help me . . .”
He stopped in mid-sentence as red-chipped nails tugged on his T-shirt. “We don’t want any trouble, dear. If the police sent her . . .”
Her husband shook his thick arm like a dog trying to dislodge a flea. Rage flared in the wife’s face before she let go.
“It won’t take long,” Faith said soothingly, holding her ground. She mustn’t show fear. “And I’m sure you don’t want me to say I couldn’t do my job.”
There was an unfathomable expression in the woman’s veiled eyes. Faith could almost imagine she was pleased that animal control was on her porch step. “Just let her look, dear,” she urged tightly. “Then she’ll leave.”
The man glared at Faith and his wife in turn. “You got five minutes,” he said and stomped back into the house, slamming the door on both of them.
The woman cocked an ear to make sure her husband was out of earshot, then smiled carefully. “Follow me. It’s around back.”
It didn’t matter how many puppy mills she’d seen, it was always a shock. This time the yard was even smaller than the front garden, with not a tree or shrub protecting the bare earth.
Faith had some experience with Chesapeakes and knew their normal weight was between sixty and seventy pounds. The pathetic specimens chained with barely room to move averaged forty pounds at most. Still, there was a plywood shelter, which Faith knew had to leak, and in which the dogs had probably spent a numbing winter. There were water and food bowls, though empty at the moment. The stench of excrement was disgusting but no law was being broken here.
She counted twenty-five before seeing the last bitch. Faith couldn’t believe what her eyes were showing her. A massive mammary tumor hung to the cold earth on which the female stood. Worse, she was obviously pregnant. Faith unlocked the pen and slipped inside.
“What are you doing? Don’t let her out,” the woman screeched.
Faith ignored the worried whine and crouched beside the dog. She ran her hand over coarse, curly fur and winced as her fingers found the bare spots. The bitch growled and raised her upper lip as Faith felt the hardness protruding from her belly. “It’s all right; I’m going to get you some help,” she whispered.
Faith straightened. “What’s her name?” she demanded.
The woman looked blank. “Don’t know.”
“How long has she been like this? And when is she due?”
The wife crossed her arms. “I don’t bother myself with stuff like that. Let him worry about it.” She jerked her head in the direction of the house. “Thinks he’s gonna make a fortune off these dogs. I say he should get a proper job and get me and the kids some money.”
Faith had heard the tale before. Behind every abuse or abandonment of an animal there were people who weren’t doing well in one way or another. She would like to gather up all of these Chesapeakes and take them to Best Friends. But as horrific as the conditions were, the man was providing the bare necessities. The dogs were within the legal limits of being fed and sheltered, and there was no law against continuous forced breeding. But there was something she could do.
“A Dr. Christy will be by to remove that tumor.”
“The old man won’t pay for it.”
“I will,” Faith snapped.
Sly greed shone in the woman’s eyes. “S
he’ll still have her pups, won’t she? He won’t let the vet operate otherwise.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Faith sneaked into IGA Foods on the way home. She left with a quart of strawberry ice cream and a giant bag of frozen fries.
The Chesapeakes seemed to obsess her. Faith told anyone who would listen of the mean conditions in which the dogs were bred. “And there was nothing I could tell the police to cite him for. Nothing I could do,” she repeated.
Francis called a week later. “You busy?”
“Always.”
“If you’ve got a minute, come down to The Village. There’s something I’d like you to see.”
“I’ve not finished feeding yet.”
“I think you should come down. See you in the meeting area.”
The meeting room had been the first section of The Village to be finished. Linked in everyone’s mind with the fond recollection of its first support beams tumbling down the cliff, the meeting area had emerged as the airy, picture-window core of the low, sun-dappled building shaded by trees nobody wanted cut down, and surrounded by beds of flowers lovingly planted over the years.
With corridors of rooms for people to live, and offices where records of the animals would be kept and prospective adopters could be interviewed, it was the most ambitious structure on the property, and the men were rightly proud of it.
There was nobody around when Faith walked through the door. She walked outside and waited. After ten minutes she figured Francis had gotten sidetracked, and listlessly she went back inside.
Something was different. Faith stopped in the middle of the room and stared at the long back wall. There had been an empty bulletin board up there last week. Now the space was covered with newspaper and magazine clippings.
Faith stood before the collage of pictures and stories and repeated the banner headline out loud: Wall of Triumph. Wall of Triumph. For half an hour Faith devoured every word, absorbed each accompanying photograph.
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