"Stupid manufacturers, always make these boxes harder than Capone's safe to break into. And this is nothing compared to an ordinary aspirin bottle. I swear, it's a conspiracy to get old people off Social Security by having them get heart attacks trying to open these child-safe bottles. You can see who everybody cares about, and it isn't the 'aging population.' "
Temple hurried over to help, tripping on an assortment of rag rugs and lazy cats, but not fatally. She could tell that Blandina Tyler wasn't big on home safety.
"Say, kid, you can't do a thing with those fancy nails."
"You'd be surprised." Temple punctured the box's dotted line with a lacquered crimson thumbnail and ripped the top off, much to the amazement of Blandina Tyler, and perhaps to the round-eyed litter of Siamese kittens pictured in full yowl on the box cover.
"Put 'em in the foil pie tins you see around," Miss Tyler ordered gruffly.
To fulfill this simple instruction took about half an hour and many trips back to the kitchen to wrestle open other boxes. Miss Tyler took to leaning against a counter and watching Temple trot back and forth while eluding outstretched cats. For all the old lady's grumpy refusal of assistance, Temple guessed that she needed it.
Certainly a twice-daily run around the Tyler house--up- stairs, downstairs, in my lady's chamber, bending and stooping, carrying and pouring--would match any aerobics routine in the city. Then came litter detail; in a word, box dredging. Miss Tyler used the clumping kind of litter, from which waste was removed with a slotted spoon. Carrying an empty plastic garbage bag like an out-of-stock Santa, Temple then made her obeisance at the foil roaster pans scattered as lavishly through the house as the feeding stations. By now, her nose was numb to all scents, and she was sneezing liberally from litter dust.
"Are you sure you haven't got a cold?" Miss Tyler asked narrowly on one of Temple's many unhappy returns to the kitchen. "l don't want my cats catching anything."
Temple studied the assembled felines, ranging from milling, meowing gangs to complacently dormant lay abouts. She blew out a stream of warm air to lift her short curls from her damp forehead, and then took another clattering run through the house. At least the rooms were air-conditioned. She spotted ventilation grilles in the old plaster walls and figured that Blandina Tyler, who apparently had lived here forever, had gone to the expense of having the house cooled.
"That's a good girl," Miss Tyler said in the tone a person uses to a docile animal when Temple returned to the kitchen, food box empty and all pie tins filled. "Sit down and have a ginger cookie." She indicated a table piled with magazines, and cats, that was draped in a yellow-checkered piece of vintage oilcloth.
Temple pulled a fifties' dinette chair over a tag rug as wrinkled as brain coral and three inconvenient cats' tails, and sat down gratefully. These shoes weren't made for walking, and especially not for running in the Feline Feeding Marathon.
Miss Tyler came over, limping a bit now that her cane was still swinging from her wrist, and offered an open cellophane package of those oblong store cookies with a lush layer of white icing. Temple hadn't had one since she was . . . well, knee-high to a kitchen stool.
"Thanks," she said, trying not to think of how many cats had been slobbering over the open bag.
Yet, as far as she could see, the house had been cleaned and dusted, if cluttered.
"Have you always had cats?" she asked.
Blandina Tyler leaned a weary hip against a chrome kitchen stool. With the weight off her feet, her hands were free to roam the Braille of the hand-carving on her cane, which they did with absent familiarity. Temple could tell that she loved that cane, that carving, almost as much as she must love her cats.
"No," the old woman startled her by saying. "I never intended to have a single one. I'd lived alone in this house for many years and was content to do so forever. Then some boys down the street came by one night making a racket to wake the dead, and they . . . threw a litter of kittens on my doorstep. Kittens they'd gotten drunk on beer."
Temple winced. She didn't want to hear what boys could do to cats--and kittens--because she'd always suspected it.
"A couple of them died." Miss Tyler said, her gnarled hands strangling the cane where it curved around to the head. "But four lived. After a while, the girls would come with their rescued strays. 'Please keep it, Miss Tyler, or with whole litters. 'They will go to the pound, Miss Tyler.' 'My brother is giving them marijuana, Miss Tyler.' 'She was hit by a car on the Big Street, Miss Tyler."
Temple looked around in awe. "All these cats were foundlings? Just by opening your door, you got so many?"
Miss Tyler nodded. "I was lucky. There were no relatives on my father's side, so I inherited this house and some substance. I could afford to take mangled cats to the vet. I could afford to have them neutered. I could afford to feed them. Motel cats that live on room-service trays; half-wild cats dumped in the desert scrub, Abused cats with cigarette bums on their bodies, with cut-off tails and ears and put-out eyes."
Temple winced again. She didn't think she could stand to hear what this old woman knew about boys' inhumanity to cats. Man's inhumanity to man, woman and child was bad enough.
"I took in a stray," she said, as if to prove she was doing her part. "He's a big bruiser-----over nineteen pounds. I can't keep him in, though. Sometimes I worry . . ."
"You should. Eat your cookie."
Both comments were stem. Both were to be obeyed. Temple nibbled on the cookie and her conscience. "I guess l should have him fixed."
"You should keep him in," Miss Tyler exhorted. "It is not safe out there." Her voice lowered to a crackling hiss of warning, "Particularly in this neighborhood, particularly around this house."
"Miss Tyler, you don't mean to say that someone could have it in for you because you rescued these cats?"
The old woman shrugged, letting her age-shrunken eves disappear into the sagging pouches of her skin. "I'm old. I live alone. I don't approve of how they like to entertain themselves. They resent me, and my cats. Sometimes someone calls and threatens to inform Public Health. Other times, someone just calls."
"Threatening phone calls?" Temple perked up. "You can report that."
"They can report me for too many cats. It all comes to nothing. The police won't believe either of us, they don't want to mess with a crazy old woman and her cats."
"But you don't have to just wait here like a sitting duck!"
She smiled and caressed her cane. "Too bad cats are not good watch dogs, hmm? But I couldn't bring a noisy, enthusiastic dog into their refuge. They prefer quiet and the company of their kind."
Temple looked around. Were so many cats kept so close happy together? They didn't look unhappy. And they were safe, as they certainly had not been just beyond these sturdy old doors. She could no longer smell the strong animal presence; it had become natural. This was their safe house, and they had a right to leave their scents upon it.
"That's a wonderful cane," she told the old woman.
Miss Tyler held it out into the cool, bright light. "Mexican made," she said proudly, "By an old wood-carver near Cuernavaca. I used to get around before I got so old, before I had all these cats. My last trip, he carved it for me, for luck."
Temple studied the strongly colored figures carved into the cane: parrots and donkeys, wagons and cacti, sombreros and coyotes. No cats. "The colors are hand-painted?"
"All hand-carved, hand-painted, No one does handwork like this anymore. If time must handicap me, if I must limp and lean, at least I will have a magical cane."
"And cats." Temple looked around again, smiled and finished the last of her ginger cookie. "You will have magical cats."
"Oh, don't let Father Hernandez hear you say that. He's down on my cats as it is. He is a serious man. He has no time for magic."
"Father Hernandez? Oh--from the church down the street. Does he object to having so many cats neat the church property?"
Miss Tyler snorted. "How could he? Do I object to the ki
ds playing and yelling at recess day in and day out?" She pounded the cane tip on the floor for emphasis. "No. we have had a parting of the ways on theological grounds, Father Hernandez and myself."
"Theological grounds? You mean matters of dogma or conscience?"
"No, I mean matters of cats."
Temple looked down. Perhaps in theological circles, cats had become a subject of grave debate, such as how many cats could pirouette on the head of a pin.
Miss Tyler looked down--and around---to her sprawling, meowing pride of pussycats. "Father Hernandez," she said in dire tones, "will not concede that my cats will be waiting for me in heaven, and vice versa."
"Oh. Isn't that the standard position in most religions?"
"I don't know about most religions. I am a faithful Roman Catholic, always have been. My house has stood here longer than the church. Until now," she added grimly, "l planned to leave most of my estate to Our Lady of Guadalupe, with a bequest for the care of the cats, but since Father Hernandez has revealed his foolishness on the issue of pets in heaven, I changed my will. Everything goes to the cats now. If they can't be guaranteed passage through the pearly gates, I'll see that my house remains a paradise on earth for them."
"I'm sure Father Hernandez feels he must adhere to the letter of the law. Maybe adults tell children that their dead pets will go to heaven, but I don't think even kids believe it nowadays, any more than they believe in the Tooth Fairy."
"I don't care what kids believe in." The cane rapped the floor again. "All the animals were in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. Why would God separate us from the very creatures He created with us--in heaven, where He can have everything just the way He wants it? If a sparrow cannot fall without His notice, how can He let so many cats suffer without any hope of an afterlife? Besides, there is no one I'd want to see in heaven, except these."
She surveyed her collection with approval.
Temple wasn't getting embroiled in a debate on cat heaven. She discreetly checked her watch. "My gosh, it's late, I've got to go!" jumping up was a bad idea.
Something underfoot squalled in protest. Obviously, the cats in this house weren't used to sudden movement, just then the phone rang. Miss Tyler sighed and began to push away from her stool.
"I'll get it," Temple offered with Girl Scout quickness.
But where was it? Follow the trail of the telephone trill. Miss Tyler was making sputterings of protest behind her, but they slacked off.
Temple found a supple phone cord emerging from behind the refrigerator, and traced it for the space of two more rings through tendrils of hanging ivy to the actual instrument's lair: atop the refrigerator. She grabbed the receiver and pulled it down to her ear.
"Hello," she answered a bit breathlessly, realizing she should have prefaced that with "Tyler residence" in case some elderly phone mate of Blandina's was puzzled by a new voice.
Apparently she sounded enough like Miss Tyler on that one hasty word to reassure the caller.
"S-s-s-sorry," he, she, it, whispered, the esses sharp and sibilant. "You'll be s-s-s-sorry."
Temple tore the phone from her ear as if scorched. She had just heard Peggy's famous Hissing Caller; only, Peggy hadn't said anything about outright threats.
Temple brought the receiver close and listened again.
Nothing to be heard now but the sinister ssssss on the open line, Either Miss Tyler was getting calls from an asthmatic masher or a defective radiator, both of them elderly.
"Hello?" Temple repeated in a high, breaking voice, making herself into a querulous old woman who didn't hear too well. Playing that sweet, elderly poisoner in the high-school class play, "Arsenic and Old Lace," hadn't hurt.
But the caller would not be lured into further words. The hiss continued, interrupted by a slurping, breathing sound.
Temple stretched up to hang up the phone, and then turned to poor Miss Tyler, who was watching her with sharp eyes.
"What did they want?" she asked.
"Not much. Peggy said that you'd been getting odd phone calls, just hissing on the line."
"You heard it, then!" she crowed. "I am not crazy. I have a witness. They've never called before when Peggy was here, or Sister Seraphina."
Temple checked her watch again, past seven. "When does Peggy come for the evening feeding?"
"Five or six, at the latest, I've never told her about the calls; no point, she wouldn't believe me. Nobody does."
"Then you've never had company this late before?"
Miss Tyler smiled. "You're right. Sister Seraphina is careful not to walk back to the convent after dark, though it's only a few doors. This neighborhood has changed." she added in disgust. "But the phones have never hissed before."
"Does it stop?"
"Only when I hang up,"
"Has . . . the caller ever said anything?"
Miss Tyler shook her head and used her cane to shoo away from her ankles the big cream tiger-stripe that had come in with Temple. "You've mooched enough, you big galoot. Gone over to the enemy, haven't you, Peter, even though they won't make room for you in the afterlife? And you with nine of 'em to go through, too!"
"What about the caller?" Temple repeated patiently. "Has he spoken?"
Miss Tyler shook her head again. "Nope, don't even know if it is a 'him,' though the phone people said most of these callers are. Hims, or kids. But I've never heard a word, just that strange hissing sound. I've heard noises, though, and seen lights at night, outside the house."
"You need to notify the police," Temple advised, wondering whether to mention that brief, unsettling phrase, you'll be s-s-s-sorry.
"Huh. I did, Many times. They ignore my calls now. They never find anything outside and I don't want 'em inside.
They might take my cats. No one believes me. NO one believes a crazy old woman who keeps a lot of cats."
"I believe you," Temple said stoutly--or was that Girl Scoutly? "I heard the hissing with my own ears. Do you have good locks on the house?"
The woman came slowly across the uneven floor, her cane prodding the yellow cat ahead of her. "Go on, go on. Usually it's his partner Paul who visits. Go on, Peter, you traitor. Just as in the New Testament, yellow through and through, until the cock crew thrice. And then they make you gatekeeper. Huh. No justice, not even in church." She eyed Temple as she came even with her. "Good locks and the windows are nailed shut. Still, it's scary, alone at night. And no one will come."
Temple waffled. Should she offer to stay? Here, with all these cats? Blandina Tyler wasn't her aunt; her problems weren't Temple's responsibility. She was already doing far more than she should. And the police were probably right; old ladies alone heard things, saw things, worried about things. Many became slightly paranoid, or even clinically so. Still, it was eerie that both the aunt and the niece were being methodically hissed at . . . or not so odd if you concluded that the aunt had been included in the harassment of the niece, or that it had something to do with a shaved Birman cat at the cat show.
Temple stood on the threshold with the ejected Peter and waited to hear Miss Tyler turn her lock and deadbolt. She spun to face the street, which was dark now. Her Storm was a huddled shape blacker than the evening. Only Peter by her legs was a reverse shadow, a beige pool of motion.
Then he took off, trotting around the side of the house.
Curious, Temple followed his pale form in the dark. Had she heard a dry twig snap? The ground was sandy and uneven. Her heels sank with every step, and she imagined them getting scuffed beyond repair. The oleander bushes clinging to the side of the house loomed as tall as Max Kinsella and scratched gently on the screens as she passed.
This was hopeless, she thought, stopping. The cat was no longer visible, and Temple felt lost in an unknown stretch of underbrush.
She retreated, coming at last to the front flagstones and clicking down them as softly as she could. Neighborhood kids--even gang members--could be tormenting Miss Tyler. She had taken their living toys away, hadn
't she? Such kids, if you could call them that, would be coming out for the night now that it was dark, to hang out, drag race, do drug deals.
Scary stereotypes, but not unrealistic, Matt's self-defense instructions started droning in her head as she trotted for the safety of her car. Somewhere a sinister-sounding car motor throbbed, its muffler growling in the empty night like a lion roaring out a challenge over the African savannah.
Why were there so few streetlights along here? She glanced up to see the church's square tower black against a still backlit, charcoal-gray sky. Old neighborhood, that's why; now a poor neighborhood, with no clout for civic improvements.
She had her keys out before she reached the Storm, had unlocked it and hurled herself inside, locking the door again. Relieved, she started the car. The loud churn of the engine was an answer to the idling lion's roar down the block. Her headlights stabbed the night, announcing her presence. But she was secure in her metal island and, rolling into gear, glad to get away and now inhale--ah, air that was not cat-clogged.
She turned on the radio for the company of its lighted dial as much as for any music. But before she turned up the sound on Rod Stewart's latest hit cut, another, less upbeat sound replayed in her head: You'll be sorry.
Would she?
Chapter 11
Prize Pussycat
Here is my problem. I must find many cats. Normally, this is a piece of catnip for me. I am a first-class finder with a world-class sniffer, particularly if the subjects in question are cats. However, I have no desire to hit the most conspicuous locale for a surplus of cats, which is the animal pound.
Cat on a Blue Monday Page 9