Cat on a Blue Monday

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  Temple reached out a hand, which the cat's jet-black nose instantly nudged. She stepped back as if the cage grille were electrified. This is how it began with Miss Tyler, she told herself: such a pretty, sweet cat; such a shame that no one would take it, that it would have to go back to the Humane Society. What was the matter with people? No one would probably take it there, either. Not a kitten, too old already.

  Cats in cages were streaming out the open rank of exhibithall doors in their owners' firm grasps, fancy cats that were guarded, groomed and displayed like expensive dolls. Louie would probably go nuts with a competitor in the home place, but he was gone so much. She would enjoy having a calm, spayed female, a loving homebody, around.

  A woman stepped up to the table and began gathering the Humane Society literature that surrounded the cage. Temple watched her resentfully.

  "Excuse me." The woman stepped in front of Temple to take the card from the cage and stuff it into a canvas bag with the other unclaimed pieces of paper.

  She opened the cage door, a pushy woman who didn't care about shoving a potential customer aside, so sure was she that it was too late and little Caviar had lost her last chance.

  The woman reached in and took out a stainless-steel bowl of water, a small plastic litter box, somewhat used. Then the cat was trained. The Humane Society woman, who certainly didn't seem that humane if she was going to snatch this poor cat right back to a place where its life expectancy was maybe three days, reached in and removed a stainless-steel bowl of unappetizing green pellets.

  Temple experienced an epiphany of the cat kind. "Oh," she heard someone saying in an enchanted voice, Hers.

  "Does she really eat Free-to-be-Feline?"

  The woman, who would have had a perfectly ordinary, nice face if she hadn't been intent on whisking a caged creature back to its doom, looked at Temple oddly.

  "Sure," she said.

  "Well, then--" Temple dug in her tote bag for her checkbook. "I've got a whole case of Free-to-be-Feline at home."

  "Temple, are you sure?" Cleo Kilpatrick asked in an undertone at her elbow. "What about your other cat?"

  "He's very . . . versatile. I'm sure he'd love a little friend."

  Cleo drifted back to supervise the chaos of the disassembling cat show while Temple bent over the table to make out her check. The little black cat rubbed and purred like a wind-up toy behind the silver grille.

  Temple soon discovered that purchasing a homeless cat was a lot harder than finding one. The Humane Society woman went from Madame Defarge to Lieutenant Molina, reeling off a roster of highly personal questions. Was Temple married? No. Were there any children under seven in the household? No, Temple said, surprised by that question after answering the first in the negative. Other animals? Only Midnight Louie. What was he? A stray cat she had taken in. How old? Possibly eight or nine, said the vet.

  Madame Inquisitor did not inquire into Louie's sexual capabilities, which was good, for Temple had to sign a document stating that she would have the female called "Caviar" spayed at the first opportunity. Of course she would have done it without signing her soul away to the Humane Society; with Louie around in an unaltered state, it would be irresponsible not to.

  As for what Midnight Louie did in his unaltered state when he was out and about on his rambles, Temple tried not to think about that. She supposed she would have to bite the bullet one day and deal with Louie's rampant masculinity, but he was such a fine, clever cat the way he was, and quite valuable as a bodyguard. She would hate to ' 'alter" any of these desirable characteristics. Maybe he was too old to get into much trouble; certainly he never showed any signs of having indulged in a cat fight for the favors of a lady.

  While Temple rationalized away her worries about Louie, the Humane Society lady accepted the check, gave her a copy of the adoption agreement, then handed her Caviar, who, recognizing this as her big audition for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--and Free-to-be-Feline--was still purring madly.

  The cat fit atop the flotsam in Temple's tote bag, hardly adding to its weight, unlike Louie. Also unlike Louie, she showed an admirable inclination to sit still and be carried.

  Temple, heart pounding as if she'd just left the biggest designer-shoe sale in six states, couldn't help showing off her impulse purchase. She trotted down the aisles cooing at her tote bag and oblivious of stares until she came to Peggy Wilhelm's stand.

  Minuet had been taken home after her assault, but the other Birmans sat calmly in their carriers and regarded Temple and her animated tote bag with delft-blue saucer eyes while Peggy broke down the show cages into flat pieces for easy transport.

  Peggy looked over her shoulder to register Temple's approach, then brushed a hand through her mop of grizzled hair and shook her head, "Such a sad show, in every respect."

  "Not every." Temple tilted her tote bag to show its contented contents. "I've adopted the Humane Society cat."

  "Oh." Peggy Wilhelm looked hungrily into the bag at the furry black wedge of face staring up at her. "What a great thing to do! You mean no one had taken it? How sad." Peggy's voice thickened as she turned away. "Sorry. This has been a lot of strain, with Aunt Blandina dying, and Minuet. Now I've got all of Aunt Blandina's cats to worry about ..."

  Do you ever! Temple thought, remembering that the will had ignored them. It wasn't her place to inform Peggy of this latest blow, but she could confirm her suspicions in a roundabout way.

  "You're sure that your aunt would have made provision for their upkeep, though?"

  "Oh, positive. Aunt Blandina would have never, ever left her precious cats out in the cold, even if she did leave most of her money to the church. I mean, she would have died first."

  The oddity of the expression under the circumstances made Peggy grimace as she realized what she had said. "Oh, I am exhausted silly over all of this! You know what I mean. I was happy to help her out with the cats, but she did have much too many, and couldn't stand the idea of giving up a one. Even letting the nuns take Peter and Paul was a wrench.

  So she'd hardly leave her babies out of the will."

  "What about you? Don't you mind being left out? Everybody assumes that you will be."

  "Oh, I've got my own life and a decent job at the library. I don't have any needs, any family of my own. Spinster and overenthusiastic cat person, just like my aunt. We weren't much alike otherwise. But I do hope she didn't leave her money to the church!" Peggy added with surprising passion. "A lot of evil can be done in the name of religion, especially if it has money."

  "Do you mean all religion, or just Catholicism?"

  "Well, the Catholic Church isn't exactly enlightened on the matter of sexual repression, is it?" she asked brusquely, slamming sheets of cage grilling together with such energy that the clashes made her Birmans' chocolate-colored ears slant back in distress. "Or premarital sex or birth control or looking after inconvenient babies that aren't aborted."

  "Then . . . you're not a practicing Catholic?"

  "Not since I was old enough to move away from home. Look, maybe I sound . . . disillusioned, but the only people who slavishly toe the church line these days are old fashioned old ladies like my aunt. They wear their tiny little silver feet against abortion and send money to the missionaries and get sent tons of holy cards and cheap rosaries and requests for money. And they are courted for their money, you better believe it. Most of them need that attention so much that they'd rather leave their money to the church and the foreign pagan babies and the unborn babies than to their own kin, than to their own flesh and blood."

  Peggy's hands and voice were shaking now, and she had given up stacking cage sides. The Birmans crouched in their carriers, sensitive to their owner's strange tirade. Temple's tote bag stirred as Caviar thrust out a curious and unintimidated head to see what the matter was.

  "It's just been too much." Peggy said that quickly, before Temple could say anything, could back off or apologize ... or even pose more questions that might answer the suspic
ion that was now rising in her mind--the notion that Peggy Wilhelm was far more than what she had seemed, and had far more reason than previously suspected to commit unreasonable acts involving cats, her aunt and the Catholic Church.

  'Too much," Peggy repeated. "I don't care what that damn will says, what she did. I won't let them hold their damn money over me again. It was always a trap, and it was always the church before me. I did my duty by her, by her precious cats--I paid my debt--and now my life is my own again."

  "Who are you talking about--'them'?"

  "You obviously didn't grow up Catholic," Peggy said with an uneasy laugh. "My parents, my parish nuns and priests, my aunt--they all ran a tight ship when I was young and couldn't do anything about it. Well, now I can, and I'm not going to let their guilt trips get to me, that's all. I'm going to take my cats home and I'll come and feed Aunt Blandina's cats as long as they need it, and then it stops. It finally stops here."

  She pushed the dishwater-brown frizz off her flushed forehead, then glanced again at the quizzical black-cat face in Temple's bag. Her white face crumpled like a used Kleenex.

  "Oh, just take your damn cat and go," she urged with waves of the hand that wasn't covering her mouth. "I haven't gotten much sleep and the show is over. This time it's really over. Sorry."

  Temple backed away, nearly stumbling over a clutter of cat carriers at the table behind her. She had seldom seen a personality come apart like this, even among friends and family. Now she knew why Matt was so reluctant to play Father Hernandez's confidant. Confession might be good for the soul of the penitent, but it swamped the recipient in a confusing, aimless barrage of unspecified ancient wrongs and festering emotions.

  In some way, Temple had innocently triggered this upsetting deluge of emotion. Now, almost as disturbed as Peggy Wilhelm, she walked through the cold, echoing, gray concrete vault of the exhibition hall, which looked like a school gym the night after the dance, when all the illusion has been stripped away.

  She glanced from time to time at her docile passenger, as if to comfort it against the miasma of human emotions now churning around them both.

  But the cat was calm, only the people were agitated.

  What a good thing that cats couldn't really know what was happening to them! Temple hated to think that Blandina Tyler's cats might sense that they had been disinherited, or that Midnight Louie might somehow know that he was about to get an unwanted roommate before it happened.

  That was the great thing about animals; they never laid any burdens on their human companions. All they asked for was food, shelter and affection.

  Come to think of it, they weren't too different from your average self-sufficient human being, either.

  Chapter 26

  Cat Inquisition

  As soon as my dear departed Miss Temple Barr is safely off to the cat show Sunday afternoon, I whisk out the French doors to do some investigations of my own. I cast one quick glance at the penthouse before I put the Circle Ritz in my wake.

  I dare not let my thoughts linger on the elevated occupant of that address, for that might tip her off to my itinerary. Much as I would hate to admit it to the object of my spiritual anxiety, the Sublime Karma (as opposed to the Divine Yvette, the object of my carnal devotion), I have found the clutter of cats she was

  yammering about being in danger just days ago.

  I am bound--not to the animal pound, or even to the Humane Society shelter for the poor and infamous. I am headed into Hierophant territory, off to Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose name I hear bandied about in recent days by my dear soul mates at the Circle Ritz. I include Mr. Matt Devine in that group, now that I and Miss Temple Barr have been seeing more of him.

  The cathouse I am in search of should not be hard to find, with three key pieces of information in place: from what I overhear, it is very near Our Lady of Guadalupe Church; the grievously attacked Peter was a next-door neighbor, which means that his sadly diminished spoor should be all over the place; and it is home to seventy-some residents of the feline persuasion, which means that the super sniffing powers of my nose alone could find it from a six-block radius.

  I have overlooked a fourth tattletale clue, ring around the collar, so to speak: a yellow police tape reading "Crime Scene: Do Not Cross" circles the house and tends to give away the location just a teensy.

  I slip past it like a fleeting shadow. Getting in is another trick. These feline pensioners were not intended to get out. I explore the no-man's-land between the place and a neighboring house that no doubt is the convent famed in song and story, as I have been overhearing it lately. Sister Seraphina and her calling nuns. Or called-upon nuns, to be more precise.

  The house is old by human standards, but I am a veteran at finding my way in and out of forbidden places. Some crumbled stucco near the rear leads to an under-porch crawl space. If there is anything I am into faster than a flesh-hungry flea, it is a crawl space.

  I box aside spider webs and occasional spiders the size of a well-fed mouse. I range over broken boards and rats' nests and a whole subcontinent of creepy-crawlies, including scorpions. I finally find an opening and push my way through into what people call a utility room via the dryer vent pipe, which is not only loose, but just the size of my circumference.

  After sneezing my way past a colony of dust bunnies the size of chihuahuas, I shimmy between the shiny white walls of washer and dryer and am home free. Actually, I am free to take measure of this home, which is now entirely occupied by my own kind.

  A thousand rich scents sprinkle the air with fur, dander, and perfumes mostly neuter. Quelle disappointment! This is a house of eunuchs! At least I know that no physical force will be called for with either sex. I am torn between triumph at finding so many of my kind safe and sound and consternation that the price of safety is censorship in the ultimate degree.

  Oh, well, we cannot all be tough, swaggering, fearless examples of our species.

  I wade into this wilderness of my kind, swimming like Jacques Cousteau amongst an exotic cornucopia of creatures--cats striped and spotted, shaded and solid, black- and white- and zebra-striped; caramel-colored and brown; white and cream; calico and rum-tum-tiger; long-haired and short; tailed and tailless; big and small, tall and squat; male and female, and most often, neither.

  I am struck by the vast variety and the noble sense of community among my kind. On the street, it is one for one's self. Never have so many coexisted so peacefully. The house, with its two stories and many rooms, is a sort of rookery, a shared territory both crowded and oddly orderly. I am humbled by this refugee community, this coagulation of every kind and kin until survival and mutual dependence have overcome the more territorial urges of instinct. Young voices mew while older ones purr caution.

  I am greeted by open meows showing sharp teeth and line-fine whiskers.

  No one heeds my progress. I am the ultimate outsider. The inspector-general. The cop. The Lone Ranger. I am recognized, but not claimed, so finally I must get down to business and start taking testimony.

  No one has bothered to interview these key witnesses to many crimes. I hear tales of telephone calls, closely observed. Of an old woman growing older and more tremulous with each cowardly attack by ring and by wire.

  I hear of her rushing to the closed windows and doors, watching, Her anxious cane occasionally impinging on an innocent extremity. Of long night vigils, of lights teasing the edges of the house.

  I hear of the coming of the Chubby Lady With Birman Breath, distracted and worried, and oddly resentful of the cats coming to stroke her legs. Of the Sister Ladies, who are cheerful and loving with each other as well as with those of our species, who pet and coo and feed, whether it is the dear old Keeper or the numerous Kept they tend.

  I hear, with some pride, of the sweet efficiency of my current roommate, who is known as Delicate Heels, and who has never spiked an inconvenient extremity to a floorboard and whose litter-box dredging abilities are second to none.

  Speaking of none,
none of these residents has been confronted with Free-to-be-Feline. Luckily, Delicate Heels has left the cooking to other, more experienced hands--such as Friskies and Yummy Tum-tum-tummy--during her tenure.

  And I hear voices of worry, telling of having heard hissing over the telephone with their sensitive ears.

  What kind of hissing, I ask. Like a snake's?

  No, not like a snake's.

  Like a fellow or sister feline's?

  No, most definitely not.

  Like a machine's?

  They pause to consider that, and I recall the hiss of a television set that is not properly tuned to a channel.

  Not like that, Mr. Midnight, they cry in chorus.

  Then what is it like? I demand.

  Like nothing, they say in cat concert. Like nothing on earth.

  Perhaps that dratted Karma is right. We are not dealing with natural disasters here, not even with ordinary murder--for I trust the testimony of my kind's ears above their eyes and mouths--but with unearthly chaos.

  This murderous snake may hail from beyond Eden to Gehenna itself.

  Chapter 27

  A Face Card from the Past

  It was a scene from an English mystery: the principals gathered for the all-important Reading of the Will.

  Temple wriggled her skimpy, tender derriere deep into the well-upholstered behemoth of a chair just like the other chairs gathered around Father Hernandez's now-familiar desktop.

  Her dangling toes brushed the floor as she swung them all the better to kill time and to admire neat, Charles Jourdan navy pumps piped in red, so smart for the unexpected country-house killing, even though they required--ugh--pale gray pantyhose on a hot day. Miss Barr with a humid spike heel in the rectory. Ooh.