“Patient? First this filthy animal gets into my wife’s studio and then these people come tramping in without even asking and bring that vicious dog …”
Jay cocked his head at the word dog as if to ask, “What? Vicious? Me?”
“Sir, this dog is a search dog. He has assisted the police in the past.” Hutchinson was stretching the truth just a tad, but that was close enough for me. He gestured toward the window and said, “A screen or closed window would keep animals out of your building. In fact, sir, it’s illegal to entice animals into a trap,” but Rasmussen didn’t seem to hear him.
“… and now my entire evening is ruined, dinner is late, my wife is upset …” He turned around and slammed the window down so hard that the glass rattled.
“I’m not upset.” Louise stood in the doorway. The first thing I noticed was that she had not changed clothes despite her husband’s earlier directive. The second thing I noticed was that her bubble hair had disappeared in favor of a neat little pixie, a much better match for her tiny frame. That was a wig? Had to be, unless she’d gone after herself with an electric hedge trimmer in the past quarter hour. “How are the kittens, Jane? It is Jane, isn’t it?”
“Janet.”
“Oh, yes, Janet.” She walked past her husband and Hutchinson, but stopped short of Gypsy’s chair. “Are they doing well?”
Before I could confirm that they were, Alberta burst in, which put the little studio just about at capacity. It was starting to get a bit stuffy. Alberta pushed past the men and set a small plastic pet carrier on the floor by the chair. “Sorry it took so long. I had to find some clean bedding. Just back from a dog show, you know, and I haven’t washed the crate pads.” She stopped to wheeze, then went on. “I found some fleece. I’ve been saving it to make some tug toys for the dogs. It makes a nice cozy bed for the little guys.” She stroked Gypsy. “I just hope you’ll go in without a fuss, my dear.”
“Just get them the hell out of here.” Charles’s face had a purplish cast and I wondered whether he might be working himself up to a cardiovascular event. He turned and stepped toward the door.
Hutchinson looked at his notebook, then at the back of the man who had called him out here. “Sir, one question.”
Charles wheeled around and said, “Yeah, what’s that?”
“You said there were seven intruders.”
“That’s right.”
Hutchinson looked at Alberta and me. I shrugged. “So where are the others? I only see two.”
Charles fluttered a hand in our direction. “Two women, that dog, and those four cats. Seven.” He started to turn away, but stopped and said, “Louise, I’m ready for dinner. Come on.”
“But I want to help get the kitties loaded up.” Louise’s voice quavered, as if she were balancing on a fine line between self-determination and self-preservation. “Everything’s ready. You can go ahead without me, dear.”
For a few seconds, no one seemed to breathe, and then Charles spoke one word—“Louise!”—in a tone dark as a scab. Hutchinson stopped writing and looked at Charles. Alberta looked at Louise, then met my eye and shook her head. Louise hesitated, cast a last glance at the kittens, and followed her husband across the lawn and into the house.
Hutchinson broke the silence that gripped us all. “Won’t be surprised if we’re called out here again.”
“Bastard,” said Alberta, then followed up. “I mean him, not you, officer.”
I thought Hutchinson might laugh at that, but he didn’t. He just nodded and said, “Come on, let’s pack these guys up and I’ll help you get them home.” He leaned over the chair for another look. “Cats don’t like to get in those cages, do they? How we going to get the mommy in there?”
Alberta picked up the little tabby, kissed him, and placed him gently in the carrier. Gypsy craned her neck to watch, but she didn’t get up. I picked up the black kitten and lifted him to my face so that I could smell him and feel him. His body was warm and still slightly damp. Jay nudged my leg, and I held the kitten in front of his muzzle. Gypsy sat up and watched the interaction, but she didn’t seem to be agitated, so I let Jay get a good sniff. After all, he did find them.
As if she were reading my mind, Alberta said, “Who knows what might have happened if that lummox had found them first?” The thought made me queasy.
“You’re a good boy,” said Hutchinson, riffling Jay’s fur.
I handed the black kitten to Alberta, and she set him next to the tabby in the crate. She picked up the calico and turned to Hutchinson. “Would you like to hold her?”
“Really?” You’d have thought he’d won the lottery from the look on his face, and when the kitten was nestled into his hands he whispered, “He’s so warm.” He looked at me and his eyes were wet. That did it. I was no longer on the fence about Hutchinson. I should have known he was a good guy at heart since Jay liked him.
Alberta said, “She.”
“What?”
“She’s a girl. Calicos are girls.”
“Awww.”
I think Hutchinson might have sat there all night holding that kitten if I hadn’t said, “Maybe we should get these guys home to your house, Alberta.”
She lifted the kitten from Hutchinson’s hands and set her between her siblings. “Okay, mama cat, you want to ride with your kids or walk home?” Gypsy opened her mouth but nothing came out. She hopped off the chair, stepped into the carrier, and arranged herself carefully around her three kittens. Hutchinson closed the carrier, picked it up in both hands, and hugged it against his body. I pulled the door shut behind us, but I left the lights on. It was dark now, and someone had turned off the back porch lights. We needed the light from the studio, and I didn’t much mind running up Charles’s electric bill.
six
Two hours later my taste buds were ecstatic. Tom and I were snuggled into a corner booth at the Bight of Bangkok washing down savory mouthfuls of pad thai with Singha beer. I had just wrapped up a fairly detailed account of the evening’s happenings.
“I saw a photo of Charles Rasmussen not long ago,” said Tom.
“Where? The post office?” Ill-tempered as the man was, it wouldn’t surprise me if he were wanted for something.
“Connectivity.”
“The school newsletter?” The school I referred to is the Indiana-Purdue joint campus in Fort Wayne, where the two universities join forces. Tom teaches full-time in the anthropology department and I sporadically teach photography classes in their non-credit division. “Why was he in there?”
“Donor. I skimmed the article and it was a couple of weeks ago, but he gave the school a pile of money. Golf scholarships, if I remember correctly. There was some controversy. Apparently he’s trying to develop in a wetland, and faculty and students in the environmental studies program objected to the university taking his money. I didn’t read the whole article, so I don’t know all the details.”
I made a mental note to check the online edition of Connectivity for the article, but the little Janet demon who likes to poke her barbs into the left side of my brain whispered, you will not remember to do that, and you know it. She was right, of course, so I grabbed a pen and an old grocery receipt from the depths of my tote-bag-cum-purse and wrote myself a note. I looked across the table. Tom’s lip was twitching. “What?”
He laughed. “Nothing.”
“Not nothing.”
“Okay, so you’re going to stick that note in your bag and find it six months from now.”
“Am not.” He’s right, that’s exactly what I’ll do. “I’m sticking it in my change purse where I’ll be sure to see it.”
“Why don’t you write yourself a note on your phone?”
I just rolled my eyes. I’d be sure to forget about it there.
I told him about the pond and woods near Alberta’s house, and told him what Alberta had said about cond
os. “I wonder if that’s Rasmussen’s development.” We also talked briefly about Alberta’s attempts to help the feral cats in her neighborhood, and about the kittens and how quickly Jay had done his job. I told Tom how the little calico seemed to put a spell on Hutchinson.
“Boy, he’s like a new man since he met Jay and Leo, huh?”
By the time we left, the temperature had dropped and the wind had picked up enough to make the misty air prickly against my cheeks.
“Want to come over and play?” asked Tom as we fastened our seatbelts.
“Play what?” I turned around and stuck my hand into one of two large dog crates Tom kept in the back. Jay pushed the top of his head into my fingers.
“Backgammon?”
“I dunno … Doesn’t sound very exciting.”
“Strip backgammon?”
I hadn’t planned to be away for the night, and I don’t like to leave Leo alone that long, so I made a counter offer. “How about my house? We can pick Drake up on the way.”
“Perfect.” Tom leaned over and kissed me, then turned to Jay. “Kittens all safe. Good job, my man! You’re a hero again.”
“Hard to believe that jerk Charles would give anything away.” I was thinking again about his donation to the university. “You should have seen the way he humiliated his wife tonight. It was odd, though,” I said, remembering how differently Louise carried herself when she came back out to the studio. “She was like a changed person the second time I saw her.” I told him about the shift from bouffant wig to gamine-look pixie. “She was completely submissive, cringing almost, and then twenty minutes later she was almost defiant.”
“Hunh.”
“Don’t you think that’s weird?”
“Probably.” He paused, then spoke again. “Maybe she had a pharmacological intervention in the meantime.” Tom’s professional interest in the cultural uses of plant-based products popped up at the oddest times and I half expected him to speculate on what exotic botanicals Louise kept in her cookie jar.
I started to say something, but let it go. I love Tom, but I found myself wishing I had Goldie or Peg or one of my other women friends to talk to. Even Alberta. We weren’t exactly friends, but she had seen the events of the evening and she knew the Rasmussens at least a little. She might have had another take on Louise’s transformation.
Tom changed the subject. “Why don’t you call Goldie when we get home.”
He’s doing it again, whispered a voice in my head. Stop reading my mind.
“It’s not that late. We could have some hot chocolate. I haven’t seen her in ages.” Tom and Goldie had some sort of strange anthropologist-to-shaman connection that I didn’t fully understand.
“I don’t think I have any milk.”
He pulled into his driveway and turned off the engine. “Be right back.”
I undid my seatbelt and turned toward Jay, letting my fingers slide through the bars of the crate again. “What did you think of that guy Charles, Bubby?”
Jay rocked his head to the side and slapped the bottom of the crate with his paw. It was probably a comment on sitting in front of Tom and Drake’s house, but I chose my own interpretation.
“Yeah, me neither.” The memory of Charles grabbing that grocery bag and reaching toward the kittens made the Singha bubble in my stomach, and I forced myself to think of other things. The look on Hutchinson’s face when he saw the kittens was a good counter balance. When we got the little family back to Alberta’s house and set up in the spare bedroom, where they would have privacy from the dogs, Hutchinson had told us that he’d never seen newborn anythings before. He hadn’t known they would be so small. I think he’d still be there gazing at them if he hadn’t gotten another call. I hit Goldie’s quick-dial number and issued the invitation.
“Oh, lovely! I’ve just baked scones. New recipe.” Goldie was always trying new flavorings, usually edibles from her own garden, in her baked goods. “You can be my guinea pigs.”
The back hatch of the van beeped and opened and Tom let Drake into his crate, where his Labrador tail whammed the side like a sledgehammer. Jay’s nub was too short for whacking things, but he made up for it by bouncing and wiggling. They’d be wild men when we got them home, I thought.
“All set. Why don’t you call Goldie?”
“Done. We need to stop for milk if you want hot chocolate.”
“Done.”
Of course it was. Tom’s kitchen was always well-stocked and much tidier than mine. But then he liked to cook.
“I’ve been thinking about that oaf Rasmussen,” I said. “I wonder if he’s the one who wants to put in a new development by the pond next to Alberta’s house.”
“Seems likely,” said Tom. “The development that has the environmental students up in arms is somewhere southeast of town.”
“He’s quite a guy,” I said. “Alberta said he’s the one who has riled up a bunch of their neighbors about the TNR program.”
“The what?” Tom glanced at me.
“You know. Trap, neuter, release. The feral cats.”
“Okay.”
Tom is a cat-person-in-progress. In fact, my Leo is the first cat he’s ever really gotten to know, but since he met the orange guy, he’s been smitten. He didn’t seem to know squat about programs that work with feral and free-ranging cats, though, much less the politics surrounding them.
He asked, “Alberta is doing this? Catching cats and having them neutered?”
“Yes. Apparently they have quite a little colony hanging around the club house at the golf course out there where she lives.”
“And then she finds them homes, right? How can anyone ob—”
“Some of them. Some of them don’t want to be anybody’s pet, though.” I told Tom about a stray cat my mother had tried to bring in when I was a kid. “She had her spayed, and that night the cat practically took down the walls in the bathroom where Mom put her to recover. She screamed like a banshee, and tried to dig her way out the door.”
“So what did you do?”
“Me? I cried. Mom and Dad decided the cat would be better off outside where she didn’t feel trapped. She’d been holing up under the back porch, so Dad put a box and blanket under there to keep her warm, and my mom cleared a path and sort of guided her to the door while Bill and I watched from the dining room.”
“I can’t picture you cowering in the dining room.”
“I was really upset.”
“Afraid of the cat?”
I snorted. “No! Afraid she’d hurt herself.” I started to laugh. “Speaking of hot chocolate, Bill and I both needed hot chocolate therapy after things quieted down.”
Tom took my hand and we drove in silence until we stopped for the light at State and Lahmeier. Then he spoke.
“So they spay and neuter all of the cats and then turn the really wild ones loose?”
I wasn’t entirely sure how the process worked, so I said, “I think they get at least a basic exam first, probably depending on the resources available to the group. And I’m sure they must be vaccinated, for rabies if nothing else.”
Tom flicked on the turn signal for my street and both dogs jumped up in their crates, Drake’s tail providing the bass counterpoint to the rat-a-tat-tat of their paws on the plastic flooring.
“So why would anyone object? It’s not as if cats run around in packs like feral dogs do.”
“Later,” I said, gesturing toward the house next door. Goldie was headed our way. The light from her porch left her face in shadow but created a silvery aura around her caftan. Her long silver hair was out of its usual braid and wild on the rising wind. She held a plate in front of her like an offering, and my own heart beat a little faster in gratitude that she was still with us in body as well as spirit.
Tom sighed. “She really is magical.”
seven
> Tom raced out the door a bit later in the morning than he had planned. Neither one of us ever says it out loud, but the fact is we don’t greet mornings after nights before quite so bright-eyed as we did two decades ago. Not that we had such a wild night, but Goldie stayed until just after midnight, and we were awake another hour or so after that. Most days Tom takes Drake with him to his office, but the doggy boys were having such a good time chasing each other around the backyard that I suggested he just pick Drake up later.
I try not to put too much on my Monday schedule, but this one seemed to have filled itself nevertheless. Unlike Tom, though, I insist on a nice cup of coffee with my critters to start the day. One of Goldie’s lemon balm scones, left over from the previous night, would be a bonus.
Leo was waiting for me in the kitchen. “What are you doing on the table, you?” I asked. He shoved his head into the hand I held out, and I bent to bonk noses with him. Our pets meet us more than half way in respect to life style and communication, so I figure I can at least make an effort to say hello in feline, albeit with a heavy accent.
I started the coffee and then addressed Leo again. “Your big weekend is coming up, Mister. So how about we practice this morning for a while?”
He squinted at me and twitched the tip of his tail.
“Okay, we’ll think about it. First let’s have some breakfast. By we I mean me, because you’ve had yours.” I lifted him off the table and set him in a chair, then checked Jay and Drake. They were sprawled, panting and grinning, in the grass, so I called them in. When I turned back to Leo, he had his back paws on the chair, front paws on the table, and nose at the brim of my mug. “Hey!”
Mrrrrrlllll. He sat back down on the chair and blinked at me.
“You don’t like coffee. You know that.”
Mrrr mrrr.
I pulled my cardigan closed and wrapped my hands around my mug. “Chilly this morning, eh?” I looked at the dogs. “Not that you two would notice.”
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