Catalyst

by Anne McCaffrey

  Mother blinked placidly.

  “What’s that?” I asked her.

  “I think it’s a camera, my boy. So the man can show our images to others. Come here. You’ve a tuft of fur sticking up on the back of your head. Let me fix it for you.”

  The weeks passed quickly, though back then I had no idea what a week was.

  I slept. I nursed. As my legs grew stronger, I practiced pouncing and running. So did the others. Our play was the work of kittens, which is a far more serious thing than it looks.

  I don’t know what the others dreamed of, but in my dreams I often did what the boy did. We fed chickens, rode horses, washed dishes, ate things that for reasons unfathomable to me seemed to appeal to him and his mother. We also read books, and this was extremely exciting, the stories we shared leaving lasting impressions on my thirsty young mind.

  Yes, our strange connection let me participate in many of the boy’s activities and learn his feelings and thoughts on more matters than actually interested me.

  Of more interest were Git’s expeditions, after which she would bring in strange edible creatures for us to tear apart with our ferocious claws and needle-sharp teeth. We were fierce, voracious, and merciless.

  But of course the early prey was dead.

  When we got live food and started to attack it, Git growled us away, smacked it dumb and bit the back of its neck, severing the spine in her strong jaws. “This critter was a living thing,” she said. “It had a mama, like you, and maybe young’uns like you too. Its death helps you kids to keep on being living things your own selves. Treat it decent. Put it out of its misery. It’s an ill-brought-up cat that tortures its food to death. Quick and clean, just the way you’d want to go if it was your time to be something else’s supper.”

  I was to remember that admonition ruefully the day Git took us hunting outside for the first time. She had taken her own kits the day before, one at a time, and Sol, Silvesta, Buttercup, and I lurked at the edges of her portal, waiting for her to bring them back, desperate to see what had happened. Wyatt and his brothers were cocky enough already, lording over us their day’s lead in life. What would they have to brag of now?

  When Git herded each through the door carrying parts of prey proudly in their jaws, I was overcome with jealousy. I tried to snatch Bat’s rat rump from him but the others abandoned theirs to jump on me and thump me soundly. When they turned back, they saw that Silvesta and Buttercup had cornered two of their mangled prizes and were daintily gobbling the bits. When the boys squalled, my sisters gave them withering looks from their bright round eyes and continued dining.

  “The female of the species is more deadly than the male,” I said. It was something the boy had read in one of his books, and my brethren looked startled to hear me say it but they didn’t disagree. My sisters might smell better than we did but they were the same size and didn’t mess about when it came to hunting. Mother and Git both favored them, actually, reminding them that someday they would have kittens to feed and teach too.

  Wyatt and his brothers abandoned the pilfered prizes and began fighting over the remaining piece and thumping on Bat, trying to get his away from him.

  But the next day was our turn. Git hauled me up by my scruff and I hung there, twitchy with anticipation while she took me into an outer world I had seen only through the boy’s eyes before then.

  Everything smelled stronger, moved faster, and looked much bigger when I saw it with my own eyes.

  Git set me down just inside the barn door. Outside it was bright and vast—there was more world out there than I could have imagined on my own. I oriented myself quickly, though, since I had been here before in the boy’s mind. The chickens wandered the yard. The house was over to the left. I couldn’t see the fields where the horses roamed but the waving of the grass in the wind fascinated me.

  I took a couple of steps forward when Git returned with Sol.

  “Stay put, both of you,” she said, “while I fetch your sisters.”

  She taught us how to hunt through the barn that day, but only Buttercup caught anything.

  “Mrrrr,” Git said. “Seems I’ve done too good a job. It was hard finding enough for the boys yesterday. Fine, then. You’re not likely to have a nice barn to hunt in all your days. Before I found this place, I hunted the meadows and fields on the way. There’s lots to be had but there’s farther for the critters to run. I’ll show you the way today but don’t be fussed if you don’t catch anything. It takes practice to run a meal down. We’re fixing to go farther than you’ve gone before. I have to carry you in and out of the cat door for my collar to work for you too, but you need to run on your own paws now. Understood?”

  At first we kept up fairly well, running, leaping, tumbling after her. The blades of grass looked as tall from my own height as trees did to the boy. The wildflowers, purple-belled ones and frothy white, bobbed seductively enough that Sol temporarily forgot he was actually a voracious carnivore and attacked the plant. A bee flew out and would have stung him if he hadn’t jumped back in a hurry.

  Deeper and deeper into the meadow we went, until Silvesta said, “I can’t see the barn anymore.”

  Git, whose fine fluffy tail had been our beacon through the bush, turned back on us. “Good. Now then, I’m going to flush something your way. Before you go back to your mama, I want you all to catch enough to eat that you won’t be troublin’ her for milk. It’s high time you wean.”

  She disappeared into the grass, but in a moment there was a thrashing and a small sparkly thing hopped toward us. These bugs were my favorite treat, and as eldest and the first one of us with open eyes, I figured the first kill out here at least belonged to me. Following Git’s instructions, I vanquished it far more easily than I would have believed possible and proceeded to eat it with pride while Sol skittered after a lizard that slid through the grass toward us.

  Buttercup, full of her barn catch, had lagged behind us. It was Silvesta, waiting with waggling hindquarters for her turn, who heard Buttercup squeak.

  Git heard it too. Although we had not seen her for some time, suddenly she bounded over us, snarling.

  There was an answering snarl and then nothing.

  A bite of my prey was still in my teeth. I looked up, surrounded by the waving grass and the blue sky up above. But with my inner eyes I saw the boy come out of the barn with the feed bucket in his hands. As if he saw me too, he dropped the bucket and began running.

  Somewhere he picked up a stick. “Leave them be, you mangy mongrel!” he yelled, waving the stick.

  But I knew even before the canine sprinted past us, our protectress dangling from his jaws as prey had so often dangled from hers, that the boy had come too late. Where our second mother’s strength, energy, and alert attention had crackled through the air, there was only stillness. The emptiness filled up with the boy’s panting breath and the smell of the dog trailing behind it. Then came the first yowl of Silvesta’s life as she stood over our sister’s mangled body.

  Git’s sacrifice had not been swift enough to save Buttercup.

  The boy picked both of my sisters up. Buttercup was so small, he slipped her body into his chest pocket, and blood seeped through the fabric. Silvesta continued to cry, and the boy searched through the grass until he saw the cowering Sol and lifted him too. I, who was closest to him, was the last to be lifted up, but I knew even in the midst of terror and bewilderment that it was because the boy knew exactly where I was, and that I knew he was near.

  Mother washed us all when the boy took us back but she couldn’t wash the life back into Buttercup, though the boy showed her the body, now oddly so much tinier than ours. Finally, Mother gave up and began washing Silvesta, and the boy took the body away again.

  Wyatt and his brothers could not grasp it at first that their mother was gone. They searched the straw, they sniffed at us, who still bore her scent on our skin, and they prodded our mother looking for theirs. Wyatt understood first and stood by his mother’s cat door and
mewed a pitiful, lonely keen, more mournful for being so squeaky and small.

  Sol and I just stared at him and the others. They had always been bigger than we were, had bullied us, but now they were lost. I sidled up to Wyatt, bumping my weight against him, trying to purr consolingly. He hissed at me.

  He and the others hid separately, forlornly, until Mother rose shakily and one by one rounded them up and brought them to nurse, then called us to join in.

  We all fell asleep before we finished eating, but when we awakened and had fed again, Mother shook us off, rising onto her haunches, her forepaws planted like columns beneath her feathery chest.

  “My children—and you are all my children now—the time has come to teach you one of our most time-honored and useful rituals—bathing. A clean cat is a healthy cat, a respectable cat, and furthermore, a serene, deliberate, and decisive cat. Cleansing one’s fur refreshes the mind as well as the body.”

  Washing hardly seemed as important as hunting, especially at a time like this, when we were all stricken by the sudden loss of Git and Buttercup. But Mom’s voice continued, demanding our attention. Perhaps she was trying to distract us from recalling the deaths.

  “This skill is necessary for every cat ever born on the ground or among the stars,” she began. “But for we of the long fur, the plumed tails and full manes, the tufted ears and fur fringed pads, it is absolutely essential. Without proper grooming, our fur quickly mats into great clumps that hang from us like disgusting growths, that pinch and pull and catch on things when we are stalking, skulking, or attempting to slink. If you are fortunate enough, as I have been, to have a Kibble to care for you, she can assist you with the more difficult bits, but daily, hourly, and momentary maintenance are your responsibility, your duty, and your pride.

  “Everybody, lick one of your forepaws.”

  “Why, missus?” Doc asked. “It’ll just get dirty again.”

  “Just do it,” Mother said firmly.

  Doc looked down at his paw as if he had never seen it before and gave it a quick lick, as if expecting it to grab his tongue and strangle him.

  I did the same, giving mine as long a swipe as my little pink tongue could manage. Silvesta and Sol followed suit.

  “Now, this paw will be your tool to clean those parts of you that you are unable to reach by direct licking. Pass it over your face, thusly,” she said, and demonstrated. She swiped it down over her ears and nose, licked it again and passed it over her long elegant whiskers, both the uppers and the lowers on the same side as her paw. Then she switched paws. I hoped my whiskers would be so magnificent when I was big.

  Virgil got his paw stuck behind his ear when he tried. Bat would only dab at the areas in question. If I do say so myself, I did a splendid job on my first try.

  Silvesta took a trial lick then began crying again. She missed Buttercup even more bitterly than the rest of us did. It was painful to listen to, and it interrupted the lesson. Mother cuffed her ears, swiping a paw across their tips to get her attention, then licking one tufted tip to take the sting out of the reprimand.

  “Pay attention, my darling. You will have kits of your own to teach one day.”

  Silvesta trembled with grief, for this was the sort of thing Git used to tell her and Buttercup with every lesson, but she moistened her paw and washed her face.

  When Mother had demonstrated the procedure for washing each bit of ourselves—and some bits were far more awkward than others—she said, “There is a language to the bath understood by other creatures as well as cats. Even humans are somewhat attuned to the meanings of the various postures. Washing is a built-in diversion, a time-out, you might say. In the annals of feline-based literature my Kibble used to read aloud to me, a wise cat named Jennie instructs a newcomer: ‘When in doubt, wash.’ Sage advice I pass along to you with these elaborations on the language of public bathing. When conveying confusion or when you are in need of clarification, wash your face. To express nonchalance or self-assurance, wash your shoulder. To indicate that you are considering a situation, lightly groom one of your front paws. And a fine time to groom that critical area under your tail is when you wish to demonstrate your indifference to the insignificant events around you, or to demonstate contempt for an idea or individual. Grooming one’s abdomen indicates trust and should only be done in the presence of those you actually do trust. A full bath, with or without the assistance of a fellow feline, ideally should be undertaken only in privacy or in the company of one’s Kibble.”

  “Or the boy,” I said. “The boy’s all right, isn’t he, Mother?” My siblings and now foster siblings murmured agreement. The boy had just saved us.

  She gave a short, noncommittal purr but I thought I saw a cloud cross her great gold-green eyes.

  Mother had vowed that she would continue Git’s work in teaching us to hunt, but alas, she never had the chance.

  Inside that little dark room, we could only hunt each other, but even my reckless foster sibs realized that killing was out of the question.

  We had only a few more days to nurse, to feed on the kibble and soft food the boy brought us, and to practice washing and pouncing before the man returned.

  The boy sadly informed him of the deaths of Git and Buttercup. He frowned, shook his head, and patted the boy’s shoulders.

  But all he could say was,“They’ve grown, I’m going to have to take a whole new set of pics.”

  He took one of all of us nursing, then had the boy hold up each of us while he pointed the little flashy thing at us.

  The boy held me close to his chest and I felt his heart thudding through it. “Don’t worry, Chester. You and me are a team. Pop said I could have a kitten and I choose you, whether he likes it or not.”

  I pressed my ear to his heart and purred as loudly as I could. Of course the boy would stay with me. Why would I know everything he did and most of what he thought if he wasn’t mine? He was my Kibble in the way that Mother’s Kibble was hers, except Mother didn’t know where hers was and some tiny part of me always knew where the boy was.

  Nobody could fathom the mind of the man, though. He was trickier than the canine that had killed Buttercup and Git.

  CHAPTER 7

  When she wasn’t helping Jared in the makeshift clinic in the Locksley Mall, Janina was out plastering every available notice board with flyers featuring Chessie’s ID pic and the reward for her return. She talked to everyone she could stop and told them about the fire and how Chessie was missing and asked them to look for her.

  One day she stopped a woman laden with parcels, boarding a battered farm tracker.

  Janina showed the woman the picture.

  “Just a minute, honey,” the woman said, setting her parcels in the passenger seat and turning back to Janina. She shoved back her long dark brown hair, the plait of which had loosened during her shopping, wiped her hands on the thighs of her blue denim pants, and took the picture from Janina, glanced at it, grunted, and returned it. “Sorry,” she said. “Don’t recall seeing one like this.”

  “You’d notice her,” Janina insisted. “Not only is she beautiful but she was about to have kittens when she disappeared.”

  The woman shrugged and started to walk away. “Hmm, well, I’m not much for cats. But kittens, you say? When was it she disappeared again?”

  The woman’s expression was both annoyed and speculative. Maybe she had a lead!

  “Nearly two months ago, after the fire in the vet clinic at Hood Station.”

  “Huh. Well, what a shame. That crew must set great store by her to be offering such a hefty reward.”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am, and her kittens too. She’s a very valuable cat, but more than that, we love her and we need her on our ship. She’s an important part of the crew.”

  The woman glanced at the flyer again, her eyes lingering on the line about the reward. “Well, I hope you find her, honey.” Then she turned back to put her parcels in her flitter.

  Janina said, “Ma’am, if you see her or
hear from anyone who might have seen her, please would you call me at Dr. Vlast’s clinic in Locksley? I’m working with him until the new clinic is ready on Hood Station.”

  “Umm-hmm,” the woman said. “I sure will.”

  Since Janina began posting the flyers, people had shown up at the clinic with cats of all coloring, ages, and both sexes, some with kittens, some without, trying to claim the reward. A few had short hair or showed the Siamese strain. Did they think the large longhaired tortoiseshell Chessie had somehow managed to don a disguise and go incognito?

  Jared said it was the triumph of hope over common sense, something he’d seen a great deal.

  Some of the cats were so matted they looked to be made from balls of dirty felt instead of fur, some were battered and scarred, many looked starved, and all looked frightened. Jared did what he could for the pretenders to Chessie’s throne, but ultimately they had to be returned to the arms of their disappointed bearers, though some were abandoned at the clinic. Janina made it her job to look after these and tried to find homes for them, though it was clear that most cats were not highly valued on Sherwood. Often they were considered to be as troublesome as the vermin they hunted.

  She kept hoping as she continued her rounds of cleaning and filling feeding dishes, mucking out stalls, hosing down kennels, and changing litter boxes. It was useful work and she didn’t mind it, but the familiar routine of caring for the cats tore at her heart, even though she was glad to be able to help them. They wound around her ankles and purred up at her and she patted them and spoke kindly, but they were just not Chessie. She and Chessie had been a team for ten years—more than half her life, and all of the best part. She missed her desperately and also missed the camaraderie with the crew.

  Under other circumstances, the prolonged opportunity to work with Jared would have cheered her, but he was run off his feet now that the people (and their animals) of Sherwood had him all to themselves. They called him night and day to attend difficult births or accidental injuries, and he was often so exhausted he barely seemed to recognize her. When there was a lull, he spent it in his makeshift lab, preoccupied and focusing on his work.