She often found him frowning at slides and tubes of the mysterious glittery substance, which they were finding in more and more animals, but when she asked him about it, he shrugged and said only, “I’m checking it out.”
Two weeks later, she was grooming the last poor matted moggy brought in by a hopeful. He was a gray and black male who had been spitting mad when he arrived. His temper hadn’t improved much since. Jared had long red scratches running down his hands from this fellow, but the cat seemed to like females—or at least Janina—somewhat better. She was clipping one of his mats when the office door jingled.
“Nina, there are people to see you,” Jared called from his exam room in the front of the clinic. She wished people would make appointments instead of popping in any old time with the poor im-poster cats for her inspection. Every time they did, her hopes rose, and every single time they’d been dashed. Bracing herself for another letdown, she plopped the recalcitrant tom back into his cage, washed and dried her hands, and walked deliberately into the waiting room.
She saw two people at the desk, a woman and a boy, each carrying something. She was trying to remember where she had seen the woman before when she heard the plaintive mew.
The mew.
“Chessie?” she asked, thinking surely her ears were deceiving her. But she heard the mew again and knew she was not mistaken. “Chessie!”
“So you do recognize her?” a slightly familiar female voice asked. “You’ll not deny that she’s the very cat you told me about. The one you’re looking for?”
Hurrying toward them, Janina recognized the woman she’d spoken to in the mall. The woman peeled a blanket farther away from the beloved furry face with its long magnificent whiskers. Chessie appeared uninjured. Her tufted ears had twitched forward at the sound of Janina’s voice.
Janina reached for her. Oh, Chessie!” The bundle the woman relinquished was much lighter than the beautiful cat had been when Janina placed her in the kennel at Jared’s station clinic. “You’ve had your kittens, haven’t you?” she asked, lifting an edge of the blanket to see the rest of Chessie more clearly.
“She did but they was all lost save this one here my boy’s got,” the woman said, indicating a bright-eyed fluffball peeking out from the shelter of the boy’s arms. “And she’s been poorly he says.”
“Poorly?” Janina’s heart dropped. Was she to regain her friend only to lose her again? She hurried to the examining room door and popped her head in. “It’s her! Someone found Chessie but she’s sick. Jared, she’s light as a feather. I can feel her bones.”
“Take her in exam room two. I’ll be right there,” he said, and he sounded happier and more excited than he had since the disaster.
“Even if she doesn’t make it, I still get the reward, right?” the woman asked anxiously, following Janina into the exam room, the boy trailing reluctantly behind them.
“If you had her and you knew she was sick, why didn’t you say when I met you before?”
“She didn’t know about it till my dad and me had it out when he tried to take Chester with him,” the boy blurted out. “Dad found your cat and kept her in the barn. He said not to tell Mom because she doesn’t like cats and wouldn’t let me keep her.”
“But I tried and tried her locator signal and got no response.”
“I reckon it must not work out our way, honey,” the woman said. “Jubal didn’t know she was yours. Don’t take it out on him. He saved her last kitten. I didn’t know a thing about it till I heard them carrying on and saw your cat. I recognized her right away.”
While the woman explained, Janina laid her bundle down on the exam table, a rather rickety metal folding table of the sort set up in meeting halls and at fairs. Chessie was indeed much thinner than she had been. Her nipples were still distended.
“She had a really hard time when she birthed the last kitten,” the boy said. “It died, but Pop wouldn’t let me call Dr. Vlast. He said she’d make it or not, and she did.”
“She only had the one other kitten?”
Tears welled up in the boy’s eyes. “No, ma’am. There were more but they got caught out when they were learning to hunt …” he said, his voice quivering. Janina wanted to cry herself. Poor Chessie! Poor baby kittens.
Jared entered the room and examined Chessie thoroughly. “She’ll need some repair,” he told Janina. “I can’t be sure but I’m rather afraid her breeding days may be over. However, she should be able to return to her other duties before long, as long as she has her able assistant.” He nodded toward the kitten, who was batting a string the boy dangled for it. “I’ll tend to her now.”
He carried Chessie from the exam room back toward the operating theater, and Janina, who couldn’t bear to be separated from her—having finally found her—started to follow.
But the voice of the boy’s mother stopped her in her tracks. “So, how do we collect the reward?”
CHAPTER 8
CHESTER
I clung to Jubal as if he were Mother, since she was otherwise occupied and in the hands of others. I did not like the woman, Jubal’s mom, and I knew she did not like me or Mother either. But she liked Jubal and vice versa, so I seemed to be stuck with her. By my mother’s joyous mew, I knew that the girl who first greeted us at the clinic was Kibble, her friend from the ship. She seemed harmless enough, and Mother was so happy to see her I’d have been jealous except that Jubal was there. Everything was fine as long as Jubal and I were together.
On the man’s last trip home, when he tried to carry me away with him, Jubal fought with him, yelling and clinging to his legs to prevent him from carrying me to the shuttle in the little bag that smelled like my brothers and sisters. Jubal had been afraid he might try something like that, and smuggled me into the house with him.
But the man had crept into Jubal’s room at night and plucked me from the pillow.
It took Jubal a few moments to respond to my entreaties for his assistance in fighting off his father who was stuffing me into a bag. When I finally clawed through the boy’s dreams to wake him, he thudded through the house after us, his bare feet on the floorboards. When the man left the house and carried me toward the shuttle, Jubal chased him, banging the screen door after him as he tackled his father.
“You can’t take Chester!” Jubal yelled at his father as he tried to snatch my carrier out of his hands. “He’s mine! You took all the others but you can’t have him.”
“Whoa, boy,” the man said, lifting me aloft so high I feared he meant to dash me to the ground, dodging his son as he leapt to take the bag back. “You’re going to kill him if you keep that up. Now stop it and let’s talk about this.”
“You didn’t want to talk when you stole him from my bed,” Jubal said.
“I’m taking him to a new home, son. I told you I was going to have to.”
“Yeah, and you told me I could have a kitten too. I want Chester and I want him back now.”
“That was before the queen lost so many of her litter. Even filling in with Git’s kittens, we’re still down a couple. All I’m doing with these little kitties is finding them good homes. Best thing that could happen to them. With their bloodlines—and, well, for Git’s babies, the fake ID tags I’ve given them with the queen’s DNA codes—they’ll be treasured ships’ cats, just like their mama. Nothing will be too good for them. Don’t you want Chester to have that kind of a life? He was born for it, you know. If he’d been on the ship, he’d be going off to a new home now where he’d be top cat, with his own personal servant and bodyguard to look after him.”
“He’s got that now. He’s got me. Pop, come on, just this once keep your damn promise. I love Chester and he loves me back and doesn’t want to go on any spaceship. You don’t care about what kind of a life he’ll have, just how much money you’ll get for him.”
“That money is for you and your mama, son. I can get you anything you want, maybe a scooter even, and fix up the place for your mama.”
“I don�
��t want a scooter. I want Chester! He’s mine. Give him back.”
“Son, now, I’ve explained why you can’t have him—” the man began.
Jubal was unimpressed. “Mom’s right about you,” he shouted at his father. “You are just a rotten good-for-nothing liar and you welsh on your promises when it suits you.”
“Look, soon as I get back I’ll take you to the feed store and you can pick out another kitten from their cat’s new litter.”
“You don’t get it, do you, Dad? If somebody took me away, would you take Mom to an orphanage and tell her to pick out a new kid?”
“You’re being overdramatic, Jubal. I admit you get it from me, but on you it isn’t becoming. Now, I am taking this kitten and selling him for enough money to keep food on the table for this family. I am your old man and that’s what I’m supposed to do, so you keep a civil tongue in your head and keep your voice down before you wake up your mama.”
The man turned his back on Jubal and started for the shuttle. Then I had the strange experience of feeling the man fall while I also felt Jubal tackling his father’s legs and bringing him down. My bag went flying and I yowled in protest.
“Chester!” Jubal cried. I called back that I was fine, just shaken up, but my answer was lost in the explosion and the man’s bellow.
“Carlton Poindexter, you mangy lying sack of manure, you leave that boy alone or so help me I will blow a hole in you a horse could jump through!” a woman hollered from the house.
“I wasn’t hurting him, honey. He attacked me over nothing. I was just going off to work and the boy went wild as a ricocheting rocket.”
The boy looked back at the woman, who held a smoking metal object in front of her. “I know him and I know you, Carlton, so I know who’s at fault here. You think I’m an idiot? I knew you were up to something in that barn, since you were so all-fired anxious to relieve me of any chores out there. I knew it was cats ’cause I smelled them on Jubal. When I saw that poster about that missing space cat, I thought you were probably the culprit since you never have seen much difference between what’s yours and what’s someone else’s. But I thought you were doing it for me and for the boy. I know he wanted a cat and you two were in cahoots about something I wasn’t supposed to know about. Jubal’s been so happy, I looked the other way. But now you’re going to cheat him too? What kind of daddy are you anyway? No, don’t bother to answer that. You just get out of here and don’t let me see your sorry butt around this place ever again.”
“But, baby,” the man began, then said, slyly, “Okay, I just need to go get some stuff from the barn.”
“You don’t need squat, Carlton. Now git before I have to traumatize our son with the sight of his mama killin’ his daddy.”
While his mother held the man’s attention, Jubal left his father to snag my bag and hug it to him. I tried to claw my way out of the bag and he released me. I climbed his head, sat on top of his hair, made myself big, and hissed at the man.
The man headed for the shuttle, “Okay, Dorice, but you’re making a big mistake. Those cats are worth big money and I’ve got it.”
“Shut up and get out. And you’re not taking the shuttle either. Hit the road running, Carlton, if you value your lying hide.”
“But, sweetie, I thought we were so happy!”
Another blast from the object in the woman’s hands and the man ran very swiftly for a human.
As soon as he was gone, the woman lowered her weapon and walked over to Jubal, but stood well back, no doubt frightened of my fierce and bristling stance. “Oh, honey,” she said in a weary voice, shaking her head.
“Mom, I know you don’t like cats but I’m keeping Chester, no matter what.”
“Yeah, I get that,” she said. “But since I ran your daddy off, I think you and I had best have a look at what’s in the barn. If it’s what I think it is, there’s a nice reward for her and it’ll keep us going until I figure out what to do next.”
Shortly afterward, Mother, Mom, Jubal, and I were in the shuttle and then at the door of the clinic, where Mother was reunited with the girl, Kibble.
Jubal’s mom made him promise not to tell the girl about his father selling my littermates and milk brothers, in exchange for which she would allow him to keep me.
“If they knew we’d been part of it,” Jubal’s mom said, “we might not get the reward, and now that your father’s gone, we’re going to need that money.”
I heard the man’s influence in Jubal’s thoughts as he told himself that all he wanted was for us to be together, his mom did need the money, and his father had said the other kittens all went to homes where they would be valued crew members. He reckoned as long as they were okay, his mom got the reward money for Mother, and he had me, we’d be fine.
While the doctor was taking care of Mother, the girl Kibble helping, Mom and Jubal and I sat in the office. Mom fidgeted, impatient and suspicious. Jubal fell quiet as he mulled over the events of the day and consequences he hadn’t previously considered. I slept.
“Can you put her right, Jared?” Janina asked anxiously as the vet made the first incision. She was monitoring Chessie’s vital signs under the effects of the anesthesia. Her fragile feline charge had been X-rayed and partly shaved, the shaved area cleaned with antiseptic.
“I can help her stand on her own four paws again and get back to work as ship’s cat, but I’m very much afraid …” He zapped a tiny bleeder with cautery and blotted the area with sterile gauze to see the inside of the wound he’d made. “… that her days as a breeder are done. Her uterus and birth canal were damaged by that last delivery and—ah, here’s the cause of her drainage.” He pulled something out and plopped it into a basin. Janina looked at it curiously then looked away again. It was bloody, whatever it was. “We’ll have to spay her,” he said.
Once Chessie was out of danger, sleeping off the anesthetic, Janina relayed a message to the Molly Daise via the station.
In a few minutes the clinic’s com screen filled with the faces of Captain Vesey, Indu, Bennie, and Mick.
“You’ve found her!” Indu said. “I knew you would, Kibble. No doubt whatever.”
“How many kittens?” Captain Vesey asked.
“I’m afraid only one survived, sir, a male, but—”
“The crew will be disappointed but she can always have more, after a suitable rest, that is.”
“I’m afraid not, sir,” she said. “There were complications. Dr. Vlast had to spay her.”
“Well, we’ll have the little male, then. His bloodline is as illustrious as hers and the crew will have the stud fees to split instead of the price of kittens.”
The office door opened behind them and the woman and boy stood there, the boy holding the sleeping kitten. “We can’t wait all day, you know,” the woman said. “We’ve animals to tend to at home. Give us the reward and we’ll be on our way.”
Catching site of the newcomers in the com screen, Bennie’s eyes lit up. “Is that him? Is that the kitten?”
“Yes, it is,” Janina began.
“His name is Chester,” the boy said.
The kitten woke, stretched his tiny paws up the boy’s arm, and yawned before climbing onto the boy’s shoulder and blinking at the room, the other people, and even the com screen. Chessie had never paid much attention to com screens unless there was some interesting movement for her to observe. The kitten regarded the remote crew members with the same curiosity he showed toward Jared and Janina.
“Chester because of his little white chest?” Indu asked. “It suits him! What a handsome little fellow he is! He’ll be the heartbreak of every Barque female in the universe.”
“Not a chance!” the boy said adamantly. “You got the mother cat back but Chester is mine.”
Janina looked toward Captain Vesey, but he was shaking his head. “I’m sorry, son, but he’s not. Chessie and her progeny belong to the Molly Daise.”
“That wasn’t the deal,” the boy’s mother said. “You only m
entioned one cat, and it’s one cat we’re returning. There was nothing on the flyer about the kittens. Kitten. My boy has fed and cared for both cats, not knowing the female was yours, and we’re out the money for the food and his time …”
“I’m sorry,” Janina said. “I made up the flyers and I left out anything about the kittens, it’s true.”
The woman said in a hard businesslike tone, “Kittens would be extra, then, even you would have to agree.”
The crew members nodded at one another. “I’m sure we can come up with a bonus on the reward for the return of the little fellow as well. Another 750 credits perhaps?” Captain Vesey said.
“No!” the boy said. “He’s mine. You can’t have him!”
The woman sighed and put one arm around her son’s shoulders, including the one with the kitten, who sniffed at her uncertainly, bobbing his fuzzy tail behind him as he investigated. “Well, there you have it. My son is very attached to his kitty. I’m afraid it’s not worth it to me for 750 credits to disappoint him.”
Mick cleared his throat and said, “These cats belong to the crew, ma’am, and we aren’t wealthy people. We offered the reward as an inducement to returning them, not in place of a purchase price. As I understand it, when Chessie left, she was pregnant with at least five kittens, of whom you still have only one. Furthermore, you’ve brought her back in such a condition that she can’t bear us any more kittens. We’re pleased to have her back as acting ship’s cat, but we’ll need the kitten for her to train as her successor, and to continue her line. The truth is, as things stand, he’s the more valuable of the two to us. So …” He looked around to the others, who depended on their purser for negotiating the ship’s business. “… I’m afraid that if the kitten isn’t returned with his mother, the reward will have to be considerably diminished—to about a tenth of our original offer.”
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