by K. J. Emrick
Watching over a town like Misty Hollow isn't as easy as it sounds. My owner, Darcy Sweet, has gone out of her way for this town lots of times. I figure I can't do any less myself.
A cat's work is never done.
"Kind of dramatic, aren't you?"
Twistypaws narrowed her eyes at me. Usually the color of clear blue water, now in the moonlight they were a doubtful gray. She's the most beautiful cat I've ever seen, with soft gray fur and a long, graceful tail, but she isn't just another pretty whiskered face. She's smart and intelligent. Which means she's skeptical about a lot of the things I tell her.
I can't really blame her, I guess. If I hadn't seen things like a ghost dog trying to bury bones in the town's cemetery, I wouldn't believe me either.
"I'm serious," I tell her now, as we sit together on the flat roof of the library, watching the celebration in the town center. "My life is pretty dangerous. I've only got eight lives left. You should go easy on me."
I roll over onto my back, my legs pawing at the air and my tongue sticking out for effect. I'm getting my fur dirty, dust and dirt covering the white and black parts alike, but I don't mind. It makes her laugh.
The town had held their yearly festival tonight, and the whole of Misty Hollow was lit up with bright lights. This had been a great spot to take Twist out for our date. Not to mention, they had been setting off fireworks earlier. I hate the noise they make, but I love watching the bright lights trail off through the sky like multicolored fireflies waiting to be chased. Twistypaws had enjoyed it with me. I had enjoyed the way she jumped and cuddled against me with every big bang the fireworks made.
Meow.
She swishes her tail at me as I pretend to be dead and looks away, but I see the little smile. "I'm not going to roll over and let you scratch my tummy just because you ask, Smudge."
For a moment, that leaves me speechless. She always could paint an image. Twistypaws and I have known each other for years. It was only just recently that she and I started spending time together as something more than friends. I had come to her rescue by helping her owner. The rest, as they say, is history. Or, at least, history in the making.
"So what are you doing tomorrow?" I ask her as I get back up onto my paws.
She tilts her head and stares at me. "Depends."
"On what?"
"On whether you're asking me out."
I step closer to her and our noses almost touch as I purr, "I think that I could definitely clear my schedule."
She meows sarcastically. "Like you have a schedule."
"Well, you know, I'm a pretty busy cat. Let me move some things around to fit you in between my many social obligations." Her whiskers twitch, but I'm only half joking. I'll have to reschedule a few things, and there was that rat I was supposed to help catch over on Brewster Lane…
Wait. What was that?
A cat's senses aren't like a person's. People usually only see what they're looking at, hear only the loudest noises, smell only the strongest scents. On the other hand a cat will see just about everything, hear the smallest sounds, smell everything. Our sense of smell isn't as good as a dog's—although I'll never admit it—but we can still smell catnip from a block away.
I wasn't distracted just then by any kind of smell, though. It was something I had seen.
"So I'm just a social obligation to you?" Twist teased, touching her nose gently to mine.
"What? Oh." My nose tingles where she touched me. A first kiss. I've been wanting her to do that for weeks now. It was supposed to be amazing and magical and electric. Now, I had something else on my mind.
It figures.
"A social obligation?" I repeat, trying to put my attention back on her. "Of course not. You are far more important than anything else…on…my…schedule."
A car. A car had just pulled out from the street that leads to Darcy's house. From up here on this roof we can see most of the town laid out around us. This was what had snagged my attention. A car. A car I did not recognize.
"Smudge," Twist growled. "I'm over here."
I turned to see a stormy look in her eyes, and I knew that I was blowing it. I was here, with her, and all I had to do was rub my face up against hers and then everything would be forgotten and we could go back to turning our friendship into the serious relationship I wanted it to be.
But there was no reason for that car to be on Darcy's street. At night.
I watched it drive by the library, slow for a turn, signal, drive away smoothly. Everything that humans were supposed to do when they were driving, near as I could tell. Nothing suspicious about it.
Except it didn't belong on the road to Darcy’s house.
See, as a cat, you get a sense of when things belong and when they don't. Darcy changed the arrangement of the furniture in our living room once, and I spent a whole month getting used to it. She started wearing pink lipstick for a while, and I wouldn't even come near her until she stopped, because it just wasn't her. It didn't fit. It didn't belong.
This car didn't belong.
"I'm sorry, Twist," I said to her, realizing I had stayed silent for a long time and she was still staring at me. "I, uh, have to go."
I bounded for the set of metal stairs at the back of the building that led from the roof down to the ground, calling back over my shoulder, "I'll come find you tomorrow and we can talk about our date, okay?"
I was going to blow it with Twist if I kept doing things like this. It was stupid to throw away something I wanted so much on just a feeling. I had that sense of something that didn't belong stuck in my head, though, like the smell of rotten fish, and I had to do something.
So down I went, and when I made it to the ground I raced off across lawns and sidewalks until I got to the narrow street that led away from town towards Darcy's house. There's only two houses down that street, Darcy's and the one that belongs to our neighbor, Anna Louis. Anna's a nice woman. Short for a person, dark haired, blue eyes that would never match the brilliance of Twist's. She lives alone and she brings me cat treats every once in a while. That's the important part.
So I wondered, as I ran, if there's just the two houses on this street, what had that strange car been doing down here?
As I went, I noticed how the ground fog had started to collect thickly around the grass and tree roots. This happens a lot here in Misty Hollow. It's what gave the town its name, actually. A quaint hometown phenomena. Me and Darcy look at it a different way, though.
Whenever the mist comes in, trouble comes with it.
When a gray form jumped out at me from foggy shadows I jumped nearly six feet in the air and screeched like a kitten. My white and black fur stood on end.
Twistypaws stared at me, and I could tell she was trying not to laugh.
"What are you doing?" I blurted out, shaking my head vigorously and then getting ahold of myself. "I mean, uh, hi. What are you doing here? I thought you went home."
She stepped very close to me, her eyes searching mine. "I could tell something was bothering you. If it was important enough for you to leave our date early, I wanted to know what was going on."
I sigh through my nose. I don't want to put Twistypaws in danger. I should tell her to go home. I kind of like that she came after me, though, and I really don't know if there's anything wrong. I mean, I was working off a feeling here. A hunch. That, and the sight of an unfamiliar car driving away from Darcy's street.
But I know enough to listen to my instincts.
"Okay, but stay close to me. All right?" She nods, and I start back towards Darcy's house, acting all manly like I hadn't just been terrified. Which I wasn't. Really.
Anna's house is before Darcy's. Thing was, I didn't need to go all the way to Darcy's place to know my hunch was right. I smelled something from Anna's. Something wrong. That's when I knew.
"You smell that?" I asked Twist.
She nodded and turned her face away, her eyes pinched tight. Then she sneezed. "Yes. What is that?"
"Some
thing bad. You only smell that when something bad has happened." If nothing else, Twist was getting a look at how dangerous my nights really could be. The question was, did I want her to be in danger herself. It was a pretty easy answer.
No. No I did not.
"You should go home now," I said to her. "I can take it from here. Darcy should be home soon. She'll help."
"What?" she protested. "No, I want to see—"
"No, you don't."
Something in my voice convinced her, because she blinked, and then nodded, and then turned away.
Two steps later she zipped back to rub the side of her face against mine. "Be careful."
Then she disappeared into the mist
Taking a heavy breath, I padded up the front steps of Anna's house. The front door had been left open. People never did that. They were maniacal about not letting bugs into their homes. That's why all their windows have those screens on them that keep cats like me from jumping in and out whenever we want.
Pushing the door a little wider with the top of my head, I found the trouble I had sensed. Our neighbor Anna lay dead on the floor. The source of what Twist and I had smelled was all around her.
Blood.
***
Of course, it was up to me to get Darcy and bring her over to find Anna. She was devastated. I didn't need the special bond she and I share or the way I can sort of pick up on people's emotions to sense that.
I gave her what comfort I could, staying with her, curling up on her lap, the usual cat things. I even sat with her while she looked at old photographs of her and Anna and other people. Thing is, there's only so much time in a day, and only so many days in a cat's life. I had other people who depended on me, too.
And by people, I mean cats.
Anyway, Darcy wasn't going to let her friend's murder go unanswered. I knew she wouldn't rest until whoever had done that to Anna was caught. So, when she ran off to do what she does best, I slipped out of the house to take care of my own stuff.
Running through the spaces between houses and shops in town, it didn't take me long to find my friend Tony sitting in the grass behind a block of apartments. He's an orange tiger-striped cat who just showed up in Misty Hollow one day. He doesn't actually belong to anybody. Except himself. It's a situation that works for him. Nice guy, just not all that bright.
"Smudge!" he greeted me warmly, his words a little muffled as he chewed on a chicken wing bone. "How you been? Haven't seen much of you since you and Twistypaws started hanging out together. I called that one, by the way. I mean, I figured she'd fall for me first, but I knew she'd get to you eventually."
I rolled my eyes at him. "Thanks, Tony. Glad to know it. Have you seen Rolo around? I was supposed to help him with a rat problem."
Rolo was the cat over on Brewster Lane. In fact, he was the only cat on that street. Every other house seemed to have a dog. One of them had a hamster. But no other cats.
Tony thought about it, chewing on the short bone til it cracked. "Nope. Haven't seen him. Why don't you just tell him to take care of his own rats?"
"I don't think that would work for Rolo. He's not really the confrontational type."
"You mean, he's scared of his own shadow."
"Right. That." Hard to admit that some cats will sit and watch a mouse run through their house rather than catch it and snap it in two, but that was the truth of it. Rolo was one of those kinds of cats.
"Well," Tony said as he licked at his prize. "He's probably holed up in his house. Like a—"
"Don't say it."
"—mouse. Sorry."
Yeah, well. He wasn't wrong. "Tony, why don't you get an owner? Let someone buy your cat food on a regular basis. Have a warm place to sleep."
He shook his head at me with a smile as he held up the mangled remains of the bone in his teeth. "Why should I? I've got everything I need right here."
***
Brewster Lane is in an area of run down houses and mobile homes. Some nice people live here, and some not so nice people live here too, but none of them have a lot of money to pay for the upkeep of their homes. It's no wonder Rolo has a rat problem.
His owner's house is one of the nicer ones on his street, a simple one story home with sagging red siding and a shingle roof that needed to be replaced. The lawn was neatly mowed, however, and the attached one stall garage was clean and organized. There wasn't a lot to it, but Rolo's owner did his best to take care of it.
I jumped up onto one of the windowsills and peered inside. Sure enough, I found Rolo there in the living room. He was peering out from under the green fabric sofa, his eyes darting everywhere, like he was expecting something to jump out at him from any direction.
I tapped on the glass with one paw, and his face disappeared altogether under the couch.
For the love of catnip.
"Rolo!" I called out to him. "Rolo, it's me, Smudge!"
His face slid back out, slowly, and peered up at me in the window. Even then it was a few seconds before he came out, like he thought I was a trick. "Smudge!" he mewled. "Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you," he said in the hyper fast way he had of talking. He was a Persian, with that fluffy white fur that could look so awesome. Rolo's was kinked and matted, though, a byproduct of his nervous disposition.
He sat on the rough-looking brown carpet in the middle of the living room and stared up at me, thanking me over and over for coming.
"Rolo," I said, slowly, "let me in."
"Oh. Oh, right."
He jumped up on the other side of the glass. It was one of those windows that opened up in two parts that swung outward from the center. I stepped to one side so he could push open the other.
"Quick, quick," he said, "get in here before anyone sees you!"
"Who's going to see me?" I asked, glancing around the neighborhood. There wasn't anything sinister that I could see. Just the houses and trees and half-mowed lawns that were always here. That, and two dogs staring at me from across the street. A German shepherd and a Rottweiler. Both of them, just sitting and staring. "Hiya, fellas," I called over to them. They didn't answer.
Dogs.
Once I was inside, Rolo tugged and clawed at the window until it closed again. "Can't be too careful," he explained. "That rat. That stupid rat! He always gets in, Smudge. How does he always get in?"
"Whoa, whoa," I said, trying to calm Rolo down. He was actually shaking. I had no idea his problem was this serious. "Listen, why don't you just start from the beginning. Tell me what's going on."
"Okay," he said, taking a breath and pacing in a tight circle. "Okay. Look. I'm not crazy. So you have to believe me when I say this, okay? This rat…he wants me to move out. He says he'll stay away from the house, as long as I move out."
"What?" I asked in disbelief.
"I said you had to believe me!"
"Well, I'm trying, Rolo, but rats don't evict people. They eat. They poop. They chew things up and make a nuisance of themselves, but they don't scare cats away. Why would it want you to leave?"
"I don't know!" Poor Rolo was practically bouncing on his paws now. "Maybe he thinks I'll eat him if he doesn't get rid of me. I've told him I'm not that kind of cat but he doesn't believe me! Smudge, you gotta help me!"
"All right, all right, Rolo. That's why I'm here. Just calm down, okay?"
"Calm down! I can't calm down!" He raced out of the living room and into what I figured was a bedroom. I could hear him struggling with something and then he was coming back, dragging a piece of paper in his mouth.
He set it down in front of me, and that's when I noticed it was a photograph. "Could you relax if a rat did this?" he screeched.
The photo was a picture of Rolo and his owner, some guy with a scraggly brown beard who I didn't recognize. The guy was holding Rolo in his arms. Or, at least, that's what the picture used to show.
Where Rolo's face had been, the picture had been scratched and nibbled until nothing was left.
***
Night duty
at Rolo's house seemed to be the best way to end this. Find the rat, kill the rat, end of story. Or convince it to leave town. I've done that before, too, but where rats are concerned I much prefer the final solution of death.
No, I don't eat them. I'm a little more civilized than that.
I had already checked the entire house out looking for any place that the rat might be sneaking in. The problem was, there were too many to count. Holes and cracks and gaps in the walls. It was a wonder that all Rolo had to deal with was a single rat and not a whole colony.
It still didn't make any sense to me. One rat. Why? Why was this one rat targeting Rolo's house. Rats never work like this. There's always a family of them and they're always more interested in stealing food than attacking the household pets. So what was different about this rat?
"Hey. Cat."
In front of me, a few dozen steps away, the rat materialized out of the night. Black and sleek, with red beady eyes that squinted at me. Long, ugly tail. It was as disgusting as I had pictured it, and nearly half as big as I was.
Well. That might have been an exaggeration. It looked that way from where I was standing, though.
"Go away," the rat said to me. "Not your fight."
"Not my…what?" I hissed at it. "What are you talking about, rodent?"
"Fight. Not yours. Not getting paid for two cats. Getting paid for one."
Oh, now that was interesting. I always have trouble understanding rats and mice, because they have this weird way of talking. It's like their brains can only have short thoughts. Find food. Eat food. Hide. Find more food. Look ugly.
Things like that.
So what comes out of their mouths when they speak is these short little sentences that barely say anything. Rolo's rat had just said he was getting paid to bother him. That started to put things into focus. It left a lot of questions, too.
"You and me are going to have a conversation, rat. A long one," I emphasized, "with lots and lots of words."
I had everything under control at that moment. Of course, when you have everything under control, that's when everything goes paws-up.
Twistypaws walked out of the night to stand between me and the rat, glaring at me. "This is what you broke our date for?" she said, angrily. "To chase mice?"