by K. J. Emrick
"I know. I know." If I didn't know birds couldn't smile then I would have sworn that was what Jessamine was doing. "You told me. It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Corvin will win my love. Will. Or will not."
"Will not," her father repeated, apparently satisfied with that thought.
"Okay," I said, glad that was over. "I'm just going to go now. If you happen to see something that looks like Corvin's, uh, people feather, can you show it to him? He'd love to see it."
I'm guessing that was one mention of Corvin too much for the old bird, because he suddenly charged at me screaming and screeching, all flapping wings and slashing beak. I could have taught him a lesson, but I chose not to. I didn't figure eating the father of the girl Corvin had a crush on would be the best course of action. No matter how tempting it was.
So, down the tree I went. Climbing and sliding on my claws, I lost my grip and hit the ground a little harder than I meant to. Actually, I fell the last few feet. Cats always land on their feet.
Yeah. Right.
"What are you doing?"
Oh goodie. Someone saw me. Twisting around onto my belly, sort of with my feet under me, I looked over to find a younger cat watching me. All black, with long whiskers and feet that were still too big for his body. He'd grow up to be a huge tomcat, probably. For now he was just a pipsqueak.
"I'm falling out of a tree, obviously," I answer him sarcastically. "What are you doing?"
He snuffed a little breath like a laugh, or a smirk. "Watching you. I usually take my walks through here in the morning. I don't usually see full grown cats falling out of trees. Were you pretending to be a walnut or something?"
"No!" I protest. "I was not— I was looking for something. That's all."
The black cat looked up into the branches above. "What in the world were you expecting to find up there?"
"A people fea—I mean, a necklace. A necklace."
He stared at me, then blinked once and turned away. "Oh."
"Hey wait," I said to him. "What's your name?"
"Samson," the cat answered. "My human named me after herself. Samantha's her name. She lives over that way. The red house with the green roof."
He pointed his nose off to his left. I know the house he means. Next to that apartment building. "Okay. Well, good to meet you, Samson."
The young cat pranced away quickly and was gone. Like I said, lots of cats in this town.
The crows up above suddenly began cawing loudly again as they argued with each other. Thankfully they were staying up there instead of coming down here to bother me. Best not to take chances, though. It felt like a good time to be somewhere else.
***
"Can't you just give Corvin some other shiny thing?" Tony asked me.
Tony is a friend of mine. A tiger-striped alley cat who likes to eat chicken wings from the dumpsters. Not my idea of dinner, but it works for him. I found him behind the Bean There Bakery and Café, where the shade kept the ground cool and lunchtime was sure to bring him lots of tasty table scraps. He sat back on his haunches now, dividing his attention between me and the back door of the place. He didn't want to take a chance on missing the garbage when it came out.
"I'm not a jewelry store," I said dismissively. "If he wants to get this girl crow a gift then he can do it himself."
"Speaking of that, how's things with you and Twistypaws?"
That, at least, made me want to smile. "We're good. I'm supposed to take her out tonight."
"Oh yeah? Anywhere special?"
"Like I'm going to tell you. We're going there by ourselves, Tony. To be alone."
I'd made the mistake of telling Tony where me and Twist were going last time. He'd shown up, hoping that we'd brought some fish with us or something. No amount of explaining it could make him understand that we wanted to have a private moment. A private moment that didn't include him.
The back door opened and a woman with her long auburn hair in a net and scars on one side of her face swung out from the doorframe. She tossed a bag into the dumpster without noticing us sitting here. The odor from the bag smelled of cheese and bread and stuff I couldn't identify. I looked at Tony, waiting for him to pounce on the bag. He just shook his head instead.
"The good stuff gets tossed out later. That's the garbage from yesterday. Blech."
I guess when you live the life of an alley cat you can tell the difference between the good garbage, and the bad garbage.
"Anyway." I got back up onto all four of my feet. "This has been really helpful and all, but I need to go. I don’t know what I'm going to do about Corvin. Maybe there's nothing I can do. The necklace is gone. Maybe he just needs to accept that."
"Wasn't that what I said?" Tony asked, his one ear flopping down.
I ignore him, although I have to admit he's right. There was nothing else I could do. I'd interviewed the crows, for all that it mattered. I was pretty sure none of them had it. They either would have brought it out to brag about it, or attacked me to keep Corvin from getting it back. So not the crows. Not humans either, because it happened after dark.
It was possible that Jessamine's father had stolen it to keep Corvin from giving it to her. I suppose I'll have to keep that in mind.
I'd considered the possibility that a squirrel was the thief, but squirrels are always too busy collecting food for the winter to steal other things. They couldn’t care less about a necklace when there's nuts to gather and a family to feed. They work too hard, in my opinion, but then again they don't have someone like Darcy to make sure their food dish is always full.
Nothing else big enough to carry away a necklace could get up into that nest of Corvin's. Not all the way up there in that tree like that. I mean, did you see how far up I had to climb to get there? Who in the world could get up there like I did or even…
Oh.
Right.
***
Sometimes, I'm not as smart as I think I am.
Don't get me wrong. I'm pretty smart. Smarter than your average cat, to coin a phrase. But sometimes I could stand to be a little smarter. Birds can get up into trees. Squirrels and chipmunks can get up into trees, although chipmunks were too small to carry away a diamond necklace and squirrels were too busy, like I'd said. So. Who else climbs trees?
Cats climb trees. That's who.
I'd climbed two different trees myself today. I know cats can climb trees. I really should have put cats on the list of suspects sooner.
Maybe if I hadn't been kicked out of bed early this morning, I would've put it together sooner.
Now, two questions. Which cat, and why.
I have a pretty good idea which cat. The one who always takes his walks past Corvin's tree.
As to the why…yeah. I've got nothing.
Samson had told me exactly which house was his. The red one with the green roof. Easy to find. Once I'm there, I jump up onto a windowsill and peer inside. It's a simple home, nice and cozy, with mismatched furniture and wallpaper that's peeling at the seams. Pictures on the wall. I don't recognize the family in them. Even so, a photograph of a young girl draws my attention. She's got spiky blonde hair and freckles and oversized dangly earrings. Her clothes are plain but stylish.
In every photograph of her, she's wearing a necklace. A gold necklace with a hanging letter S embedded with diamonds.
"It belonged to Samantha all along," Samson said to me. I'm not sure when he got here, but he's sitting on the ground below me at the window, watching me. "She was devastated when she lost it. That necklace was a gift from her dad just before he died. The necklace is the only thing left she has to remember him by. I've been combing Misty Hollow for a week looking for it. Imagine my surprise when I found that crow had it in his nest."
"I can imagine," I agreed. That explains why Samson took Corvin's sparkly. "I don't blame you for wanting it back. Samantha looks like a good kid."
He jumps up easily to sit next to me. "She is. She's real good to me. I'd do anything for her. You can understand that, can
't you Smudge?"
"Sure," I answer easily. "The human I live with is more than just my owner. She's my friend. I understand that completely."
He sighs and looks away into the house, cool indifference masking his obvious relief.
I regard Samson, measuring him again in my mind. The kid might be young yet, but he's going to grow into a fine cat someday. I'll have to make an effort to watch over him and make sure he doesn’t fall into the wrong crowd here in town. I'll have to tell him about the dogs, and maybe introduce him to Tony and a few of my other friends.
Hey. It's what I do.
"So you won't tell Corvin what I did?" he asks.
"You mean, that you climbed up into his tree without him noticing, without the other crows seeing you, and stole back something that didn't belong to him, all in the dark of night?" I flick my tail, amused. "No. I won't tell him. A friend of mine suggested that I just get something else for Corvin. To replace the necklace. Besides, it wasn't even his to begin with."
"Thanks, Smudge. I appreciate that."
Inside the house, I see Samantha come into the room, the real Samantha, not the one in the picture. She curls up on the couch with her feet under her, a book in her hand. Her fingers stroked the S necklace where it rests at her throat. She looked happy.
Now I understand why Samson took the necklace from Corvin. I have to say, I was a little impressed with the pipsqueak.
"See you around, kid," I say to him as I jump down from the windowsill and start off toward the park. I need to see Corvin again. There's one more thing I need to do before I can close the book on this mystery.
A cat's work is never done.
***
On the way to the park I take a detour through some of the cleaner back alleys. Tony isn't the only one who knows where the good stuff can be found. When I find what I'm looking for I carefully take it in my teeth, avoiding the more fragrant bits of garbage nearby. I'll probably need a week to get the taste out of my mouth. Corvin had better appreciate this.
I spit the object on the ground at the base of Corvin's tree, then call up to him. Of course he's there. Crows are more than happy to stay at home when someone else is doing their work for them.
"Smudge!" he calls to me as he wafts down on a warm breeze. "Did you get it? Did you get my shiny?"
"Uh, no," I told him. I'd rehearsed a whole explanation on the way over here about why I didn't have his necklace, but I decided not to use any of it. "Look, Corvin, the necklace is gone. Just forget about it. I have something better for you."
"Better? Better?" he cawed, hopping around and flapping his wings crazily. "It's not better! I need my sparkly. Jessamine loves sparklies! Loves sparklies!"
He was going to have a seizure or something if I didn't stop him. "Corvin. Corvin! Look. Look what I have for you."
He focused his attention on the object I had scrounged for him. It wasn't much, from the viewpoint of anyone else, but I figured to a crow it would be like finding a little piece of a star that fell to Earth. A little toy mirror, pink plastic handle broken in half. The doll it had belonged to had been in the trash as well but I figured Corvin didn't have any use for a doll. Just the sparkly.
"What is this?" he asked, suddenly very calm, staring at an image of himself in the reflective surface of the toy. The mirror part looked like maybe a sticker instead of real glass, with a seam running through it where it had been stuck on carelessly. It was no people feather, maybe, but it sparked every time the sunlight angled in it just right.
Corvin seemed to like it.
Excitedly he spun in a quick, hopping circle, then flapped his way up into the trees.
"You're welcome!" I called after him. I had just given up on him coming back when I saw a rustling of leaves in the branches and heard the cawing noises of not one but two crows.
It was Corvin, and he had brought Jessamine with him. He swooped down and then hesitantly went up to the mirror, nudging it toward her with his beak. She hopped closer to it, then away again, then back to it, bending low to look into the imitation glass. Her beak parted, her breath quick, and she began hopping from foot to foot with animated little noises.
"See? See?" I said to Corvin, mad at myself for falling into the crow's speech habits. "She likes it. How could any girl not like…that?"
He spread his wings wide, his chest puffed out, and it was the happiest I'd ever seen him. "Likes it! Likes it! Corvin did good. Jessamine likes it! Likes me!"
The two of them began dancing around each other with various caws and screeches that I couldn't understand. It was cute. So cute, in fact, that I wanted to bite their heads off.
I restrained myself, but it was a close thing.
When another bird came crashing down in the middle of Corvin and Jessamine it was like war had broken out. Flapping, shouting, noises that would peel paint off walls. It was Jessamine's father, and he did not look happy about who his little girl was with.
I figured it was time for me to leave. Wishing Corvin good luck, knowing he was going to need it, I turned tail and jetted across the park as fast as I could.
Hey. A cat can only do so much.
—End—
Stealing Heidi
A cat's work is never done.
People—human beings in general—think their lives are busy. Rush, rush. Go here, go there, go back to the first place again. The person I live with, Darcy Sweet, is a lot more organized with her life but even she gets caught up in too much at once sometimes. She's always trying to help people in our town of Misty Hollow. Sometimes, she's the only one they can turn to.
I guess that’s what happens when people know you can talk to ghosts.
Anyway, as hectic as people think their lives are, cats have it worse. Don't let the nap times fool you. There's so much stuff a cat does during any given day that it's no wonder we flop down on the couch sometimes. We need a breather. Trust me.
All of these thoughts roll through my mind as I run full tilt behind a row of houses on, well, whatever street this is. I've kind of lost track of where I am. The breeze ruffling my black and white fur is brisk and it would have felt good any other day. This isn't a sprint for fun, though. Not today. It's not me chasing a rat or racing home for a dinner of tuna and milk.
I'm kind of running for my life.
The dog's breath is hot on my backside as he leans in and snaps at me again, his irregular and yellowed teeth clamping closed just an inch or so from my tail. Butch isn't the forgiving kind. He's the nearly two hundred pounds of snarling, black and brown, I'll-kill-you-if-you-take-my-squeaky-toy Mastiff kind.
And yes, you guessed it. I took his squeaky toy.
So, run it is.
"Hey, Butch," I call back over my shoulder without slowing down. "You aren't going to stay mad about this, are you? I mean, it's not good for your heart."
He lunges at me two more times but it works against him, breaking his stride and allowing me to gain some distance. "I kill you!" he shouts. "You steal my squeaky toy!"
"Come on, it wasn't even yours!" I'm past the houses now, heading for the edge of town where birch trees stand tall and widely spaced. It's a sprint across open ground now, and Butch catches back up to me. For all my sleek speed the dog has the benefit of size, and a longer stride, and if he catches me now I'm going to be puppy chow.
Instead, I bound up onto the first tree I come to and scamper up the bark and into the branches. No squirrel jokes, all right? You do what you have to when your life is on the line. My heart is hammering and my breathing so hard I'm almost hyperventilating and my tail won't stop twitching, but the dog is down there and I'm up here. Score one for the cat.
Butch makes a good effort at jumping up after me, but dogs aren't built for climbing trees. Eventually he just snarls and huffs and starts pacing back and forth under me, his dark brown eyes glaring, his lips curled back from his teeth.
"Ah, come on, Butch," I call down, licking my paw, trying to pretend like I wasn't terrified. "It was just a rubbe
r ball. I'll get you another one."
"Nobody touch my squeaky toy!" he barks up at me in his broken tough-dog way of speaking. He punctuates each word by jumping up to hammer his front paws against the tree trunk like he means to knock it down. Scary thing is, I think he could have done it. "Want back my squeaky toy!"
"It was yours not!" Scrunching up my face, I clear my throat and try that again. "I mean, it wasn't yours. It belonged to the kid next door, and you know it."
"Mine!" he shouts, with enough force that his breath ruffles my fur. "Mine, mine, mine!"
"Not yours," I say in a sing-song voice. Hey, he can't get me up here. I can afford to be a little cocky. "I can't deny it was cool and all, but the kid really missed his ball. I'll bet if you offered to play with him he'd share it with you."
"No!" he huffs. "Mine!"
"Aren't you supposed to be on a leash?" I tease him, knowing I never would have dared do that if I wasn't fifteen feet up in the air.
"Kill you! Mine!"
Not the greatest conversationalist, but he knows what he wants. Obviously he's not going to let this go no matter what I say. Guess I'd better get comfortable. This is going to be a long day. It's only mid-morning, too, and I really had a list of other things to—
"Butch," a soft cat voice says from down below, "is that any way for a big, strong dog like you to act?"
I'd know that voice anywhere. I can't believe she's here, but then I suppose nothing she does should surprise me anymore. Twistypaws is a beautiful gray cat with just a hint of white at the tips of her ears. I've been dating her for a while now and every day is better than the last. It just keeps getting better. I really didn't expect her to calmly saunter up to an angry pile of fur on four legs, though. That's new.
I felt cold iron grip my heart. Any second, I was sure, butch would turn on Twist and chomp her to bits. Plans raced through my head. I had to help her. Could I jump on his head from here? Claw his eyes out before he hurt her? It would be a long fall, and if I missed I might break every bone in my body, but I'm sure I could do it.
I tensed to spring and set my claws. My back arched. I sucked in a breath to scream the most vicious cat howl that had ever been heard in the history of cats. Then, in the next instant, all of that fizzled away and I was left staring in disbelief as Butch hung his head and sat back on his haunches.