Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

by Sharyn McCrumb

  No doubt it would have interested those New Age clowns to learn that he was not a kitten, but a fully grown cat. Apparently the arrival had been instantaneous as well. He had always been given to understand that the afterlife would provide some kind of preliminary orientation before assigning him a new identity. A deity resembling John Denver, in rimless glasses and a Sierra Club T-shirt, should have been on hand with some paperwork regarding his case, and in a nonthreatening conference they would decide what his karma entitled him to become. At least, that’s what the New Agers had led him to believe. But it hadn’t been like that at all. One minute he had been tumbling into a sewage pit, and the next, he had a craving for Meow Mix. Just like that. He wondered what sort of consciousness had been flickering inside that narrow skull prior to his arrival. Probably not much. A brain with the wattage of a lightning bug could control most of the items on the feline agenda: eat, sleep, snack, doze, dine, nap, and so on. Speaking of eating…

  He made it to the floor in two moderate bounds, and jingled toward the kitchen, conveniently signposted by the smell of lemon-scented dishwashing soap and stale coffee. The floor could do with a good sweeping, too, he thought, noting with distaste the gritty feel of tracked-in dirt on his velvet paws.

  The cat dish, tucked in a corner beside the sink cabinet, confirmed his worst fears about the inhabitants’ instinct for tackiness. Two plastic bowls were inserted into a plywood cat model, painted white, and decorated with a cartoonish cat face. If his food hadn’t been at stake, Danby would have sprayed that as an indication of his professional judgment. As it was, he summoned a regal sneer and bent down to inspect the offering. The water wasn’t fresh; there were bits of dry catfood floating in it. Did they expect him to drink that? Perhaps he ought to dump it out so that they’d take the hint. And the dry catfood hadn’t been stored in an airtight container, either. He sniffed contemptuously: the cheap brand, mostly cereal. He supposed he’d have to go out and kill something just to keep his ribs from crashing together. Better check out the counters for other options. It took considerable force to launch his bulk from floor to countertop, and for a moment he teetered on the edge of the sink fighting to regain his balance, while his bell tolled ominously, but once he righted himself he strolled onto the counter with an expression of nonchalance suggesting that his dignity had never been imperiled. He found two breakfast plates stacked in the sink. The top one was a trove of congealing egg yolk and bits of buttered toast. He finished it off, licking off every scrap of egg with his rough tongue, and thinking what a favor he was doing the people by cleaning the plate for them.

  While he was on the sink, he peeked out the kitchen window to see if he could figure out where he was. The lawn outside was thick and luxurious, and a spreading oak tree grew beside a low stone wall. Well, it wasn’t Albuquerque. Probably not California, either, considering the healthy appearance of the grass. Maybe he was still in Maryland. It certainly looked like home. Perhaps the transmigration of souls has a limited geographic range, like AM radio stations.

  After a few moments’ consideration, while he washed an offending forepaw, it occurred to Danby to look at the wall phone above the counter. The numbers made sense to him, so apparently he hadn’t lost the ability to read. Sure enough, the telephone area code was 301. He wasn’t far from where he started. Theoretically, at least, Giles was within reach. He must mull that over, from the vantage point of the window sill, where the afternoon sun was marvelously warm, and soothing… zzzzz.

  Danby awakened several hours later to a braying female voice calling out, “Tigger! Get down from there this minute! Are you glad Mommy’s home, sweetie?”

  Danby opened one eye, and regarded the woman with an insolent stare. Tigger? Was there no limit to the indignities he must bear? A fresh wave of Prell shampoo told him that the self-proclaimed mommy was chatelaine of this bourgeois bungalow. And didn’t she look the part, too, with her polyester pants suit and her cascading chins! She set a grocery bag and a stack of letters on the countertop, and held out her arms to him. “And is my snookums ready for din-din?” she cooed.

  He favored her with an extravagant yawn, followed by his most forbidding Mongol glare, but his hostility was wasted on the besotted Mrs.-he glanced down at the pile of letters-Sherrod. She continued to beam at him as if he had fawned at her feet. As it was, he was so busy studying the address on the Sherrod junk mail that he barely glanced at her. He hadn’t left town! His tail twitched triumphantly. Morning Glory Lane was not familiar to him, but he’d be willing to bet that it was a street in Sussex Garden Estates, just off the bypass. That was a couple of miles from Giles Eskeridge’s mock-Tudor monstrosity, but with a little luck and some common sense about traffic he could walk there in a couple of hours. If he cut through the fields, he might be able to score a mouse or two on the way.

  Spurred on by the thought of a fresh, tasty dinner that would beg for its life, Danby/Tigger trotted to the back door and began to meow piteously, putting his forepaws as far up the screen door as he could reach.

  “Now, Tigger!” said Mrs. Sherrod in her most arch tone. “You know perfectly well that there’s a litter box in the bathroom. You just want to get outdoors so that you can tomcat around, don’t you?” With that she began to put away groceries, humming tunelessly to herself.

  Danby fixed a venomous stare at her retreating figure, and then turned his attention back to the problem at hand. Or rather, at paw. That was just the trouble: Look, Ma, no hands! Still, he thought, there ought to be a way. Because it was warm outside, the outer door was open, leaving only the metal storm door between himself and freedom. Its latch was the straight-handled kind that you pushed down to open the door. Danby considered the factors: door handle three feet above floor, latch opens on downward pressure, one fifteen-pound cat intent upon going out. With a vertical bound that Michael Jordan would have envied, Danby catapulted himself upward and caught onto the handle, which obligingly twisted downward, as the door swung open at the weight of the feline cannonball. By the time gravity took over and returned him to the ground, he was claw-deep in scratchy, sweet-smelling grass.

  As he loped off toward the street, he could hear a plaintive voice wailing, “Ti-iii-gerrr!” It almost drowned out the jingling of that damned little bell around his neck.

  Twenty minutes later Danby was sunning himself on a rock in an abandoned field, recovering from the exertion of moving faster than a stroll. In the distance he could hear the drone of cars from the interstate, as the smell of gasoline wafted in on a gentle breeze. As he had trotted through the neighborhood, he’d read street signs, so he had a better idea of his whereabouts now. Windsor Forest, that pretentious little suburb that Giles called home, was only a few miles away, and once he crossed the interstate, he could take a shortcut through the woods. He hoped that La Sherrod wouldn’t put out an all-points bulletin for her missing kitty. He didn’t want any SPCA interruptions once he reached his destination. He ought to ditch the collar as well, he thought. He couldn’t very well pose as a stray with a little bell under his chin.

  Fortunately, the collar was loose, probably because the ruff around his head made his neck look twice as large. Once he determined that, it took only a few minutes of concentrated effort to work the collar forward with his paws until it slipped over his ears. After that, a shake of the head-jingle! jingle!-rid him of Tigger’s identity. He wondered how many pets who “just disappeared one day,” had acquired new identities and gone off on more pressing business.

  He managed to reach the bypass before five o’clock, thus avoiding the commuter traffic of rush hour. Since he understood automobiles, it was a relatively simple matter for Danby to cross the highway during a lull between cars. He didn’t see what the possums found so difficult about road crossing. Sure enough, there was a ripe gray corpse on the white line, mute testimony to the dangers of indecision on highways. He took a perfunctory sniff, but the roadkill was too far gone to interest anything except the buzzards.

  Once a
cross the road, Danby stuck to the fields, making sure that he paralleled the road that led to Windsor Forest. His attention was occasionally diverted by a flock of birds overhead, or an enticing rustle in the grass that might have been a field mouse, but he kept going. If he didn’t reach the Eskeridge house by nightfall, he would have to wait until morning to get himself noticed.

  In order to get at Giles, Danby reasoned, he would first have to charm Julie Eskeridge. He wondered if she was susceptible to needy animals. He couldn’t remember whether they had a cat or not. An unspayed female would be nice, he thought. A Siamese, perhaps, with big blue eyes and a sexy voice.

  Danby reasoned that he wouldn’t have too much trouble finding Giles’s house. He had been there often enough as a guest. Besides, the firm had designed and built several of the overwrought mansions in the spacious subdivision. Danby had once suggested that they buy Palladian windows by the gross, since every nouveau riche home-builder insisted on having a brace of them, no matter what style of house he had commissioned. Giles had not been amused by Danby’s observation. He seldom was. What Giles lacked in humor, he also lacked in scruples and moral restraint, but he compensated for these deficiencies with a highly developed instinct for making and holding on to money. While he’d lacked Danby’s talent in design and execution, he had a genius for turning up wealthy clients, and for persuading these tasteless yobbos to spend a fortune on their showpiece homes. Danby did draw the line at carving up antique Sheraton sideboards to use as bathroom sink cabinets, though. When he also drew the line at environmental crime, Giles had apparently found his conscience an expensive luxury that the firm could not afford. Hence, the shallow grave at the new construction site, and Danby’s new lease on life. It was really quite unfair of Giles, Danby reflected. They’d been friends since college, and after Danby’s parents died, he had drawn up a will leaving his share of the business to Giles. And how had Giles repaid this friendship? With the blunt end of a shovel. Danby stopped to sharpen his claws on the bark of a handy pine tree. Really, he thought, Giles deserved no mercy whatsoever. Which was just as well, because, catlike, Danby possessed none.

  The sun was low behind the surrounding pines by the time Danby arrived at the Eskeridge’s mock-Tudor home. He had been delayed en route by the scent of another cat, a neutered orange male. (Even to his color-blind eyes, an orange cat was recognizable. It might be the shade of gray, or the configuration of white at the throat and chest.) He had hunted up this fellow feline, and made considerable efforts to communicate, but as far as he could tell, there was no higher intelligence flickering behind its blank green eyes. There was no intelligence at all, as far as Danby was concerned; he’d as soon try talking to a shrub. Finally tiring of the eunuch’s unblinking stare, he’d stalked off, forgoing more social experiments in favor of his mission.

  He sat for a long time under the forsythia hedge in Giles’s front yard, studying the house for signs of life. He refused to be distracted by a cluster of sparrows cavorting on the birdbath, but he realized that unless a meal was coming soon, he would be reduced to foraging. The idea of hurling his bulk at a few ounces of twittering songbird made his scowl even more forbidding than usual. He licked a front paw and glowered at the silent house.

  After twenty minutes or so, he heard the distant hum of a car engine, and smelled gasoline fumes. Danby peered out from the hedge in time to see Julie Eskeridge’s Mercedes rounding the corner from Windsor Way. With a few hasty licks to smooth down his ruff, Danby sauntered toward the driveway just as the car pulled in. Now for the hard part: how do you impress Julie Eskeridge without a checkbook?

  He had never noticed before how much Giles’s wife resembled a giraffe. He blinked at the sight of her huge feet swinging out of the car perilously close to his nose. They were followed by two replicas of the Alaska pipeline, both encased in nylon. Better not jump up on her; one claw on the stockings, and he’d have an enemy for life. Julie was one of those people who air-kissed because she couldn’t bear to spoil her makeup. Instead of trying to attract her attention at the car (where she could have skewered him with one spike heel), Danby loped to the steps of the side porch, and began meowing piteously. As Julie approached the steps, he looked up at her with wide-eyed supplication, waiting to be admired.

  “Shoo, cat!” said Julie, nudging him aside with her foot.

  As the door slammed in his face, Danby realized that he had badly miscalculated. He had also neglected to devise a backup plan. A fine mess he was in now. It wasn’t enough that he was murdered and reassigned to cathood. Now he was also homeless.

  He was still hanging around the steps twenty minutes later when Giles came home, mainly because he couldn’t think of an alternate plan just yet. When he saw Giles’s black sports car pull up behind Julie’s Mercedes, Danby’s first impulse was to run, but then he realized that, while Giles might see him, he certainly wouldn’t recognize him as his old business partner. Besides, he was curious to see how an uncaught murderer looked. Would Giles be haggard with grief and remorse? Furtive, as he listened for police sirens in the distance?

  Giles Eskeridge was whistling. He climbed out of his car, suntanned and smiling, with his lips pursed in a cheerfully tuneless whistle. Danby trotted forward to confront his murderer with his haughtiest scowl of indignation. The reaction was not quite what he expected.

  Giles saw the huge, fluffy cat, and immediately knelt down, calling, “Here, kitty, kitty!”

  Danby looked at him as if he had been propositioned.

  “Aren’t you a beauty!” said Giles, holding out his hand to the strange cat. “I’ll bet you’re a pedigreed animal, aren’t you, fella? Are you lost, boy?”

  Much as it pained him to associate with a remorseless killer, Danby sidled over to the outstretched hand, and allowed his ears to be scratched. He reasoned that Giles’s interest in him was his one chance to gain entry to the house. It was obvious that Julie wasn’t a cat fancier. Who would have taken heartless old Giles for an animal lover? Probably similarity of temperament, Danby decided.

  He allowed himself to be picked up and carried into the house, while Giles stroked his back and told him what a pretty fellow he was. This was an indignity, but still an improvement over Giles’s behavior toward him during their last encounter. Once inside Giles called out to Julie, “Look what I’ve got, honey!”

  She came in from the kitchen, scowling. “That nasty cat!” she said. “Put him right back outside!”

  At this point Danby concentrated all his energies toward making himself purr. It was something like snoring, he decided, but it had the desired effect on his intended victim, for at once Giles made for his den and plumped down in an armchair, arranging Danby in his lap, with more petting and praise. “He’s a wonderful cat, Julie,” Giles told his wife. “I’ll bet he’s a purebred Maine coon. Probably worth a couple of hundred bucks.”

  “So are my wool carpets,” Mrs. Eskeridge replied. “So are my new sofas! And who’s going to clean up his messes?”

  That was Danby’s cue. He had already thought out the pièce de résistance in his campaign of endearment. With a trill that meant “This way, folks!,” Danby hopped off his ex-partner’s lap and trotted to the downstairs bathroom. He had used it often enough at dinner parties, and he knew that the door was left ajar. He had been saving up for this moment. With Giles and his missus watching from the doorway, Danby hopped up on the toilet seat, twitched his elegant plumed tail, and proceeded to use the toilet in the correct manner.

  He felt a strange tingling in his paws, and he longed to scratch at something and cover it up, but he ignored these urges, and basked instead in the effusive praise from his self-appointed champion. Why couldn’t Giles have been that enthusiastic over his design for the Jenner building, Danby thought resentfully. Some people’s sense of values was so warped. Meanwhile, though, he might as well savor the Eskeridges’ transports of joy over his bowel control; there weren’t too many ways for cats to demonstrate superior intelligence. He couldn�
�t quote a little Shakespeare or identify the dinner wine. Fortunately, among felines toilet training passed for genius, and even Julie was impressed with his accomplishments. After that, there was no question of Giles turning him out into the cruel world. Instead, they carried him back to the kitchen and opened a can of tuna fish for his dining pleasure. He had to eat it in a bowl on the floor, but the bowl was Royal Doulton, which was some consolation. And while he ate, he could still hear Giles in the background, raving about what a wonderful cat he was. He was in.

  “No collar, Julie. Someone must have abandoned him on the highway. What shall we call him?”

  “Varmint,” his wife suggested. She was a hard sell.

  Giles ignored her lack of enthusiasm for his newfound prodigy. “I think I’ll call him Merlin. He’s a wizard of a cat.”

  Merlin? Danby looked up with a mouthful of tuna. Oh well, he thought, Merlin and tuna were better than Tigger and cheap dry cat food. You couldn’t have everything.

  After that, he quickly became a full-fledged member of the household, with a newly purchased plastic feeding bowl, a catnip mouse toy, and another little collar with another damned bell. Danby felt the urge to bite Giles’s thumb off while he was attaching this loathsome neckpiece over his ruff, but he restrained himself. By now he was accustomed to the accompaniment of a maniacal jingling with every step he took. What was it with human beings and bells?

  Of course, that spoiled his plans for songbird hunting outdoors. He’d have to travel faster than the speed of sound to catch a sparrow now. Not that he got out much, anyhow. Giles seemed to think that he might wander off again, so he was generally careful to keep Danby housebound.