Like Michael, Walter had a soft spot for animals and had once filled his home with stray cats, injured birds, and other wounded creatures. He still put out leftover food for raccoons. After returning from the Vietnam War in 1967, animals became his refuge from the stresses and horrors of war. Animals had also helped him stay sober for thirty-eight years. When he first met Michael at AA, he told him, “Anyone who’s on the down-and-out heals himself with animals.”
Kyle sat down at the kitchen table with a tired sigh and looked around. The kitchen had a down-home coziness, pine cupboards bursting with mismatched dishes, and a line of dusty copper mugs hanging above the windows, which overlooked the backyard. The double-door fridge was covered in a mosaic of sun-faded Vote for Obama and Ready for Hillary stickers, a magnet of an American flag, with a God Bless America caption, and a frayed postcard of a yawning otter floating on his back. Above the kitchen table, pictures of Michael and his twin brother, JP, when they were seventeen years old, hung on the wall, along with photos of Elliot, a fifteen-year-old Korean American orphan whom Walter had adopted after Michael left home.
Michael walked over to the fridge and got out a can of Mountain Dew for Kyle. Then he followed Walter into the living room. The cozy room had a wood-burning stove, handcrafted wooden furniture, and worn scatter rugs. Tabor trotted in casually behind him. And then she froze in her tracks at the sight of another cat on the sofa.
Walter had a large smoky-gray blue-eyed Himalayan named Gus, who, seeing a strange cat in his house, hissed and swished his powder-puff tail. With his flat face and frowning mouth, the fluffy tom looked like a hairy little old man. Tabor scrabbled up Michael’s leg onto his shoulder, where she stared down at Gus from the safety of her perch. Gus leaped off the sofa and ran down the stairs to Walter’s bedroom, his usual hiding place.
Walter sat in a distressed, mustard-yellow recliner, with his back turned to Michael, where he had been enjoying his morning cup of Nescafé and the soothing, sorrowful tones of Johnny Cash before they had arrived.
“Are you mad at me?” Michael asked, cradling Tabor in his arms. “Have I done something wrong?”
Walter hesitated and huffed, “Well, for a start, you’ve upset Gus. I don’t hear from you for ages, and then you show up with another cat.”
“Sorry. I’ve been traveling and trying to look after the cat.”
“You could’ve picked up the phone and called me. What, have you lost the use of your hands?”
“I know. I know. You’re right . . . and I’m sorry—”
“I don’t wanna another cat,” Walter cut him short. “I’m in my retirement now.”
“But I’m not trying to dump her on you.” Over the years, Michael had rescued countless strays and taken them home to Walter’s. As a teen, he had brought home barn kittens in his pockets and named them Sassy and Kassy. It was Walter who taught Michael how to raise cats, and Sassy and Kassy had grown into huge, happy adults.
“When Gus dies, I’ll bury him in the yard next to Sassy and Kassy, and that’ll be my last cat.”
Gus, whom Walter sometimes called “my old buddy,” was now a skittish thirteen-year-old. Michael had found him, too, one summer twelve years ago. Walter had also adopted and fed a feral, outdoor cat, a massive tom he named Michael who, once arriving in Walter’s backyard, never left. He would come by the back steps outside the kitchen door for his twice-daily takeouts, though he preferred to sleep under the porch or a bush.
“I swear, we’re just visiting.”
“I don’t want that cat upsetting Gus,” Walter went on. “He hates change and gets easily upset by just about everything.”
“But Tabor’s really laid-back, and she gets along with other cats.”
“I don’t care,” Walter said in a voice as dry as dust. “When you have an animal, I don’t care whether it’s a dog, cat, parrot, or bear; it’s a real commitment.”
“I know,” Michael said. “And I’m trying.”
Kyle appeared in the doorway. “It’s true,” he said, trying to stick up for his friend. “Michael takes good care of her. You should’ve seen Tabor when he found her.”
Walter eased up. “I know Michael has a soft spot in his heart for cats. We had cats and kittens running around the house everywhere. Michael was in seventh heaven. He’d stand out here in the backyard and toss ’em on the roof of the garage, and they’d turn around and jump down on him. It was a circus out there.
“Anyhow, I got Gus in the house. He’s an old man now, and I don’t want to take any chances. We better take that cat to the vet first thing. There’s no telling what mites, ticks, and diseases she might’ve picked up on your travels.”
“She’s fine,” Michael protested. “Tabor doesn’t have any diseases.”
“I don’t want Gus catching any diseases,” Walter shot back, as barbed as a scorpion. “He’s old and he’s fragile.”
“But Tabor’s perfectly healthy.”
“You’re making a mountain out of a molehill,” he said firmly. “She’s gotta go to the vet.”
“Okay,” Michael agreed, before wandering back into the kitchen with Kyle. There was no arguing with Walter.
Chapter 20
Portland: A Summer Storm and Full Moon
It was nighttime, and storm clouds were gathering over the rooftops of Northwest Portland. A flash of lightning streaked across the sky. Beneath a garish Tiffany ceiling lamp in a neon-lit parlor, a small, bent old lady with coiffed white hair sat on a plastic-lined armchair as if it were a throne. This was Madeleine, a psychic who had a reputation for finding lost animals, at least according to her ad in the back of Cat Fancy magazine. Blue light filtered through her storefront window from the giant neon hand that advertised her tarot reading and other otherworldly services. The parlor walls were lined with gilt-framed paintings of saints, and every surface was covered with crystals, Celtic runes, and the clutter of mysticism and spirituality.
Ron perched on a couch across from Madeleine, a small card table between them. Evan had accompanied him but gone outside for a moment. Ron told Madeleine about Mata and that on the last morning he’d seen her, she’d sat on the kitchen counter and watched him scramble eggs, then gone outside to sit on the porch to catch some sun.
“Some days I just can’t stop crying,” he said, glancing out the big window, seeing the rain start to pelt down and people rushing home to their lives. “The hardest part is dealing with the lack of closure. I can’t move on.”
Madeleine pointed at the window to the shadowy trees outside. “You see how the moon is barely visible? People and animals can be like that, too, hidden behind others.”
“Hidden?” Ron looked confused. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying sometimes the clues are all around us, in dreams or in our instincts, for example.”
Evan came back inside and sat beside Ron. He’d gone outside because he needed to laugh after noticing the psychic’s troweled-on makeup, which looked as if it had been flung on with a spoon, and at the ridiculousness of it all. When Ron had asked him to come along on this visit, he’d said, “You need a therapist, not a psychic. The spirit world is a big fat lie.”
Madeleine stared intently at Ron. “I can see this unresolved grief is hurting your soul.”
“Yeah, it is,” he said, staring at a painting of the Sacred Heart Christ with his chest bursting with flames. He felt it, too, that burning of a broken heart. “The pain just won’t go away.”
“You have to let yourself heal,” she said in low, calming voice. She paused and, with her eyes fixed on Ron, asked, “What is your psychic feeling about your lost cat?”
“That’s what he’s paying you for,” Evan muttered under his breath.
Ron shot him an annoyed glance. “I don’t know. I’m hoping that some little old lady found her and Mata’s bringing joy to someone else’s life, but I know there are bad people out there who do terrible things to animals. Ever since I spoke to Rachel, the psychic who told me that Mata
was dead, I can’t think of anything else.”
“A psychic told you your cat was dead?” she said, frowning.
“The way she described heaven was straight out of Ezekiel and Revelation and exactly as I imagined it: a tropical paradise.”
“So she said your dead cat has gone to a tropical island?”
“Yup, to this tropical paradise where people and animals alike are happy. It even says in the Bible, ‘God loves his animals and you’ll be with your animals in heaven.’ ” Ron stopped and took a deep breath. “I just need to know if Mata’s still alive.”
Madeleine clasped her hands over her chest. “I know deep in my bones that your cat’s not dead.” She laid a weathered deck of tarot cards on the little card table between them. “I want you to shuffle the deck and choose the first card that presents itself to you.”
Ron shuffled the deck and chose a card. When Madeleine turned it over, Ron saw that it was the Hanged Man, and the color drained from his face. “Oh, God, does that mean she’s been strangled?”
“This card is telling you you’re at a crossroads. You have to let go, and the angels will help you. Everything you release will either be washed away from you or returned to you, healed.
“Now, at this point in a session, people usually give me pictures of their missing pet, and I look into their pets’ eyes to connect with them and try to find out where they are.”
Ron pulled a dog-eared snapshot from his wallet and handed it to her. “Here’s a picture of Mata.”
Madeleine leaned across the table, sparkling like a gaudy chandelier in her multicolored jewels. “With a summer storm and a full moon, there’s a lot of electricity in the air, so it should be easier to reach your cat.”
She lit the white and black candles, drew a pentagon on the dark felt cloth table in front of them, and put Mata’s photo in the circle. “Okay, I’ll tell you what I see,” she began. “I can feel that your cat’s anxious. She knows that you and her brother have been missing her.”
Closing her eyes, she traced her finger across the cat’s photograph. “I can see a cat walking through the desert. She’s not alone. It looks like there’s someone with her who’s trying to keep her out of harm’s way. She’s a long, long way from home, but she’s trying to find her way back to you.”
Chapter 21
Helena, Montana: Mysteries of a Feline Heart
On the morning of June 13, two days after their arrival in Helena, Walter drove them to the vet in his old white Subaru sedan. Kyle rode shotgun, and Michael sat slumped in the backseat with Tabor, who was pretty chill as usual, curled up on his lap, her slender forepaws stretched out, happily watching the view of sky and pines roll past.
But Michael was worried. The moment he had awakened that morning, after tossing and turning all night, he’d had a terrible intuition that he was going to lose Tabor.
As they parked outside the vet, Michael caught his reflection in the side mirror. The lines around his mouth had deepened, and the bags beneath his eyes had gone black. He was starting to look like Bela Lugosi, he thought.
The Helena Veterinary Service was housed in a white-and-blue ski chalet–type building with a giant paw-print logo out front. Michael didn’t say anything about his fear to Walter or Kyle, but when they entered the vet’s office, Tabor was on edge now, too. Kyle waited in the reception area while Michael and Walter took her in to be examined.
The consultation room smelled of disinfectant. When Michael put Tabor down on the stainless-steel table, her little body tensed and she tried to jump off. Michael caught her midair, but she managed to slip out of his hands and bolt to the corner of the room, where she tried to squeeze herself into a shallow open drawer of a medicine cabinet.
The vet, a soft-spoken man with thinning, gray-flecked blond hair, chubby cheeks, and nerdy glasses, carefully pulled her out of the drawer. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” he said, patting her reassuringly. “It’s okay.”
Dr. Bruce Armstrong had been Walter’s vet for more than fifteen years. Before settling in Montana to set up his own practice, he had worked all over the world helping animals, from a wildlife refuge in California to relief work in Saudi Arabia. He also had a small horse ranch outside of Helena, with his wife, where they grew hay and alfalfa.
Dr. Armstrong asked about Tabor’s history, and Michael told him about finding her under a table on the street in the rain, living on the beach, and escaping a cattle stampede. The vet smiled as he continued to pet Mata on the table.
“Sounds like she’s had quite an adventure.” Addressing the cat, his voice dropped to a whisper. “Let’s take a look at you, young lady, and make sure you’re doing okay.”
He felt Tabor’s joints and put a small stethoscope to her heart. “She’s in great shape. You’ve obviously taken very good care of her,” he said, and pried her mouth open to look at her teeth. “I’d say she’s between two and four years old.” Then he placed her on the scale. His brow furrowed. “She’s twelve pounds, a little overweight for her frame.”
Michael laughed. “Yup, she’s a little chunky,” he said, stroking her head. “That’s because she’s lazy and wants to be carried everywhere. But I figured a little extra weight couldn’t hurt her, since we live outside.”
“We should get her vaccines all caught up,” Walter said.
Dr. Armstrong nodded and whisked her off the table to be vaccinated in the back room. Slung over the vet’s shoulder, Tabor shot Michael a look of betrayal.
They were in the back room for what seemed like eternity to Michael. He sensed something was wrong.
When Dr. Armstrong reemerged with Tabor in his arms, he had an odd expression on his face. “She’s now up to date with her shots,” he said, putting her back on the exam table between them. “But there’s another issue.”
“Is she okay?” Michael asked, immediately alarmed.
“She has a microchip.”
“Heck, I knew it,” Walter said, grinning.
Michael stood there, thunderstruck. “A chip?”
“Yes, she has an owner,” Dr. Armstrong said. “She was reported missing in Portland in September 2012.”
Michael felt his heart shatter. His eyes welled up, and he excused himself and walked out of the exam room, through the reception and out the front door. He was heartbroken and angry at the same time. He needed to smoke a cigarette and pull himself together.
When Kyle saw Michael sweeping through the waiting area, he knew something was wrong, too, and thought, Oh no, Michael’s gonna lose Tabor.
Walter put Tabor back in her carrier and looked at the vet. “Mike’s homeless, and it’s tough. He’s gotten very attached to the cat.”
Dr. Armstrong wrote down the telephone numbers associated with the identification chip and gave them to Walter. Then he asked Walter if he could tell the local paper about Michael and Tabor’s journey, as it may inspire more people to microchip their pets. Walter thought it might also help Michael to come to terms with losing Tabor to tell their story of traveling together.
Then Walter took Tabor out to rejoin Michael and Kyle and take them home.
Shortly after they left the clinic, the veterinary technician, Maddie Parker, who had scanned Tabor and called the microchip company after finding the chip, called the number for her owner and left a message on Ron Buss’s answering machine that the Helena Veterinary clinic wanted to speak to him.
Chapter 22
Astral Weeks
The water was so clear you could actually see fish and turtles swimming beneath the surface. Mata was propped up beside Ron on the wooden seat of a little rowboat, watching the water rippling. Suddenly she grew anxious. She flashed her teeth, hissed and screeched, then scrambled down to hide under Ron’s legs. Peering over the boat’s edge, Ron could see a dark, bulky shadow. As they drifted toward the shore, he saw that it was a crocodile gliding in the reeds and shallows.
Ron screamed, gripping the cat.
Ron jolted awake out of his scary dream. The s
un was streaming through his bedroom windows through the half-open blinds. He lay motionless for a while, blinking sleepily at the streaky light coming in and splashing across the walls. Then he got up and made his way to the kitchen to give the cats breakfast. Creto and Jim sat on the counter next to a glass bowl overflowing with oranges, peaches, and grapefruits, meowing impatiently.
After they were fed, Ron made himself a peach-and-orange smoothie and put on the radio, sending the sounds of the ’60s into the street. Settling into the breakfast nook, Ron sat in a daze listening to the Easybeats’ catchy 1966 mod classic “Friday on My Mind.” Then, straining to remember his dream, he called Miguel, out on the coast.
“I always see Mata by the water and in the woods,” he said to Miguel, telling him about his nightmare. “I still sense she’s alive, either lost or someone has her. Do you think he might’ve drowned her and then buried her in the woods by the river—”
“Look, you need to stop analyzing dreams,” said Miguel curtly. “It means nothing.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Ron said, to placate his friend. He was exhausting his friends’ sympathy. “I have a million things to do this morning. I need to food shop, water the garden . . . and I need to start thinking about what to pack.”
Ron had been invited to the memorial for a friend in Texas the next weekend. The previous summer he’d befriended some rock ’n’ roll guys in a group called Ministry from Austin, Texas, through his guitar business. A multiplatinum-selling ’90s industrial-metal band, many of their members had been well-known for their life of excess, hardcore drinking and drugging, so it wasn’t a surprise when their guitar player collapsed onstage and died of a heart attack at the age of forty-seven. Six months later, the surviving band members were throwing a party to celebrate his life.
Ron got off the phone, slipped a Ministry CD into the kitchen stereo, propped open the back door with a cast-iron statue of a Sphinx, and went out into the backyard. Creto and Jim were already splayed out on top of the garage, sunbathing. Gordon, his neighbor Ann’s cat, a tough-looking, yellow-eyed black tom, was up there with them—the garage rooftop was like a tomcat sun-worshippers social-club hub. Ron unraveled the garden hose as Ministry’s “Jesus Built My Hotrod” blasted out of the kitchen.
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