by Patricia Fry
Savannah smirked at Jeannie. “Do you really believe that?”
“Well, I…” Jeannie started. She grinned. “Yeah, I really do need to rethink things, don’t I?”
“I’d say so,” Chris agreed. “I was with an abusive man once. I know how easy it is to make excuses for them and hope things will be better. The good times are wonderful, but the other times are awful and could actually become seriously violent. It’s not healthy for you or for your children and certainly not for the cats.”
“I’ll consider that,” Jeannie said quietly. When she saw Savannah and Chris both staring at her, she said more assertively, “Really, I will seriously consider it.”
Savannah patted Jeannie’s hand. She took a deep breath and asked, “So you and Drew thought Angel was expecting when you brought her home?”
“No. Not at first. When I told Drew I wanted Angel, he vetoed the idea immediately. I’d seen her at a cat show I had gone to with a friend, and I absolutely fell in love with her. I couldn’t get Angel out of my mind, so I’m afraid I tried a little manipulation to get my way. I started talking to Drew about how much money we could make breeding Angel and selling the kittens.”
Savannah chuckled. “Speaking Drew’s language, huh?”
“Yeah,” Jeannie said, “but I didn’t expect him to get so carried away. He bought my argument and went right out and purchased the cheapest male ragdoll he could find. Then he bought Angel for me as a surprise. I was so excited.” She thought back to that time nearly eight years earlier. “Well, it appeared that she was in heat, so we left the two cats together that first night.”
“Hmmm,” Chris muttered.
“When we saw the kittens some sixty-five days later, we were shocked. Drew went storming over to see Mrs. Gallagher, and she denied that the cat was pregnant when we bought her.” Jeannie said, “Frankly, I was inclined to believe her because she was so respected in the ragdoll-cat arena, but Drew was absolutely convinced that she cheated us and lied to us. He couldn’t think of any other way it could have happened. He just knew it was her fault, and he was furious because she would not give his money back. Then she went missing, so we lost out altogether.” She frowned. “That was a strange thing to happen.”
Savannah nodded and cast a look at Chris. She asked, “Jeannie, this is a very important question. Do you recall if, around the time you bought Angel, you ever saw an orange cat in your neighborhood?”
“Oh,” Jeannie said. “That’s an odd question.” When she could see that Savannah was waiting for an answer, she said, “I’m trying to remember.” She started to shake her head, then said, “Wait. Yes, I do remember a large orange cat that would come very occasionally and sit on our back fence. I had bird feeders out there for a while, but Drew made me take them down. He doesn’t like birds and didn’t want that cat in our yard, either.” She smiled. “That big old guy would come and watch the birds. I never saw him take one.” She looked at Savannah. “He belongs to the people behind us. Shari catches the school bus with their little girl.”
“So they still live there behind you?” Chris asked.
“Yes. And I’m pretty sure they still have the cat.” She smiled. “He sometimes follows their daughter, Selene, to the bus stop.”
“Interesting,” Savannah said, looking at Chris.
Chris nodded, then asked Jeannie, “So is there any way—any chance at all—that Angel could have gotten out and hooked up with that orange cat or another tom who happened to be around your house after you got Angel—when she was in heat?”
“Oh, let’s see, I don’t recall. Wait, there was one morning when Drew was ranting about something. I was pregnant with Shari, as matter of fact, and not feeling well. He accused me of leaving the doggie door unlocked, and he was pretty sure something came in and ate Angel’s food and used her litter box. That was shortly after we got her—like a few days.”
“She stayed in the garage?” Chris asked.
Jeannie sighed. “Yes, it took Drew a while to allow cats in the house, and then it was just for short periods of time. I often brought them inside when he wasn’t home.”
“So do you think the orange cat came in that night and maybe bred with Angel?” Savannah asked.
“Or, Angel could have gone out,” Chris said, “if the doggie door was open.”
Oh!” Jeannie said. “I never thought of that. Gosh, no! It never occurred to me. Drew was so insistent that she was pregnant when we got her.” She gasped. “Do you think a stray cat from the neighborhood got to Angel?”
“It’s quite possible,” Savannah said. She stood up. “Jeannie, thank you so much for your time.”
Jeannie chuckled. “What else do I have these days but time?”
Savannah squeezed her arm. “Well, maybe that will change here very soon.”
She clapped her hands together quietly. “Wouldn’t that be—oh, I can’t tell you how much I miss my children.”
“I can guess, “Savannah said. “I have two little ones and I find it very hard to be away from them.”
Jeannie smiled.
Savannah started to turn away, then asked, “What’s the name of the people who have that orange cat?”
“Sy and Kim Swanson,” Jeannie said. “Kim works from home now, so she’s there most of the time.”
Savannah nodded. “Great. Thanks so much. I may have more questions once I start writing the book, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course not,” Jeannie said. “By then you can call me on my cell phone, or we can email back and forth.”
Savannah hugged her and turned to walk away. Chris followed, waving. She winked.
“Hope to see you on the outside soon.”
****
“I’m excited,” Savannah said, as she and Chris headed toward Jeannie’s neighborhood. “Directly behind them,” she recited, driving along the street and looking at the addresses.
“There!” Chris said. “I can see that big tree in the Gerard’s backyard.” She pointed. “See it there? This must be it. Looks like someone’s home. Did you call ahead?”
“No,” Savannah said. “Jeannie couldn’t remember the number, and I thought we’d just take a chance and…” She pointed. “Hey look. There’s an orange cat in the window. Oh my gosh, this is too cool.” She parked the car and opened the door. “Come on.”
“Right behind you,” Chris said.
Savannah pushed the doorbell, and the women waited.
“I hear someone inside,” Chris said. “Push it again.”
Savannah did and still no one answered, so she knocked and almost immediately the door opened. “Mrs. Swanson?” Savannah asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m Savannah Ivey and this is Chris Tomlinson. We’re friends of Jeannie Gerard.”
“Oh?” Kim Swanson said. “How is she? Is she still…”
Savannah nodded. “Yes, she’s still there, but she could be coming home real soon.”
“I sure hope so. That poor woman... That just shouldn’t have happened. I don’t believe…” she looked at Savannah and Chris and asked, “So how can I help you?”
“It’s rather a strange issue. We’d like to come in and talk to you about your cat—that orange cat we saw in the window just now.”
“In the window?” she said. She took a step back into the room and looked toward the window, saying, “Oh, that’s Rusty. We also have Red and Orange Juice—we call him Juice.”
“Three orange cats?” Chris confirmed.
Kim nodded. “Yes.” She frowned. “Uh-oh, what did they do? Do you live around here? Have they visited you?”
“No,” Savannah said. “But I wonder if one of them visited Jeannie’s ragdoll cat, Angel.”
“What? When? Has she been hurt or something?” Kim asked.
“No,” Savannah said. “Can we come in and explain, please?”
“Actually, I am busy, but I’m also curious. I’d like to know what this is all about. Please do come in.” She stopped and asked, “Y
ou aren’t planning to sue us for something the cats did, are you? If you’re looking for something of yours, I can show you what’s in the closet.”
“Closet?” Savannah asked, puzzled.
“Well, come in. Please, sit down,” Kim invited. “Okay, what’s this all about? What have my redhead boys been up to lately?”
“It isn’t lately,” Savannah said. “It’s something that happened just about eight years ago.
Did you have any of these cats then?”
Kim nodded. “Just Rusty. He was our first. We got him as a kitten before our son was born ten years ago. The other two didn’t come into our lives until more recently.”
“Okay, then it’s Rusty we want to focus on,” Savannah said. “So that’s Rusty on the back of the couch?”
Kim nodded. “Good-looking, isn’t he?”
Savannah smiled. “Yes he is. So he was about two in the spring of 2011?”
Kim nodded.
“Was he going outside then? Are your,” she chuckled, “redhead boys inside-outside cats?”
“Yes they are. They’re all pretty adventurous.”
“Now for the big question,” Savannah said. “Are they neutered?”
“Oh yes. All of them are. We learned firsthand with Rusty about the dangers for unneutered males running free. He came home twice with an abscess. It’s expensive to take a cat to the vet.”
“Yes,” Savannah said. “And not a good experience for the cat. So when did you have Rusty neutered. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” she said. “Right after his second birthday.” She chuckled. “My husband didn’t want him to have to go through that surgery on his birthday.”
Savannah and Chris smiled. Savannah said, “So, he was an intact male allowed to go outside? And when is his birthday?”
“March twentieth 2009.”
“And you had the surgery shortly after that date in 2011?”
“Yes. Why?” she asked bewildered. “Why are you asking me all this?”
Savannah flashed a look at Chris. “Well, it could be that your cat is my cat’s father.”
Kim frowned. “So you are here to sue me—are you preparing a paternity suit?”
“No,” Savannah said, laughing. “I’m actually eagerly seeking my cat’s sire—you know, doing a sort of genealogical search.”
“Well, I’ve never heard of such a thing.” Kim fidgeted in her seat for a moment not knowing what to say, when suddenly she jumped up and ran toward the hallway. “No, Rusty, darn it. Where did you find that?” She picked something up off the floor and quickly tucked it under a pillow on an overstuffed sofa.
“Was that what I think it was?” Savannah asked, laughing.
“Well, I’d rather not mention it,” Kim said, “because it is rather unmentionable.”
Savannah and Chris both laughed. They did a high five.
“What was that about?” Kim asked, confused.
“He’s a klepto?” Savannah asked. “You mentioned a closet—do you have a closet of things he’s dragged home?”
Kim nodded shamefully. “Yes, so you are a neighbor. What are you missing? Do you want to take a look and see what he might have stolen from your place?”
“I’d love to take a look, but I don’t think he has anything of mine. I live up north. I’m staying at my mom’s house on the other side of the freeway.”
Kim looked puzzled. “Then what brought you here? How could he be the father of your cat?”
“Well, I used to live here in LA, and I found my cat, Rags, at a pet store when he was a kitten. He’s almost eight years old, and he’s such a unique cat that I decided to go in search of his family.”
“No kidding?” Kim said. She leaned forward. “This is fascinating. So how’s the search going, may I ask? How would one conduct a search like that?”
“It’s been interesting,” Chris said.
Savannah nodded. “Most definitely. We’ve found two of his siblings, would you believe, and his mother.”
“His mother? Kim questioned. She wondered out loud, “So if Rusty’s the father of your cat, who in the heck is the mother?” She winced. “It must be someone who has lived in this neighborhood for eight years.”
“That’s right,” Savannah said. “His mother is Angel.”
“Angel?” Kim questioned. “Oh my gosh, that beautiful ragdoll of Jeannie’s? I love that cat. My Rusty got to her? But how? They keep her indoors.”
“Well, it’s possible that Rusty found the door open into her boudoir one night, and they had a little rendezvous. The Gerards had also bred her—or thought they’d bred her—to another ragdoll, but when the litter came out all colors of the rainbow, they knew that another male cat was involved.”
“So the kittens were orange tabbies?” Kim asked.
Savannah shook her head, a calico, a couple of cats that look like the mother, and Rags,” she said, showing a picture from her phone.
“Oh?” Kim said, putting her hand over her mouth. “But he doesn’t look anything like Rusty or Angel. So how could that be?” She shook her head. “Ladies, I think maybe you’ve made a mistake. There are other male cats in the neighborhood. In fact, I remember seeing a cat marked pretty much like that one, only he was black and white.”
“I’m a specialist in cat DNA,” Chris said, “and I happen to know that the most likely sire for this litter, based on the colors—for at least Rags and maybe the calico—is an orange cat. We can determine if it’s your orange cat by running a DNA test on him.”
“Oh,” Kim said, “well, I’m not sure I want to do that. What would it entail?”
“I would take a little saliva from his mouth and deliver it to a lab to find out if it matches the markers in Rags’s DNA.”
Kim sat quietly, absorbing what she’d been told, then asked suspiciously, “After that, then what?”
“Project completed!” Savannah said. “I’ll probably write a book about this interesting genealogical pursuit, and Chris may write some articles from a scientific perspective. She looked at Rusty. “So we’d love to swab him to make sure, then I’d like to know more about him. His story will be a large part of the book I want to write about cat genetics—well, actually one particular cat’s genetics.”
“Who cares?” Kim asked. “I’m a marketing expert. That’s what I do when I’m not baking cookies for my six-year-old’s class or schlepping my eight-year-old to soccer practice.” She explained, “There has to be an audience or an end user when something goes to market.”
“Oh she has a following,” Chris said. “Or I should say, the cat does.”
“Really?” Kim said. “So he’s one of those YouTube stars?”
“No,” Savannah said, “but he is the star of a documentary that features his work with the local police department, and he’s the main character in some children’s books. I’ve also written his memoirs, and I’m working on a sequel to that book. Rags has an agent who arranges book signings and other events where we promote the books.”
Kim sat wide-eyed. “A documentary? He works with law enforcement?”
Savannah nodded. “And he’s a major klepto. One of the things I wanted to find out through this research into Rags’s family is whether there are other klepto cats in his lineage. I’ve often wondered if this is a learned trait, or if it could be hereditary and why. It appears it’s possibly in the genes, but how and why, I don’t know yet. I guess we’ll have to do more research. I can tell you that two of his sisters are sort of klepto—they have some traits similar to Rags, but not as developed. Both of them are inside-only cats.”
Kim shook her head and muttered, “So Rusty dated Angel. I have to say he has good taste.”
“Well, she didn’t do so badly for herself, either.” Savannah stood up. “I’d love to see the closet you mentioned, if you don’t mind. And maybe get a few pictures of him in it or with some of his treasures.”
Kim laughed. “Treasures. That’s what we call that stuff too. So, Savannah, what do you
do with the things Rags takes? How do you get it back to the owners? I have no idea who most of this stuff belongs to, but I can’t just throw it away.”
Savannah looped her arm in Kim’s. “Here’s what I used to do, when Rags was terrorizing the neighborhood. On weekends, I’d put him in a wagon, along with the things he’d brought home that week, and go around the neighborhood trying to find the owners.”
“Great idea!” Kim exclaimed. She called out, “Come on, Rusty, let’s go show the ladies your loot.”
The cat wandered in from the kitchen, and trotted past the women down a hallway, leading them into a room and to the closet.
Chris asked, “He understands you?”
“He seems to,” Kim said. “He responds to many things I say to him.”
“It’s mind talk,” Savannah said quietly. When Kim looked at her curiously, she explained, “He sees your mind pictures. That’s what he’s reacting to.”
“Really?” Kim said. “I had no idea. Wow, this has been very enlightening. Do you think we could meet your cat, Rags—his son? Oh my gosh, his son. This is so wild!”
Savannah looked at her watch, then glanced at Chris. “You know, this isn’t too far out of our way; why don’t we go get Rags and load up the car and we’ll swing by here before we hit the freeway toward home.”
“Oh, would you?” Kim said. “That would be awesome.” She ruffled Rusty’s fur. “Wouldn’t it, old boy?”
****
“It’s good to have you home,” Michael said after dinner that night. “You must be tired. You had a long drive.”
“And a full morning before we left LA,” Savannah said.
“So it was a successful trip?” Gladys asked. “Did you get the answers you’d hoped for?”
Savannah nodded and snuggled with Teddy, who had climbed up into her lap. “Yes. I think we did. It was actually hard to leave LA this morning and it was hard to leave Chris in San Francisco. There’s more we want to do. I’m still waiting to find out if Rusty is Rags’s father.”
“Well, your visit with Rags’s mother’s and his siblings’ owners sounded pretty interesting,” Michael said. “It’s quite amazing that you found those people.”