“And you humans give yourselves to it,” the black and white added, though not unkindly.
Jenny blinked, still half asleep and faint with hunger. Had she been fully awake, she might have argued. She had not so much given herself to heartbreak as she’d been taken over by it, broken into pieces, each of them aching for the whole that no longer existed. That perhaps never had.
“Are you all right?” the ginger cat asked with concern.
“You — You’re talking,” Jenny replied stupidly.
“Most animals with vocal cords do,” the black and white assured her.
“In English?”
The great ginger cat shrugged. “Language doesn’t matter. It is simply that in this place we choose to make ourselves understood.”
“This is Pappa Gatto,” the black and white explained. “He lives in the barn up the hill.”
The ginger cat inclined his head. “And you are?”
“Jenny. Jenny Myford.”
“You are welcome in our house, Jenny Myford,” Pappa Gatto said formally. “You have found favor with my children.”
As though choreographed, both cats swerved their heads at a sound that came from the ground floor.
“The gifts,” said the tuxedo cat. He turned back to Jenny. “Get dressed,” he told her. “You’ll want to see what’s arrived.”
The two cats left the room, leaving Jenny slightly dazed. She’d just held a conversation with two oversized cats. The day before, she’d seen Sasha crossing a field in the middle of a downpour. It occurred to Jenny that she was losing her mind. Still, she dressed herself and brushed out the thick tangle of her hair. It was a mercy, she reflected, that there were no mirrors in the house.
Downstairs, she found countless cats milling around two large wicker baskets. A delicate black kitten wedged her paw through the weave of the larger basket, earnestly attempting to lift the lid. Jenny knelt to help her and unpacked several smoked fish, a roasted chicken, and a thick bunch of catnip tied with twine.
“Where did all this come from?” Jenny asked.
The black and white, who seemed to have no interest in the food but sat gazing through an arched window, answered. “Many years ago we rid San Martino of a plague of rats. To this day, the people remember and thank us with their gifts.”
The little black cat on Jenny’s lap touched her arm with a paw and mewed plaintively. “What, you don’t speak English?” she asked it.
“It’s been a while since we’ve had a human live with us,” the ginger cat explained. “Many of my younger children are not experienced in talking to your kind.”
Whether or not the cats could converse in English, their desires were clear. They were rubbing against Jenny, tapping the basket with their paws, purring, meowing, doing everything but sending messages in Morse code.
“Okay,” she said. “Andiamo!” She got to her feet, the motion making her slightly dizzy, and went into the kitchen, where she took a stack of yellowed ceramic bowls from the cabinet. Using a dull knife, she divvied up the fish and chicken, then carefully portioned them out into the bowls. It was only as she set the first one down that she realized that each bowl had a name painted on it in an elaborate, cursive script.
“Aggripina,” she read aloud, and the elderly three-legged Siamese limped toward her. “Is that you?” she asked, stroking it as it began to eat. The cat purred in response, so Jenny tried a second. At the name Olivero, the tiger cat came forward, muscular shoulders rolling. Noccioula, brought the small Abyssinian; Sandro, a silvery tabby. Ruffino was a yellow torn who was missing one ear; Cipriana, a blue-gray longhair with a regal plume of a tail; Nicola, the delicate all-black; Giuseppe and Peppino, two comical striped kittens; and at the name Domenica, the wired little tortoise shell shot forward with a joyous burst of energy.
Jenny kept on naming and feeding cats until all of the bowls were in use, all of the cats contentedly feeding. All that is except Pappa Gatto and the black and white.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sure she’d gravely offended them. “I don’t have any more bowls left, and I’ve used up all the food.”
“That’s as it should be,” Pappa Gatto said gently. “We prefer to hunt. Don’t you think it’s time you ate? The second basket is for you, child.”
Jenny opened it and found a loaf of bread, still warm from the oven; a wedge of creamy white goat cheese; a bottle of Chianti; a hard summer sausage that smelled of fennel and herbs; grapes and olives and bright red tomatoes still clinging to a curl of vine. For a long, disbelieving moment she just stared at the feast in front of her.
“Eat,” Pappa Gatto said.
“Before you faint on us,” the black and white added.
She started with the grapes, progressed to the bread and cheese, then to the meat and wine. When she’d had her fill, she looked questioningly at the two large cats. “Who brought all that food? Who knows that I’m here?”
The black and white, who was again gazing out into the rain, said, “San Martino is a very small village, and our house has no doors. Did you think your presence was a secret? Everyone here knows everything.”
“Then someone must know how I can get to Florence,” Jenny said.
“Firenze is very far,” the ginger cat told her solemnly.
“Well, how long will it take me to get there? I’ve got to catch a plane back to the States.”
It soon became clear that the cats had no real understanding of either “plane” or “the States.” They’d seen and heard planes overhead but had never really connected them to people, and Jenny spent quite a while trying to explain both airplanes and nonrefundable tickets. (Pappa Gatto would later explain to the people of San Martino, “Jenny had to go to Firenze to catch her bird.”)
The cats patiently heard her out, then Pappa Gatto said, “From time to time we had young people live here and keep house for us. As you saw yesterday, it has been a while since the last. Won’t you stay? My children are already very fond of you. Little Domenica has talked of nothing else since you arrived.”
“You want me to stay and keep house for you?”
Pappa Gatto nodded. “San Martino is not such a bad place. You will see when the rain lets up.”
Aggripina, the three-legged Siamese, rubbed against Jenny’s legs, and Nicola curled up in her lap, a small oval of glossy black fur, her head cradled in Jenny’s palm.
Jenny ran a finger along the soft fuzz on Nicola’s nose. “You’re awfully sweet,” she said. “And I appreciate the invitation, but I can’t stay.”
The old Siamese’s blue eyes narrowed. “Don’t be a fool. If you go to Firenze now, you will only long for the worthless one who hurt you.”
The wine was acting on Jenny like truth serum. “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to long for him for anyway.”
“That,” the black and white said, “is a waste of your time. But if you insist, you should know that you’re safer here. Grief alters humans. It lays them open, makes them vulnerable.”
Jenny wondered if she’d somehow fallen into the middle of a feline talk show. “Excuse me,” she said, “but what makes you think you’re all such experts on—”
“We’ve observed your kind for a very long time,” the black and white answered.
Nicola woke for a second to lick Jenny’s palm, then nestled her head inside it again.
Pappa Gatto yawned, revealing very large, very sharp, pointed teeth, and making Jenny wonder just what it was he hunted. “Wait a bit,” he suggested. “You will leave here and go to Firenze when the time is appropriate. You don’t have to worry about this journey of yours.” Then he earnestly began to wash his leg, thus putting an end to the discussion.
So Jenny stayed in the house of the cats. Even years later, when the strange, dreamlike quality of the time had faded, she would never be clear on just how long it was that she stayed. The rains stopped but the skies remained gray and overcast, and so mornings were indistinguishable from afternoons, and afternoons from dusk, and the days ran into each other like watercolors.