"Looks like Dad can't wait to get rid of us," Ryan said, laughing, "and have the house to himself." Mike had moved in with Clyde a day early, to get acquainted with the animals and learn their habits.
He would not, of course, learn all their habits. Joe Grey had been lectured several times about his behavior around Mike Flannery, about his tendency to tease and create problems-about what would happen to him if he made trouble.
Shutting the door behind them, Clyde dropped Joe on the bed, and he and Charlie and Ryan sat down at the wicker card table before the window. Kit slipped from Charlie's shoulder to the table, and Joe leaped up to join her. Both cats looked nervous and wrung out.
"Dulcie's fine," Charlie repeated. "She and Wilma are…doing a favor for a friend."
"What friend?" Clyde said suspiciously. He hadn't seen Wilma leave the crowded house.
"A cat," Charlie said. "One of the wild band. He came to me tonight at the ranch; I was just ready to leave, and there was Willow hiding at the back of the barn, crouched and frightened. She…they…" She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
Clyde reached for the box of tissues from the desk, surprised to see Charlie cry. Charlie never cried. She seemed surprised herself.
"They've left the ruins," Kit interrupted, "Willow's clowder…They're going back with the wild band, there was a terrible battle and Cotton and Coyote killed Stone Eye, and the whole band is free again, Cotton and Coyote will rule now but Sage was hurt bad…" Kit was so worked up she was shifting from paw to paw. "…wounded and bleeding and in pain and Willow took him to Charlie and Charlie doctored him and then took him and Willow to Dr. Firetti and he-"
"He had to operate," Charlie cut in. Kit could run on. "Firetti needed blood." She looked intently at Clyde. "He said it had to be special blood. From a special kind of cat."
That got Clyde 's attention. Beside him, Ryan was silent, her green eyes turning from Charlie, to Clyde, to the cats. Sometimes lately she felt as if she'd been dropped into Neverland.
Charlie put her hand over Ryan's hand. "Dr. Firetti said, 'I think you know what I mean. I will need special blood.'"
"He knows," Clyde said, swallowing. "All this time? Taking Joe in for shots…? Oh, my God."
"He's known since he was a boy," Kit interrupted, "and his father who was the vet before him knew, someone brought speaking cats here from Wales and started to sell them and the cats hadn't agreed to that and they escaped and that was the beginning of our clowder and…"
Listening to Kit's high-speed monologue, Ryan felt seriously unbalanced. She was barely used to Joe's acerbic comments, was still startled every time the tomcat spoke to her-was barely used to the fact that the cats could talk, and now here was Kit rattling on at a speed that left her giddy.
"And shaved our front legs," Kit was saying, thrusting out her own naked forearm for all to see, "and stuck needles right in under our skin into our veins and drew out so much blood I felt weak and fainty and then Dr. Firetti gave us broth and custard and roast beef that Mrs. Firetti sent over and then Wilma brought us chicken soup and party food and we felt stronger," she said, sucking in a breath, "but our poor fur, Joe's beautiful silver coat and my dear black-and-brown fur that I groom every day all spoiled and our skin all naked and cold and will it ever grow back again?"
"It's only a small shaved spot," Charlie said softly, taking Kit in her arms.
Ryan, with a sense of walking on quicksand, reached to gently examine Kit's shaved forearm, the dark veins showing boldly beneath the paper-thin skin. "I've had dogs shaved like this," she told Kit. "It doesn't take long to grow back. A few days, it will already be bristly. But how is Sage? How is the patient?"
Clyde put his arm around Ryan, hugging her. She was so cool, was fitting right in with this madness.
"He's doing fine," Charlie said. "Wilma's up there with Dulcie, in case they need more blood. She'll call when he's fully awake, when they know how the surgery went. Dulcie will stay there overnight. Dr. Firetti plans to sleep in the surgery, on a cot, but he wants another speaking cat near when Sage wakes, a cat he knows, to reassure and calm him. Being inside a building, in a cage, will terrify him until he's fully conscious-a wild little animal like Sage, with no other cat to talk to…"
"We have to tell Lucinda and Pedric," Clyde said. "They-"
"I…," Kit began, crouching on Charlie's shoulder, ready to drop to the floor, ready to race through the house searching for her humans, to be the first to tell them. Hastily Charlie grabbed her and held her securely.
"I'll find them, Kit," Charlie said. "You stay here. You can't talk to them out there." Setting Kit firmly on the table and giving her a threatening look, Charlie went in search of the Greenlaws. Behind her, Kit fidgeted. Clyde and Ryan rose to follow, Clyde promising to bring the cats a plate of party food.
"Heavy on the shrimp," Joe said, "and the ribs."
"And some of those little quiches," Kit said, reluctantly settling down. "Nice and fresh from the oven."
Clyde gave the two a long look, then moved down the hall with Ryan, shutting the door behind them, Ryan pressing her fist to her mouth to keep from collapsing into uncontrolled laughter.
"Am I dreaming?" she asked him softly. "Am I making this up? Have you lured me into some alternate world?"
He paused in the hall, drawing her close and kissing her. "Does that feel made up? If you think you're dreaming, come on upstairs…"
She laughed and kissed him back, then slipped out of his arms and headed back to the party, holding his hand. But all the rest of that evening she wasn't really certain they hadn't slipped, together, through Alice 's looking glass or through some other innocent-seeming portal into a startling new universe. The kaleidoscopic events, since the morning that Joe Grey had spoken to her for the first time-Christmas morning, the morning Clyde proposed to her-had left her waking suddenly in the night laughing out loud and then seriously questioning her sanity.
But then she thought, trying to steady herself, Tomorrow we'll be married, and that's real. How many women marry, for life, into the family of a talking cat?
8
CHARLIE FOUND LUCINDA in the kitchen setting out a plate of homemade cookies on one side of the round table that was loaded with party food. The tall, older woman was so thin that when Charlie put her arm around her, she could feel every bone-but bone covered in lean muscle. Even at eighty-some, Lucinda Greenlaw was healthy and strong; she did most of her own housework and walked several miles a day. "I need to talk with you," Charlie said softly.
Lucinda looked at her, startled.
"Nothing bad," Charlie breathed, "only private. Kit will tell it later, but she's-"
Lucinda laughed. "So impetuous you can't get in a word. Come on, Pedric's in the laundry." And Lucinda headed across the kitchen, away from the crowd. Charlie, following her, heard through a tangle of laughter Dallas 's raised and angry voice from the living room and Mike's sharp retort.
What was that about? Mike and Dallas never had words. Glancing across the room, she caught Ryan's eye. Ryan shook her head almost imperceptibly before she turned away.
On the closed laundry door hung a little sign: PLEASE DO NOT OPEN, which Clyde had posted to give the three household cats some semblance of quiet and privacy-none of the three liked loud parties. Two were elderly, and the younger, Snowball, had always been shy. Slipping the door open, they found Pedric sitting hunched on the bottom bunk, his head ducked beneath the upper bunk of the animals' bed, petting the three cats. Snowball lay in his lap, and Scrappy and Fluffy were snuggled in the blankets next to him. The cats had shared the two-bunk bed with the two old dogs until Barney, the golden, and then Rube, the black Lab, had passed away. Snowball was still grieving for Rube.
Against the party noise beyond the closed door, Charlie told the Greenlaws about Willow and Sage, then about John Firetti knowing the cats' secret. Neither of the two tall, thin, eighty-year-olds seemed too surprised; it took a lot to amaze Lucinda and Pedric.
"I always thought," Lucinda said, "that John Firetti acted a bit strange around Kit. When we first took her in for her shots, he looked at her for a long time without saying anything, and then he seemed to expect her to lie still and behave herself. He asked if she'd had her kitten shots, and when I told him we didn't know, that she was a stray, he asked where we'd found her," Lucinda recalled. "When we said Hellhag Hill, there was a sudden light in his eyes, a gleam of excitement, then he quickly looked down."
"But," Pedric said, "mostly it was his assuming Kit would lie still. Why would he think he could just look at her and tell her it would hurt more if she wiggled, and she would hold stone still for him? I thought at the time that it was his tone, that he had a unique understanding of a cat's nature, that his voice and inflection somehow told his patients he expected them to behave.
"But later," Pedric said, "we wondered."
"Apparently he does have a unique understanding," Lucinda said, smiling. "More understanding than I ever guessed. We did think it strange, though, that he never suggested spaying her. He never brought up the subject. And of course we didn't."
"Well," Charlie said, stroking Snowball, "looks like I'm more shaken by this than you two. I never imagined…"
But when she looked at the older couple, who had recently been through a frightening kidnapping that could have cost them their lives, who had escaped unharmed with great resourcefulness, she knew there wasn't much that would shock the Greenlaws-until she mentioned the hidden book.
When she told them more about the battle at the ruins, and described the old volume the ferals had found, Lucinda's eyes brightened with excitement. "Where is it, Charlie? What did they do with it?"
And Pedric was burning with even more excitement. "More tales of speaking cats! Do you think…Are there stories we've never heard?" Charlie could imagine the old man avidly reading those tales, and memorizing every word.