But then as she grew older, the wonder of that life began to fill her dreams. She would wake thinking about bright store windows and high rooftops, and she began to long for that world. It was not many months until she found the courage to leave the clowder and make her way down the hills and into the village again. The time was early spring. She had gone where there were tall gardens to play in, in the yards of humans. She had let a human discover her, she had made up to the woman shamelessly, rolling over and purring.
She had lived with that human and then with another, lived among humans in half a dozen houses; but each time she found a home, someone would move or go away for many days and forget to feed her. Then another couple “took her in,” as they called it. The woman was nice, but then the man had moved away, and then the woman left, too. Left her there alone and, heartbroken, she had crept away from that house and left the village and returned to the dull but safe life of the clowder, to a world without fickle humans.
But she knew humans weren’t all alike, and soon she again missed that life. She missed the places of humans, she missed the excitement and color and always something new to intrigue her. Sage didn’t like her to miss those things. He’d told her to forget the human world, just as he’d told the tortoiseshell cat to forget it. Sage called the human world wicked, he wanted her to forget her dreams, he said a cat had no business with dreams. This morning when he saw her watching Kit, he’d said she must stay away from those village cats. He said she must obey him, and they’d argued and fought. She said she wasn’t his slave, and at last he’d stalked away scowling, his ears back, turning to look at her coldly. That was when she’d fled from him, had raced down the hills to an abandoned barn she knew of. She’d stayed there prowling the empty barn and lashing her tail, wishing the tortoiseshell would find her.
But the barn and the hills had remained empty. She’d stayed there all day. She’d had a nice nap and then caught four fat mice. She was royally feasting on mouse when a yellow car came bumping down the narrow road that wound through the hills, and a dark-haired man and a beautiful, dark-haired woman got out to wander through the barn and outbuildings. She’d hidden from them, but she’d seen another man following them; he stopped his car high above them, beneath thick trees, and sat looking. He was a mean-faced man; he watched the couple the way a coyote watches a little cat.
When the couple left at last in the yellow car, she was sure they didn’t know he was there in the trees above them, or that again he followed them.
She’d sat for a long time in the old barn, licking up the last of the mice and feeling uneasy, wondering what that was all about. And then when she’d scrambled up onto the roof of the barn, she’d seen the yellow car parked farther down the hills. She didn’t see the white car, but she looked at the big pile of dirt in that yard and the blue blanket over the roof and she was so interested and curious that she’d trotted down to have a look.
The time was late afternoon. She knew it would be dark when she got home and Sage would be angry, and she didn’t care. She’d sat concealed in the tall grass thinking that maybe she wouldn’t go home at all. There was a narrow canyon between the hill she was on and the place where the house stood, and another hill rose to its right, dense with heavy, dark trees. The man and woman had gotten out of the yellow car and were talking to a redheaded man. She was watching them when she glanced up the hill and saw the white car hidden there among the trees. The mean-faced man had gotten out and stood watching them in a way that made her fur crawl.
It was much later when the yellow car went away. She stayed where she was, waiting and watching as that man came down the hill and walked around the house and looked in, then went in the garage. He was in there for a long time, it was becoming dusk and the fog was settling in over the hills and still he hadn’t come out. As she looked down the hill again, past the house, she saw a tall, thin couple coming up the road-and there was Kit, racing ahead of them.
She watched as the couple sat down on the stone wall and the tortoiseshell leaped up beside them. Kit stood very still, looking up the hills, looking straight at her. Tansy reared up, too, so Kit would see her. What would it hurt to go down there? What harm to sniff noses, and talk a little? What harm would that do? She and Kit looked through the fog at each other, and looked and looked, and suddenly they were running, Kit streaking up the hill and Tansy pelting down, both cats running so fast their hind paws crossed beneath their front paws like racing rabbits.
They met nearly head-on, skidding to a stop in the wet grass of the steep hill. At first, neither spoke. Kit’s yellow eyes were wide, and she was laughing; they both were laughing, and Tansy knew she’d found a friend.
17
“I AM TANSY. YOU are Sage’s friend,” the scruffy cat said smartly. “Oh, my. You would have been his mate but you wouldn’t have him. You jilted him!”
“Where did you learn that word?” Kit said, amused. “Jilt” was not a word she’d ever heard among the clowder. The stranger was the color of bleached straw, her inch-long coat standing out every which way and tangled with seeds and streaks of mud from the ditches.
“I learned that from humans, when I was a kitten, and later when I ran away from the clowder and came back to live in the village.”
“You ran away from the clowder?” Kit knew no other speaking feral besides herself who had abandoned the rule of the clowder and gone to live among humans.
“I wanted music,” said the scruffy cat. “I wanted humans to talk to me-though I never talked back. I wanted to curl up before a nice warm fire. I miss that life, I want catnip mice and kind hands, soft blankets and magical stories…”
Kit laughed at her but she knew too well that longing, and she could feel a purr bubbling up.
“I was a kitten in the village until a man put me in a box and dumped me in the hills and left me there to die. I nearly starved. Even after I clawed my way out, I was too little to hunt much. But then Willow found me and she washed me and caught mice for me, and I went to live with the clowder. But when winter was over and I got bigger and spring came, I longed for human places, I…” Tansy looked at Kit helplessly, as if she didn’t know how to describe her dreams.
Kit raised a paw, and looked away toward the village. “Come on,” she said softly. And she turned and trotted away.
The scrawny cat followed and was soon trotting beside her. As they passed the stone wall, the old couple remained very still so as not to frighten her. The last Lucinda and Pedric saw of them, the scrawny little cat was sharply silhouetted against Kit’s dark, black-and-brown elegance. Lucinda and Pedric looked at each other, and smiled, and the Greenlaws understood perfectly Kit’s flick of the ear and lashing of her tail, her silent, See you later! Don’t wait up!
But then Lucinda frowned, trying not to worry. Living with tattercoat Kit, worry was a given, they never knew what trouble she’d have her paws into. The elderly couple remained sitting on the wall, watching the two cats disappear down the hill to vanish at last among the cottage gardens as they headed into the village. What adventures the two would find, and what dangers, they didn’t want to consider. They tried to just fill up on the wonder of the moment and not let themselves think any further.