IN THE VILLAGE, Kit led the young cat along her own secret routes through narrow alleyways flanked with little shops, and then up a trellis to the rooftops. They trotted across jagged, shingled peaks and down into the dark crevices among a forest of chimneys. They stood with their paws in the roof gutters looking down at the tourists, then raced across leaning oak branches above a narrow street. They spent nearly an hour peering in through penthouse windows at couples eating supper, at ladies undressing, at children already sleeping in their beds. Tansy couldn’t get enough of the exotic world of humans that she had so missed.
As night drew down, they raced up the tiled steps of the courthouse tower to perch high above the world on its narrow balcony. If anyone were to look up and see the two little shapes crouched there, they’d wonder what kind of birds those were that had come to roost for the night. Below them, fog shrouded the cottage rooftops, so the shop lights were blurred into smeared colors along the busy streets. Through the mist, villagers and tourists headed for the little restaurants, and from the restaurants a miasma of smells was rising up: boiled shrimp, charbroiled steaks, and intriguing pasta sauces that made them lick their whiskers and that brought them down from the tower, racing down the long stairs to make their rounds of the restaurant patios. Winding among table legs and people’s feet, they paused frequently to fawn on the diners as only a cat can, smiling prettily up into the faces of strangers until they were treated to buttered lobster, rare steak, or roast chicken; and now Kit watched Tansy with increasing amusement. This waif, shy and frightened one minute, was bold as brass the next, employing spry and teasing ways until she got exactly what she wanted-Tansy was not at all as frightened and helpless as she seemed. The flip side of her nature showed Kit a skilled little freeloader. And as they left the center of the village, full of delicious treats, Tansy took the lead, scrambling to the roofs again and heading jauntily to where the village cottages climbed up into the hills.
“What?” Kit said. “Where are you going?”
“My neighborhood,” Tansy said. “I want to go there to my own street, where I lived. I want to roll in the gardens and smell the flowers. I want…That was my home once, and I want to go there.” And the small ragged cat raced away across the shingles. Kit followed, silent with amazement. They had nearly reached Tansy’s old neighborhood when Joe Grey and Dulcie appeared on a high peak and came streaking toward them. Kit stopped to wait for them. Tansy stopped, too, but she dropped into a wary crouch.
EARLIER THAT EVENING, Joe had left Dulcie on the rooftops, planning to meet again when night fell, planning on an evening of break-and-enter in the vacationers’ empty houses. Parting from his tabby lady, Joe had stood for a moment watching her trot home to her warm supper and to reassure Wilma that she was all right, that she was safe and well. One of the curses of being a speaking cat was the burden of truly understanding how their human housemates worried about them, and the resultant desire to ease their friends’ stress. This was a big responsibility for a cat, and one that Joe, in particular, found burdensome. He liked being an active part of the human world, but he also liked his freedom.
Turning for home, thinking that Clyde and Ryan were still house hunting, he expected to find an empty house where he’d have to raid the refrigerator for his own cold meal. There’d be kibble down for Snowball, he thought with disdain. He’d have to be in the last throes of starvation before he filled up on what he considered the equivalent of discarded sawdust.
But when he hit his home roof, he caught the heady aroma of browned pot roast. And when he glanced over the edge to the driveway, there stood the yellow roadster clicking away as its motor cooled. Okay, so they were home from the great house hunt. But how had they had time to cook supper when they’d been gone all day?
Then he remembered the packages of homemade pot roast that Ryan had put in the freezer. Two weeks ago, she had an amazing bout of domesticity. She’d tied on an apron and, with the same efficient dispatch as when she was building a house, she had filled their freezer with enough home-cooked pot roast, spaghetti sauce, tamale pie, lamb stew, and more of Joe’s favorites, to last at least until Christmas. The big freezer, a wedding present from Ryan’s dad, stood in the laundry room beside the bunk bed where the family pets used to sleep. Clyde ’s two dogs were gone now, as well as the two elderly cats. Only Snowball was still with them, and now Rock, of course. Both slept on a soft comforter on the couch in Clyde ’s study, leaving the laundry-room bunk as a handy place to store empty boxes and unsorted laundry.
Padding across the roof and in through the window of his rooftop tower, Joe pushed into the house through his cat door and onto a rafter, and with a long leap, he hit the desk below. He could hear their voices in some deep discussion, and hear the scrape of forks on their plates. Dropping to the floor he raced down the stairs breathing in the meaty aroma of pot roast, hoping they’d left him some. Only as he approached the kitchen did he slow. Were they arguing? Listening, he paused in the doorway.
But no, you couldn’t call it arguing. Just a heated discussion about the faults and merits of one of the houses they’d looked at-sounded like a decrepit heap that wasn’t worth firewood but that Clyde was convinced they could turn into a mansion. Lucky thing Ryan knew what she was doing, that she wouldn’t waste their money on a wreck.
Or would she? Hoping Clyde ’s wild enthusiasm hadn’t warped Ryan’s common sense, Joe padded in trying not to drool from the good smell of supper.
The Damen kitchen was large and bright with its handsome new tile work and new lighting, yet satisfyingly cozy with cushioned dining chairs and, in the far corner, crowded bookcases flanking a pair of flowered easy chairs. Long before Ryan and Clyde were married or even dating seriously, Ryan had done an extensive remodel. Besides adding the new upstairs, she had torn out the wall be tween the kitchen and the seldom-used dining room, had replastered the walls of the opened-up room and painted them a soft peach, installed Mexican-tile floors and new tile counters with hand-decorated borders. As Joe entered, Rock was snoozing in one of the easy chairs, probably worn out after a long day at the beach with Ryan’s dad.
The Weimaraner looked on enviously as Joe leaped onto his usual chair at the table. Rock wasn’t allowed to beg at the dinner table, only outside at the picnic table. It was hard for the big dog to bear, that Joe could do what he couldn’t. But then, for Rock, the whole concept of a speaking cat was hard to get used to. Life was not as simple as the young Weimaraner had, as a puppy, first imagined it to be. A speaking cat who gave him orders and was quick with the claws if he didn’t obey, and yet was a pal to cuddle up with at night, and who had taught him to track a killer, had turned out to be a special kind of friend. Rock tolerated Joe’s household privileges with a rare patience and good humor.
Ryan reached across the table, setting a plate before Joe. The big, round table was so heaped with real estate fliers and newspaper ads, and with Ryan’s scattered sketches and her notebook filled with figures, that there was barely room for the couple’s dinner plates and for the steaming casserole of pot roast and vegetables.
“What’s with the fast service?” the tomcat said.
“We heard you hit the roof,” Ryan told him.
“And charge down the stairs like a herd of buffalo,” Clyde added.
Before tucking into his supper, Joe studied the scattered papers. In his opinion, this new venture into real es tate did not bode well for the Damen household, but what did he know? He watched Clyde dig the plate of French bread out from under some fliers and pass it to Ryan, then Joe licked up his supper. He was not only starved, he was eager to meet Dulcie, half his mind on the Chapman house and the other empty houses of their neighbors.