“Treat!” he shouted, and two furry bodies rose from the basketseat of the recumbent bike. “You jokers! You think that’s funny!” he said. “You like to make a fool of anyone with only two legs!”
All three of them had their treat: roast beef from the deli. Some of it was diced and placed on two plates in the feeding station; some of it was sliced and placed on rye bread with tomatoes and horseradish. Then they all went to the gazebo.
Qwilleran stretched out on a lounge chair overlooking the bird garden, and Yum Yum landed weightlessly on his lap. Koko sat at his feet with an alert eye for movement in the bushes and an alert ear for birdsong. Soon he was chattering an obbligato or mewling a melodic phrase of his own.
Amazing! Qwilleran thought. More and more Koko’s behavior convinced him that this was no normal feline. Koko was a natural predator who was never predatory. He had never been interested in catching mice, although Yum Yum had one or two to her credit. He made buddies of crows and sang for the wrens and robins. He was a house cat who knew when the telephone was about to ring and when something bad was happening half a mile away. He put ideas in one’s head when there were problems to solve and secrets to uncover.
Furthermore, Koko had devised uncatly ways of communicating information. Long before “the commish” was implicated in the Coggin case, Koko was bleating like “a dirty old ram,” although Qwilleran had failed to read the message. Long before Phoebe’s murder, he had taken a dislike to the woodpecker with a red topknot. And now that the case was in the hands of the prosecutor, he had suddenly lost interest in red checkers, the bell with a serpent for a handle, the antique compass, and Nathanael and Rebecca.
Such musings said more about Qwilleran’s imagination than the cat’s communication skills. But where could one draw the line between coincidence and a supercat’s intelligence? Somewhere there was an answer. Qwilleran combed his moustache with his fingertips.
There was a noisy flapping of wings as seven crows landed outside the screen and Koko jumped down to greet them - in syllables not too different from their own language.
Qwilleran said to him, “Koko, you are a remarkable, enigmatic, unpredictable, and sometimes exasperating cat!”
Koko turned away from the crows and gave the man a long look before opening his jaws in a wide, unlovely yawn.