Chapter 25.

The Cat crouched under a bush, stupefied and panting. Sirens wailed, close and unbearably closer. A long truck jounced down the dirt road, its roof lights flashing and headlights glaring. The Cat’s ears ached; the pupils of his eyes contracted to slits, but still he could hardly see; he gagged on the smoke. Turning, he plunged into the dark.

Blinded, choked, and deafened, helpless as a newborn kitten, the Cat could only hope he was stumbling in the right direction. At least his sense of touch was still working: his whiskers, his eyebrow hairs, and the pads of his feet. He felt weedy stems as he pushed them aside, then vines and bushes as he squeezed through them. Finally, stepping onto a springy surface, he sensed a clear space.

The Cat sneezed, clearing ashes from his nostrils. Now he smelled pine trees. He blinked, and his pupils widened to take in the restful dimness. But his ears were still ringing, keeping the world eerily clueless of sounds.

Looking over his shoulder, the Cat was reassured to see how far he was from the fire truck and the burning cottage. The lights flashed and the fire pulsed and jumped, but at a safe distance.

Where had he gotten to? Gazing up, the Cat saw a ragged canopy of pine and oak branch silhouettes. There was no moon. The sky above the black trees was gray, sprinkled with bits of light.

He was in the woods, then. The Cat felt a twinge of unease. He looked to one side, then the other. Dark columns of tree trunks, some larger, some smaller.

Off to his right, close to the ground, a shadow moved. Or did it? When he turned to stare, the shadows were motionless.

And what was that, to his left? Again, nothing? The Cat strained to listen for the cracking of twigs underfoot, or the rustle of a body brushing undergrowth. His ears gave him only the senseless ringing.

Then a rogue breeze, in the still woods, carried a message to his nose. It was a smell like a dog’s, a mix of meat and plants.

But this smell was not a dog’s. There was no overlay of human-connected scents, like collars or shampoo or car upholstery.

And this not-a-dog creature had one scent the Cat had never, ever smelled on a dog. He had smelled it on scat in the woods, on the first day of his second life.

The Cat froze in a crouch. Every hair on his body stood out. What he smelled now was the breath of a cat-eater.

A shadow on the left sprang at him. Another shadow sprang from the right.

Straight ahead the Cat leaped, to the base of the closest tree. With a second bound he launched himself upward. His claws dug into the bark; he scrambled up, up, up. Behind him, the monsters’ paws scraped at the bottom of the tree. Clouds of that breath rose from their open jaws.

Reaching a high branch, the Cat paused to peer down. His ears were recovering, because he heard the shadows whining with disappointment while they circled the tree. One of them put its front paws up on the trunk, as if hoping it might be able to climb.

But it couldn’t climb a tree, any more than a dog could. The Cat began to calm down. How, he wondered, had he managed to smell the coyotes? The air in the woods was very still, even up where he was, as high as the Girl’s bedroom window in his old home. And yet he’d detected their dreadful breath when they were several bounds away, giving him time to escape up the tree.

The Great Cat. She must have stirred up a breeze with her magnificent tail, guiding the scent of danger right into his nose. Praise to thee, Great Cat!

The not-dog beasts waited under the Cat’s perch for a long while. They crouched to rest; they sat up and gazed into the branches; they circled the tree again; they rested again. Finally one shadow rose, then the other, and they melted off into the woods.

 

In the morning the Cat clawed and slipped his way backwards down the tree. He started off in one direction, but where the trees thinned, he met a wet, scorched stench, and he slunk away from it at an angle. That direction led him to the sound of trickling water, and he followed the sound down a slope through ferns to a pool. He was so thirsty. Skimming dead leaves from the water with his paw, he lapped.

Refreshed, the Cat jumped from stone to stone across the brook, climbed the opposite slope, and found himself at the edge of a road. The scene looked familiar, like part of a route he’d seen while riding with the man Josh.

Great Cat! A ravishing scent flowed into the Cat’s nostrils. His whiskers quivered. The chickens!

The Cat pattered along the side of the road toward the scent, as if pulled by a twitching, receding shoestring. The tantalizing aroma grew stronger, then almost faded, then grew stronger and stronger—

And there he was, outside that wire-fenced yard. Only now, the chicken yard was empty. The Cat examined a cooler near the road. He thought he smelled eggs, but it was tightly closed.

Squeezing under a loose corner of the fence, the Cat sniffed all around the pen. Stray feathers tickled his nose. He stole up the ramp leading to a chicken-sized door in the shed. The Cat could hear feathered bodies rustling inside, but the door was shut and bolted.

The Cat circled the shed twice, pawing at the door to make sure there was no way in. As he crouched beside the shed to see what would happen next, a man emerged from the nearby house. “Well, look who’s here.”

The Cat tensed, ready to leap away, although the man didn’t seem angry. He didn’t shout or stamp at the Cat as he entered the wire pen, swinging a bucket. “You like chickens, huh? Well, there’s no baby chicks at the moment, so you can look all you want to.”

The Cat’s heart fluttered at a sudden thought: Had the Great Cat led him to his new patron—a chicken farmer?

Grinning down at the Cat, the man reached for the small door of the shed. “You ready for this?” He unbolted the door, and a rooster ducked through it into the sunshine.

The rooster strutted down the ramp from the shed to the ground, wattles flapping as his head jerked from side to side. A parade of hens followed his flowing tail feathers out of the shed.

Black chickens, brown chickens, white chickens strolled across the yard, pecking in the dirt. One dark brown hen lowered herself into a dusty spot near the fence, wiggling and fluttering lusciously.

The Cat licked his lips, and his jaw quivered. Up close, these succulent birds looked very large. The sight made the Cat salivate and tremble at the same time. His tail twitched with desire, but his ears flattened timidly.

Spotting the Cat, the rooster spread his wings, uttered a wrathful squawk, and rushed at him. The Cat shrank away from the outstretched beak. He had just turned to dash for the fence when the rooster flapped into the air to attack the Cat feet first. Clawed feet dug into the Cat’s shoulder.

Snarling, the Cat rolled over to fight the bird with all four paws, but the rooster flapped into the air again, back out of reach. He spread his wings as if ready for a second round.

But the Cat was done. Where was the loose edge of the wire fence? He didn’t see it. Instead, he leaped awkwardly onto the nearest fence post. His four paws barely fit on the top of the post, and he balanced for only an instant before dropping to the other side.

The rooster crowed, the hens cackled, and the farmer chuckled. “Way to go, Colonel!” he told the rooster.

Unfair! Chickens weren’t supposed to fly. The Cat climbed onto a boulder near the fence and rubbed a paw over his face to groom away humiliation. Trying to reach his wounded shoulder with his tongue, he paid little attention to a car coming around the curve of the road.

The car slowed and stopped, and a plump young woman in pajama bottoms and a tank top climbed out. “Hey, Al,” she said. She opened the cooler and started to take out a carton of eggs.

The farmer pointed a gloved finger at her. “Hey, Jordan. If you want eggs, I want cash. No more of this leaving a baggie of weed.”

“But I need eggs! I am feeding nursing mothers.” She gazed at him a moment before shrugging and letting the lid of the cooler fall. “You don’t care.” Then her eyes focused on the Cat. “Wait a minute!”

“What’s your problem?” asked the farmer.

The Cat stared at the young woman. He’d seen her before, and it hadn’t been good. He flattened himself against the boulder.

“That’s my cat, Mr. Tux! What’re you doing with my cat?” She pushed through goldenrod toward the Cat.

The Cat bounded from the boulder to the stone wall, pattered across the road, and squeezed through a hedge. The chicken farmer was laughing again.

The young woman didn’t seem to be following now, but the Cat kept going into a great field of grass. He paused at the sight of several enormous black and white animals, but these creatures seemed interested only in eating the grass. Still, they were so huge, much larger than humans. Best not to be stepped on by one of them, even accidentally.

On the far side of the field, the Cat jumped onto another stone wall, and discovered that it ran beside a road. There was something familiar about this curving road—was that good or bad? Up and down the road, nothing to cause alarm. He began walking along the top of the wall, in the direction of a roof partly hidden by pine trees.

Closer up, the building under that roof turned out to be a disappointment. It was full of cats. The air vibrated with their cries and reeked of their smells. It wasn’t the dreaded place where the Woman and the man Josh had tried to leave him; it wasn’t the house where the young woman collected cats; it wasn’t the vet’s office. But it also wasn’t a home with a prospective patron.

Anyway, now the Cat could see, farther up and on the other side of the road, a place he knew: the dog kennel. Ducking under the pines, he approached it cautiously. Among the cars in the parking lot, he recognized the small green one with a dented fender. It belonged to the man Josh. Even though that man was an unsatisfactory patron, he had fed the Cat more than once. He would probably feed him again.

Running across the road, the Cat sailed in the car’s open window.

 

 

 

 

A tired dog is an obedient dog.

Sign above counter in Coastal Canine office.