The four cats rode crowded on Wilma’s lap, spilling across the front seat as Ryan’s king cab headed for the highway. Dulcie and Kit dreaming of the old tales, Courtney with lingering visions of the Netherworld. Pan stretched out between the girl cats and Ryan, and who knew what he was dreaming?
“You can take us to my house,” Wilma said. “Egan’s in jail, and Randall’s in the hospital, there’s no one to bother us.” She smiled. “No reason to toss my place again, anyway. They got the book, or think they did. They know the police have it.”
“Rick and Lena aren’t in jail,” Ryan said.
Wilma was silent.
“Lena isn’t stable,” Ryan said, “but she’s clever. She might guess there was another volume, might wonder if that one was a substitute, if you still have the valuable copy. Who knows, at auction, what the original would have been worth? And if she knows the whole story, she might come after . . .” She glanced down at the tangle of cats. Dulcie and Kit stared up at her, wary and silent.
“No one knows if she’ll break in,” Ryan said “no one knows what she’ll do—she knows she could never catch the feral cats. And Rick, he has a long, ugly record—while they’re both still free, you’re coming home with us.”
“But what about your quarantine?” Kit said.
“Joe and Rock can stay in my studio, it’s nice and light and there’s a soft couch to share. The isolation will be over by tomorrow night, the two of them will be free. Striker and Buffin can come home, Joe and Dulcie can cuddle their kittens. Maybe, by that time, Lena and Rick will be locked up, instead of our poor animals.”
With Wilma and the cats settled in, Ryan didn’t go back up the hills to work. She thawed a pot of bean soup for dinner and made corn bread—while the four cats galloped upstairs to rub against the glass door of her study. And Joe Grey, inside, did the same, his nose and whiskers pressed against the cold door, as close as he could get to Dulcie and Courtney, to his calico child and his lady. Rock paced the length of the studio restlessly, more interested in getting out than in the cats’ familial concerns. When Clyde got home Rock barked up a storm until Clyde put a leash and muzzle on the Weimaraner and took him for a long run.
When Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw came down to get Kit and Pan, of course they stayed for supper, for Ryan’s good comfort food and to catch up on the tangle of events. They were sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea as Clyde and Rock came storming in the back gate to the patio. Clyde brushed sand from the silver dog and wiped the sand from his feet. He fed Rock in the patio then took him upstairs to his prison. He sent the four cats down to the kitchen, knowing very well the two inmates didn’t have rabies, but obedient to John’s instructions. Pan, leaping to the table with the lady cats, had started to tell about Kate’s visit to Voletta when Kit jumped in with her usual monologue. “. . . and that wasn’t Egan, it was Rick Alderson with the long record and Voletta pretended she never heard them moving all those cars that night and didn’t see lights but how could she not, she’s a mean woman, I don’t like her even if she was hurt when the window broke, I don’t even like the way she smells and—”
“Slow down!” Dulcie and Pan hissed.
“And then Lena’s husband Randall called Rick and said he broke out of jail and we couldn’t hear all the conversation because Lena came in and we had to hang up the phone and hide and when they drove off to get him I wanted to jump in the car but they were too fast and Pan grabbed me and bit me hard and they were gone before I could leap off the roof and then we couldn’t call the cops because we didn’t know where they were going and . . .”
“Kit . . .” Ryan said, scooping up the tortoiseshell, snuggling Kit against her. Kit looked up at Ryan innocently, yellow eyes wide.
“They’re gone now,” Ryan said, holding Kit tight. “Long gone. Joe found them and he did call 911. Maybe the cops have them by now. Oh, Kit, do settle down.”
Clyde was silent, taking it all in, putting the pieces together from Joe’s story and Kit’s. Only when Ryan put supper on the table, steaming bowls of bean soup, cooler bowls for the cats, big slices of corn bread all around, was Kit wordless, settling greedily in to her feast.
It was after supper, when they’d gathered around a warm fire, that Ryan thought again about Kate and Scotty up at the mansion—about Scotty standing in the shadows listening to the cats’ ancient tales. She wondered what had happened after she left. Surely all the cats had seen him, but no one said a word, not even talkative Kit. Ryan started to say, “I wonder if —” when Kit interrupted.
“Now Scotty knows about us,” she said as if she had read Ryan’s thoughts, “and Kate knows that he knows and there won’t be any secrets between them now and I think they’ll get married.”
They all looked at her. She had to tell that tale, too, about sitting among the boulders with the ferals hearing the old stories—she ran on until Dulcie hushed her. Courtney wished her daddy were there with them so he could hear all Kit had to tell—but then, maybe it was better that he didn’t hear. She didn’t look at her mother, she knew Dulcie didn’t like her listening to tales of the Netherworld that so thrilled her. Dulcie didn’t like hearing that Courtney’s own pictures were there in that underground world, as Willow had told, antique paintings of a long-ago cat who looked exactly like Courtney—those visions too sharply stirred Courtney’s dreams of that magical land.
When the living room fire had burned nearly to coals, the Greenlaws rose to leave, Pan happy to be going home with Kit. As much as he loved the Firettis, he hadn’t meant to move in with them forever, only long enough to comfort them in their loss over Misto. But how could he tell when that was? John and Mary would grieve for Misto forever, they all would. But now, at least for a few days, the Firettis had Buffin and Striker to ease them, while Pan himself hunted with Kit and lounged in the tree house.
It wasn’t long until the Damens’ lights went out, until they were all asleep, Rock and Joe in the upstairs studio, Wilma tucked up in the guest room with Dulcie and Courtney. The cats slept lightly, their ears at alert. There was no attempt at a break-in with Egan in jail and with Randall under guard in a hospital bed, probably hooked up to plastic tubes and with a uniformed guard at his door. And, hopefully, Lena and Rick on their way to jail, though they had had no word from Dallas or Max Harper.
At three that afternoon, the call came. Not from Max, but from John Firetti.
Clyde was just home from work. When he answered the phone, John nearly shouted in his ear, “Negative, Clyde! The test was negative! No rabies! Joe and Rock are free, you can let them run. My God, this waiting has been hell. Shall I bring the boys and Snowball home?” he asked hesitantly.
“I’ll come,” Clyde said. “I’m on my way.”
But the conversation, when Clyde arrived at the clinic, was not at all what he’d expected. They stood in the recovery room, Striker, freed from his cage, racing the length of the room round and round on three legs, working off an endless burst of energy—while Buffin remained curled up close to the fluffy little dog. Watching Buffin and Lolly, Clyde felt a hollowness in the pit of his stomach at separating them.
John seemed to have trouble putting his words together. This was the first time Clyde had ever seen John Firetti shy and uncertain. They were both watching Lolly and the buff kitten pressed lovingly together.
“I think our little dog is going to make it,” John said. “We’ve done everything we can for her. It’s Buffin who has kept her comfortable without heavy drugs. The minute he hops in her cage and curls up beside her she sighs, you can see her muscles ease as the pain subsides, as she relaxes against him.
“I don’t know how he does it,” John said. “It’s a quite amazing talent, it’s the kind of healing that scientists have argued about for centuries. And here it is, in this young, half-grown kitten.”
Clyde moved closer to the cage, looking in at Buffin then glancing at John. “Would you like him to stay for a while longer?”
“I would indeed . . .” John began. “Until she’s completely healed.”
“Yes,” Buffin told Clyde, his blue eyes pleading. “I want to do that. She’s better but there’s still some pain, she still needs comforting.” The big kitten looked up intently at Clyde. “Is this what I was born for? To help other animals, to help them heal?”
“To help heal,” John said, nodding. “To give solace. Everyone is born for some special reason, some special good.” He sighed. “But so many never find it.”
Clyde smiled. “Wilma told me once, everyone is born about something, some passion or talent that will guide his or her life. If he doesn’t have such a longing, or never discovers and uses it, he is only a shell, empty, to be filled with something ugly instead.”
Buffin looked from John to Clyde. “May I stay, then? For a little while? Maybe . . .” he said, looking up at the doctor, “maybe John and Mary need me, too?”
“We need you very much,” John said, reaching into the open cage to stroke Buffin.
“And maybe they need me,” Striker said, jumping up into the cage, rearing up to touch his nose to Clyde’s, then placing a paw on John Firetti’s shoulder. “And Pan can be home with Kit, in the tree house.”
So it was that only Snowball went home to Rock and Joe, the little white cat kittenish with delight to be back with her big dog to snuggle and protect her. So it was that Wilma and Dulcie and Courtney were at home—without Courtney’s brothers—and Dulcie’s heart was heavy. Her two boys had left the nest, had left so much sooner than she had ever imagined.
Wilma said, “It won’t be long and they’ll be home again. It’s no different than human children off to camp.”
Dulcie wasn’t sure it was the same. Buffin and Striker might be home again for a while. But this sudden parting was the first of many, of a long voyage for her children as they started out on their own. They would be back, might be in and out of the house, but they would never again be homebound kittens needing only this one shelter, needing only her and Joe, needing only this one safe place in their lives. Now, already, they were heading out into the bigger world.
Though maybe, she thought, maybe Striker with his predatory nature might decide to join her and Joe in their own pursuits, might hunger for secret investigation, hunger to stalk the bad guys who preyed on the world. That would comfort her, and would make Joe Grey more than happy.
And Courtney? Dulcie nuzzled her calico kitten. She knew where Courtney’s dreams lay, where perhaps an ancient fate waited. Courtney’s longings frightened Dulcie, but she knew she couldn’t change them. This young lady had been born knowing images of distant times, and of times perhaps yet to come. Dulcie and Joe could only love her and keep her close when she was willing—or could only love her from a distance when she was far away.
But that day hadn’t come yet. Now, Dulcie would treasure the time they had with their kittens and not dwell needlessly on the future.