Cat Shining Bright

He stared down at the mess he had made and before he could be scolded he fled, diving from the buffet through the dining room, racing down the hall into the guest room and deep under the bed. There he stayed, in the darkest corner, listening to Wilma and Dulcie laughing. Laughing at him! He was far more embarrassed by their amusement than by his own clumsiness.

Only when Dulcie crept deep under the bed herself and hugged Striker and told him it was all right, only when Wilma had swept and vacuumed up the broken glass and sopped up the water and thrown away the flowers did Striker come out from under the bed. He meowed with pleasure when Wilma told him it was all right, when both Wilma and Dulcie hugged him and laughed with joy because he had spoken; because, they said, he was a very special cat. No one scolded him for the mess; and certainly no one scolded him for swearing.

But what of calico Courtney? It was September, the kittens were four months old. Both boys were talking. Courtney had spoken not a word. The calico was keen and observant, she saw everything, she listened to every conversation; Dulcie had thought she’d be the first to ask questions. Their human friends, redheaded Charlie Harper; Joe Grey’s own housemates, Ryan and Clyde Damen; and Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw, Kit’s lean, elderly couple, all waited expectantly for Courtney’s first words. Dr. John Firetti came to visit far more often than was needed, greeting Wilma but then going right to the kittens. John had known about Joe and Dulcie for years, had known the secret of speaking cats since he was a boy. He had waited all his life to see new, speaking kittens born, which was indeed a rare event. He loved these kittens with an amazing rapport and they immediately loved him. The minute he knelt down by their pen the boy kittens were all over him, talking and cuddling and playing, Buffin stroking his face with a soft paw. As Buffin clung to him snuggled under his throat, John would look over at Courtney.

“No words yet?” he would ask Wilma.

“None. She hasn’t spoken,” Wilma would say sadly, looking down into Courtney’s baby-blue eyes.

Courtney would lie in Wilma’s lap as Wilma read to her, would lie purring but mute, loving the ancient myths and tales, listening in total silence—until one evening before the fire, as Joe Grey stretched out on the couch, Dulcie and the kittens on Wilma’s lap, Courtney suddenly put her paw on the page, on the very words Wilma was speaking.

Wilma hushed, watching her. Courtney sat up straighter and began to read aloud, just where Wilma had left off. She read the tale smoothly and clearly all the way through, she spun the story out as lyrically as Wilma herself had ever done.

When she’d finished, they were all silent. Joe Grey looked so ridiculously proud that Dulcie had to hide a laugh; she licked Courtney, both she and Joe smug with their calico’s cleverness—until the morning that the words Courtney read brought not smiles but alarm.

It was a week after Courtney started to read that, sitting on the kitchen table on the edge of the newspaper, she placed a paw on the front-page article. “‘car thieves moving down the coast. to hit molena point again?’” She looked up at Wilma. “What is this? What are car thieves? What does it mean, to hit Molena Point? Hit how?” She kept reading, dragging her paw down the lines of type.

2

Joe Grey still hadn’t told Dulcie about the car-thieving ring, he didn’t want her thinking about village crime. Not because she’d be afraid; Dulcie was seldom frightened. But because his tabby lady would be torn with painfully conflicting desires—longing to prowl the night with him tracking the perps, but too deep with love for their babies to leave them. Wilma still kept the morning paper hidden and the TV news off. Dulcie was so entangled in busy motherhood that she hardly noticed Wilma’s changes in the household.