Cat Shining Bright

When Wilma and the four cats had headed home in Ryan’s king cab, Kate turned back to the rocky meadow. She approached the back of the mansion where she thought Scotty had stood.

She paused and stepped back.

Scotty sat on a boulder, his back to her but in plain sight, talking with Willow, the faded calico comfortable on the smooth rock next to him, one paw on Scotty’s knee. Willow was saying, “Kate has known for ever so long, for many years. But how could she agree to marry you, when she thought you didn’t know? When she would, for all your lives, have to keep the secret?”

“But—” Scotty began.

“But what?” said Willow. “You only found out by accident, when you were moving those boards. When we weren’t careful, and you heard us talking.” The matronly cat looked hard at him. She had the look of the leader she was, queen of the feral band, a cat who had reprimanded and coddled generations of kittens and perhaps a human or two. “I think,” Willow said, “it’s time you two had a talk.” She patted Scotty’s knee with a soft paw, sprang from the boulder lithe and quick, and bounded away, losing herself among the walls of the old house, leaving Scotty and Kate alone.

Scotty looked at her, and took her hand, and for some time, neither spoke. A little breeze blew the tall, wild grass against the rocks. Scotty took her in his arms. If a feral cat or two watched from among the fallen walls, neither Kate nor Scotty minded.

“So now,” Scotty said, “so now that you know my secret—was this your secret, all along?”

“It was,” she said shakily.

“And now,” he said, “now that all is clear between us, will you marry me?”

She couldn’t answer, she could only nod against him, and try to wipe away her tears.

25

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.