Cat Shining Bright

Joe Grey’s tower was buried in the top of the fallen tree, covered with leaves and twiggy branches, Joe’s beautiful windowed aerie. Praying the gray tomcat had escaped, she yowled and yowled for him—she couldn’t shout his name, since the thief might still hear her. Worried for Pan but terrified for Joe, forgetting the vanishing thief as she scrambled across the last of the broken tree limbs and into the tangle of the shattered tower, she heard Clyde’s voice from within.

“What the hell! Joe, are you all right?”

“Fine!” Joe yowled. “Get this damn tree off me.”

Kit bolted through a jammed-open tower window into Joe’s broken aerie, into a mass of leaves and branches, and broken safety glass scattered like small diamonds. She watched the tomcat crawl out from under. “You okay?”

“Fine,” he repeated crossly, the white strip down his face narrowed with anger, his gray ears flat to his head. “I never in all hell thought that big tree would fall.” He began to paw glitters of glass from his face, from his sides and shoulders. “Cops, go call the cops. This stuff sticks like glue.”

Kit fought her way past him through the tower and in through Joe’s cat door onto the nearest rafter, dropped down to Clyde’s desk to report the thief but already Clyde was on the phone—mussed dark hair, rumpled robe—describing the fallen tree to the dispatcher. Apparently he hadn’t seen the smashed car, hadn’t seen the driver run. Kit could see Ryan through the sliding doors to her studio; she had grabbed the extension before Clyde hung up, her blue robe twisted around her, her green eyes frightened.

“A car,” she told the dispatcher. “The tree fell on a car, I can see it from my studio. The driver jumped out and ran. A square, heavy man, dark clothes, dark cap . . .” At the same moment, Kit thought she heard, up the street, another car starting. She leaped to the mantel to see better. “There,” Ryan said, “around the corner. He’s getting in another car, just the parking lights on. They’re moving off, turning north, maybe headed for Highway One?”

Kit didn’t hear Rock; the Damens’ big Weimaraner should have been barking up a storm from the moment the tree fell. Then she remembered he was off on a fishing trip with Ryan’s dad and his wife, Lindsey; they often took Rock with them. On the love seat Snowball, the Damens’ little white cat, sat rigid with alarm in her mound of quilt. She usually had the Weimaraner to shelter and protect her. Now, alone, she was shivering at the crash, her eyes huge and afraid, though she was unwilling to race downstairs and leave the comfort of her humans. Snowball didn’t speak, she could only meow, and now her cry was pitiful.

Clyde stopped to cuddle and reassure her, then stepped into Ryan’s studio, put his arm around her, stood looking down through the window at the wrecked Jeep. He turned to look at Kit. “Where’s Pan? He’s still out in the storm?”

“Firettis called,” Ryan said. “They’re worried about him, worried about you cats out in this. And Lucinda . . . she knows I’ll call the minute you show up, Kit. I can just see her pacing, I know how she fusses over you. But Kit, where is Pan?”

Kit didn’t answer, she leaped back up to the rafter and pushed out through the tangle of eucalyptus branches. Joe, having freed himself of some of the sparkling glass pellets, shouldered through beside her. “Kit, where is he? Were you together? Watch the glass. Where the hell is Pan?”

Kit’s heart was pounding so hard it shook her all over. Had other trees fallen? Could Pan be hurt? She raced from the broken tower down the pepper tree to the street, Joe beside her. Across the street and up again to the roofs on the other side, back the way she had come. The wind shifted and twisted, was choking them, pushing against them so they could hardly move. “We were together,” she shouted in Joe’s ear, “we saw that man hide a car then hurry away looking in other cars. I chased him but Pan jumped up to peer in the bedroom window of the house where the car was hidden and he never caught up with me.” The full terror of what might have happened to Pan sent her racing hard into the heavy blow.

 

In the Damen bedroom, Clyde had pulled on a pair of pants and was grabbing a jacket when Ryan stopped him. “We can look for Pan but no good trying to follow that man from the Jeep, by now the car that picked him up is probably on the freeway.” She had dressed quickly, she was reaching for her slicker when Clyde shook his head.