Cat in the Dark Read Free Page A

that spread just outside the window, their knotted patterns softening the room’s stark lines and offering a sense of mystery and depth. And beside the bed, a thick, ruby-toned Persian rug added a single touch of luxury, gleaming like jewels in the moonlight—a tender and extravagant gift from one of Clyde’s former lovers.
    Pawing free of the confining bedcovers, Joe Grey walked heavily across the bed and across Clyde’s stomach and dropped down to the thick, soft rug. Clyde, grunting, raised up and glared at him.
    â€œWhy the hell do you do that? You’re heavy as a damned moose!”
    Joe smiled and dug his claws into the rug’s silky pile.
    Clyde’s black hair was wild from sleep, his cheeks dark with a day’s growth of stubble. A line of black grease streaked his forehead, residue from the innards of some ailing Rolls Royce or Mercedes.
    â€œYou have the whole damned bed to walk on. Can’t you show a little consideration? I don’t walk on your stomach.”
    Joe dug his claws deeper into the Persian weave, his yellow eyes sly with amusement. “You work out, you’re always bragging about your great stomach muscles—you shouldn’t even feel my featherweight. Anyway, you were snoring so loud, so deep under, that a Great Dane on your stomach shouldn’t have waked you.”
    â€œGet the hell out of here. Go on out and hunt, let me get some sleep. Go roll in warm blood or whatever you do at night.”
    â€œFor your information, I’m going straight to the library. What more sedate and respectable destination could one possibly…”
    â€œCan it, Joe. Of course you’re going to the library—but only to get Dulcie. Then off to murder some helpless animal, attack some innocent little mouse or cute, cuddly rabbit. Look at you—that killer expression plastered all over your furry face.”
    â€œRabbits are not cuddly. A rabbit can be as vicious as a bullterrier—their claws are incredibly sharp. And what gives you the slightest clue to Dulcie’s and myplans for the evening? You’re suddenly an authority on the behavior of felis domesticus ?”
    Clyde doubled the pillow behind his head. “I don’t have to be an authority to smell the blood on your breath when you come stomping in at dawn.”
    â€œI don’t come in here at dawn. I go directly to the kitchen, minding my own business.”
    â€œAnd trailing muddy pawprints all over the kitchen table. Can’t you wash like a normal cat? You get so much mud on the morning paper, who can read it?”
    â€œI have no trouble reading it. Though why anyone would waste more than five minutes on that rag is hard to understand.”
    Clyde picked up the clock, which he kept face-down on the night table. The luminous dial said twelve thirty-three. “It’s late, Joe. Get on out of here. Save your sarcasm for Dulcie. Some of us have to get up in the morning, go to work to support the indigent members of the household.”
    â€œI can support myself very nicely, thank you. I let you think otherwise simply to make you feel needed, to let you think you perform some useful function in the world.”
    Padding across the oak floor, Joe pawed open the bedroom door. “So go to sleep. Sleep your life away.” Giving Clyde a last, narrow glare, he left the room. Behind him, he heard Clyde groan and pound his pillow and roll over.
    Trotting down the hall and through the living room, brushing past his own tattered, hair-matted easy chair, he slipped out through his cat door. He supposed he should feel sorry for Clyde. How could a mere human, with inferior human senses, appreciate the glory of the moonlit night that surrounded him as he headed across the village?
    To his right, above the village roofs, the Molena Point hills rose round and silvered like the pale, humped backs of grazing beasts. All around him, the shop windows gleamed with lunar light,