Cat Under Fire Read Free Page B

little bits of sausage and egg through the wide-mesh barrier. She’d hang around listening to him play on her sympathy until court convened at nine.
    Turning away to his left, toward home, he raced across the grassy median to the northbound lane, gauged the slow-moving cars, and leaped across between them.
    At least if Dulcie had to solve puzzles, the murder of Janet Jeannot was better than agonizing over the mystery of their own pasts. They’d done enough of that this summer. Their sudden onslaught of uncatlike thoughts, and their ability to speak human words had been a shocker. When Joe had first experienced his new and alarming talent, he had tried to remain cool and laid-back. Scared as he was, he’d attempted to handle the matter with some restraint. But not Dulcie. She had exploded into her new life with wild eagerness, embracing her sudden new talents with hot feline passion. Wanting to learn everything about the world all at once, trying to make sense of the entire universe, she’d just about driven him crazy. Even watching TV had become a challenge as she soaked up information
    Ever since she had been a kitten, Dulcie had watched TV with her elderly housemate. Curled cozily on Wilma Getz’s lap, she had basked in the music and motion of the programs, and in the incomprehensible but fascinating voices. Then suddenly this summer, when she had begun to understand human words, she’d fixed her attention on the programs, eagerly lapping up the smallest detail. Sitting rigid on Wilma’s lap, like a little furry scholar, she had soaked up the daunting new experiences and ideas as if, her entire life, she had been waiting for this moment to learn and discover.
    Good thing Wilma has some taste in what she watches . Though even Dulcie had better sense than to shape her total view of the world from TV.
    Leaving Ocean behind him, Joe sped down the sidewalk the three blocks to his own front yard, to the small white Cape Cod that he shared with his own human housemate. Joe and Clyde’s cottage, snuggled comfortably beneath the sheltering oaks, was a somewhat decrepit structure, mossy around the foundation, and with a green-tinged, mossy roof, the shingles loose where a reaching branch had been at them. Clyde grumbled hugely about having to replace a few shingles, though he wouldn’t dream of trimming the trees. Nor did he do much else to pretty up the property, except mow the ragged grass. But the worn old place was home, cozy and safe.
    Clyde Damen was thirty-eight, once married, before Joe’s time. He was stocky and dark-haired. He liked professional boxing, liked all competitive sports. He worked out with weights regularly, an activity which he performed with much grunting in the spare bedroom, lying sandwiched between his battered desk and the guest bed. He loved his beer and his women; though he had grown far more selective, these last couple of years, in choosing the latter. Joe never could figure what women saw in Clyde, but they were always there, laughing, drinking beer with him, cooking his suppers.
    Clyde had rescued Joe from the gutter as a half-grown kitten, where he lay fevered from a broken, infected tail. That was in San Francisco, and not in the best section of the city. One might say that Joe had been born on the wrong side of Market Street. Clyde had been driving up Mission when he saw Joe lying in the gutter. He said later Joe had looked like a bit of trash, and then like maybe a dead rat, but something had made him stop short, squealing his brakes.
    Getting out, he had crouched over Joe, had touched him tentatively, then carefully examined him for broken bones.
    When he found only the tail broken, he had gathered Joe up and taken him to the vet, then home to his small Sutter Street apartment. There Clyde had cared for him like a baby, had doctored him, spoon-fed him, and given him pills, talking baby talk to him. They had not been parted since.
    They had moved from San