Hangman's Root Read Free Page A

together on a present for Dottie: the Surgeon General's warning rendered in needlepoint and framed in black. Dottie hung it over the toilet.
    She grinned. "If you did, I'd tell you to mind your own damn business."
    "That's why I didn't say it."
    I followed Dottie into the kitchen, threading my way through the lineup of feeding dishes for the dozen or so cats she calls her "live-in lovers." Maybe she's a little on the nutty side. But then, aren't we all a little nutty about something? It might as well be cats.
    A few minutes later, laden with glasses, champagne, and tea-cakes, we went into the back yard, where Dottie pushed a calico off a picnic table to make room for the food.
    "I want to ask you a question," she said. I saw the look again. Something was definitely bothering her. "But let's take the tour first."
    We started out in the new room she had built behind the garage, which served as treatment center and isolation room. It contained a stainless-steel sink, enameled table, and a large storage cabinet. There were several cages in the room. In one, a gray tabby was nursing a litter of five kittens on a bed of clean newspaper.
    "I picked these up yesterday behind the freshman dorm." Dottie's voice was hard. "Students get tired of their cats and dump them, particularly at the end of the semester." She poked a finger into the cage and the tabby licked it. "I isolate the new strays in this room until I'm sure they're not contagious. Then I give them their shots and move them to the cattery."
    "Who's your vet?" I asked.
    "Joanna Wagner, on Limekiln Road." Dottie unlocked the

    cabinet and opened it to show me its neat, fully-stocked shelves. "She keeps me supplied with free drug samples and sells me medication at cost. She used to handle the euthanizing, but I do that myself now. I hate it, but it has to be done."
    Behind the treatment room was Dottie's cat hotel. She had built it out of wooden posts and wire fencing, a six-foot-high, tin-roofed cage on a cement slab that extended the width of the yard and half its depth. It contained dozens of deluxe plywood sleeping cubicles, a feeding center with offerings to appeal to the pickiest kitty, a sand latrine modestly situated behind a privacy hedge, and a playland that rivaled Fiesta Texas. And of course there were cats. Cats playing, cats eating, cats grooming themselves and each other, cats napping. While some were still obviously recuperating from the trauma of life on the lam, most looked sleek, serene, and self-congratulatory, having finally been admitted to cat heaven. When we opened the gate and went inside, they acknowledged Dottie with nonchalant affection but ignored me. I was only a tourist.
    But they were a little less nonchalant when I tossed out the catnip mice. After a moment's hesitant sniffing, there was a mad scramble followed by a general free-for-all, as the cats batted the catnip mice, rubbed their faces against them, and rolled over on them in a frenzy of kitty euphoria.
    "Fve always been curious about catnip," Dottie said, watching the melee. "What makes cats go crazy over it.^"
    "It's genetic, actually," I replied. "Nearly all cats are attracted to the volatile oils in the bruised leaves, even the big cats—lions, tigers. But only about two thirds have the gene that makes them go bananas."
    "Maybe I should grow some catnip," she said. "Trouble is, the house cats will tear it up."
    "They will if you set out plants," I said. "But they'll probably ignore it if you grow it from seed. I'll give you some."

    Dottie bent over to adjust a watering fountain. "Is it good for anything besides getting cats high?"
    "You might try brewing a tea of the leaves if you want to relax before bedtime, or if you have a cough or an upset stomach. And once upon a time people chewed it to relieve toothache." I grinned. "Keep the root away from your enemies, though."
    "Oh, yeah?" Dottie's laugh was not altogether pleasant. "What would happen if I slipped it into the departmental