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 Cat's Claw
Chapter One: Raised Blinds
Early
Spring
"Olivia
Mallory is a real challenge." Cassidy McCabe muttered to
herself as she stared out her dining room window at the neighborhood
cat lady's house across the street.
Starshine,
the small calico sitting on the teak table in front of
Cassidy, pricked her ears and fixed enormous green eyes on her human, a
look she used whenever she wanted attention. Cassidy, never able to
resist the cat's wiles, jiggled her fingers in front of the calico.
Starshine attacked instantly, drawing a bead of blood on Cassidy's
forefinger.
She
jerked her hand away and sucked the wound. Wondering why she never
could seem to remember that cats had claws, she picked Starshine up and
gently deposited her on the floor.
Her
gaze returned to her neighbor's house as she brooded over the problem
she was having in establishing a relationship with Olivia, a
relationship essential to accomplishing the cat-related mission she'd
set for herself. Here I am being my most helpful, charming,
empathic self, she thought, and there are still times the woman
barely speaks. Although, she had to admit, there had been an
amazing, totally un-Olivia-type breakthrough the week before.
Right.
I've been doing backflips to be nice, and now Olivia's actually
granting me the privilege of doing her a favor.
You're
doing yourself a favor. She's going to let you feed her indoor
cats while she's away on business, which means you actually get to step
foot inside her house -- something you've been dying to do for ages.
The
more Cassidy thought about it, the more she realized she really was
making progress. A few days earlier she'd gone into Olivia's backyard
at feeding time and her forty-something neighbor had surprised her by
starting a conversation. Eyes glistening, Olivia had pointed to an
emaciated feral, one of many strays fighting over food bowls on the
stoop, and said, "This cat's dying. It won't be long before he just
disappears and I never see him again." Cassidy had looked at the sick
cat and blinked back tears herself.
Plunking
her elbows on the table, she continued to gaze at the cat
lady's bungalow, a charcoal frame facing the north side of Cassidy's
corner two-story. Olivia had lived in her house alone and put out food
for the colony of feral cats that collected around her stoop since
before Cassidy moved onto the block.
Cassidy
noticed a couple of kittens pouncing in Olivia's driveway, two
new additions to the six or so adult cats that clustered in the yards
belonging to Olivia and the man in the corner house to the west. Oh
shit, first litter of the season. Heaviness settled on Cassidy's
shoulders. Time to launch my cat rescue campaign. Which, like most
of the projects I misguidedly get myself into, is undoubtedly going to
prove way harder than I expect. And I won't be able to do it at all
unless Olivia gives me permission to tramp through her yard catching
kittens.
Starshine,
overriding Cassidy's objections, had taken up residence with
her more than two years ago, and in the interim Cassidy had gradually
metamorphosed into a cat person. Attached as she was to the calico, she
found she could no longer ignore the sufferings of the wild felines
across the street, whose ranks were regularly decimated by disease and
cold winters.
As
Cassidy watched, the cat lady's rusted-out Cavalier turned into the
driveway, causing the kittens to flee. Her car appeared every evening
at close to six and left every morning before Cassidy had enough coffee
in her system to shake off her beginning-of-the-day fog. Olivia went
out in the evenings and on weekends, but Cassidy had never seen another
person go in. And she had never seen any of the slatted, horizontal
blinds that covered every window opened or raised.
She
ought to live on a moor, have Heathcliff as a lover. An Oak Park
bungalow, dinged-up car, and feral cats just don't cut it in the gothic
romance department.
It
was only since deciding to tackle the colony of ferals that Cassidy had
become a cat-lady watcher. But from the time she'd first moved into her
house, it had been impossible not to notice the woman's reclusiveness
and the excess of cats.
Olivia
climbed the steps to her main entrance, located on the west side of the
house, and disappeared through the door. She did not look up or wave,
did nothing to acknowledge she had neighbors. She behaved, in fact, as
if she were cut off from every other human on the planet, even though
Cassidy, by dint of extreme effort, had managed to establish a tiny
thread of connection.
Used
to think it was only old ladies who gave up on people, turned to
cats for company. But once you actually looked at her, boy, were you
surprised. Even from across the street Cassidy could tell that
Olivia was slender and youthful, a clearly attractive woman. Up close,
she discovered Olivia also had creamy skin, fine features, and dark,
shiny hair pinned up in back.
The
kittens, one orange, the other tiger striped, raced out from the bushes
beneath Olivia's front window. The April light was thin and pale, the
sun not yet delivering any real warmth. But small bumps on the branches
of Cassidy's corner maple told her that spurts of greenery, dandelions,
and more kittens were on the way.
What
does Olivia do all alone in there? How can she stand never looking
outside? Wanting all the light she could get, Cassidy kept her own
windows as uncovered as modesty would permit, sometimes more than
modesty quite liked. Although the bungalow was in good repair, the
closed blinds and Olivia's isolation made it seem Dickensian, a picture
forming in Cassidy's mind of dead flowers, cobwebs, and motes of dust
floating in the gloom. She muttered, "That, and the stink of cat pee
soaked into every floorboard."
You're
not certain her cats've done unauthorized peeing. Could smell
like roses for all you know.
As if
any cat lady doesn't have a feline-fragrance problem.
She
heard the back door. Zach's home. Wonder what kind of carryout
we're having tonight. She went into the kitchen to see Zach Moran
coming around the oak room divider, a bag in hand. As she started
toward him, Starshine raced in behind her, tangled in her legs, and
sent her grabbing at the refrigerator to keep herself upright.
The
calico sprang onto the counter and glared in outrage at her human, who
had offended by thrusting legs into the cat's path.
The
large old kitchen was badly in need of an uplift, its gray linoleum
floor curling at the seams, the ancient linoleum countertop so worn the
color was nearly gone. On the east side of the room, an oak cabinet
stood perpendicular to the wall to serve as a divider between the
kitchen and the waiting area she had set up for her home-based
psychotherapy practice.
Placing
his bag on the dining room table, Zach said, "It's nice to be
greeted but don't fight over me." Cassidy's housemate was just under
six foot, wide through the shoulders and chest, with smooth dark hair
and an easygoing expression. The carryout bag emanated delicate
stir-fry aromas.
Cassidy
set the table while Zach put out four white cartons. They sat
kitty-corner from each other and dished up food. Her voice grim, she
said, "I saw the first kittens."
Zach
chewed absently, gazing into space.
"You
know, kittens?" she tried again.
He
gave her a blank look.
Jumping
onto the end of the table, Starshine intently observed every
forkful that went into Zach's mouth. Cassidy said, "She doesn't even
like Chinese."
"But
she hates being left out."
"Where
were you just then? You didn't hear a word I said about the kittens."
She watched him make a mental effort to switch gears and focus on her.
"Sorry,
I was thinking about a call I got today. There's this
small-time dealer, Reno, who's been snitching for me ever since I blew
the whistle on some cops who seriously punched him out."
My
hero-defender of downtrodden dope dealers. Propping her chin on
her hand, she gazed fondly at his bronze-skinned face, a jagged scar
running across the left cheek.
"Police
brutality is practically a non-story around here. But what Reno
told me today-that a couple of cops are running a major dope ring out
of one of the clubs, and these same two cops shot a dealer on the
street for refusing to hand over his heroin bag-now that's front page."
Don't
like this. People who swim with piranhas sometimes get eaten. "My
preference'd be something a tad less dangerous, but I know you'd never
pass up a story as big as this."
"If
it ever gets to be a story. The word of a loser like Reno isn't
evidence, and proving anything against a couple of cops won't be easy.
Anyway, you were saying something about kittens."
"You
know, capturing all the litters and taking them to no-kill shelters."
He
lowered his chin, his face skeptical. "There you go, tilting at
windmills again. Those cats are feral. Feral means wild, remember? They
do not come when you call 'kitty kitty.' Nobody can get near them."
Her
jaw tightened. "What? You think feral cats are more hard-core than
those killer cops you're planning to go after?"
He
slanted his head toward the window, then turned to face her again, his
blue-gray eyes amused. "Can't imagine why I ever try to talk you out of
anything. I certainly know by now how useless it is."
She
licked a stray piece of rice from the corner of her mouth. "You do it
for the same reason I do. Right now I'm fighting an urge to say that
going after dirty cops is insane. We both have an unfortunate tendency
to try to straighten each other out."
He
ran his hand down the arm she had propped on the table. "I don't want
to straighten you out. I like the curves." His shaggy brows drew
together. "Instead of telling you not to play Don Quixote, I ought to
be telling myself."
Half
rising from her chair, she dropped a kiss on his eggroll-tasting mouth.
"One of the things I love about you is that you throw yourself at
windmills, but just as you're ready to leap into space, I want to grab
you and pull you back."
He
smiled. "Exactly how I'm feeling about your feral cat campaign."
"Yes,
but don't forget the coup I pulled off last week."
"Coup?"
"Remember,
a couple of days ago I was helping Olivia feed the ferals
and she mentioned she had to spend next week in L.A. getting trained in
a new software program. So I, of course, volunteered to feed both the
outdoor and the indoor cats. She came up with every excuse in the book
to avoid letting me into her house, but she's so timid I was able to
argue her down. I'm hoping that if she lets me inside and nothing bad
happens, she'll start to develop a little trust."
"I
can't believe it. I thought the place was under some kind of
quarantine. Besides, isn't she your basic paranoid wacko?"
"Paranoid?
Definitely. Assuming anyone knows the difference between
paranoid and realistic any more. But I don't think she's seriously
wacko." Cassidy tilted her head. "At first I thought she had a schizoid
personality disorder. Schizoid sounds like schizophrenia but it's
totally different. A schizoid has no interest in relationships. Just
doesn't care about people."
"But
you obviously didn't stick with that theory."
"She's
scared is all. She has a real longing for connection but she's afraid
to let anyone near her. So the right diagnosis is social phobia, which
means only slightly wacko."
"The
shame of it is, she could be a real babe if she gave it half a try."
His mouth stretched into a mock leer. "I might hit on her myself if I
hadn't gone and gotten married."
Cassidy
smiled warmly at Zach, images popping into her head of the two
of them standing at the altar in a small chapel, the party afterward at
their house, the honeymoon in Mexico. Pulling herself back to the
present, she said, "Olivia's not your type. It'd take a year to get to
the first kiss."
"You
think she's a virgin? Nah, couldn't be. Virgins over forty don't exist."
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