|
 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." |
