The Cat Among Us Read online

  “Hello, son. Boys.” Doug kissed David and tousled the hair of the other two — or tried. He got Geoff but James pulled away.

  “Excuse me.” Margaret marched toward the ladies’ room.

  Doug sat down in her chair. “How are you, Andrew? Gerry?”

  He didn’t seem drunk. Andrew seemed friendly, so Gerry took her cue from him. “Great, Doug. You? We still on for tomorrow?”

  “You bet. Wouldn’t miss it.”

  As he rose, Andrew asked, “What’s on tomorrow?”

  Gerry smiled. “That’s for us to know and you to find out — eventually.”

  Andrew subsided. “Oh.”

  As Margaret returned, Doug tipped an imaginary hat as they passed each other. Margaret snorted, her cheeks aflame. Thankfully, the food arrived, a welcome distraction. The burgers had different sauces and toppings and Andrew let Gerry try his: cheddar cheese and bacon. She admired James’s more sophisticated palate — he’d chosen one topped with blue cheese and caramelized onions — and was surprised when she received only a scowl by way of reply. After that, she focused her attention on Andrew, and a bit on David, who seemed less resentful than the rest of his family.

  After dessert — the Parsley specialized in cheesecake — Gerry had the salted caramel — came coffee. The two oldest boys made their excuses and left — a friend was picking them up to go to a party. Apparently the invitation didn’t extend to David, and Gerry thought she saw tears of frustration shining in his eyes. His mother was deep in conversation with Andrew about the value of the figurines he’d inherited, and seemed not to notice David’s discomfort.

  Gerry leaned over. “Did you know Aunt Maggie well, David?”

  David blinked, seeming to come back from a long way away. “Aunt Mags? Yeah, we went over there lots in the summer when we were little, to swim in the pool.”

  “What do you think of the cats?”

  David smiled. “I loved the kittens. There was one named Bob — he’s my favourite.”

  “Mine too! Though I don’t let Marigold hear me say that. You should come over and see Bob sometime. And me. I’m sort of your aunt, too, or second cousin or something.”

  David shyly nodded but he looked pleased.

  Gerry rose. “I shall leave you now, I think. Andrew, thank you so much. I enjoyed the meal. I must return the favour.” Gerry felt herself assume that shark smile again. “Margaret, I feel I do know you a little better after tonight. David.” And with quick kisses and a flick of her fingers, she made her exit.

  “Whew.” She stood in the hallway of the inn, was surprised to see Doug coming down the staircase that led to its rooms.

  “I live here,” he stated, “in exchange for my inestimable painting and gardening skills.”

  Gerry grinned. “You can’t be drunk. You wouldn’t be able to say ‘inestimable’.”

  He grinned back. “Believe it or not, it helps keeps me sober when I see how many people roll out of here drunk and then try to drive.”

  She saluted. “Only one glass of wine before supper, sir. Good to go. See you tomorrow.”

  He saluted back.

  What a mystery, she thought, as she covered the short distance across gravel to her car. However did Margaret and Doug get together? The teenage attendant was long gone. “Oh,” she said flatly. Somebody had keyed her car.

  Gerry opened one eye then the other. Staying on her side, she looked out the window into a green pattern of gently rustling foliage. She felt unusually well this morning, considering she hadn’t yet had her coffee. There was a small warmth curled up in the curve of her belly. She looked down, wondering who it would be, and was elated to see Marigold, soundly asleep. She must have left her door open when she went to bed. Then she groaned. The weekend. No Prudence. Time for the cat patrol.

  She carefully climbed out of bed and got another surprise — Bob, asleep on her little black dress where she’d carelessly dropped it on the floor. He woke and stretched, his claws digging into the flimsy fabric. Gerry yelped and lunged. Bob dashed from the room, one claw still hooked in the cloth. “Argh!” Gerry picked up the dress halfway down the stairs and saw the snags. “Thanks, Bob. Now it’s vintage.”

  She carried on down to the kitchen, Bob and Marigold following. As she passed through the dining room, the assembled company stretched and jumped down off their chairs. The boys and Stupid came in through the cat flap.

  Gerry picked up Marigold and made a dash for the kitchen, closing the door on the mob. She fed the Princess first, got her coffee going, then prepared breakfast for everybody else and let them in. Grasping her mug, she opened the porch door and stepped out into the garden.

  Another beautiful day. She stood and inhaled the clean air and watched a heron walk in slow motion from left to right, its gaze fixed on a point just a few inches ahead of its beak. Sailboats flirted with the lake breeze.

  She walked down to the water’s edge. To her left, the Ottawa flowed from the north. Hard to believe that in her father’s time it had served to float softwood to Montreal from logging camps in northern Quebec and Ontario, and that it had been so polluted people had been afraid to swim in it.

  To her right, she could see the ferry, in operation for nearly a hundred years between the little villages either side of the lake. The lake that is not a lake but part of a river.

  She turned her back on the water to face the house. It graciously sprawled across the property. “Thank you, Auntie,” she breathed. The crunch of a boat on the beach behind her made her swiftly turn.

  “Weren’t you expecting me?” Doug asked, throwing her a rope attached to the front of his canoe. She tied it to a ring through a post sunk in the ground for that purpose. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Much. Not while I live here.”

  “Wait till winter. No, really. Something’s wrong.”

  Gerry sighed. “I have an enemy. Or maybe it was just kids.” She stopped, stricken. “I didn’t mean — ”

  He looked alert. “What?”

  “Somebody keyed my car at the restaurant last night. A nice big X on the driver’s door. Where I’ll see it whenever I get in.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  The cats, having eaten, were beginning to stream outside. Marigold passed, on her way to her hydrangea. Bob and the boys zoomed by, full of nonsense. Stupid stalked off past the pool towards the neighbour’s, while Mother sat Ronald down in front of her and gave him a thorough grooming. The rest of the honour guard, Blackie, Whitey, Mouse and Runt, watched gravely. Perhaps they’d all been similarly attended to by Mother in the past.

  “Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty,” Gerry counted. “That’s everybody. I know twelve by name and I’m working on the other eight.” She pointed at two enormous cats, one black with white spots, the other white with black spots. “I call them the cow cats. That’s Harley and that’s Kitty-Cat.”

  “Other way around,” Doug commented, wryly.

  “Drat!”

  They examined the car.

  “Well, you can either take it for bodywork or I can fix it for you.”

  “Do you have time?”

  “It’s a small job. Anyway, think about it. Today we have something else to do.”

  “Do you need me? ’Cause I have six cat boxes to clean out and a kitchen to tidy.”

  “I’ll call if I need anything.”

  She left him to it. As she worked, she heard him whistling at his task. She went to her studio in the bamboo room, meaning to check something, looked up in amazement to find the morning gone.

  Doug was still in the room that opened off the dining room. “Wow, you’ve got a lot done.” They surveyed his work.

  Now that the deep cases for her aunt’s figurines were gone, the room was larger. Doug had removed its few bits of furniture, washed the wall
s and put up a picture rail on each wall. “I’ll prime it this afternoon and paint tomorrow. Okay?”

  “Okay. I’ve decided to have you repair the car.”

  “Good. Especially as it was probably one of my sons who did it. Or my wife.” His tone was bitter.

  Gerry kept silent. What could she say when she shared his suspicions? Everyone at their table had gotten up at some point to use the washroom. The two older boys had left early. She changed the subject. “Do you ever make art? I mean, I heard you’re an artist.”

  He was about to speak when the phone rang.

  “Excuse me.” She ran to the kitchen. The phone was mounted on the wall and had a very long cord. Gerry pictured her aunt working there as she chatted with a friend.

  “Gerry?” The voice was faint and frightened-sounding.

  “Cathy?”

  “Oh, Gerry, good. I’m at the hospital. Passing a stone, they tell me. Kidney.” Cathy paused for breath. “Hurts. Charles. Can you?”

  “Of course, of course. But a key?”

  “I was in such a hurry when the ambulance came, I didn’t lock up.” She began to weep. “He’ll be so hungry!”

  “Shush, now. I’ll go at once. And I’ll come to see you.”

  She rushed over to Cathy’s giant house, for once oblivious to its whimsical character. As she ran around the back to the kitchen door, Prince Charles’s bass tones walloped her ears. “I’m coming, Charles, I’m coming!” she cried, as she almost fell through the door. Cathy hadn’t said when she’d been taken to hospital. The poor dog must be frantic.

  There was a scrabble of claws on hardwood as Charles got to his feet, tail wagging. He sat while Gerry patted him, then turned his gaze to the appropriate cupboard. Careful Cathy had stowed his kibble in a large mouse-proof garbage can. A scoop was dug into the kibble.

  Gerry stood, perplexed, the massive bowl in one hand, scoop in the other. “Charles, how much?” She tried to quickly do mental math, estimating Charles’s weight in cats, but her cats ate as much kibble as they wanted twice a day, so that didn’t work. She sensed this method might not be appropriate for dogs, especially one as chunky as Charles.

  One scoop went in the bowl. She looked at the still expectant dog. Another scoop, then. His bum stayed glued to the floor. “Another?” As the third scoop of food hit the bowl, Charles stood and began the odd noise — somewhere between a yelp and a bellow — that is the basset bark.

  Gerry hastily put the bowl down, more to stop the noise than anything. As Charles ate, she threw more kibble into a bag, added a handful of dog biscuits from the basset-shaped crock on the counter, and the now slobbery, empty bowl.

  Charles was taking great gulping laps of water, half of which he deposited on the floor, the other half on Gerry’s feet. “Oh, nice, Charles. Thanks.” She clipped on his leash.

  For once Charles showed some energy. He dragged her to a shrub and lifted his leg. A steady stream doused the wretched plant. A few steps further on he located the cedar hedge, chose his spot with care, and backed into it. Gerry, unversed in the ways of dogs, watched in fascination as he pooped into the shrub.

  “Wow, Charles, discreet or what?” She looked furtively around. No one to see. Cathy’s own property. Surely there was no need to pick up this excellent hedge fertilizer, was there? She didn’t have a bag, anyway. And Charles was already pulling her onward.

  He peed on a large rock, a tree trunk and Cathy’s gate. He peed on a telephone pole, a clump of weeds and a fire hydrant, then on The Maples’ lamppost, a wooden half barrel of flowers, and finished up against the rear tire of Gerry’s car. Then he flopped, exhausted.

  Gerry coaxed him into the kitchen porch, where he sniffed the recycling bin and the garbage can, then dropped his nose and sniffed his way into the kitchen.

  Marigold, waiting for lunch on the top of the fridge, flattened her ears and hissed. She tore away into the next room. Gerry still had Charles by the leash and hurriedly closed the kitchen door. What was she to do? Twenty cats and one basset hound. Quickly, she fixed herself a sandwich, another for Doug, and put Marigold’s plate of meat atop the fridge.

  Outside, she cast about for something to tie the dog up with. She remembered some clothesline she’d seen in the shed yesterday. Charles seemed happy as she tied him to the picnic table (associated with food, no doubt) on the back lawn and fetched him a bowl of water. He crawled under the table and went to sleep.

  She found Marigold in a state of shock in the dining room with most of the others and scooped her up. “Okay, Princess, this is temporary.” She placed the calico on the fridge and took the sandwiches to Doug.

  “He okay?” Doug put down the roller and pulled a plastic bag over the paint tray. “Oh, thank you.” He ate hungrily. “I’ve a thermos of tea there, if you want to share.”

  Gerry bit into her ham and cheese and asked, “Um, how long do you think kidney stones take to pass?”

  Doug considered. “Not long, I think. Is that what she has? A few hours. If they don’t pass, they might do surgery, I guess. I don’t really know.”

  “How am I going to juggle twenty cats and the prince?”

  “First of all, I would really like to see that. Secondly, I have every confidence in you. Why don’t you visit Cathy this afternoon, check on her?”

  “Yes, I said I would. Doesn’t she have any family?”

  “Well, she’s local, but her family has kind of died out over the years. No kids that I know of. Go see her. I’ll watch the prince.”

  Feeling overwhelmed, Gerry did a quick cat box clean, topped up the cat kibble, changed and drove to the hospital.

  As always, the beautiful drive along the river road soothed her. Farms on one side, the vast expanse of the Ottawa, dotted with boaters enjoying their weekend, on the other. She counted five great blue herons spread out along the shore of the largest bay, standing, wading, each poised to strike. Then the river road ended, there was the quick rush of the highway, and soon she was struggling with the hospital parking system.

  At reception she asked where Cathy might be. “When did she come in?” the woman asked.

  “I’m not sure. Last night? Yesterday sometime?”

  “She’s probably still in emergency. Try there first.”

  Gerry pushed through swinging doors to emergency. It had been years since she’d been here. During one Christmas visit, when she was about ten, she’d fallen on the ice and cracked her wrist and been sent by the local doctor for an X-ray. She remembered leaning against her father for most of one day as they waited, her wrist aching, him gently distracting her with stories, candy, the newspaper comics.

  She tried one office, was sent to another. Finally, she was allowed to enter emergency to look for her friend. She walked among the beds. Many people had a worried loved one at their side. An old woman was insulting a nurse. “You’re no good. You’re nervous. I can tell. Ouch! That hurt! Stop it!” The harassed nurse gave up on finding a vein and hurried away.

  A blanketed lump faced the counter by which its gurney had been pushed. “Cathy?” Yes, but asleep. Gerry wandered around looking for a chair, finally dragged one from the waiting room. But Cathy wasn’t where she’d left her.

  “Gone for a scan,” another nurse explained. “Won’t be long.”

  Gerry plunked the chair where Cathy’s bed had been. A woman sitting with an old man leaned forward. “Is she your relative?” It seemed easiest to nod. The woman continued. “Well, she’s pretty doped up. She was here when we got here this morning. I think I heard the doctor say gall bladder.”

  “She told me kidney stone.” A worried frown creased Gerry’s forehead. The woman seemed affronted.

  “Well, I’m only telling you what I heard!”

  She looked tired, so Gerry thanked her and enquired about her husband. Unexpectedly, he opened his eyes and spoke. “I’m still here, you know
!”

  At this point, thankfully, Cathy reappeared and was parked. She was awake but her eyes were dopey-looking. “She was afraid, she told me, she was afraid…the canoe shouldn’t have been there…the boys, the boys…she was afraid…I’m sorry, Maggie.” Her gaze cleared. “I’m sorry. I’m babbling. Surgery, they say. Charles?”

  “At my place with Doug.”

  “Oh, Doug. Such a sweet little boy. Tell Charles…tell Charles…”

  “I’ll give him your love,” Gerry murmured as Cathy fell asleep.

  PART 2

  TEACUPS

  She waited in the dining room for the man to finish painting. The smell was unpleasant, but she was hungry.

  She liked men. She dozed, remembering her first owner. She’d put out a paw through the slats of the cage at the pet store and he’d clasped it gently. When he took her out of the cage she’d gone limp, moulding herself to his chest. And when he’d begun looking at another, more playful kitten in the cage, she’d put out her paw again, this time to bat one of her brothers in the face. The man had laughed and said, “She’s made her selection.”

  She’d grown up in his apartment, never going outside except when he’d bundle her into the cat carrier for a trip to the vet.

  Sometimes his little children would visit, but mostly it had been her and him, alone together.

  Then one morning she’d woken to find the bed empty, the man swinging like a catnip mouse on a string, swinging high from a rope and the hall light fixture. There was the same bad smell as when the woman had died in her bed, a similar absence. She’d crouched, waiting.

  She never saw the children again, but a woman who smelled like them came after a few days and took her away, left her at the vet.

  So when another woman had selected her from a few adult cats in the cage at the vet’s, First Cat wasn’t surprised. She hadn’t even had to put out her paw; they’d looked at each other and she felt the woman knew.

  The painting man came out of the room and closed the door. He took in the room full of cats. “Well, well, let’s see what we can do.”