The Cat Between Page 5

  “Mm,” Gerry and Jean-Louis said simultaneously. Charles plodded determinedly into the room and plopped down between the table and the oven.

  “Whoo, it’s hot in here,” Gerry said, gratefully peeling off the hideous sweater. Thankfully there was a clean white t-shirt underneath. They opened a bottle of wine and pointed to their preferred toppings.

  Cathy expertly whapped pizza dough down on the counter and twirled it into shape. “Okay, Gerry, you’re first.” Gerry selected mozzarella, tomato sauce and basil. “Ah,” said Cathy, “the classic Margherita,” and popped the pizza into the oven. She assembled Jean-Louis’s: pepperoni, ground beef, Swiss cheese and green peppers.

  “Oh, throw some hot peppers on there too,” he urged, smiling wickedly. “You only live once!”

  “I’ll drink to that!” Cathy toasted them. Jean-Louis refilled their glasses. Gerry’s pizza was placed before her. She cut it in small segments and urged the others to sample.

  Jean-Louis hesitated. “Does this mean I have to share mine with you when it’s ready?”

  “Ha!” Gerry riposted. “You’re fooling nobody.” The oven pinged and Jean-Louis’s spicy meaty meal appeared. They cheered. He opened another bottle of wine. Cathy assembled her own pizza. Salmon, onions, capers and a crumbly mild cheese were topped with a drizzle of olive oil and fresh black pepper.

  Jean-Louis exclaimed respectfully. “My God, Cathy, you know how to eat! Are you perhaps a Frenchwoman in disguise?”

  Cathy sat down, her face flushed and happy. “No. The usual English mix—some Scottish, one grandmother from Wales. No French that I know of.”

  “I owe my fabulous English to my English mother.”

  And your dark good looks to your French father, Gerry dreamily reflected. Then she thought, I hope I didn’t say that out loud. She licked her fingers.

  By now, all their heads turned every time the timer pinged. “Pavlovian response,” Gerry joked as Cathy’s pizza made its appearance.

  “Wait, wait! One more,” the chef cried. “A group effort.”

  “Bacon!” Jean-Louis suggested.

  “Cheddar!” was Gerry’s contribution.

  “Tomatoes!” Cathy said. “And olives.”

  They raised their glasses. “And olives!” they chimed. Jean-Louis opened the third bottle of wine as Cathy worked feverishly, popped pizza number four into the oven and collapsed to eat her own salmon extravaganza.

  Prince Charles, having sampled everything, staggered to his water bowl and slurped noisily. The oven timer pinged and he swung his head. A quantity of water, hanging from his jowls, detached and slapped against a cupboard door.

  “Oh, Charles! Gross! No, Cathy, you sit.” Gerry released the last pizza from the oven and wiped dog slime from the cupboard. Charles, meanwhile, was back at his post—tableside.

  Finally, they leaned back from the table. Compliments were paid to the chef, dishes loaded into the dishwasher and Cathy sent them to the living room while she prepared coffee.

  Gerry collapsed onto the sofa. “I don’t usually eat that much,” she groaned.

  Jean-Louis knelt by the fire and built it back up. The living room temperature provided a nice cool contrast to the heated kitchen, but the fire made the room cozy. He sat on the sofa and looked at her admiringly. “Your cheeks are all flushed.”

  Her hands rose to cover them. “Oh. They feel hot too. It’s the wine, I guess, plus I went snowshoeing this afternoon. Must have caught some sun.”

  “I protect my skin against the weather,” he replied primly.

  “Oh yes?”

  “You wouldn’t believe the windburn one can get going down the side of a mountain.”

  Gerry recalled the ruddy faces of downhill skiers as she’d seen on television. “Yes, I guess it might be painful.”

  “I use a moisturizer and sunblock. I don’t want to be all wrinkled by the time I’m forty.”

  “Um.” Gerry really didn’t have anything to add to this conversation. “Um. How old are you, Jean-Louis?”

  “Call me J-L. That’s what my mother does. I’m thirty-two.”

  “And you’re a full-time ski instructor?”

  “Yes. And in the summer I work as a trainer. It’s fun. You, er, draw?”

  “I’m a commercial artist, a cartoonist, really. And lately, I’ve become a teacher.”

  “Teaching art? Cathy, let me help you.” He rose and took the tray from their hostess. Gerry’s reply was lost in the bustle of adding cream and sugar to her coffee and enjoying the tiramisu Cathy had presented in shallow cut-glass bowls.

  She beamed on the two younger ones. “Getting acquainted?”

  “Yes. Yes, we are,” J-L replied. “How many guests do you average a week, Cathy?”

  As Cathy explained the seasonal vagaries of the hospitality trade, Gerry, to whom they were already familiar, let her mind drift.

  After a moment she interrupted: “Do either of you know anything about trees making a kind of little shrub like a ball on one of their boughs? I thought they were squirrels’ nests but one was low enough to examine and it was growing out of the tree.”

  J-L looked blank. Cathy mused for a second. “I think what you’re describing might be a witch’s broom. Wonderful name, eh?”

  “Yeah. Creepy. Thanks.” Gerry relapsed into a dream of women cutting sticks off trees, releasing the brooms and flying away into the night. She yawned.

  “Somebody’s sleepy,” J-L teased.

  Gerry stood. “Yes, I am. Cathy, thanks so much.” She turned to J-L, half expecting him to offer to walk her home. He poured himself another cup of coffee then jumped up and kissed her on both cheeks.

  “Lovely to meet you, Gerry. Again. Perhaps we’ll meet in the woods sometime. I cross-country ski in there.”

  “Watch out for snowmobilers,” she warned. “Today I heard several and had one come right up to me.”

  “Oh yes. Whereabouts?”

  “Way up near the highway and again crossing the tracks.”

  Cathy accompanied Gerry to the front door and squeezed her arm. “Isn’t he handsome?” she exclaimed but in a low voice.

  “I think he’s fun,” Gerry admitted. “Thanks for the great food. I’ll take you to lunch soon, okay? To pay you back. Cheer up, Charles,” she said to the dog, which, with a sad expression, had wandered into the hall, and stooped to kiss his head.

  Once again, she stepped out into the crisp clear night. The evening had been fun, hilarious even, but as the buzz from the wine ebbed and was replaced by a headache, Gerry felt that, somehow, it had all been a little off.

  Nervously, she looked around, listening for the sound of any animal activity. Would a fisher attack a human?

  It was with relief that she let herself into the quiet of The Maples. A few cats came to meet her: Bob, Mother and Jay, and Min Min. Lightning came too but stayed at the far end of the living room. Gerry took a big glass of water and sat at the room’s table. She pulled her not yet completed first draft of The Cake-Jumping Cats of Dibble over and re-entered its world, where a cat was queen, her courtiers were dogs, her human friends compliant, and it was always time for cake and tea.

  “How are the cakes coming?” Atholfass, Queen of Dibble, in the province of Fasswassenbassett asked her good friend Latooth Élonga, a not-quite-yet-elderly author who was paying an extended visit at the Queen’s castle.

  Latooth smiled modestly and urged the Queen and her courtiers to follow her to the kitchen. The hem of her dark grey dress drooped at the back and her shoes were worn down, but she walked like a lady. Proudly she displayed her latest creations.

  They gazed, awestruck, at a stack of at least twenty meringue disks that diminished in size from the bottom layers to the top, sandwiched together with whipped cream. “Adjustable,” murmured Latooth.

  Queen Atholfass jumped onto the tab
le and sniffed the stack, licked a bit of cream from the edge of the plate. “Clever,” she said, then did a double take as she came face to face with a pair of life-size white chocolate swans. “Tricky,” she praised.

  Next, she edged around an enormous treacle cake oozing syrup. “Sticky,” quipped Max, Count Scarfnhatznmitz, a flamboyant border collie. This drew a stifled giggle from his cousin Tess, Lady Ponscomb, a black flat-coat retriever. The Queen glared at the dogs.

  She strolled up to a Gâteau St. Honoré built of cream-filled puff pastry balls made to resemble a castle, the whole edifice held together by a delicate caramel syrup and decorated with spun sugar. “Fantastic,” purred the Queen. “It looks like Castle Dibble.”

  “Yes, dear. Thank you, dear,” beamed Latooth.

  “Can we eat any of these?” drooled Max.

  “Of course, dear. These are just samples. Of what jumps on the course might look like.”

  The little group relaxed at the kitchen table and planned what ought to happen next while Latooth cut into the treacle cake and Languida Fatiguée, a little girl somewhat related to Latooth, made a pot of tea.

  Gerry got up and fetched another glass of water. Her headache receding, she planned the illustration for this bit of text. “A big long narrow table. Well, like this one.” She imagined how much space each of the four cakes might take up and positioned her characters near them. “A long drawing that might run along the bottom of two facing pages.”

  She quickly sketched. The Queen sniffed the stack of meringues. Tess admired the white chocolate swans. Max’s large ham-like tongue lapped at a bit of syrup running off the treacle cake’s plate onto the edge of the table. Languida furtively removed one of the cream puffs from the lower part of Castle Dibble’s wall, causing the structure to begin to collapse.

  Oh, why couldn’t life consist solely of these lovely moments when she lost herself in her work?

  She stretched and noticed how quiet the house had become, except for the odd creak of ancient timber. A cat sneezed. She smiled and went to bed.

  When she woke in the morning, her first thought wasn’t of Dibble—its cats and courtiers, its cakes and endless tea parties—but of protecting the window in the house next door. She felt bad she’d forgotten do it earlier.

  She’d set her alarm for seven, knowing she had to be out the door heading for the college by 12:15 at the latest. She reread the day’s lecture as she drank her first coffee. “Historical context, Europe, blah, blah, Romantic period to realism, blah blah blah overview,” she muttered. “Trends, movements, compare and contrast. Okay, I think that’s all right. Bob, do you want to come with me and repair that window covering?”

  The tuxedo cat rolled on the braided hearthrug. One of the grey tiger cats—Gerry thought it was Joe, but what happened happened so fast it was hard to tell—jumped on Bob. Joe’s brothers, Winnie and Frank, jumped too, then their diminutive sidekick Ronald got involved. It was all friendly but it meant Bob shot off into the next room and Gerry went next door alone.

  As she entered the long semi-circular driveway that swung behind the house, she saw freshly fallen snow had obliterated her and Bob’s footprints across the lawn. And no one had cleared the driveway. She marched to the house’s far side. But the nails stayed in her pocket and her hammer hung unused in her hand. Not only was the plywood protection on the ground under the window, but the window glass was shattered.

  Gerry backed away and ran home to call the police. Perhaps if Bob had been there, he might have noticed, leading away from the window, tiny paw prints in the snow.

  PART 2

  SHRIKE

  A flutter. A flutter just at the edge of his vision. The grey cat made as if to turn his head, stopped. Pain. But the flutter.

  He remembered the tree; he remembered looking down from his place in the window. In the house. He wondered if the old man was still asleep. Cold.

  He remembered the feel of cold snow on the path behind the house. His paws twitched. But which house? He saw the way and followed it. White.

  It hurt to trot but he kept going. He kept going under the gate and across the back of the house where he used to live with the many other cats. He looked down to the shore. No flutter.

  But something had happened down there. He continued until he was almost directly under the tree. He looked up and then back toward his old house and saw himself sitting in a window high up under one of its gables.

  But he didn’t live there anymore. What was his name? He’d had a few. His mind became confused, his paws twitched again and he heard a low murmur. He turned his head and the thing was upon him.

  Run. He must run. He shot diagonally across the snow-covered lawn. The hell with paths. He almost flew over the snow. He heard the thing behind him, scrabbling. It was fast but bigger so he must have the edge. Mustn’t he?

  He made it to the gate and shot under and through his own backyard to the base of the red-barked tree.

  The hunter was stymied by the gate; didn’t appear to like it, or was unable to fit under it. The cat watched from halfway up the tree, resting. Then the hunter seemed to make up its mind and quickly swarmed up and over the gate.

  The cat spat and cursed the tree’s smooth bark. No purchase unless he dug his claws well in and that slowed him. He desperately continued his climb.

  He could hear the creature closing the gap. It was climbing the tree! No fair! shrieked the cat. Climbing trees was one of a cat’s few defences against larger predators.

  He made it to the height on the tree from where the ledge on the house beckoned. He leapt and was halfway through the squirrel hole when the creature behind him must have leapt too. He felt a searing pain down one side.

  The murmur ceased. His paws stopped twitching.

  6

  The police response to Gerry’s call was underwhelming. No one called back, and after she’d fretted away the morning doing chores, getting ready to teach and peering out her kitchen window at the house next door, she had calmed herself down enough to realize why.

  A broken window in an abandoned house in winter. Right. Like that mattered compared to car accidents, house fires and heart attacks, not to mention real criminal activities.

  She phoned first Cathy to alert her and then Blaise. “But I’m sure we don’t have to worry about break-ins,” she reassured him. “It’s because the house is empty.”

  “I read in the paper that its previous occupant just died. A woman. She was older than me. Over 100.”

  “That’s encouraging.” She sought to change the subject. “How’s Graymalkin?”

  “The drain is gone and they’ve stitched him up, but he’s still full of drugs. They say he stirred yesterday. Cathy took me and I sat with him for a while, just talking and stroking his head.” Blaise’s voice caught in his throat. “His paws twitched but that was it.”

  “Well, Cathy says Dr. Morin is the best vet around here.”

  “Are your cats all right, Gerry?”

  “Yes. But I’m not letting them outside unless I’m with them. Not that most of them want to go out in winter. Only Bob and sometimes the boys. You know: Winnie and his brothers.”

  “I know. And how is that nice young cousin of yours? What’s his name? Doug’s youngest.”

  “David? He’s fine, I think. He goes to the same college where I’m teaching. You know—Ross Davidson. But it’s a big place. I haven’t seen him yet. Look, Blaise, I’ve got to get going. Bye bye.”

  She was hungry again but again, there was no time. She rushed to a fast-food place near the college, parked and ate in her car. Mm, she thought as she wolfed the breakfast: cheese, bacon and egg on an English muffin with a wodge of deep-fried potato. My car is going to start smelling like a restaurant.

  As she savoured the salt and the fat, the big Cadillac she’d seen the foreign student from the college tour get out of pulled up. This tim
e the car was driven by a scowling woman. A couple of frightened-looking girls got out and scuttled away. After the car left, the young man joined the girls. They all looked furtively around as a heated discussion erupted. Finally they dispersed. “Huh,” Gerry remarked to the air as she gathered her garbage and her notes and set off for class. “I wonder what all that was about.”

  “Please put that phone away, Miss,” Gerry warned the young girl at the back of the room. “I won’t tell you again. You may keep your phones but not use them.” The girl flushed, defiantly worked her thumbs for a few more seconds before realizing Gerry and most of her classmates were watching. She put it away, crossed her arms across her chest and slid down in her seat.

  “Thank you,” Gerry said calmly. The trick was not to appear intimidated. She returned to the painting they were viewing. “Now, we may find these works boring.” Vernet’s The Battle of Friedland was on the screen. Napoleon on horseback was surrounded by his generals and the captured and dead of his enemies. “Painted in 1835-ish, this is a fine example of history painting. Nothing wrong with it. Fine technique. Just, to us, not much emotion.”

  She clicked and Bonnat’s The Martyrdom of Saint Denis appeared. “Boring or gross, depending how you look at it. Now, this was painted fifty years later and is another example of history painting, but done in a style called revival. Note the columns and costumes harking back to biblical times.” She let them look for a moment. “I rather like the exposed sinews of the saint’s neck where the skin has torn off. And look at how sharp the axe is. The painting is full of symbolism but we would say, again, not much emotion.”

  She clicked again. “Let’s go back to the same period the Napoleonic work was done and see another war painting. This is Goya’s The Third of May 1808 painted in 1814. Now, we have maybe a rougher, less polished technique, but look at the face of the central character. Despair, bravery and fear are mixed there. The composition is simple. Soldiers on one side, prisoners on the other. The night sky is above both groups but a strong light illuminating the hero shows us who the artist admires. And we can relate to this human confrontation where possibly we don’t relate to saints or emperors.”