Catalyst_ A Tale of the Barque Cats - Anne McCaffrey [20]
“Not me! I’ve caught many mice and rats and one frog already. I’ll show you.”
The other cat turned tail and waddled away. Chessie immediately felt lonely, even before she was out of sight. The other cat was not as unfriendly as she could have been, and Chessie was used to being surrounded by friends and admirers, not to mention her Kibble. She cried out for the other cat to return, and the tortoiseshell padded back toward her. She had a lot of red in her mottles, looked to be the same breed as Chessie and as heavily pregnant, though perhaps a little younger, and she was dragging a huge rat, which she dropped in front of Chessie’s carrier. Then, despite Chessie’s entreaties that she stay, she waddled away again to return with another rat, then the frog, several small mice, and some other things Chessie had never seen before.
“Good catch,” Chessie said, one expert hunter to another.
“And these are just the ones I haven’t eaten yet!” the other female said. She was sitting erect, guarding her prey, and at Chessie’s comment, her chest puffed out so that it almost protruded more than her kitten-filled middle. Her nipples looked as swollen as Chessie’s felt. This was a clever and able cat, Chessie thought, and a possible ally when she escaped to return to her ship.
“I’m formally called Thomas’s Duchess,” she said. “But my shipmates call me Chessie.”
“The boy hasn’t called me anything yet, except ‘momcat,’” the other replied. “But before him, others said ‘Git!’ when they saw me, so I guess that must be my name.”
“Git—succinct, efficient, no nonsense about it. It suits you.”
“Do you think it’s short for anything grander, like yours is? I have no idea what Duchess means but I like the sound of it.”
“Possibly it’s your name and coloring. Your real name might be Grizabella. That is quite a venerable name among Barque Cats so probably it is among dirtside—land cats—as well. It must be an acronym—the first letter of each word. ‘Grizabella Is Tortoiseshell’ might be your real name.”
“Oh, that sounds very grand. Why do you suppose they only use first letters?”
“It’s kind of a code. They’re fond of using letters for codes. The health op used to say to my Kibble, ‘It is time to take Chessie to the V-E-T.’ As if I didn’t know what that meant!”
“They’re really confusing,” Git said. “Some cats want to be house pets, but me, I’ll be happy for a warm barn to raise my family and plenty of game to hunt. A kind word once in a while is nice but it’s not like I’d want to depend on humans.”
“My Kibble and crew are very reliable,” Chessie said. “They will come looking for me. I’m sure they won’t take off without me and my kittens. I doubt the ship will even start unless I’m there.”
“If you’re so important, why did they send you here?”
“They didn’t. I told you, I was abducted. But my people will find me. There’s a chip in my neck.”
“A chip? Does it hurt?”
“No worse than an insect bite when they put it in. It has my ancestral record in it and my duty station and its signal, but it also transmits my whereabouts. Kibble uses it to track me when I’m patrolling places too small for her to fit.”
“Can’t say I’d care for that,” Git said disdainfully. “You set a lot more store by humans than I do. In my experience they’ll more than likely let you down.”
“I told you I am worth a great deal to them. That’s got to be why the man stole me. He wants these kittens.”
“You’ll see. It will be as much as either of us can do to keep him from drowning or shooting us all if he reckons there’s too many.”
“Not my kittens. My kittens patrol ships all over the universe. They are much sought after as vermin-control agents.”
“What’s that?”
“Hunters. Killers. We’re very good, you know.”
“Better than me?” Git growled, and hunkered down to glower menacingly in through the airholes. “Could you or your kittens catch more prey than this in a single night? I don’t think so!”
“Oh, no,” Chessie