Catalyst_ A Tale of the Barque Cats - Anne McCaffrey [23]
“Don’t worry, girl. I wouldn’t hurt your baby. You know me, right? We’re friends, aren’t we? I was just going to pet it.”
Chessie turned her head to give him a long look too, calmer than the momcat’s but a warning. It came to him all of a sudden that the kitten was probably too little and too new to be petted right then. “I didn’t know, okay?” he said. “Gimme a break here. I haven’t seen baby cats get born before.”
The little kitten might be blind, but it found one of its mom’s teats quick enough and set about nursing while she popped the rest of the next kitten out. The two cats were doing an assembly line kind of thing: the tortoiseshell momcat popping them out, Chessie washing one end while the new mother washed the other, and then if Momcat was busy with birthing the next kitten, Chessie would nudge the clean kitten over to get its dinner.
He was still watching when he heard Pop call, “Jubal! How come the cows are still out in the pasture? It’ll be getting dark soon.”
“Pop, come and see this!” he cried without getting up. In a minute the latch was raised and Pop came in behind him.
“Well, looks like your barn cat is showing her ladyship how it’s done. I don’t reckon they need supervision, son.”
“But, Pop!”
“You go do your chores before your mama wants to know why you didn’t. I’ll make sure the cats are okay.”
And that was that. Jubal hung around the barn as long as he could, going out in the yard to feed the chickens, putting down fresh food and hay for the cows, getting the milking gear ready for when he brought them in. Pop slipped out in the middle of the milking and came back with a piece of equipment that he took into the cat room with him. Jubal wondered what it was. Pop wouldn’t hurt the cats or the kittens, he was pretty sure, but it was hard to say for certain what he would do. He wasn’t exactly a predictable kind of guy.
When Jubal put the cows into their stalls and was measuring out their food, he heard a cat squall. He hastily set down his bucket and ran to the cat room, flinging open the door. Pop had one of the kittens in one hand and a syringelike thing in the other hand, the tip against the kitten’s neck. Momcat was snarling at him.
“I’m not going to hurt your offspring, madame,” Pop told her. “I am elevating him—or her, as the case may be—to a higher station in life. You’ll thank me for this later.”
Jubal didn’t think Momcat was buying it.
CHAPTER 6
CHESTER’S STORY: A BARN ON SHERWOOD
Having finally attained the maturity and skills to render a full account of the events surrounding my entrance into the universe, I can now tell the story of my birth, the births of my siblings, and our fate at the hands of our captors.
Because of the humans’ interference, my mother wisely chose to deliver her litter in the middle of the night. I was born first, the most beautiful of the lot, my mother assured me, though I heard her say the same thing to each of my subsequent siblings. I had to take her word for it since my eyes were still closed.
Inconvenient bit of biology, that. Fortunately, my blindness made my other senses preternaturally acute and I quickly assessed my surroundings. My nose led me to a source of nourishment.
“Hey, you, new kid, that’s our milk you’re stealing!”
“Yeah, get away from our mother and go back to your own!”
These were the unkind and uncouth cries that greeted me from the other youthful feline denizens of our lair, the offspring of my mother’s companion and my sometimes nanny, a tortoiseshell queen named Git. Though lacking our careful breeding, Git nonetheless proved herself to be a noble creature of the highest order. Fortunately for me, Git’s kittens had been born only the day before and were also