Catalyst_ A Tale of the Barque Cats - Anne McCaffrey [25]
The boy’s large warm presence loomed over us and one of the wormlike things descended to stroke my mother between the ears and then me, from my ears to my tail. The sensation was not unpleasant. The boy stroked each of my siblings in turn, then Git’s kittens. Git had taken advantage of the opening to leave the enclosure, but I heard her return and the sound of her fur brushing the boy’s hind leg and paw, which were cramped awkwardly beneath him.
Then the boy said, “What’s that? Looks like you lost one of your babies and—shite oh dear, kitty, you’re bleedin’ like a stuck pig.”
He rose so quickly that Git fell sideways and, without closing the opening, he thudded away, yelling, “Dad! Hey, Dad!”
My memory gives me no account of what happened next. Although I now possess the maturity and faculties I mentioned previously, at the time I was newborn, with closed eyes, had been through a great deal during my first few moments of life, and I needed my rest.
I can say only that my mother and I survived, as did the three siblings that were born after me. That made it even. Four of us and four of the others, Git’s get. The boy announced that he would call me Chester. Mother said I was the spitting image of her illustrious forebear Tuxedo Thomas. I am largely black, with a white chest and paws. My younger sisters were Silvesta, a silver tabby whose stripes twined into butterfly shapes on her sides, and Buttercup, gold and white with deeper orangish stripes along her legs and decorating her tail. My brother Sol, when he was little, was pale peach and cream-striped and insufferable. No matter which outlet on which mother I chose, Sol was right there to argue with me about it.
The kittens born to Git were our seniors by a day, according to her. They were all males. The boy called them Virgil, Wyatt, Bat, and Doc, after dead humans whose exploits he had read in stories. Apparently Bat was the one whose name came first, since he batted at the boy’s finger when the boy tried to pet him. The other names came by association.
We got to know Git’s get quite well, as they were essentially also our littermates and shared our meals. While Mother recovered, Git often gathered us to her to nurse and give Mother rest.
Then came the time when their eyes began to open while we were still in the dark. It seemed wrong somehow that we, who Mother and Git agreed were quite special and of celestial lineage, should be blundering around blindly while Git’s kits pounced us, rolled us over, and generally behaved in an exceptionally aggressive and aggravating manner, punctuating their attacks with squeaky growls.
“You had better stop that,” I told Wyatt, who had landed on me while I was suckling. “The boy and the man are coming, and they don’t want to see any of us damaged. We are valuable.”
“You are whupped, that’s what. I don’t hear the boy’s steps or the man’s so don’t try to get out of it that way. No one can save you now from the paws of doom!”
Then he heard the footsteps too.
“How’d you hear them before me?”
“I saw them,” I told him. “I see the boy.”
“Hah! You can’t. Your eyes are closed.”
“I have my ways,” I told him mysteriously. It was not hard to be mysterious since I didn’t understand it myself. However, ever since my cries for help had summoned the boy to my mother’s side, I had retained the ability to see him through my closed eyes and to compel him to do my will. This would have given me a great sense of power except that most of the time I had no idea what my will was concerning the boy. My urgent needs, as I understood them, were met by Mother and Git. If my littermates had similar powers and visions, they didn’t mention it. Perhaps it did not occur to them that such abilities were not a normal part of a cat’s equipment, but I tend to think that theirs took longer to develop than my own, as I was the only one to know in advance when the