Catalyst_ A Tale of the Barque Cats - Anne McCaffrey [28]
At first we kept up fairly well, running, leaping, tumbling after her. The blades of grass looked as tall from my own height as trees did to the boy. The wildflowers, purple-belled ones and frothy white, bobbed seductively enough that Sol temporarily forgot he was actually a voracious carnivore and attacked the plant. A bee flew out and would have stung him if he hadn’t jumped back in a hurry.
Deeper and deeper into the meadow we went, until Silvesta said, “I can’t see the barn anymore.”
Git, whose fine fluffy tail had been our beacon through the bush, turned back on us. “Good. Now then, I’m going to flush something your way. Before you go back to your mama, I want you all to catch enough to eat that you won’t be troublin’ her for milk. It’s high time you wean.”
She disappeared into the grass, but in a moment there was a thrashing and a small sparkly thing hopped toward us. These bugs were my favorite treat, and as eldest and the first one of us with open eyes, I figured the first kill out here at least belonged to me. Following Git’s instructions, I vanquished it far more easily than I would have believed possible and proceeded to eat it with pride while Sol skittered after a lizard that slid through the grass toward us.
Buttercup, full of her barn catch, had lagged behind us. It was Silvesta, waiting with waggling hindquarters for her turn, who heard Buttercup squeak.
Git heard it too. Although we had not seen her for some time, suddenly she bounded over us, snarling.
There was an answering snarl and then nothing.
A bite of my prey was still in my teeth. I looked up, surrounded by the waving grass and the blue sky up above. But with my inner eyes I saw the boy come out of the barn with the feed bucket in his hands. As if he saw me too, he dropped the bucket and began running.
Somewhere he picked up a stick. “Leave them be, you mangy mongrel!” he yelled, waving the stick.
But I knew even before the canine sprinted past us, our protectress dangling from his jaws as prey had so often dangled from hers, that the boy had come too late. Where our second mother’s strength, energy, and alert attention had crackled through the air, there was only stillness. The emptiness filled up with the boy’s panting breath and the smell of the dog trailing behind it. Then came the first yowl of Silvesta’s life as she stood over our sister’s mangled body.
Git’s sacrifice had not been swift enough to save Buttercup.
The boy picked both of my sisters up. Buttercup was so small, he slipped her body into his chest pocket, and blood seeped through the fabric. Silvesta continued to cry, and the boy searched through the grass until he saw the cowering Sol and lifted him too. I, who was closest to him, was the last to be lifted up, but I knew even in the midst of terror and bewilderment that it was because the boy knew exactly where I was, and that I knew he was near.
Mother washed us all when the boy took us back but she couldn’t wash the life back into Buttercup, though the boy showed her the body, now oddly so much tinier than ours. Finally, Mother gave up and began washing Silvesta, and the boy took the body away again.
Wyatt and his brothers could not grasp it at first that their mother was gone. They searched the straw, they sniffed at us, who still bore her scent on our skin, and they prodded our mother looking for theirs. Wyatt understood first and stood by his mother’s cat door and mewed a pitiful, lonely keen, more mournful for being so squeaky and small.
Sol and I just stared at him and the others. They had always been bigger than we were, had bullied us, but now they were lost. I sidled up to Wyatt, bumping my weight against him, trying to purr consolingly. He hissed at