Catalyst_ A Tale of the Barque Cats - Anne McCaffrey [30]
“Or the boy,” I said. “The boy’s all right, isn’t he, Mother?” My siblings and now foster siblings murmured agreement. The boy had just saved us.
She gave a short, noncommittal purr but I thought I saw a cloud cross her great gold-green eyes.
Mother had vowed that she would continue Git’s work in teaching us to hunt, but alas, she never had the chance.
Inside that little dark room, we could only hunt each other, but even my reckless foster sibs realized that killing was out of the question.
We had only a few more days to nurse, to feed on the kibble and soft food the boy brought us, and to practice washing and pouncing before the man returned.
The boy sadly informed him of the deaths of Git and Buttercup. He frowned, shook his head, and patted the boy’s shoulders.
But all he could say was,“They’ve grown, I’m going to have to take a whole new set of pics.”
He took one of all of us nursing, then had the boy hold up each of us while he pointed the little flashy thing at us.
The boy held me close to his chest and I felt his heart thudding through it. “Don’t worry, Chester. You and me are a team. Pop said I could have a kitten and I choose you, whether he likes it or not.”
I pressed my ear to his heart and purred as loudly as I could. Of course the boy would stay with me. Why would I know everything he did and most of what he thought if he wasn’t mine? He was my Kibble in the way that Mother’s Kibble was hers, except Mother didn’t know where hers was and some tiny part of me always knew where the boy was.
Nobody could fathom the mind of the man, though. He was trickier than the canine that had killed Buttercup and Git.
CHAPTER 7
When she wasn’t helping Jared in the makeshift clinic in the Locksley Mall, Janina was out plastering every available notice board with flyers featuring Chessie’s ID pic and the reward for her return. She talked to everyone she could stop and told them about the fire and how Chessie was missing and asked them to look for her.
One day she stopped a woman laden with parcels, boarding a battered farm tracker.
Janina showed the woman the picture.
“Just a minute, honey,” the woman said, setting her parcels in the passenger seat and turning back to Janina. She shoved back her long dark brown hair, the plait of which had loosened during her shopping, wiped her hands on the thighs of her blue denim pants, and took the picture from Janina, glanced at it, grunted, and returned it. “Sorry,” she said. “Don’t recall seeing one like this.”
“You’d notice her,” Janina insisted. “Not only is she beautiful but she was about to have kittens when she disappeared.”
The woman shrugged and started to walk away. “Hmm, well, I’m not much for cats. But kittens, you say? When was it she disappeared again?”
The woman’s expression was both annoyed and speculative. Maybe she had a lead!
“Nearly two months ago, after the fire in the vet clinic at Hood Station.”
“Huh. Well, what a shame. That crew must set great store by her to be offering such a hefty reward.”
“Oh, yes, ma’am, and her kittens too. She’s a very valuable cat, but more than that, we love her and we need her on our ship. She’s an important part of the crew.”
The woman glanced at the flyer again, her eyes lingering on the line about the reward. “Well, I hope you find her, honey.” Then she turned back to put her parcels in her flitter.
Janina said, “Ma’am, if you see her or hear from anyone who might have seen her, please would you call me at Dr. Vlast’s clinic in Locksley? I’m working with him until the new clinic is ready on Hood Station.”
“Umm-hmm,” the woman said. “I sure will.”
Since Janina began posting the flyers, people had shown up at the clinic with cats of all coloring, ages, and both sexes, some with kittens, some without, trying to claim