Catalyst_ A Tale of the Barque Cats - Anne McCaffrey [31]
Jared said it was the triumph of hope over common sense, something he’d seen a great deal.
Some of the cats were so matted they looked to be made from balls of dirty felt instead of fur, some were battered and scarred, many looked starved, and all looked frightened. Jared did what he could for the pretenders to Chessie’s throne, but ultimately they had to be returned to the arms of their disappointed bearers, though some were abandoned at the clinic. Janina made it her job to look after these and tried to find homes for them, though it was clear that most cats were not highly valued on Sherwood. Often they were considered to be as troublesome as the vermin they hunted.
She kept hoping as she continued her rounds of cleaning and filling feeding dishes, mucking out stalls, hosing down kennels, and changing litter boxes. It was useful work and she didn’t mind it, but the familiar routine of caring for the cats tore at her heart, even though she was glad to be able to help them. They wound around her ankles and purred up at her and she patted them and spoke kindly, but they were just not Chessie. She and Chessie had been a team for ten years—more than half her life, and all of the best part. She missed her desperately and also missed the camaraderie with the crew.
Under other circumstances, the prolonged opportunity to work with Jared would have cheered her, but he was run off his feet now that the people (and their animals) of Sherwood had him all to themselves. They called him night and day to attend difficult births or accidental injuries, and he was often so exhausted he barely seemed to recognize her. When there was a lull, he spent it in his makeshift lab, preoccupied and focusing on his work.
She often found him frowning at slides and tubes of the mysterious glittery substance, which they were finding in more and more animals, but when she asked him about it, he shrugged and said only, “I’m checking it out.”
Two weeks later, she was grooming the last poor matted moggy brought in by a hopeful. He was a gray and black male who had been spitting mad when he arrived. His temper hadn’t improved much since. Jared had long red scratches running down his hands from this fellow, but the cat seemed to like females—or at least Janina—somewhat better. She was clipping one of his mats when the office door jingled.
“Nina, there are people to see you,” Jared called from his exam room in the front of the clinic. She wished people would make appointments instead of popping in any old time with the poor im-poster cats for her inspection. Every time they did, her hopes rose, and every single time they’d been dashed. Bracing herself for another letdown, she plopped the recalcitrant tom back into his cage, washed and dried her hands, and walked deliberately into the waiting room.
She saw two people at the desk, a woman and a boy, each carrying something. She was trying to remember where she had seen the woman before when she heard the plaintive mew.
The mew.
“Chessie?” she asked, thinking surely her ears were deceiving her. But she heard the mew again and knew she was not mistaken. “Chessie!”
“So you do recognize her?” a slightly familiar female voice asked. “You’ll not deny that she’s the very cat you told me about. The one you’re looking for?”
Hurrying toward them, Janina recognized the woman she’d spoken to in the mall. The woman peeled a blanket farther away from the beloved furry face with its long magnificent whiskers. Chessie appeared uninjured. Her tufted ears had twitched forward at the sound of Janina’s voice.
Janina reached for her. Oh, Chessie!” The bundle the woman relinquished was much lighter than the beautiful cat had been when Janina placed her in the kennel at Jared’s station clinic. “You’ve had your kittens, haven’t you?” she asked, lifting an edge of the blanket to see the rest of Chessie more clearly.
“She did but they was all lost