Catalyst_ A Tale of the Barque Cats - Anne McCaffrey [88]
When Jared came to the laboratory that first day, although other cats who had been his patients snarled that he had betrayed them and joined the enemy, she welcomed his caresses. Lately she had smelled her Kibble’s scent on him, and that comforted her. Kibble had not abandoned her. She believed Jared truly meant it when he said he would get her out of there and back to Kibble, no matter what. But she didn’t think he could. She knew too much about humans after all of her years among them.
“Don’t worry, old girl,” he’d told her that first day while scratching her head. “We’ll find some way to get you out of here.” The key word in this reassurance was “out,” and that made her a little hopeful, a little less resigned, and when she felt panic rising in her, she resisted. She was a very patient cat, as a good hunter had to be. She would wait and watch, wait and watch.
The cats in the cages next to her, at first unable to understand why she was not as agitated as they, eyed her warily. But slowly, as their own exertions wore them down, her calm curling, sleeping, waiting and watching, quieted them, so they followed suit. And their calm quieted the cats in the cages next to theirs.
Chessie knew that dwelling on what you feared but were helpless to change was a waste of time. All that did was make your fur fall out. So when they were more settled, she began telling stories to the other cats, especially the kits. Stories of the bravery and independence of catkind, of the first cat to contact humans, whose tale was told by a human as “The Cat Who Walked By Himself,” of Scarlett who went into a burning building over and over again to bring out her kits, sustaining horrible injuries but saving most of her family. She told them (again) of her illustrious ancestor, Tuxedo Thomas, and how he saved his human’s ship many times by his cleverness and the quickness of his pounce and paws. And she told them the most ancient stories of all, of the origins of Earth cats, those who guarded the temples of ancient Africa, Asia, and Indochina, those who were worshipped as gods, those who were hunted as the accomplices of supposedly evil people and yet still caught and killed the rats that brought plague to the very humans who had killed their own noble protectors. This was another of those terrible times for their species, but she knew that the qualities that made cats great would keep them from becoming extinct. The truth was, humans could not actually do without them, though cats could do without humans.
Others among the captives had tales too, losing their fear momentarily in the presence of a large appreciative audience. The cats who were in heat and those who were in pursuit sung tales of their ancestors, of their own beauty and prowess as hunters or makers of enchanting offspring. They sang lustily and drove the lab tech humans to take refuge from the caterwauling in headphones and earplugs.
But that day, when Jared did not come, Chessie slept to escape the fear that she had been abandoned to her fate once more. She wanted to trust, but among the stories of her fellow cats were many ancestral tales of human treachery and betrayal. These cats seemed not to have particularly good positions on their ships. They, like Git, seemed to feel that trust was for dogs.
Chessie awakened suddenly, though at first their section of the laboratory seemed quiet. The white-haired woman who’d come in Jared’s stead was gone—along with all but one