Catboy - Eric Walters [27]
“I can show you. If you point me in the direction you came from, I’ll know which hole you came through,” I said.
All three of them pointed in different directions.
“I guess we got a little turned around,” Dr. Reynolds said.
“No problem. I’ll show you all the holes in the fence until we find the one you came through.”
“Thanks, we appreciate your help, and the help you’re giving these cats,” Dr. Reynolds said.
He held out his hand. I slipped his business card into my pocket and shook his hand. It was good to know I wasn’t alone.
Fifteen
I sat as still as possible, not moving my eyes and trying to control my breathing so my chest didn’t go up or down. I’d found the longer I sat still, the more comfortable the cats became with me. It was as if they’d forgetten I was there. I became another hunk of junk in the yard. Or, I liked to imagine, one of them. I even started having cat-like thoughts as I sat motionless.
Over the weeks the cats had let me get closer and closer. Now some of them even let me get close enough to give them a scratch behind the ears. That Doris woman had been right about some of the cats being gentle. I’d learned which ones I could risk doing that with. Not that I was going to tell my mother.
The best way to get close to them was to wait and be patient. I always let them approach me. I never approached them. It was mainly the teenager cats and the kittens, but a couple of the older cats, including Miss Mittens, allowed me to stroke them on the back too. Some of them even brushed against my leg or stood on their hind legs to meet my hand halfway.
I wasn’t sure what Dr. Reynolds would have thought, but I knew my mother would not approve. Mr. Singh had seen me patting the cats, as had Simon, and the other guys and Jaime. They were a little jealous because the cats wouldn’t let any of them get close, not even the cats they’d named.
Alexander, of course, called his cat Kot. Jaime named the Burmese and the Siamese cats Minx and Ming. The Himalayan cat was named Sherpa by Rupinder, in honor of the guides who take climbers up Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world. Mohammad named a calico cat Pizza, because that was his favorite food, and the Abyssinian Cleopatra, because she reminded him of a carving on a pyramid. And finally, Devon named an orange tabby Marley, after Bob Marley.
They may have named some of the cats, but I invested the most time and energy at the colony. Simon spent more time there than anybody else except me, but he had trouble sitting still or staying quiet long enough to allow the cats to approach. He was a great guy, but patience wasn’t one of his virtues.
Sitting off to the side was King. He was keeping an eye on me but pretending not to. I didn’t think he was worried about me as much as he wanted to know if I had any food. His interest in me was strictly related to the food I brought. He didn’t seem to want or need human contact. In fact, he didn’t even seem interested in the other cats.
After Dr. Reynolds had questioned the relationship between King and Hunter, I’d noticed that King never fought with Hunter. Of course Hunter wasn’t nearly as big, but he had a way about him that left little doubt he could handle himself. King was a bully, and bullies didn’t usually pick on somebody who could actually fight back. Not that Hunter would win a fight with King. King was big and seemed to be getting bigger due to all the extra food I’d been bringing to the colony. So Hunter gave King his space and King gave Hunter his space.
I heard the sound of pounding feet, lots of them, loud and fast. I spun around in time to see two dogs run into the clearing. One was big and the other bigger. The big one looked like some sort of Rottweiler and German shepherd cross. The other just looked mean. One of its ears was up and the other looked as if it had been torn off. The two of them almost merged into one gigantic, eight-legged mass of black, brown and white