Catboy - Eric Walters [52]
“As I was saying,” Dr. Reynolds said, “I’m transporting these cats to my offices for an examination and treatment.”
“Doc, I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night,” the officer said. “What I know is that there was a report of a white van parked where the fence had been broken and four or five people were inside the junkyard. Now here I am, standing beside a white van, the only white van I can see, and there are five people inside it. So once again, I’d like an answer.”
“I’ve given you an answer,” Dr. Reynolds said. “I’m sorry you don’t like it, but that’s my answer, unless you have proof of something different.”
“Proof? You mean like going over there and taking casts of the shoeprints coming out of the yard and comparing them to your shoes? Do you mean that sort of proof?”
Dr. Reynolds swallowed hard.
“So would somebody like to tell me what you were doing in the yard?” he asked.
“We weren’t doing anything wrong,” I said. “Honestly.”
“But you were in there, correct?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
He turned to Dr. Reynolds. “Now was that so hard? So what were you doing in there?”
“We were just—” Dr. Reynolds said.
“Not from you,” he said. “I want to hear it from him. He hasn’t lied to me, at least so far.”
“We weren’t taking anything, except for the cats.”
“And why would you be taking these cats?” he demanded. He sounded angry.
“You don’t understand,” Dr. Reynolds said.
“Then let him explain,” he said, pointing at me again.
“They’re wild cats, feral cats, and we had to move them.”
“And why is that?” he asked. He still sounded angry.
“Because of that,” I said, pointing at a section of the fence that had a poster of the condos. “They’re building condominiums, and the cats weren’t going to have any place to live, if they even did live! They would have been killed during the construction!”
“And the owner of the property, the man who’s developing this property, does he know all of this?” the officer asked.
“He doesn’t know, and if he did, he wouldn’t care,” I said.
“So he doesn’t know you’re taking these cats?” he asked. “He didn’t give you permission to take the cats or to be on his property, is that correct?”
I didn’t want to answer, but I had to. “Yes, sir,” I said quietly.
He let out a big sigh.
“But we had to do it!” I exclaimed. “We had to rescue them or they would have died. We had no choice, even if we didn’t have permission!”
“And where are you bringing these cats to?” he asked.
“The Leslie Street Spit is gigantic,” Dr. Reynolds said. “There are already two separate feral cat colonies out there, and there used to be a third.”
The officer shook his head slowly.
“You have to know a couple of things about me,” the policeman said. “First off, I’ve been a police officer for almost twenty years, and it is my sworn duty to uphold the law.”
This was looking worse and worse.
“And, second, I have a cat named Pepper. He’s a wonderful cat, almost a member of my family. So I’m going to back my car up, and you’re going to drive away, right now, before any other squad cars arrive.”
He handed the ids back to Dr. Reynolds and started to walk away, then spun around and came back to the van.
“And thanks for taking a chance. Sometimes you have to do what’s right instead of what’s strictly legal. Have a good day!”
Thirty
We drove slowly, very slowly, along the bumpy dirt road. It led out to a strip of land that jutted into the lake. There were bushes and trees all over and plenty of places where a cat could hide or hunt. I could see city office towers across the water, but where we were seemed more like a little piece of land up north, not the heart of Toronto.
Dr. Reynolds explained there was a connection between the land on which we were driving and those towers. The spit was created when the city had to find a place to dump the dirt it had dug up to build the foundations of those office towers. Somehow it seemed right that our cats, forced from their home by another tower going up, would make this land their home.
“There’s lots of food out here for them to catch,” Dr. Reynolds said.
“And people who