Secrets of the Cat_ Its Lore, Legend, and Lives - Barbara Holland [3]
I dumped a large can of cat food into a kettle of dry chows, poured water over it, and mashed and stirred the mess vigorously while Muffie watched and the others took up their stations on the lawn.
Zachary was fed on the back step, and first; at the time, Judy still considered him the baby of the family, though she’s had an accident since that wiped out his title. He is a curious-looking cat. His sharply crossed eyes are Siamese-blue and his body is buff, but his legs and tail are striped. Judy loyally insists that he’s a tabby-point Siamese, a recognized creature in English show circles, but nothing about his shape or voice suggests Siam. Was he the product of a misalliance, or the result of some misguided breeding experiment? Apparently his owners had been dissatisfied with him and cut off his whiskers and threw him away in a patch of steep, rocky woods; he was too small to have wandered so far from human habitation on his own, half starved and screaming lonesomely to himself when Judy found him.
The Three Girls—Stubby, Gray, and beautiful Marzipan—eat together out of one rusty pan, and care must be taken that their mother, Mehitabel the witch, doesn’t chase them away from it; she never could stand them, even when they were tiny. She was found, pregnant, in a dumpster at a construction site, and Judy and Bob often said, “You can take the cat out of the dumpster, but you can’t take the dumpster out of the cat.”
Throw a handful at the bushes for Blackie. Like throwing salt over your shoulder to ward off evil spirits.
Ferdy, whose teeth are bad, eats last and gets the softened juicy dregs at the bottom of the kettle. I never come out quite even and have to hustle around snatching back some from the other dishes, but when you’ve finished feeding Judy’s cats you’ve accomplished something, and can stand back and survey the seething lawn with pride.
I had gotten as far as, I think, Porky, when Boston Blackie came out of the bushes.
The other cats froze, and then the ones closest to the woods began to slip away. Marzipan broke and ran, like a fool, followed by her sisters, and Muffie edged backward toward the kitchen door. I stood still.
Where had Judy left the cat carrier, in case someone had to be rushed to the vet? Why hadn’t we called Terry at once, on Thursday, as soon as we decided on the gun? Could I call him now? Would he get here in time?
Blackie walked steadily across the grass toward me, and I backed against a tree. I had never heard of a cat walking up to a human and attacking it, but I’ve learned to be wary of generalizations about cats, and this was no common cat.
He moved purposefully, without haste, and ignored the other cats melting away, ignored their abandoned dishes.
In front of me he stopped and looked up, and I looked down, hugging the kettle as a kind of bulletproof vest. His tail was high in the classic greeting gesture. He opened his mouth and gave a ridiculously small hoarse mew.
It was the first time he had ever noticed any of us. It was absurd to think of it, but could it be a trick? A trap? “Are you hungry, Blackie?” I asked in nervous falsetto. “Help yourself. The others lost their appetites.” I could reach down and grab him, if only I had steel gloves on. Throw him loose in the car and drive hell-for-leather to the SPCA’s gas chamber.
He lifted a front paw and curled it, and mewed again.
“You mean you want a plate of your own?” I asked.
Apparently he did. I went and got one, and filled it, and he settled quietly to his dinner without glancing around, tail down and stretched out in the classic gesture of satisfied dining. One by one the others crept back to gulp a few bites from their own plates, never taking their eyes off the guest, but he paid no attention. He ate daintily and slowly, and when he was finished he washed his white paws and whiskers and then went over to the daylily bed against the sunny wall and found