Cat Tales Read online

  Cat Tales

  Alma Alexander

  Copyright Alma Alexander 2011

  ISBN 978-1-4524-2131-5

  Published by Kos Books at Smashwords

  Kos Books

  A & D Deckert

  343 Sudden Valley Drive

  Bellingham WA 98229

  Publication Record

  Homemaker, Renard's Menagerie, July 2007

  Hourglass, Jim Baen's Universe, Feb. 2008

  Safe House, published for the first time here

  Smashwords License Statement

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  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  Homemaker

  Hourglass

  Safe House

  Reviewers Say

  Other Books by Alma Alexander

  Contact Alma Alexander

  About the Author

  Foreword

  At a recent social gathering, someone left a knot of people talking about a random topic, was away for a short time and by the time that he returned the subject had already changed … to cats.

  "What is it about writers," he asked, apparently genuinely puzzled. "You leave them alone for five minutes and they start talking about cats?

  I don't know about writers, but cats… have had a certain kind of mystique to them ever since the first one deigned to permit itself to become "domesticated" and call a human hearth its home. They are the perfect subject for so many things – not least being writerly conversations at literary parties. They are walking metaphors, they were once worshipped as gods and they have never forgotten it, and even the most klutzy or stupid cat manages to give an impression of a certain kind of focus and concentration and insouciance, as if they all know precisely where they are going (if not exactly how they plan on getting there). Cats are just walking stories, waiting to be told. And because they are so mysterious, so self-possessed, often remote (as though they lived on a different world, as perhaps they do), the stories that lie hidden behind those calm eyes of emerald green or warm amber are always mysteries. A cat does not kiss and tell. But they DO seem to tease, and flirt, and invite you to find things out… if you can.

  Cats have (naturally) played a certain part in several of my own stories. I present three of them for your enjoyment.

  Welcome to the Alexander Triads, Book 2: Cat Tales.

  Alma Alexander

  Summer 2011

  'Homemaker' was one of those oddball stories, written because I heard it call me but then left behind in a drawer (or, in this instance, a hard drive) because there was no obvious thing to do with it. The story, told from the point of view of a cat, was strongly anthropomorphic, and it had an oddly 'young' feel as though I had been aiming it at children – which I hadn't, which I rarely do. When a magazine by the name of Renard's Menagerie turned up, some years after this story was written, and asked for stories just like this one – stories that were animal-centric and even stories written from the animal's POV – the market seemed tailor-made for this particular tale. I sent it in, and they published it in July 2007.

  Chapter 1:

  Homemaker

  I'd been keeping an eye on Janine Murray for some time from the safety of the bushes behind her home. She was the new kid in town, skinny and shy, with a pair of John Lennon spectacles always half-falling off the end of her nose. I'll admit she wasn't exactly promising material. This one would be a pushover to win. But to make something of her… to Make this family… that would be a different story. However, I always did thrive on challenges.

  "Mom," Janine called the first time I allowed her to see me, shivering on the back porch, "there's a black cat…"

  But I was gone. In the first few encounters, it was important to keep the mystery going.

  The next time, I stayed a little bit longer. After that, I almost allowed her to touch me. And then I came to within a whisker's breadth of the saucer of milk she was offering before diving back into the bushes as if something had startled me. The more elusive I was, the more determined she became to "tame" me.

  "We don't need a cat," I heard her father snap one evening. He was always banished to the back porch for his evening smoke, by himself, and it was a good time for either Janine or her mother to get him alone and ask him for things. That comment was good news, actually – Janine had obviously asked if they could keep me – but the tone of her father's voice was not exactly encouraging. But I would give it time. I could see that they needed me.

  The first time I allowed Janine to see me actually lapping at her offering on the porch I waited long enough to know that she had gone to get her mother and that they were both watching me eat from the back door. I sat back and started cleaning my whiskers, deliberately ignoring them.

  "Isn't she pretty?" said Janine. There – I knew the girl had taste.

  "She's a moggy, darling – and she's so painfully thin – and how do you know it's a she anyway?"

  "I know."

  "Oh, dear. You know that would mean a trip to the vet. If she stayed."

  I looked up at that, mid-motion, and then flung myself off the porch into the bushes.

  "She's probably somebody's," said Janine's mother. "She seemed to understand the word 'vet' perfectly well, anyhow."

  It was weeks before I came close enough to explore the house. It had had a cat door before they moved in, but they had no pets so they had locked it shut. After a while, though, I realized that Janine had stealthily unlocked the cat door and was leaving the house accessible. The first time I came in it was well after midnight, and they were all fast asleep. It was a pleasant house, and it had all the right things. I tried out one of the cushions on the sofa – it was just right. I had an excellent nap before I made my escape in the morning before the rest of them stirred. But I made sure that they would know I'd been there.

  The next time I snuck in, there was a saucer of milk by the fridge. I could feel my whiskers twitching. They were doing well.

  I allowed myself to fall asleep on one of the wicker chairs on the back porch one or two days later, knowing they would find me there. When I felt Janine's thin hand on my back, I kept my eyes closed and started purring.

  "Listen," Janine said happily, "she enjoys it."

  "Your Dad doesn't like the idea, Jan," said her mother. "Now go inside, you have homework."

  "Michelle thinks we're lucky," Janine said. "Black cats are supposed to be lucky…"

  "Funny, that," said her mother. "I always heard just the opposite. Homework."

  Michelle. Hmmmm. It was working already.

  When I let their next door neighbors catch me stalking the cage with their budgies, they had already seen me on Janine's back porch often enough to assume I belonged there. So it was to that house that they directed a complaint.

  "She's not our cat," Janine's mother said apologetically. "But come in. Would you like a cup of coffee?"

  The neighbor from the other side subsequently popped over to tell Janine's mother what a fusspot the woman with the budgies was. They too shared a cup of coffee. Then Janine's family was invited there to dinner one night. Michelle came to hang out with Janine, and soon there were other girls there, too. I allowed myself to be seen and stroked. They all thought I was beautiful, and I was gracious enough to accept the compliment – as well as the small can of tuna which they sneaked off the pantry shelf to give me.

  I started sleeping in t
he house. The family didn't seem to mind. A beanbag appeared beside the TV one night, and it was just the right size for a cat. I appreciated their thoughtfulness. But it was still best when I climbed into Janine's Dad's lap when he least expected it and sat there kneading his legs. He always protested, but I could tell that he enjoyed the attention, especially when he knew that Janine was jealous – she'd sort of discovered me and she rather thought of me as "her" cat. But her dad smelled nice – a sort of musty male smell with a whiff of leather from the patches on the elbows of his sweater, and tobacco. He had a moustache – whiskers almost as respectable as mine. If he'd been a cat he would have made a very good mouser.

  The family seemed nicely established now. The left neighbor got Janine's mother and father involved in a bridge club. The right neighbor said that Janine could come over and play on the Internet on his computer if she liked. The neighbor two houses down the road asked if Janine could baby-sit. Michelle practically lived at Janine's place. And in the middle of it all – as there should be – there was a contented cat drowsing before the TV. The center of the circle, the heart of the house.

  It was probably time for me to go. I had done all I could here. Janine couldn't help being skinny and shy – but she had had her hair streaked gold and she wore a different pair of glasses which did far more for her than the ones she had been saddled with when I had first seen her. I knew that she was getting second looks in the street.

  And there was another kid down the road – a boy who sat alone for hours on the steps leading up to his front door, a boy who missed the dog his family had left on another continent. Another challenge. Another day. Another family that needed me.

  All the same – I stood in the road for ages when I walked away from Janine's house. It was getting harder and harder to leave every time. I Make a good home – and when I get it just about perfect, that's when I'm called to leave, and start again. Perhaps there will come a time when I will be allowed to Make a home for myself – and stay sleeping by someone's fireside during the long cold winter nights. But until then, I have work to do.

  I am a Homemaker.

  'Hourglass' was actually the third story I wrote about the character named Aris – the gleeman, or singer, or travelling troubadour (call him what you wish) whose defining characteristic was that he had the same relationship to magic as those poor people who are allergic to cats have with every cat in creation – the cats know their presence is not wanted and this particular fact makes them perversely determined to ingratiate themselves with precisely the people who cannot endure their presence.

  Magic pursues Aris relentlessly, never quite letting him out of its sights – and all he has ever wanted was a perfectly decent and ordinary life. But cats and magic – what can I say. They have minds of their own. This story was published in Jim Baen's Universe, in February 2008 – submitted, accepted, and published all within the space of a handful of weeks, which is unprecedented for a sale like this. But they liked it. And their version (you can look it up it's still online as far as I know) had a perfectly wonderful illustration of the cat at the heart of this tale…

  -----0-----

  Chapter 2:

  Hourglass

  I could get RICH in Ghulkit!

  Prove it…

  Aris cursed the cozy inn whose potent ale had made him utter that boast and then have his bluff called. Wyn and Allyc, the two fellow gleemen who had provoked his words, were at this moment no doubt ensconced beside another warm fire in some congenial hostelry, nursing mulled wine and laughing quietly over Aris's stubborn insistence to honor the rash boast he had made.

  Spend a winter in Ghulkit, come back with wealth, and he could return and spend many a satisfying evening telling avid listeners across the length and breadth of all the Kingdoms how one gleeman had dared to defy almost impossible odds. He would get rich in Ghulkit, and then get rich all over again telling stories of Ghulkit in the tame lands afterwards. No other gleeman could compete….

  Aris allowed himself a grim smile as he struggled through the snowdrifts on the lonely back road. Spend a winter in Ghulkit. He should have known there was a good reason why people did not do this. He had already found out – the hard way – that if he was not totally focused on the road he was travelling he could find himself mired in innocent-looking snow banks which were hip-deep or worse. At least once he nearly lost his harp in the drifts; and even without that, he could almost physically feel the effects of the killing cold on the fragile instrument. Whenever he gained some sort of sanctuary and obtained a spot to ply his trade, he would have to thaw out the harp for half an hour or more before he could usefully employ the instrument to assist him in the simplest of songs.

  This day was worse than many a day before it, because often the cold would be ameliorated by a thin and watery kind of sunlight which would even manage, weak and etiolated as it was, to render the muffled, frost-sparkling landscape beautiful in Aris's sight. That, at least, had been a sort of gift – he had composed several songs about the beauty of the snow country – but after a while even that had not been enough to make him forget how cold he was. And this morning – this morning it had started snowing. By the time he had hit the road it was not just snowing, it was snowing heavily; he should have stayed another day where he was, at the village where he had been given adequate if not lavish hospitality. But he had thought it a flurry. The locals could have told him it was not, had he thought to ask – but he had not asked. The blizzard had grown steadily worse; in the white light Aris lost all track of time and could not have possibly said if the sun was meant to be overhead or setting. He only knew that he had been walking for hours, that he was on the verge of losing all feeling in his feet, that he could see no further in front of him than the length of his outstretched hand, and that he was in real trouble.

  Spend a winter in Ghulkit.

  If he was not careful, he was in real danger of spending eternity here.

  He could have missed the house by the roadside altogether, so camouflaged was it in the snowdrifts; and in his snow-blanked mind Aris had been focused for so long on just putting one foot in front of another that he would have had considerable trouble recognizing even familiar things, let alone something that barely differentiated itself from his frigid environment. But he retained enough wit to pause briefly when he smelled what he thought was smoke; even so, he almost did not see what lay right before him and it was quite probable that he could have shrugged the smoke smell away as a hallucination of his fevered brain and struggled on. But even as he halted, a black hole suddenly yawned in the nearest "snowdrift". It took Aris precious moments to realize that someone had just opened a door.

  "Whuh…" he muttered, in a cold-cracked voice, through lips that seemed to have stiffened into icicles.

  "You walk to your death, stranger," said another, lighter voice. It sounded very young. "This is not a day for travelling. I have a fire inside. Come."

  "Whuhuh… thhhan…thank you," Aris managed to force through chattering teeth.

  He allowed himself to be guided through the doorway. When it closed behind him, he found himself in close darkness, and fought a rising panic – but then, a moment later, what appeared to be a heavy curtain was lifted at the far end of the hall and beyond it Aris could see the inviting red glow of a fire. An involuntary sigh escaped him at the sight, and his host chuckled softly at this.

  "Come inside," he said. "Let's get you out of those wet clothes."

  By the time he was fully in command of his senses, Aris was a little startled to find himself wearing a fur-edged woolen robe, sitting beside a hearth whose sheer size made it look as though it belonged in a king's hall and not some lost and snowbound cottage in the wilds of Ghulkit, and clutching a pewter mug full of some hot drink. It was the mug that made him snap back to himself because the scalding heat from its contents had made him jerk away the palms of his hands which had been wrapped around it. He very nearly spilled the whole mugful into his lap, only saved by a steadyin
g hand on his own.

  "Easy," murmured his host. "That is better inside you…"

  Aris remembered his manners.

  "I think," he said, "you saved my life."

  And at that he looked up and finally saw the face of his companion.

  Standing beside him was a very young man, almost a boy. His untidy shoulder-length fair hair and two engaging dimples he produced as he smiled, together with the small hands and the narrow child-sized hips, made Aris initially guess his host's age as fifteen, maybe sixteen at most. But then he met the eyes of blue fire that sat in that young, unlined face, and felt his stomach knot. The eyes were ancient beyond measure, all-knowing, all-seeing, old. This was someone of no age at all, or perhaps all the ages of the world; beneath the intensity of those eyes Aris dropped his own, utterly confounded, feeling as though all the sins that he carried in his soul – the pride, the arrogance, the ambition, the selfishness – were open to their scrutiny.

  "Who are you?" he asked after a beat of silence.

  The other laughed softly.

  "You may call me Bek. Now drink that. Slowly."

  He raised an eloquent eyebrow when Aris hesitated, and Aris, feeling obscurely shamed, lifted the mug to his lips and drank. The scalding liquid burned its way down his throat, to the extent that tears came to his eyes as he swallowed. He coughed.

  "Sorry," said Bek. "It needs to be hot. You were on the verge of snowsleep."

  "Snowsleep?" repeated Aris blankly. He suddenly roused. "My harp..! My harp!"

  "Rest easy," said Bek, one hand on Aris's shoulder. "It is here. I took the liberty of unwrapping it and wiping it down. It is a fine instrument. You are a gleeman?"