Tag: ready to read

A tiny candle flickered inside a glass dome and heated George’s arm as he reached across the table to take Susanna’s hand. “There’s something I need to ask you,” he said.

Susanna blushed and set her fork down. “Yes? What is it?” Susanna asked.

Nearby, someone sawed on a violin. George thought of bad Italian restaurants in the seventies. “In the short time that we have been seeing each other, I have come to respect your judgment immensely. And I have a little project in mind.” He kept talking over her half-voiced noises of appreciation. “You of all people know how much time and attention I put into my job. But sometimes, I forget why I started doing this.”

“You have been so stressed lately,” Susanna murmured. “I’ve been worried about you. I’ve hardly seen you this past week.”

“I want to buy a little place, a fixer-upper, just for myself.” He held her gaze and her hand. “Or, maybe, ourselves.”

Her look of enraptured affection slipped. She looked confused now. “What do you mean?”

A lesser man might have been nervous, might have faltered when she did not leap at the idea. George Ellison just settled into his pitch. “I want to buy a house with you as my partner. I want something we can spend time on together. And I would sincerely like your help in it.”

“Oh, I think that sounds wonderful,” she said and George could see she did not mean it. Not yet. But she did not say no. “I would love to do that with you.” Negotiations had begun. He just needed to find the right angle.

“I am so pleased to hear that,” George said. He lifted his wine glass. “To us, then, and our endeavor. May it be profitable and enjoyable.” Their glasses clinked together. And may I enjoy my profits, George added privately.

—

Rune chomped on dry kibble without pleasure. The community bowls were running low and, since Heather insisted on keeping the bags sealed, he could not get more on his own. He stretched and sniffed and twitched his ears. A voice caught his attention while he was contemplating another dose of catnip.

“Remember how I said that homeowner’s association had its annual meeting just after the first of the year?” Heather said.

Rune padded in her direction. Another voice then. Carlisle’s. “I remember. You said it was today.”

“Yeah, I sort of left something out,” Heather said, sounding embarrassed.

Rune trotted into the solarium, but pulled up sharply when he saw the third occupant of the room: a vacuum. He did not remember them owning a vacuum, the wretched, noisy things. Heather leaned against the handle.

“Yvonne wanted everyone to get a chance to see the house. So she asked me to be hostess. Here. Today,” Heather said, wringing her hands.

Carlisle slumped into the reclining chair where he was seated. “Oh, Heather, what were you thinking?”

“I tried to say no, but she can be quite persuasive.”

Rune moved around the edge of the room, keeping his distance from the vacuum. He jumped onto the coffee table and waited and listened.

“One hundred or more cats,” Carlisle snapped. “And on a Leo moon. There is barely enough room for them as it is. What do you expect me to do with them while you have a bloody tea party?”

“This is important,” Heather whined. “I need to make a good impression on these people.”

“Why? Poppy never bothered with them,” Carlisle said with a dismissive flick of his hand.

“Yeah, and now I’m in trouble for it. It’s mandatory. There’s some rule about attendance for property owners.”

“Absolute rubbish,” Carlisle pronounced.

“Please? Can’t you just take everyone out on a field trip or something?”

Rune meowed to get their attention. “You can’t send them outside,” he said when they looked at him. “There are kittens still under age. They can’t change yet.”

“So their mothers can carry them or something,” Heather said.

“Into town? Do a bit of shopping with a kitten in their back pocket?” Rune said.

“Carlisle, think of something,” Heather said. “I need the house today.”

Rune huffed an annoyed sigh at her theatrics. “The whole damn house for a few humans to chat over canapés?” He scratched behind his ear with a hind foot and said, “You can have the ground floor. Carlisle and I will keep everyone upstairs.”

“Really?” Heather asked, rounding on him with wide eyes. “You’re okay with it?”

“Not even a little,” Rune said. “But we’ll call it the lesser of many evils. Carlisle, get Topaz to call in anyone outside. You and I will start moving everyone upstairs.”

“The meeting is at noon,” Heather said.

“Then by noon, you will have the illusion of a cat-free house,” Rune said acidly. “I’m sure everyone will be pleased to get as far as possible from that machine,” he said and flicked his tail at the vacuum. He set off at a trot through the house, rounding up changed cats as he went and wishing he had just gone upstairs for catnip instead.

—

Rune retreated from the top of the stairs where he had been eavesdropping on the rather dull conversation of Heather’s new friends while his high fizzled under the weight of the Leo moon. He heard another set of raised voices coming from the opposite end of the floor and went to investigate. He scratched at the door, which opened only after a long delay, during which he heard several voices arguing. “I take it the concept of keeping quiet was a bit too difficult for you all,” Rune said when the door shut behind him. “What’s going on?”

Topaz and another big tom were restraining a frantic queen. Her face was red and wet. She strained against their hands on her arms. “My kitten,” she wailed. Topaz clamped a hand over her mouth before she could get any louder.

Carlisle said, “We have a problem,” and turned away from the woman. “Her kitten is missing,” he said quietly.

“Have you checked the other rooms? It might have ended up with friends somewhere else.”

Carlisle shook his head. “Topaz already checked. No one has even seen her.”

Rune sighed. “I’ll see if I can find her.” He turned to the queen. “What’s your kitten’s name?”

She shook her head free of Topaz’s hand. “Elly. Please, she’s only three months old. If she got outside…” She dissolved into tears again.

“Should I get Heather?” Carlisle asked.

“No. I’ll find Elly. Heather and her buddies need never know. It’ll just raise too many questions if you show up downstairs. Ma’am, where did you last see Elly?”

She wiped her hands over her face, the pressure leaving streaks of white amid the red. She sniffled and said, “We were in the solarium, watching the birds outside. Then we came up here. I know she was with me. I carried her, for pity’s sake.”

“But you haven’t seen her up here?”

“We came in before most of the others. She must have snuck out when a group came in.” She knelt in front of Rune. “The humans won’t hurt her, will they? If they find her?”

“Heather would never let them do anything to a kitten,” Carlisle said.

“I’m going to find her before it comes to that,” Rune said. “I promise you, no harm will come to your kitten.”

“Thank you,” she said, stroking her shaking hands over Rune’s coat.

Carlisle let him out into the hallway. Rune sniffed. The kitten would smell like her mother, like milk, and like the fine, soft fur that only kittens had. He listened carefully, but there were so many small noises in the background, hidden behind closed doors. He tried to pick out cat noises from all the human noises.

It was no good. He would have to just start looking. He ran to the end of the hall, but instead of going downstairs, he hooked his paw around the door of a cabinet. Inside, where the right-hand wall should have been, there was just open darkness. He ducked low and entered the crawlspace, tracing the ceiling beams through the house and over to the solarium.

—

Susanna held her breath as the engine died and ticked quietly in the silence. She glanced over at George and caught him staring at her. She preened under the attention and he put a hand on her shoulder.

“I’ll walk you to your door, then, shall I?”

“You could come inside. I can make us coffee. We did have rather a lot of wine. I would hate for something to happen to you.”

“If we’re just being responsible, why not?” George said. “I’ll take that cup of coffee.”

Susanna smiled when they went inside, but not at George. She smiled because she had planned for this and her little house looked impeccable. She led George into the kitchen, with its unused, black-handled knives and its bowl of bright orange and green mangos that smelled sweetly rancid to Susanna, and began setting the coffee maker to work.

“It wouldn’t be for keeps,” George said out of the blue.

Susanna flicked the switch on the coffee maker and turned around. “What’s that?”

“Our project. I just want to be clear. We wouldn’t be picking out a house we want to grow old in,” he said. “Just an investment for the two of us together.”

“I think that sounds fine,” Susanna said. She thought, you can bet I’ll do the picking when it comes time for us to choose a place to live. “Very practical.”

“Something that we can turn around in a real spectacular fashion,” George said.

Susanna boosted herself into the stool next to him at the kitchen counter. “Did you have something in mind?”

“I wouldn’t make a decision without you. But I admit I had thought of one place.”

“Don’t keep it a secret,” Susanna said. She leaned in close to him as though they really were sharing a great secret. “Tell me.”

“That house on the hill. The Lee place.”

—

From his hidden perch in the rafters, Rune looked down on Heather’s meeting. Of course, Heather had cooked and the smells rising from the table, pastry dough and mushrooms and butter, set Rune’s stomach growling so loud, he worried it would attract the attention of the humans below.

“Heather was telling me — we ran into each other in town the other day — that she wants to restore the house,” Yvonne, that chatty human, said.

Rune rolled his eyes. Nothing would get restored unless someone ripped the oven out so Heather could not cook anything for a while.

“And I said,” Yvonne said with a laugh and a knowing glance around the circle of men and women, “I said, dear, restore it to what? A lumber pile?” Everyone else laughed. Heather laughed. Heather also winced and fidgeted. Anyone with half a brain, even a human, could see she was embarrassed. Rune ignored them and scanned the room, searching for Elly. A kitten that young could get into all manner of hiding places, Rune knew.

“I know it’s a little run down,” Heather said, only to be drowned out by the other voices.

“The way you talked, Yvonne,” a man said, “I imagined mud walls and a thatched roof.”

“I’m glad I didn’t disappoint, then,” Yvonne said in a burst of raucous laughter that ruined her veneer of gentility. She must have noticed Heather, whose body language said she was moving from ashamed to defensive. Yvonne patted her hand. “Oh, I’m just teasing you, pet. I know you’ve only been here a little while. There’s only so much one person can do in that time with a place like this.”

A place like this, Rune mouthed. Who did the bitch think she was? She wanted to be there. No one had forced her. And what was so wrong with his home, their home, that she could talk about it that way?

“Don’t you have any family?” Another woman asked.

Heather flinched, but put on a brave smile. “No. My mother was the last. I was living abroad and I guess it was hard for her to keep the place up.”

Rune growled. That was the understatement of the century. He thought he saw movement, but it was only the reflection of a woman’s hand moving in the window. He began to lose hope of finding Elly quickly.

“Did you hear something?” Yvonne asked, looking around the room.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Heather said and looked pointedly up at the ceiling where Rune hid. But no one was listening to her anyway. Rune took that as his cue to leave. Elly was no where in sight, at any rate. He ducked back into the crawlspace and made his way farther down the length of the house.

—

Rune trotted through a back hallway. With the temporary population boom, these little-used parts of the House were inhabited and dust hung in the air, stirred up by many feet from its usual resting places. He stopped to watch the movement of dust motes through a wedge of sunlight. Minutes or hours later, he came to enough to realize he sat slack-jawed and staring in the empty hallway. Concentrate, he ordered himself. Think. Just a little longer, damn you. Keep yourself together. He shook dust from his coat and continued on. He had almost reached the end of the house.

Rune stopped in his tracks. There. What was that sound? He took a few steps forward and realized, with growing fear, where he was. An archway opened in the wall just ahead. He ran to it. A spiral staircase led straight up into the highest reaches of the house.

He strained his ears forward, hoping against hope that he would hear nothing. But there it was again, the repetitive mewing of a kitten, as though she navigated by sonar. Rune leapt up the stairs, higher and higher until he reached a landing that would be level with the roof.

Where another doorway should have been, this one leading out onto an open-air walkway, there was just rubble reinforced with several boards, hastily pushed into place to prevent further damage. It was all that remained of the interior of the tower.

“Elly?” Rune called out. “Elly, can you hear me?” The mewing increased in frequency and pitch. Damn it, why did she have to be there? “Elly, are you okay? Are you hurt?” The only answer was more frantic mewing, a babble of cat-speak gibberish. “Just stay where you are. I’m going to come get you.”

Rune pushed his nose and paws into the gaps in the rubble. He could see where she had gotten out, a tunnel that had formed where two boards met and the debris had tumbled out below them. He could see light at the other side. But try as he might, he could not get through after her. He pawed at the debris, trying to dislodge it to open a wider passage. But everything had settled in the time since the original collapse and gravity had mortared stone and wood into place against one another.

He growled and shook his head. He was wasting time. “Elly? I want you to stay right where you are, understand? I’m going to get help. We’re going to get you back to your momma. Just sit tight.”

—

After dinner and drinks, George’s breath was sour with garlic, wine and coffee, trapped against his own nose by the curve of Susanna’s neck. “It’s important to me that we be partners,” he said. He left a kiss there and moved on.

Susanna curled her fingers up into his hair. “I want that as well.” Her acrylic nails were thick and blunt, easy on his scalp. The last girl he had been with was a secretary with sharp nails, kept short for typing.

“That we be equals in this,” he muttered while he struggled with the clasp of her bra. She made matters more difficult by continually arching into his touch, providing a moving target.

“Equals,” she obediently repeated while her arms and legs wound around him and totally prevented him from enjoying her newly liberated breasts.

“I’m glad you agree.” He pushed down one of her legs and felt around for the zipper on her skirt. Her fingers chased his and undid it before he even saw where it was. “The split will make this so much more meaningful.”

She made a pained noise when he pitched the skirt away into the dim room. “What split?”

“Oh, just on the property.” She finally started moving with him, whipping away his unknotted tie and getting his shirt rucked up under his arms without unbuttoning it. “Each of us putting up half for the down payment. That’s all.”

As soon as he got his cuffs unbuttoned, she had the shirt off of him, left in some secluded corner to do unspeakable things with her likewise abandoned skirt. “We don’t even know for sure that it’s available. Let alone how much the down payment might be.”

He kept moving, letting her fumble too long with his pants just to keep her busy. “You don’t think we should be equals?” If she had time to stop, she would think they were having a serious discussion.

“I didn’t say that,” she said, successfully derailed by pants and emotional blackmail.

“Then you do,” he said and kissed her out of simple pleasure as she got the better of his pants at last.

“Well, yes, but I don’t see–”

“Then that settles it, he said, sinking his weight onto her at last. “Half and half. Two people, coming together for a common goal.”

She laughed and he knew, in that sound, he would get everything he wanted. “I believe your thinking of something else now.”

—

Rune rushed through the house. Heather was no longer in the solarium, nor were her guests. He skidded to a stop in the front room. Voices outside. He jumped onto the window sill. They had moved onto the porch. The guests were carrying their purses and coats as though they intended to leave, but they were still chatting away like they could stay the rest of the day. There was no time to wait for them to clear off. His need for catnip gnawed at him, worse than pain, worse than hunger. He opened the front door with an easy jump and ran outside.

When they heard the door open, the humans turned and watched in astonishment as he let himself out. “My, what a clever trick,” a woman exclaimed. “Did you teach him that?”

Heather made shooing motions with her hand at him even as he approached. “No, jeez, no. He was my mother’s and now I’m stuck with him. I’m going to have to change doorknobs so he can’t do that.”

“I think it’s cute,” the woman said.

Rune rolled his eyes at the stupid humans. Everything animals did was cute, because the humans never had a clue what they were really doing. “Heather, get them to leave,” he said. Heather grimaced and pretended to not hear him.

“Sounds like someone wants his din-dins,” Yvonne said.

Rune put his paws up on Heather’s legs. “I need your help. Now. It’s important.” She just brushed him off and hissed under her breath.

“We should let you get back to your routine,” the first woman said. “I think he’s saying we’ve worn out our welcome.” Brilliant, Rune thought, a human who actually listens.

“Don’t rush off on his account,” Heather said. “He can wait.”

“But Elly can’t,” Rune said and hooked his nails into her calf. Heather shouted in surprise and jerked away from Rune, but he was behind her and she stumbled. She tried to catch her balance on the railing of the porch. But when her weight hit it, there was a crack and Heather fell backwards off the side of the porch, through the new, woman-sized gap in the railing.

“Oh, my god, are you alright?” Someone asked. There was a clamor of voices as everyone rushed to Heather’s side. No one would let Rune past.

Heather groaned and rolled over. Under her back, a two-foot length of splintered wood had partially sunk into the soft ground. Heather coughed and wheezed like the wind had been knocked out of her.

“You could have been impaled,” Yvonne said. Rune thought it sounded like an accusation, as though Heather had just pulled some foolish stunt.

Rune circled around them and finally broke through. He sat at Heather’s side and pawed at her hand. She braced herself on her hands and knees. “Okay, ow,” she said. “What the hell happened?”

“I’m sorry,” Rune said. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m okay,” Heather said, more to herself than anything. “That’s going to leave a bruise.”

“Do you want us to call an ambulance? Take you to the emergency room?” A man asked.

Heather knelt up then rose to her feet. She moved slowly and closed her eyes, head no doubt spinning. Rune kept his distance, afraid to trip her again, but did not leave. “I’ll be fine,” Heather said. “I’m sorry to cause such a scene.”

“It’s getting to be a regular occurrence with you, these little disasters,” Yvonne said coolly.

Rune hissed quietly at the foul woman. “Send them away, please?”

“I should go put some ice on this,” Heather said, “if I want to be able to walk tomorrow.”

“Good idea,” a woman agreed. “Or take a nice hot bath, dear.”

“Thank you for an otherwise pleasant afternoon,” a man said reluctantly, the polite phrases suddenly out of place.

Heather waited for them to all drive away, queuing up behind one another for the drive down the hill. Then she turned on Rune. She would have been more intimidating if she had not been wincing and holding a hand to her back. “This had better be good,” Heather said, “or I’m going to poison your kibble some day soon.”

—

Neither climbing ladders nor rappelling around the outside of buildings was Rune’s forte, but Heather accepted the rescue mission with a stoicism he admired. Elly had emerged in the middle of the rubble that sealed the top and side of the house where the tower once attached. Heather had to navigate the unstable debris, while Rune watched nervously at ground level, pacing and eating as much of the homegrown catnip as he could stuff in his mouth at once. He gratefully rode out the less attractive moments of his high in solitude.

Heather finally descended the ladder then reached into her shirt and pulled out tiny Elly, who was crying up a storm. “Let’s get her back to mommy,” Heather said.

Her mother nearly crushed Elly in her enthusiasm to have her back. Her thanks were tearful and blubbery and Rune and, he suspected, Heather were happy to be rid of her. With the guests gone, the cats were once again given free rein of the house.

“We need to talk,” Rune said when Heather tried to leave with the rest of the cats in the room. A few stayed behind to settle into their temporary accommodations.

“Let’s take this in my office,” Heather said.

“Alone,” Rune said when Carlisle tried to follow them into the office.

“I beg–” Carlisle started to say.

“It’s okay. Go,” Heather said.

Rune pushed the door shut with his shoulder. “If you get your way, humans will have more freedom in this house than cats.”

Heather sat down behind her desk, turrets of folders and books on either side. “That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?” He jumped up and perched inches from her. “If you had anything resembling a backbone, you would have told that harpy it was impossible to have the meeting here.”

“Thanks to you, I might not have a backbone any more. And she was trying to give me a chance to get involved.”

“She was looking for a new chew toy.”

“She’s my friend,” Heather barked back.

“You should make friends with your own kind!”

Heather leaned back in her chair and circled her hand in his direction, still carefully out of reach. “Is that was this is about? Your, your anthrophobia? Your terror of all things human? Your prejudice?”

“Prejudice,” Rune spat. “Is it prejudice to acknowledge that we live in separate worlds? That they would neither believe in what we — what you – are, nor treat us kindly if they did?”

“You don’t know that,” Heather said, all teenage petulance.

“Yes, I do.”

“I’ve lived with humans for years. They can be good. I’ve made friends I really cared about.” She leaned farther away. The studied pose of relaxation made her look more on edge than ever.

“That’s your business. This house is mine.”

“Are you challenging my authority here? Because that went so well last time.”

Rune did not rise to her bait, hyper-focused by the unfamiliar feeling of being the mature one of the pair and mellow after his last dose of catnip. “The cats here follow you, follow me, follow your mother, because they need a leader. They need someone who knows more than they do, to protect them, to serve their needs.”

“And I’m doing that.”

“Sometimes. And sometimes you indulge in a fantasy where you can shed your fur forever.” He took advantage of her reclining posture to jump into her lap and get so close to her face, he could no longer see her. It was a great mercy to see nothing but wide blue eyes and a blur of cream that could have been fur. “You are a cat at the end of the day. You are not one of them. You can’t be. And every time you try, you risk yourself and every other cat living here.”

“If you hadn’t tried to kill me, there would have been no problem today.”

“A kitten could have died because you wanted to hold a tea party to satisfy a woman who treats you like a dog.”

Heather dumped him out of her lap and stood in one panicked move. “She did not–”

“A dog, Heather. A pet to be teased. And I’ve had enough. If you want me to lead a rebellion, I can probably manage that.”

Heather crossed her arms. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“I would and you know it.” He let out a chirp of bitter laughter. “I’m not reasonable enough to resist. But I would rather you just listen to me.”

“Listen to you insult the people I would like to befriend? Listen to you tell me I’m just another cat?”

Rune shook his head. “You are not like other cats,” Rune said and he could not help smiling. What a joke, he thought, lecturing her while I can’t go two hours today without a fix. We both make pretty rotten cats. He headed for the door. “But you need to stop this. No more strangers visiting. No more courting them instead of us.”

—

In the morning, Susanna woke up to George watching her. “Hey,” she said. “You stayed.”

“Sure.” He brushed a lock of hair out of her face. “Did I come on too strong last night?”

She sat up long enough to twist her hair back and away from her face. “What, the–” She waved her hand vaguely to indicate what they had done.

He pulled her back down to his side. “No. I know you liked that. I meant about the project. I think I pushed you too hard. I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m happy about it, really.” She rolled over and burrowed her hand under the sheets so she could snuggle into his arms. “A little surprised. It hasn’t been that long.” Privately, she bemoaned how long it had taken him to offer her a proper incentive to keep seeing him. She was not a teenager any longer; she was not going out with him just for the pleasure of his company.

“That’s why it’s so critical to me that you and I go into this equally. I don’t want you to feel like I’m holding the project over your head.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t think that.”

“You say that now, but I’ve worked with partners before.”

She slapped his shoulder then kept her hand there to knead the muscles. “You’re breaking my heart here.”

“None as lovely as you, of course.” That was what she liked about George. He always gave her the attention she was due. He never missed a cue. “That’s why we’re going to do this right. You’ll never have to worry that I’m going to cheat you.”

“You’re a good man, Mr. Ellison.”

“Only for you, sweetheart,” he said amid a flurry of kisses.

“Let’s go out for breakfast,” Susanna said.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather stay in?”

“When we’re done, ah, staying in, will you be doing the cooking?”

“Ah. I see your point,” he said with a grimace. “How about brunch then, my treat?”

“You’re a tough negotiator, but you’ve got a deal.” She offered her hand for a mock shake to seal the deal.

He pulled her hand to roll her onto his broad body. “I always get the deal,” George said.

—

Previous Episode :: Back to Index :: Next Episode

Heather slid her omelet onto a plate, grabbed a fork from the drying rack in the sink, and sat down at the kitchen table. Out in the yard, small birds picked through the grass for the last morsels of the year as winter set in. For the moment, they were unmolested by cats. The weather had turned cold, after a long and typically warm California autumn, and the cats did not like to go out until the pale winter sun had a chance to warm things up. There was a thump and Heather looked up to see Rafflesia shaking her head and a small mark on the glass door from a wet nose.

“What are you doing, sweetheart?” Heather asked.

Rafflesia jumped onto the chair opposite Heather and up to the tabletop. “I wanted to chase the birds,” the young cat said, “but I forgot the door was there.”

“I thought only birds flew into glass doors,” Heather teased. “What are you doing up so early?”

Had Rafflesia been human, she would have looked close to tears. As it was, her ears were pinned and her tail drooped. “I have a question.”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“What is Christmas?”

“Where did you hear about that?”

“The newspaper you get had that word all in it.”

Heather thought back to recent articles she had read. The business section had a rather depressing one about the still-dismal sales being reported by stores around the country. From the way the writer had talked, the average American family was eating damp cardboard for Christmas dinner. “It’s a holiday that some humans celebrate.”

“Like Thanksgiving? We celebrated that.”

“Yes, we did. It’s a bit like that. It’s a little hard to explain, though. Some people celebrate Christmas as the birthday of a very important man, a special person for them. But a lot of people just want a chance to spend time with their families and do special things.”

“You said Thanksgiving was a family time.”

“Yep. Christmas is too.”

Rafflesia settled down onto the table. “What do people do?” She sniffed Heather’s omelet.

“I’ve never celebrated it myself,” Heather said. “But they give each other presents and eat big, fancy meals together. And they decorate their houses.”

“What do they decorate with?” She asked and inched towards the plate.

“Pine trees. With ornaments on them.”

Rafflesia cocked her head. “They put pine trees in the house?”

“Weird, huh? Why the sudden interest, Raff?”

“Charlie said it wasn’t real. He said that even humans wouldn’t do something that dumb. He said it sounds like a silly fuss.”

“Maura’s son, Charlie?”

Rafflesia pinned her ears again. “Yeah. He’s a big jerk.”

“Well, you tell him I said it was all true. And if he thinks that’s weird, he should hear what they say about Santa Claus.” She pawed at Heather’s plate in silent appeal.

If Rafflesia wondered about Santa Claus, it was overwhelmed by her desperate pleading. “Auntie Heather, can we have Christmas here?”

“I don’t know, Raff. Thanksgiving was a lot of work and it hasn’t been that long since then.” Heather cut off a bite and pushed it across to Rafflesia. “I’m not sure I can handle another big meal.”

“Maybe not a big meal. Maybe just presents. And a tree in the house,” she said around a mouthful of egg.

“I’m not sure,” Heather hedged. Rafflesia visibly wilted in disappointment. Heather sighed. “I’ll see what I can do. Presents and a tree, right?”

Rafflesia jumped up. “Yes, please! May I go outside now?”

“Ask you mum first.” Rafflesia bounded down from the table and dashed out of the room. Heather watched her disappear. She held up her fork with a piece of now cold omelet speared on it. “How does this happen to me?”

—

Carlisle pulled a stack of blankets down from the linen closet, only to have the whole thing tumble down on his head. He sighed wearily and stooped to gather them up. He had eaten cat’s bane for three days straight just to keep up with the work to be done in the House. There were voices everywhere and every time someone new arrived, they could be counted on to create a new pocket of noise when they reunited with some long-lost friend. He rather wished they would keep in touch in the first place and spare him their throes of ecstasy.

“Let me help,” Heather said when she appeared at his side. She folded a blanket and stacked it with the rest. “I need to ask you about Christmas.”

Carlisle gave her a look of pure incomprehension. “What? Why? Now?” He handed half the blankets to Heather and picked up the rest himself. “Walk with me.”

“Rafflesia wants us to have Christmas,” Heather said with a wry grin.

Carlisle entered a room already crowded with cats. The floor was a patchwork of blankets mounded into comfortable beds. “Does she know what Christmas is?”

“That was the other part of the conversation,” Heather said and flung open a blanket before bundling it into an unused corner. “How many cats are we up to at this point?”

“Number one hundred seven arrived in the night. Word has gotten out that a new Queen is here. I’m absolutely at my wit’s end. There’s so much to do and no one will hold still long enough for me to get it done.”

“I’ve never celebrated it, myself. A friend invited me to Thanksgiving once, but I moved between then and Christmas.”

“Hand me another one,” Carlisle said and reached blindly for a blanket while he moved two existing beds farther apart to make room.

“I know the usual icons — tree, shiny ornaments, wrapped presents, lights — but I don’t know where to start if we’re going to have it here.”

Carlisle hurried downstairs, where he could hear voices raised in anger. “It’s not really a good time for me,” he said to Heather as she trailed after him.

“I just thought, you were with that dout and maybe you knew something about it.”

“The Blue Roads did not celebrate Christmas, to the best of my knowledge. In fact, if I remember correctly, their leader had taken up Wicca somewhere along the way. Very strange, if you ask me, a religious cat. Though I did know a rabbi’s cat once.” Carlisle ducked into a room, but someone else had broken up the fight, so he hurried back upstairs.

“I’m not really concerned about that, Carlisle. But I’m going to be very unpopular with Rafflesia, and probably with all the other kittens by the time she gets done talking to them, and I’d like to avoid that.”

Carlisle stopped and whirled around. He took Heather by the shoulders. “I truly do not have time to worry about Christmas right now. If I can get through setting up beds for all the newcomers, get updates from my traveling contacts, and prevent any major wars, I will be more than happy to talk to you about Christmas.”

“But–”

“Heather, I will dress up as Santa Claus, I swear, but not now!” In another room, someone was calling his name. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to go. I will talk to you later.” The person called again. “Just one bloody minute,” he shouted back. He patted Heather on the shoulder and rushed off towards the next emergency.

—

Heather lay in bed and listened to the House breathe with her. The other cats had come back from their nighttime hunting. In the predawn darkness, finally, everyone slept. Except Heather. She could get no peace and did not know why. Half-realized thoughts kept waking her as she fell asleep, only to disappear before she could take hold of them.

There was a scratch at the door. Heather pulled on her robe and drifted to the door. Rune stood on the other side. He had his eyes averted, as he always did when Heather was around.

“I could hear you moving around,” Rune said. “I figured you were awake.”

“Will you come in?” Heather asked.

Rune kept his distance as he walked past her into the room. “I think it’s a good idea.”

“What is?” Heather asked as she curled up on her bed. She pulled the blankets up to her lap to keep warm and propped herself up with pillows. When she patted the bed, Rune jumped up. His feet made dimples in the thick blanket as he kneaded it into a comfortable arrangement.

“Christmas,” he answered when he had made himself comfortable. “Or something like it.”

“You do?”

“Surprise, surprise,” Rune said. “The kittens would enjoy it.”

“That’s pretty obvious. How could they not? But I never figured you would be up for it.”

Rune stayed silent for so long, Heather thought he had fallen asleep. “I have made some mistakes,” he said finally. “I want them to remember their home, the House and the cats in it, fondly. As I do.”

“And Christmas?”

“I can help you. I know a bit more about it than–” He hesitated. “Than others,” he finished.

“I would appreciate any help I can get. That being said, why exactly did we need to discuss this at–” Heather looked over at the clock. “–four in the morning?”

“Because everyone else is asleep. And this should be a surprise for them.”

“I don’t think I can hide a pine tree in the house without them noticing.”

“We’ll decorate it ahead of time. But we need to keep the presents a surprise. Let the kittens think that a tree and decorations are all we can manage.”

“You’re a sneak,” Heather said. “I like it.”

Rune ducked his head, but she thought he looked happy to hear it. “Meet me in the attic later and we can work out what we’ll do.” He jumped down from the bed.

“Where are you going?”

“To sleep, of course. Aren’t you?” He jumped up and unlatched the door himself by hanging from the bar-style handle. He pushed away from the wall with his hind feet and the door swung open. Heather watched in amazement. Though the doors in the House all had that kind of handle to allow cats to open doors for themselves, only a few were adept at it. Rune looked back from the doorway. “Oh, and tell Carlisle that he’s too thin to be Santa Claus. Talk to Dorian about it instead.” Rune hooked a paw around the edge of the door and pulled it. Its weight closed it the rest of the way.

Heather wriggled down until she was cocooned in blankets up to her chin. She chuckled. Santa Claus. She closed her eyes and when she opened them again, the sun was high in the sky, dawn long behind it.

—

Carlisle massaged his temples for a moment, then dropped his head to his arms where they were folded on the kitchen table. He wanted nothing more than to sleep for a week. He heard someone come into the kitchen and the crinkle of plastic bags. Then hands started working the knots out of his shoulders and neck. He did not have to look up to know who it was. Topaz’s hands moved like miniature creatures, fingers and thumbs and palms all doing something different, each more wonderful than the last.

“How go the interviews?” Topaz asked.

“I was just about to get to work again,” Carlisle said, voice muffled with his head buried in his arms. “I think I’m about halfway through.”

“You want some company? I promise not to pester you into playing hooky.”

Carlisle sat up and reluctantly gathered his papers and pens. “I rather wish you would. But yes, company would be lovely.” Carlisle looked over his list, the headed upstairs. “Jainie is next on my list. She’s a solitary out of Nevada area, last I heard. And I think we put her up in the yellow room.”

In the yellow bedroom, makeshift beds took up most of the floor, but only a few cats occupied them. Jainie, a middle-aged tortoiseshell, slept soundly in a bed of bath towels. “What could you possibly want right now?” Jainie asked when they woke her.

“Hello, Jainie,” Carlisle said. “You know I have to keep records. Sorry to be a bother.”

She blinked sleepily. “Oh, Carlisle. I didn’t recognize you. Very well. The usual routine?”

“Just so. Where have you been staying the past year?”

“There’s an old farmhouse outside Reno. The owner is retired. He keeps an old car in the barn under the pretenses of restoring it, but he hardly ever goes out there. It’s a good, safe spot.”

“Pity it isn’t a dairy farm,” Topaz said. “A squirt of fresh cream now and then wouldn’t bother me one bit.”

“Oh, I used to steal bottles of milk off doorsteps,” Jainie said. “This was in a tiny town where they still delivered it fresh from a local farm every morning. It was lovely.”

“Have you been in touch with anyone out there?” Carlisle asked.

“In spring, a dout came through. One of their queens gave birth there.”

“Which dout was that?”

“Carnival’s group,” she said.

“Ah. Young Tramps, then. Always exciting company.”

“I kicked them out after the third time the owner called the police, thinking there were vandals in the barn.”

They went on like that for some time, trading stories in amidst the pertinent information. All the while, Carlisle filled out a page on a legal pad with Jainie’s territory, contacts, clan and heritage.

“Do you think…” Topaz started to say as they walked through the house, hunting down the next cat on Carlisle’s extensive list, only some of whom were known to be at the House for winter already.

“Yes?” Carlisle prompted him.

“Do you think I could do any of these? If you give me that sheet you just finished, so I don’t forget to ask anything. And tell me some of the cats we’re looking for.”

“Do you really want to?”

“I figure, the sooner all this is finished, the sooner you’ll be back in the mood to play hooky with me. It’s completely motivated by self-interest, you see.”

Carlisle smiled and kissed him. “Well, who am I to stop you then?” He wrote down a list of cats to look for and pulled that, his notes from the last interview, and several blank sheets off of the pad.

—

Heather whipped the hastily donned sheet down from the live pine tree set up in the front room. “Ta da! What do you think?”

The kittens all blinked and cocked their heads. There were a dozen kittens and another handful of young adults, all human thanks to cat’s bane, plus a few more too young to change. Rafflesia came forward and circled the tree curiously.

“Is that all?” Charlie asked. He had a snobby, know-it-all air. “We have bigger pine trees in the back.”

“It’s not decorated yet,” Heather said. “We have to decorate it.”

Rafflesia sniffed it and ran her fingers through the long, soft needles. “It smells good,” she said.

“We can plant it with the others when Christmas is over,” Heather said. “That’s why we got a live one.”

“What do we decorate it with?” Rafflesia asked.

Heather pulled out a cardboard box from behind the tree. “With all this.” Inside were pine cones and brightly colored yarn and bottles of glitter and glue and construction paper. “We’ll make our own.”

One by one, the kittens came forward to start pawing through the box. They tossed pine cones at one another and spilled glitter on themselves and tried to stick their fingers together with the glue. Heather did not say anything. She just sat down near them and started squeezing glue onto the open scales of a pine cone. She took a paper plate from the box and poured red and gold glitter onto it. By the time she had rolled the pine cone in the glitter, Rafflesia had figured out what she was doing and started making one as well.

After that, all the kittens joined in. Their discovery of scissors was a death-defying experience and they spent a good while distracted by the pleasures of yarn on its own. But even Charlie forgot his skepticism as they made their ornaments. Heather showed them how to make paper snowflakes. The kittens made bird and mouse cut-outs and strung them on yarn. Before long, they had used up all the supplies in the box and the front room was covered in traces of glitter and glue and yarn.

“Now, we decorate,” Heather said. “Put the heavier ones on thick, sturdy branches, close to the trunk of the tree. See?” She slipped a loop of yarn, tied to a pine cone, over a branch so that it bobbed gently. “Okay, kids. Go to it.”

Heather stepped back while the kittens fought over the best branches and the bigger ones lifted the little ones up to reach the highest branches. The older cats all watched with her, amused and baffled by their offspring’s enthusiasm.

On the couch, Carlisle looked up from where he and Topaz made a silver and gold swirl with their bodies and tails. “Where do you find the energy?” He asked in awe. “I spent a week human and I’m exhausted. And here you are, the biggest kid of them all.”

“Plenty of practice,” Heather said.

On the back of an armchair, Rune watched through half-closed eyes. The tip of his tail twitched comfortably. “It looks good,” he announced. “Very festive.”

Heather flushed with pleasure. “Thank you,” she said. “Next year, we’ll have to start earlier and we can make popcorn garlands for it.”

“Just no tinsel. Someone’s bound to eat it,” Rune said.

“I tried to keep that in mind when I was shopping. I figured that everything would get tasted by somebody along the way.”

“That’s the last of it,” Rafflesia announced.

“Not quite. There’s one more thing up in my room. I’ll be right back.” Heather returned with her hands behind her back. “We need something for the top.” She brought her hands around and Rafflesia squealed. Heather held a star made of gold paper, intricately folded and attached to a cone to fit in the tree.

“Can I put it on?” Rafflesia asked.

“Sure can. Stand on this chair here.”

Heather steadied Rafflesia as she stretched on tip-toe on a chair next to the tree. Rafflesia barely got the star onto the tree before she jumped down to admire it.

“And for the finale,” Heather said. “Somebody hit the lights for me.” The room went dark. Heather reached behind the tree and plugged a cord into the outlet there. A gasp went around the room when the tree lit up with the string of tiny lights Heather had wrapped it in before unveiling it. She was satisfied to see even the adults were wowed.

—

That night, after all the kittens had been put to bed for the night, Heather broke out her second box of supplies, hidden safely in her room. Topaz and Carlisle and Rune were all there, but Topaz and Carlisle were still too tired to shift again. So Valoria and Evergreen had signed on to be Heather’s assistants. Even so, it looked like it would take them all night and morning to finish their work.

“So, what do we have to work with?” Evergreen asked.

Heather sat cross-legged on the floor and started unpacking the box. “I’ve got all sorts of yarn. Paper towel rolls and things like that. Some small brown paper bags. Bells. Felt and fabric scraps. Assorted socks. Sticks.” She laid out all that and more on the floor. The others sat in a circle around the supplies.

“What’s this?” Rune asked, sniffing a plastic bag.

“Lavender,” Heather said.

“It smells amazing,” Rune said and rubbed his face against the sealed bag.

“It’s a substitute for catnip. No side effects, but lots of cats like it.”

Rune nodded. “Good. I don’t want the kittens…”

“I know,” Heather said quickly. “I figured as much.”

Carlisle cleared his throat. “So, what are you going to do with all this?”

“Make toys, of course. We can make good, fun toys out of all this.” Heather demonstrated by stuffing some fabric scraps into an ankle sock. She opened the bag of lavender and the room filled with its scent. She sprinkled some in, then dribbled a pinch onto Rune, Topaz, and Carlisle’s heads. All three were distracted for several minutes, busy rolling and rubbing against the fragrant dried flowers. Meanwhile, Heather folded that sock shut and put it top down into a second sock. “See? Now the filling won’t fall out. I know it’s not much, but the kids should get a kick out of it.”

Valoria picked up a set of baby socks and did the same to them. Evergreen cut a length of string and attached it to one of the sticks, a thin bamboo rod.

“Here, I’ll make a pompom for that,” Heather said. She fashioned a puff from short pieces of yarn tied together.

“Do the rest of us get to play with these?” Topaz asked.

“My thought exactly,” Evergreen added. “I’m pretty jealous of the kittens right now.”

Heather laughed. “At least let them have first dibs,” she said.

“Hand me that red yarn, will you?” Valoria asked. Rune batted it over to her. “How about some plain yarn balls?” Valoria suggested. “Provided no one minds having to clean them up when they’ve been unraveled.”

Heather groaned. “Don’t remind me. It’s going to take forever to clean the glitter out of the carpet downstairs.”

There was a knock at the door. Heather hissed them into silence and they all moved to hide the toys behind their backs. Heather opened the door a crack. Annabelle peered back at her. Behind her, a clutch of cats, all human, giggled and shushed each other.

“Is this the secret meeting?” Annabelle asked. “We’ve come to help.”

Heather waved them in. “We need all the help we can get. We have a lot of toys to make before morning. Just sit down anywhere,” she said.

The other cats waved to Heather as they came in. They were all newcomers, at the House just for the winter. They introduced themselves as Jainie, Coral, Max, and Boston. The cats already present made room in the circle and passed supplies around to the new cats.

“Anyone know any carols?” Boston asked. “I can sing.”

Topaz knew the tunes and so provided a little feline accompaniment, while Coral and Boston sang their way through a medley of carols. Heather tentatively joined in, doing her best to remember the songs she had heard played over the radio, in the restaurants, and all around every town she lived in from October to January. Sometime in the dim hours of morning, when they were all giddy and throwing toys around the room at each other, Heather swore she even heard Rune humming along. But he might just have been purring. She did not bring it up.

—

Heather stuffed the last toy between the cushions of a couch then ran to her seat by the Christmas tree. Next to her, Carlisle attempted to relax, despite Topaz’s constant excited fidgeting. On the back of the couch, just by her head, Rune perched, to all appearances sleeping. Dopple was within tail’s reach of Rune on the nearest windowsill. And all around the room, cats waited. Queens with kittens were there, but so were a great many others, such that they spilled out into the hallway and wandered through other rooms.

“We ready?” Heather asked. When the others agreed, she called out, “Okay, you can come in!”

The kittens, cats once again, ran full tilt into the room from upstairs, where the adults had made them wait with the tantalizing promise of “something good.” As Heather had expected, Rafflesia was at the head of the pack. “Merry Christmas, kids,” Heather said. “It’s time to have presents.” The kittens all looked around the room, which appeared empty of anything special. “But you have to find them first.”

“Where are they?” Rafflesia asked immediately.

Heather rolled her eyes. “What’s the fun of my telling you? You have to sniff them out. They’re all hidden downstairs. So get to work. When you find one, bring it in here. I’ll tell you when you’ve found them all.”

The kittens did not need any more encouragement than that. Some darted down the hall, no doubt trying to stake out one room or another as their private hunting ground. Some squeezed under furniture. Rafflesia bounded up onto a chair and took a flying leap at the Christmas tree, having already spotted a bright purple sock toy in the upper branches. Her leap brought it, and several ornaments, tumbling to the ground. She picked it up in her teeth, tail high in pride, and dropped it at Heather’s feet. “That’s one,” Rafflesia said and bounded off again.

Valoria laughed. “This was a very good idea,” she said. “Highest marks for understanding the minds of kittens.”

“Such as they are,” another queen added.

“It wasn’t my idea,” Heather said. She leaned over so her head brushed Rune’s. “This fellow was the mastermind. I just did the shopping.” Rune harrumphed and returned the light headbutt. Soon, more kittens trickled in with toys from all over the ground floor. A pair struggled to drag in one of the fishing pole toys, each holding a section of string in their mouths and tripping themselves up with the stick as they went.

Topaz jumped up to the back of the couch and batted at Rune with a paw. He spoke in a low voice and Heather could only make out a few words of what he said. She was sure the word “catnip” was in there and maybe “clean.” She glanced over. Rune’s eyes were slit and his posture, relaxed only a moment ago, had turned stiff.

“I found another,” Rafflesia said.

“Hey, that was mine,” another kitten cried out, chasing after her.

“Was not!”

“Was so!”

They both pounced on each other at the same time, snarling and flailing.

“Hey, break it up,” Heather said and pulled them apart by the scruffs of their necks. She pointed to the other kitten. “You, play nice and go find another toy.” She held onto Rafflesia. “You, come here.”

Head low, Rafflesia jumped into Heather’s lap. Heather smoothed down her rumpled fur. “You wanted Christmas and you got it. But if you want the other kittens to think your idea was a good one, you need to make sure they have a good time too. There are plenty of toys for everyone to find some. I better not see you fighting over them again or you’ll spend the rest of the hunt sitting right here. Understood?”

“Yes, Auntie Heather.”

“Go. Shoo.”

Rafflesia jumped down and rushed out of the room. Valoria watched her go then looked up at Heather.

“Are you sure you’ve never had kittens of your own?”

“Quite, thank you,” Heather said.

Valoria shrugged. “You’re doing my work for me, at any rate. But you should think about having one. You’d be a good mother.”

“Yeah, I think I already have my work cut out for me.” Then she noticed that a large gray body had just slipped into the hallway. She looked back. Rune was not on the couch any longer. Heather excused herself and made her way upstairs, all thoughts of toy hunts and kittens flying from her mind.

—

Heather found Rune waiting for her in the attic with a partially scattered pile of catnip. “So, have you taken it?”

“I knew you would follow me,” Rune said. He had a slightly wild look to his eyes.

“That’s a yes, then,” Heather said. “It wasn’t hard to guess where you were going.”

“You won’t be able to stop me,” Rune said.

“If you wanted me to stop you, you should have given me more time to get up here.” She slid down to the floor with her back against a trunk.

Rune started pacing. “Topaz put you up to this, didn’t he?” He spoke precisely, trying to keep himself under control.

“Whatever he said to you just now, he’s a ninny.”

“He said he was proud of me,” Rune said with a bitter laugh. “He thinks I’m cutting back.”

“And we both know you’re worse than ever,” Heather said. She pointed at him, jabbing at him with one finger. “The question is, do you want to cut back?”

Rune butted his head against the wall then turned on her. “I can’t.”

“You could with help,” Heather insisted. “But I’m not going to waste time trying to save someone who would rather self-destruct.”

“So I’m to be your pet project now, is that it?”

Heather shook her head and started to get up. “I’m offering you help. As a friend. As someone who would like you to live through this.”

“Don’t go,” Rune said meekly.

Heather sank back to the floor. “Do you accept my help? Or will you kill yourself?”

“Catnip won’t kill me,” he said then ruined the argument by twisting around to bite his own sides in a brief frenzy of violence.

“Wanna make any bets about that? Right about now, your heart is racing, your body is overheating, and you are having visual disturbances.” Rune’s expression confirmed everything. “If you’re lucky, you’ll have a good trip and see phantom butterflies. But mostly, you’ll think there are bugs behind your eyes and worms in your skin.”

“You’ve used it.”

“Hello, I was a teenager once. I have tried the stuff. You forget that I’ve actually been around a lot longer than you have.”

Rune scoffed. “Poppy would be so disappointed in her good little girl.”

“Spare me. Mother knew all about it. It was the human stuff that I kept to myself.”

“You dishonor her memory, the way you run this place.”

“I do no such thing,” Heather said, voice rising. “I’m here, doing what she wanted me to do. If I wanted to dishonor her, I’d burn the place to the ground.”

Rune’s tail thrashed. “Poppy died of a broken heart because you disowned her.”

“I didn’t disown her. I ran away from home. She wasn’t even the reason I did it,” Heather said softly.

Rune’s hallucinations were peaking as he stumbled and wove across the room towards her. “I don’t want you here.”

“Since you’re half out of your mind on drugs and I’m ten times your size, I don’t think I’ll be leaving at your say-so.”

He put his paws on her legs and stared just past her ear, the closest he ever came to a direct glare. “I could hurt you. I’ve hurt others.”

“Are you proud of that?” Heather asked. She tried to keep her voice neutral, to make it a genuine question and not an accusation. “Are you proud of what you’ve done to innocent people because you decided you couldn’t cope?”

“Sometimes, the only thing to do is run away!” Rune spun away, swiping at his ears as though he could unhear what he had said.

Heather clucked her tongue. She bet her mother never had to put up with this kind of crap. “Guess we’ve both run out of places to run.” She rolled to her knees and shuffled across the floor to the pile of catnip.

Rune looked over at her. “What are you doing?”

Heather dropped a pinch of catnip into her mouth and swallowed hard around the dry herbs. “Something staggeringly foolish. What’s it look like?”

Rune moved to straddle the pile, blocking her with his body. “You can’t have that.”

Heather rolled her eyes. “Because I would hate for you to have to go without.” Color bloomed at the back of her head. The cat’s bane in her system took most of the bite out of the catnip. Her vision and hearing sparked with phantoms, but her mind stayed intact enough to tell her what she saw was an illusion. She snuck her hand under Rune, taking advantage of his pitifully slow reflexes, and took another pinch. She would never change if she did not get enough.

“Why?” Rune howled. “Why can’t you just act like you’re supposed to?”

Heather could not answer him for a time, as the change battered through her, blasting a hole through the shields put up by the cat’s bane. Her mind stuttered as it switched from English to cat-speak. “No one should be alone on Christmas, or so they say,” she said. Heather shook off the last blurs in her vision and the shakes from the change. “I’ve stopped running. When will you?”

Rune watched her for a long time. It was strange to have him look directly at her after so many months of averting his eyes. She could not help but distract herself with grooming her newly grown fur under such a gaze. Finally, he said, “Not today.”

Heather smiled and settled down to ride out both their highs. He had not said never. Whether he admitted it or not, Rune had just handed his tomorrows to Heather.

—

Previous Episode :: Back to Index :: Next Episode

George Ellison’s SUV chirped behind him as he locked it and walked through the parking lot to his building. The headset of his cell phone glowed faintly blue by his ear. “Try ruling the world,” he said.

Susanna’s voice sounded as though it was inside his head with him. “I know. Maybe tomorrow, then.”

The phone crackled slightly as he entered the elevator. “Sure. Of course. I’ll take you someplace nice.” He strode into his company’s headquarters and snapped his fingers at his secretary. She jumped to her feet and followed him.

“Sounds good,” Susanna said. “Okay, big shot. Go sell ice to Eskimos.”

“Will do.” He ended the call just as he stepped into his office and rounded on the secretary. “Speak to me,” he said as he sat down heavily.

“I have your messages here, sir.”

George picked up a rubber band and stretched it between his hands. “Anything worth my time?”

“Two, sir.”

The rubber band popped and flew towards the door. “Oops. Would you get that for me?” He admired the view when she picked up the rubber band. Between those heels and that skirt, the girl was a walking distraction. Which was why he had not fired her yet. “So, two important messages.”

“Yes, sir,” she said and put the rubber band back in the pile on his desk. “The board of directors is requesting a meeting.”

“What the hell for? I don’t want to spend an afternoon with those wind bags.”

“That’s what the second message is, sir. Lewis, over at Bank of California, has called three times today.” She tapped a pen against the clip board in her hands. “He says you never returned his calls from last week, either.”

George lounged back in his office chair. “Tragic bore. What does he expect?”

“He says you are late on repaying the loans from building North Acacia.”

George launched himself forward and slammed both fists on his desk. Objects jumped and clattered on top of it. “You tell that son of a bitch the next time he calls that I will pay him when the place opens, just like we agreed.”

“Yes, sir, I did.” She hesitated and looked down at her clip board. “Only he says that since the loans specify the opening date as July and it is December now–”

“I know what month it is, damn it.”

“He insists that you are overdue on beginning payments. Sir, if you don’t mind my saying–”

“Well, I do mind,” George pouted.

“I don’t think he will stop calling until he speaks to you personally. The board is getting nervous as well.”

George thought for a moment. He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Get out.”

“Sir–”

“I’ll handle it.” He pointed to the door. “Now get out.”

She gave a slight bow. “Very good, sir.” She shut the door behind her.

George unlocked his brief case. “The name Ellison used to mean something,” he muttered. “I need to remind them.” He took out a folder of papers on the North Acacia development. “I’m the biggest thing in real estate development in three states. They’ve all gotten cocky. They think they can push George Ellison around.”

He took the building plans for South Acacia from his desk drawer. He spread them out. It would be another eighteen months before it was even close to ready. At the rate those bastards were going, they would pull out of the project before then. “I just need one good turnaround,” he said. “That’ll show them. Inspire a little confidence.”

He flipped open a notebook. In block print was a list of potential projects. But which one, he thought, which one would impress them?

—

In the solarium, Heather clapped her hands. “Can I have everyone’s attention, please?” Around the room, cats turned bright eyes toward her. “Is everyone here?” There was a murmured chorus she took to mean yes.

“Thank you all for gathering here. I know you all have things you would rather be doing.” The cats looked at each other. Heather smirked. Maybe not as many pressing engagements as she anticipated.

“As you may know, a few days ago, there was a human here examining the house. The porch has a termite infestation, but so far the rest of the house is safe. So today, his company will be out to treat it.”

All the cats started speaking at once, to one another and to Heather. There was a din of high, mewing voices. “Just listen to me,” Heather pleaded. “I have been assured that their methods pose no danger to us. We don’t have to move out and they won’t be tenting the house.”

Heather braced herself. Now came the hard part. “However, they will need access to the house. And something like six dozen cats in a single house, even a large one like ours, is going to draw attention. Attention that we can ill afford.”

There was a mutinous whisper going around the room. Heather had no idea how she would convince them to go along with this idea. “So I’m going to need every able-bodied cat to temporarily relocate to the woods outside.”

The whisper became shouts of dismay and rebellion. “We can’t stay outside all night. We have kittens to think about,” someone shouted.

“It won’t be all night. Just during the day, while they work. It won’t take long. But there’s a lot of house to cover and I can’t risk them seeing all of you.”

“Couldn’t we just move to different rooms in the house? We can track their movements and avoid them,” a cat suggested.

“I don’t dare try. If something goes wrong, it will be even worse if they find a room of wall-to-wall cats. I would sooner let everyone stay scattered than risk that.”

“But what about the gray-whiskers?”

“Like I said, able-bodied cats only. I want all the sick and elderly moved into my office. I can explain a few charity cases easily enough.”

“Charity cases?” Another cat repeated, sounding outraged.

“That’s just the story, okay. Look, everyone,” she said and crouched down to talk to them. “I need you to see my position here. I am doing everything I can to protect the secrecy of the House of Cats. And yes, that is more important than the inconvenience of making you spend the day outside.”

“Who will protect us? The coyotes and bobcats keep their distance after the taser incident,” Dorian said. Heather had no idea what the taser incident might have been, but she rather liked the sound of it. “But we also don’t tempt them. Only the hunters venture far from the house alone. The rest of us travel together–”

“And you’ll be together today. What kind of creature is going to be stupid enough to approach six dozen cats at once?” Heather said.

“Could we take cat’s bane?” Annabelle asked.

“The woods aren’t dense enough to hide that many people. Which is why we’re doing this today instead of tomorrow, when the moon will be in effect. Cats will be harder to spot.” Heather checked the clock on the wall. Nearly ten. “We need to move now. I want everyone settled down before they get here.”

She opened the sliding doors into the yard and watched cat after cat leave the house. Mothers carried their kittens, who wanted to romp and play. The younger cats mostly accepted the experience as just another opportunity to play outside. The older cats seemed resigned to the humiliation of being kicked out of their own home. Heather thought they were being rather more dramatic about it than necessary.

She jogged up to her office. Soft beds were set up for all the cats too sick or weak to go outside, ten in total. Evergreen had organized the movement of them from their usual rooms. “Is everything ready?” Heather asked.

“Yes. I think they’re as comfortable as we can make them,” Evergreen answered. “But stay with them as much as you can. They’re used to constant company.”

“I’ll do my best, but I’m going to have to talk to the people arriving. Go catch up with the others. I’ll be out to check on everyone later.” Heather checked the clock in there as well. The exterminators could arrive at any minute. She hated waiting. She eased herself to the floor by one of the older cats and started a quiet conversation, moving from cat to cat as she did.

—

Carlisle watched a koi swim across the pond and under the tiny waterfall coming from the higher one. In that pond, a fountain sent arcs of water into the air. Beyond that, cars trickled past on the street. Behind him, voices traveled softly from the shops along the promenade. A breeze blew light spray from the fountain across his face. A cup of coffee appeared in front of him. Topaz smiled down at him when he took it then sat down on the bench next to him. Topaz slipped his hand into Carlisle’s and squeezed.

“Whatcha thinking?” Topaz asked.

“Are you sure Heather will be all right by herself? I have to admit, I feel rather guilty.”

Topaz sipped his drink and licked a line of foam from his upper lip. “It’s not our fault she scheduled them to come out today. You asked a week ago to take today off.”

“I didn’t ask for the day off, precisely.” His coffee gave off a spiraling column of steam in the cool morning air. Thick clouds glowed, lit from behind with sunlight like lampshades over the world.

Topaz rolled his eyes. “Sure. You just announced that you would be going out.”

“Maybe I asked if she had any particular need of me,” Carlisle admitted.

“Uh huh. That’s what I thought. The first step is admitting you have a problem.”

“Very well. I promised no work today,” Carlisle said. He stood up and wrapped his scarf around his neck once more. It was too cold to sit still for long. “So what do you want to do instead?”

“We should have ice cream for breakfast,” Topaz said solemnly.

Carlisle chuckled. “I don’t believe the ice cream parlor is open this early.”

Undeterred, Topaz said, “So lunch then.”

Carlisle tapped the toes of his shoes on the concrete pathway to shake off the dew from the grass. “And until then?”

“We could go ice skating.” Topaz pointed to the tiny rink set up at the far end of the lawn. It was decked out in red ribbons and bells. Tinny Christmas music played over the speakers. “They just set it up last weekend. It could be fun.”

Children shouted to one another as they banked off the high railing around the raised rink. On the side, employees rented out ice skates. “I cannot begin to describe the horror I am imagining.”

“Oh, come on. Changing-cats, hello?” Topaz lowered his voice when Carlisle shushed him. He still grinned, full of mischief. “Preternaturally agile compared to humans. We’ll knock their stripes off.”

“Have you ever actually ice skated before?” Carlisle asked.

“No. But that’s why it’ll be fun. New experience.” Topaz must have seen Carlisle’s reluctance and he turned on him with a pout. “Come on, let’s try it.”

Carlisle sighed. “How can I deny that face? Let’s go see. At least it isn’t crowded yet.”

“Yeah! This will be so cool!” Topaz hurried ahead then doubled back when Carlisle took too long. “Do you think you can do a back flip while skating?”

“I don’t do back flips when on solid ground.” They reached the ticket seller and Carlisle took several bills from a bundle in his pocket. “I am certainly not going to try now,” he said as they moved on to the rental skates.

Topaz laced up his skates haphazardly in his hurry to get out on the ice. Carlisle made him sit and tighten them properly. “Do you think I can?” Topaz asked while enduring the delay.

“I would honestly prefer if you restrained yourself in that particular aspect,” Carlisle said as he tested his balance. Topaz had been right about that at least; balancing on the edge of a blade was dead easy for a cat.

They stepped through a gate and onto the ice. Carlisle could feel the subtle changes in the quality of the ice, smooth and grainy and ridged in turned where previous skaters had marked the surface. The feeling was not unlike the sensitivity of one’s paws.

He held Topaz’s arm at the elbow under the pretense of steadying himself. “Let’s not make too much of a spectacle of ourselves, shall we?” He whispered. “I don’t want to come home with broken bones or our faces in the local newspaper.” He squeezed Topaz’s arm and released him to glide away, weaving in and out of the awkward humans with showy ease. “But do let’s have a little fun.” Topaz grinned and took up the challenge, chasing after Carlisle through the crowd.

—

Rune was not going to take any catnip. He stood on his hind legs to look out the tiny circle of window in the attic’s secret compartment, over the tops of trees and beyond to the city far below. He had never meant it to go this far. All he had wanted was a way to avoid changing under the moon. It was never supposed to be an all the time thing. Now he hid from his friends for days and spent the rest of the time moody and sick. He could not go more than a handful of hours with out it, less when the Leo moon drew near.

Rune sank back and watched the pile of catnip in the corner as though he expected it to jump up and bite him. He did not like who he was when he ate it. So he would not eat it. It was that simple. He could smell it from across the tiny room. If he did not have to see anyone else, did not even have to see himself, how bad would it be to change? It had been so long. Maybe long enough. He paced the length of the room.

He stopped when he realized his pacing had brought him closer to the pile of dry leaves and hard button flowers. He sniffed and he could feel the heat and rattle and noise of the plant in his body just from that. There was a promise in it: I will let you forget and I will make everything go silent.

So Rune chewed morosely on the catnip he had crammed in his mouth with such initial enthusiasm, frenzied after just a few moments of restraint. “You’re a real loser,” he said. In the privacy of the attic’s secret compartment, he need not fear being overheard. “Totally pathetic.”

The sound of chewing filled his skull. His ears rang. He shook his head, trying to dispel the noise. He shook so hard, his head hit the nearby wall. The blow sent a flash of white blankness through his head and gave him a moment of clarity.

There were strange shapes in his vision, like gnats flying around the room. He batted at them and chased them around the room. They were impossible to catch but he tried until his heart raced. He stopped, unable to go on, and gasped for breath. The tiny room was so stuffy. There was no air.

Then the high really hit him. Color and sound and phantom sensations exploded in his mind. He purred and mewled and rolled on his back to bat at the gnats, which became butterflies. His body chanted cat, cat, cat. It forgot that there was such a thing as humans, forgot that it could ever take any other shape. The body forgot and the mind went with it. Rune could think of nothing but the strange sensory delights that assaulted him. Everything was fine. Would always be fine.

But no high ever lasts. In time, his mind trickled back into his head. It brought memories, the alien faces of humans that grew familiar again as still more memory returned. The memories were worse as he came down than when he was sober. Rune covered his head with his paws. He scratched at his face, trying to scrub out those memories.

“Go away!” He knocked his head against the floor where he lay. The pain granted him a second of reprieve, so he did it again. “I don’t care, so leave me alone,” he pleaded to the empty room.

He rested with his eyes closed and tried to just concentrate on his breathing. In. What an ugly thing I’ve created. Out. She depended on me. In. That was someone else. Out. The blame is mine alone. In. I had a responsibility. Out. I never want to see them again.

He yowled and clawed his face. He left bloody trails through his fur. It was never going to end, he was sure. This would be the time that killed him. This time he had gone too far. He was sure. He wanted to lie down and die. If he could just get a little quiet, everything would be okay. Just a minute of silence in his head, that was all he asked.

He wound down slowly. The shakes left him. His vision cleared. The hallucinations, faces painted against the walls, faded. The voices went silent. Everything left after that was a monster of his own making. He breathed deeply, chest tight.

“I need help,” he whispered.

—

Heather hovered by the door to her office. “Well? Are we okay?”

The man in the white uniform nodded. “All clear.”

“Good. I want to disturb these folks as little as possible,” she said indicating the cats watching warily from inside. “Thanks for your understanding.”

“Not a problem,” he said and shut the door behind himself and his team members.

“Then if you don’t need me for anything else,” Heather said as she followed them downstairs and out to the patio, “I have some work of my own to do on the property. You have the run of the place.”

“Sure thing, ma’am.”

Heather made her way, as casually as she could, into the back yard. She puttered with cleaning up carpet shreds from the cat trees and pulling weeds from the garden. She could hear the exterminators drilling into the wood of the porch.

They had explained the bait stations that would go in the attic and back rooms and under the porch and the orange oil that would be injected into the wood of the porch, the worst damaged area. She had tried to keep track, but it did not mean much to her. And all the time her mind was on the cats — her people, she thought hesitantly — out in the woods on their own.

She finally made her way across the yard, checking over her shoulder too many times to be inconspicuous at all, and entered the woods. Dorian and Phyllo met her just inside. “How goes everything?” Heather asked.

“We have a patrol monitoring our perimeter and guards at the four points. We’re okay.” Dorian reported.

“Did you bring us a picnic, then?” Phyllo asked. He had a rough, street urchin sort of look about him, no matter how well-fed he might be and his cream coat had a permanent layer of dust on it.

“Sorry. That might blow our cover, me taking a picnic basket into the woods by myself.”

“How ’bout just a little something for me then? Smuggled in your pocket, perhaps,” he said, standing with his front paws on her leg to nose at her pants. “I don’t mind a bit of lint and I won’t say a word to the others.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Heather said and left them to move deeper into the shadows of the trees. She caught glimpses in the darkness of bright eyes and dark bodies moving like liquid shadow. The cats knew how to hide well. Up ahead, a familiar tuxedo cat spoke in hushed and hurried tones to another that Heather did not know personally.

“Ask around then. See if anyone saw him come out. He wouldn’t just leave, you know that,” Dopple said with increasing anger.

“I did ask around,” the other cat protested. “No one has seen him at all.”

“What’s the matter? Is someone missing?” Heather asked.

“It’s Rune,” Dopple said. She kept lifting her front paws up from the pine needle bedding of the woods. They must have been painful, more so than usual, on the prickly material. “I don’t know where he is.”

“And no one saw him come out of the house?”

“No. I think he’s still in there.”

“But I had the cats do a sweep to make sure all the gray-whiskers were accounted for. They should have found him then,” Heather said.

Dopple looked torn. She cleaned her whiskers fitfully. “He has a place he likes to go to be alone. He might be hiding there,” Dopple finally grumbled.

Heather came to a sickening realization. “Was he at the meeting this morning?”

“I didn’t see him.” Dopple swayed her head, indicating it was neither here nor there to her. “I don’t think so.”

“Don’t you understand? He doesn’t know that humans are going to be in the house. If he notices them–”

“He’ll try to kill them,” Dopple said, finishing the thought.

“And he’ll get himself killed trying. Dopple, where is this place? I have to get him out,” Heather said in a rush.

“It’s in the attic. There’s a hidden button on the baseboard. It opens a door and leads to a secret room. He’s been going up there more than usual lately. That’s where he’ll be,” Dopple said with enough certainty to satisfy Heather.

Heather spun on her heel and ran, dodging around thick tree roots blocking the path. She slammed into the sliding door in the solarium before she could get it open. She did not bother to close it behind her. She took the stairs two at a time. She had to get him out before the workers came into the house. She had to get him out while she had a chance.

—

Carlisle stopped and looked in at the display of cell phones behind the huge glass windows of the shop. Topaz, at his side, popped the last bite of his ice cream cone into his mouth. “Whathup?” Topaz mumbled.

“Do you think we should get phones?”

“Cell phones? I didn’t think you knew they existed,” Topaz said, nudging him playfully.

“Despite your assertions otherwise, I have ventured out of the House more recently than 1973.” Beyond the front display, customers bundled in coats and hats mingled with employees dressed for summer in polo shirts.

“I don’t think Rune would ever stand for it.”

Carlisle grimaced. “Rune is no longer leading the House of Cats.”

Topaz held his hands up in surrender. “And I both know and respect that. But you have to admit, he has influence in the House even now.”

“Yes. I wake each morning half expecting everyone to be as out of their minds on catnip as he is.” The look on Topaz’s face was reproach enough. Carlisle sighed. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. He has a problem and needs help, not ridicule.”

“What would we use them for, anyway?” Topaz asked, watching the preprogrammed video clips playing on the screen of a giant mockup of a phone. “Games?”

“Think of today. If we had phones, I could just call Heather to check that everything is going well there.”

“Yeah, see, that is exactly why I wouldn’t want a phone. Wasn’t it nice to get away from all that for a while? Let someone else take care of things?”

“Of course. Very nice. But for emergencies.”

Topaz shrugged, obviously grown bored with the topic. “I guess. I think you need to give Heather more credit though. She is, after all, an adult. She should be able to handle even an emergency without you talking her through it.”

“Objectively, I know that.” He let Topaz lead him away from the shop, rejoining the ever-increasing stream of people on the promenade. “But after being involved in the day-to-day affairs of the House for so long, I find it rather difficult to leave well enough alone.”

“What about a land line that everybody could use?”

“How many other cats will have access to phones? Who are they going to call?”

“We could get pizza delivered,” Topaz said, pointing up at the pizza parlor’s sign under which they were passing.

“You are hopeless.”

“Hey, speaking of hopeless and winning the prize for most awkward transition ever–”

Carlisle shook his head. “This should be good.”

“I haven’t seen Rune taking any catnip in at least a week.”

The hope in his voice was enough to break Carlisle’s heart. “Topaz…”

“Hey, I’m sure he’s not clean or anything. But if I’m not seeing him use it, it’s got to mean that he’s cutting back, right?” Topaz said with strained cheer. “I think he might only be using it around the moon.”

Which happens to be now, Carlisle thought, but did not have the heart to mention. “We can always hope,” he said gently. “Come on.” He took Topaz’s hand, giving it a squeeze, and veered out of the stream of people and across the lawn. “I noticed an arcade when we arrived and, if memory serves, you said you are something of a pinball wizard.”

“Oh, yeah, I kick ass at pinball.”

“Would you care to make a small wager on that? Because I do not imagine the game has changed much since 1973 and I do believe that my own skills will put yours to the test.”

—

A panel popped open beside Heather’s face where she knelt on the floor. It was about the size of a large dog door. She heard voices and people moving somewhere in the house. She was running out of time. She slid one arm through, intent on at least attempting to get through it. She could see, at the end of the short passage, Rune sprawled out on the floor. Her forward motion suddenly stopped. Her hips! They were too wide.

She rolled on her side and shimmied a little farther. She would have given anything to be twenty pounds lighter or possibly male right then. Then her arms were free, her head, her shoulders. She put her hands on the wall on either side of the passage and pulled herself the rest of the way out and into the room.

She knelt beside Rune. His eyes were half open and unfocused. Was it possible he would stay in the attic for the remainder of the day and never notice the workers in the house? But no, they had said they would put a bait station in the attic as well. She could not count on him sleeping through someone bungling around on the other side of the wall.

“Rune? I need to take you out of here,” she said. She reached out and, after some hesitation, touched his shoulder lightly. When that elicited no reaction, she shook him gently. “Rune, wake up.”

He made a small, questioning noise and raised his head. His eyes slowly focused on her. “I’m awake,” he said. His voice was slurred and rough.

“I need you to come with me.” She looked at the wall. The door had closed. How would she ever get through with him? She could not carry him and still fit through. And he did not seem inclined to walk, since his head had flopped to the floor again. “I can’t get out,” she finally said.

“Just push the button.”

“I can’t fit both of us through there.”

Rune lifted his head and squinted at her. “Have you put on weight?”

She put her hands on her hips. “Oh, very nice. Very charming.” She lowered them when she realized that it just brought attention to her hips. “I can’t fit through that tiny little door with you too.”

“Not that door,” Rune mumbled and lolled on his back.

“There’s another door?” Heather scanned the wall, looking for a sign of a second doorway. “Is there a button for it?”

“Up high. One for cats, one for…” His voice trailed off, but she assumed he meant one for humans. Changing-cats after their change. It was a foxhole. Changing-cats could come and go, but strangers of the human variety could never get in.

“Where is the second button, Rune? I can’t feel it,” Heather said, bumping her fingers along the wall where it met the ceiling.

“There, right there,” he said, waving a paw at her in an oddly human gesture.

Heather smashed the palm of her hand against the wall. Where she had expected a button, she found a hand-sized pad. Dust and disuse had stuck it over time and there was an audible squeak as she pushed it in. A narrow opening, just big enough to let a person through sideways, slid open on a mechanism she could not begin to imagine. With it open, she could once again hear voices and movement in the rest of the house.

Heather knelt back down next to Rune. “Can you walk?” Rune shook his head. She shimmied a hand under his neck and the other under his hips. “I’m going to pick you up, okay? Don’t take my arm off for it this time.” She lifted his rag doll body and cradled him in her arms. He offered no resistance.

Heather slid out of the foxhole room and back into the attic proper. The narrow steps were treacherous to take without the use of her hands for balance. She stopped at the bottom and listened. The voices of the workers were closer, perhaps even on the second floor already. She did not dare attempt to sneak him out to the woods. She ducked into her room and closed the door with her foot.

She sat down on the edge of her bed. “You really overdid it this time, Rune,” she said when she looked down at the insensible cat in her arms. “You’re going to go too far one of these days.”

Rune burrowed his face into the crook of her elbow. Then the most unexpected thing happened. Rune started to purr. It was broken by hiccups and long pauses, as though he forgot what he was doing, but he always started up again and as long as he did, Heather could not bring herself to let go.

—

George Ellison drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he idled at the red light. Call from Susanna Dahl, an automated voice said over his headset. How many times did they have to talk in one day? “Hello,” he said.

“Hi. What’s wrong? You sound upset.”

He ground his teeth and forced his voice to perk up. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m still at the office, that’s all.”

“Oh. I just wanted to let you know, I got some paperwork from the accountant today.”

He moved the headset closer to his mouth to drown out the sound of the engine. “Meaning?”

“You asked me to tell you if Heather Lee was fixing up her house.”

George did not have to feign interest any longer. “You found something.”

“All the time she was gone, there was activity on the account. Probably a gardener or caretaker of some sort to watch the place for her. Nothing too expensive. Lots of cash withdrawals. Probably spending money.”

He turned into the driveway of the gated community where he lived. “Yeah, yeah. What’s she doing now?”

“She’s spending five times as much now. It’s still nothing compared to the assets her family has set up. Their portfolio could probably buy a small state.”

He rolled his window down and punched in the gate code. “Is she fixing the place up?” George insisted.

“Half her expenses are going to local home improvement stores, nurseries, and an exterminator company.”

“What about the other half?”

“That part is a little strange. She must have had a lot of guests over for Thanksgiving. Maybe someone’s living with her. But she’s buying a ton of food. I mean, there is no way she can be going through hundreds of dollars of groceries in the time span I’m looking at.”

He drove to the top of the hill, where the houses had the best view. “Interesting. Was that all?”

“Yes. So, are you sure you won’t be able to get away at all tonight?”

George turned into his driveway. “They’ve got me chained to the desk, sweetheart. But I’ll call you tomorrow, I promise.” He killed the engine and fished in the backseat for his briefcase.

“Tomorrow then.”

“And keep me posted on any new developments with Lee.” He popped the latches and took out a notebook and pen.

“Sure. Bye-bye.” There was a click as the line disconnected.

On the first page, he circled one item on the list then snapped the notebook shut. “That’s the best damn news I’ve heard all day,” George said to himself.

—

Previous Episode :: Back to Index :: Next Episode

Heather tickled the kitten under the chin. He squeaked and mewled and squiggled across her palm. She set him next to his mother. “He’s beautiful. He looks just like his daddy.”

Lana chuckled. “One of them, at any rate.” His eyelids were just beginning to part in the corners. Once they opened, he would begin exploring in earnest. For now, he was content to bump around Lana on wobbly legs.

Heather leaned back against the couch where mother and kitten were currently nesting. “Have you decided on a name yet?”

“A few of us are all going to ask today.” The kitten cried and squirmed as Lana cleaned him.

“Ask?”

Lana paused mid-lick. “We’re going to ask Rune to choose for us.”

“He’s the, that is, one of the fathers?”

“Oh, no. That’ll be the day.” She laughed. “He barely even looks at any of us. Pity, too. He’s a good-looking tom.”

“So why?” Beyond the window, the hillsides were a patchwork of green and brown and orange. The damp and mild California autumn had allowed a new crop of thin, bright green grass to come up all around the house. Heather thought of Thanksgiving Day dinners being served at Mitchell’s. She had not thought of Mitchell and Marty and the rest of the staff in months.

“Because he’s a wise cat, when he has his head on straight,” Lana said, snapping Heather out of her reminiscences.

“You’re serious.”

She cocked her head. “You don’t believe me?”

“Before I got here, I imagined this dictator, a mad Caesar. Something worth fearing.” Heather tipped her head back to rest on the seat. “Rune’s just a junkie.”

“You’re wrong about that. Come on. I’m supposed to meet them now.”

Heather followed Lana as she carried her single kitten in her mouth. Changing-cats always had small litters, which was a blessing when they all tried to fit into the House. They went upstairs and into a room Heather walked past every day, but never entered. It opened onto a balcony overlooking the front drive of the property. Rune slept in the midmorning sun.

“You’re late,” one cat called to the newcomers.

“We almost started without you,” said the second.

Heather sat a few feet away. Rune did not look at her. The three queens sat with their kittens, all eager to escape, held under firm paws.

“What can I do for you, ladies?” he asked. He seemed relaxed. Must be coming down, Heather thought. He’ll need to fix again soon.

“We were hoping you would choose names for our little ones,” one cat said.

“You know so many cats,” said another. “You’ll know better than we do what’s been taken too many times.”

“Very well. Let me see.”

Lana put her tuxedo kitten in front of him. Rune swept him up with a paw and pulled him between his front legs. The kitten burrowed into the thick fur of his chest and tumbled over his own paws. Rune tucked his chin and gave the kitten a swipe with his tongue.

“His father is a two-color as well?”

“One is. The other had a two-color mother, but he’s all black himself.”

“He’s strong for his age.”

“He likes to kick, too,” Lana said with an indulgent smile.

“I think…Rugby, with your permission, madam.”

So it was in that way that Rugby, Cottonwood and the twins, Castor and Pollux, received their names. Their business finished, the three queens all left Rune. Heather lingered. He had his back to her, once again basking in the sunlight. Beyond the balcony, the tops of trees were transformed into an unbroken sweep of color.

“What do…Did you need something?” Rune eventually asked when she did not leave.

“How do you feel about yams with marshmallows?” Heather asked.

She could not see his face and he did not turn around, but she thought she could hear a smile in his voice when he answered. “I am partial to garlic mashed potatoes, actually. And chunky cranberry sauce.”

—

Dopple watched Carlisle hook a nail under the edge of the envelope and rip it open. From the doorway to the kitchen, she could look out the sliding doors to the backyard. Heather sat on the lawn, still fighting with the same cat tree she had been trying to assemble for the past twenty minutes. Dopple thought she could hear her cursing through the closed windows. Carlisle slid a neatly folded sheaf of papers from the envelope and unfolded them.

“Any new reports?” Dopple asked, sliding into the seat next to him at the kitchen table.

“Oh, Miss Dopple,” he said. His fur puffed and relaxed in a flash of surprise. “Not as of yet. Though I have developed something of a backlog. Everyone is writing in before the winter sets in.”

“Oh. I see.” She rose from the chair. “I guess I’ll be going then,” Dopple said.

“There was one thing,” he said with a smile.

Dopple’s heart skipped a beat. “Yes?”

“I got a letter from a certain calico beauty queen.”

Dopple was back in the chair in an instant. “When? Where is she? Is everything okay?” She grabbed the pile of letters and started sifting through them. “Can I read it?”

“Ahem.” Carlisle pushed a lone red envelope toward her. “It’s all yours. I’ve not read it yet myself. But she used the perfumed paper, so I imagine that all is well in her world.”

Dopple tore the envelope open with her teeth. A fresh burst of perfumed air filled her nose as she pulled out a single sheet of paper. Dopple scanned the letter once through, searching for any sign of disaster, and then read it a second time more slowly.

“She’s in Canada,” Dopple said. “But she’s heading south soon.” She looked up at Carlisle. “Maybe she’ll come out here,” she said hopefully.

“Perhaps she’ll winter here with the rest of them.”

“That would be nice,” Dopple said wistfully. “It’s been six months, you know, since I saw her last. We met up in Baton Rouge.”

“I remember. She’ll be fine, you know, I’ve no doubt of that. Your fine lady is quite competent.”

“I know. But there’s so much…” She sniffed and tucked the letter into the pocket of her jacket. “I guess we’ll find out when she feels like it, huh?”

“I can send word to a friend in Alberta, if you would like. He can check in with her.”

Dopple put a gloved hand on his head. “I’m tempted. But I don’t need to spy on her. I’ve got to just trust that she’ll come back to me.”

He moved his ears under her palm. “Ah, you can keep that up as long as you like,” Carlisle said.

“Is she okay out there alone?” Dopple asked.

“Who, Mysti?”

“No, our esteemed Queen.”

“I do wish you would give her half a chance.” Carlisle looked out. “Oh, dear.”

Heather had moved on to a larger cat tree and was struggling to keep the central pillar upright long enough to attach the base. It kept tipping while she tried to screw it into place. More often than not, it hit her in the head. Shelves for the tree were scattered around her. A cardboard box, full of tiny nuts and bolts, threatened to spill whenever she moved and bumped it.

“I’d better…”

“No, I’ll go,” Dopple said.

Carlisle twitched his nose at her. “You’re not going to pick a fight, are you?”

“You wound me. No, I just figure I should leave you to your correspondences.” She paused then said without looking at him, “I’d be lost without you.”

“Very well.” Carlisle nodded. “I shall remain here then.”

Dopple went through the sliding screen door and into the backyard. She stood over Heather for a minute until Heather noticed her.

“What?” Heather snapped.

“Give it here.”

“You’re actually going to help?”

“I am trying to be nice right now,” Dopple ground out. “It will go a lot better if you don’t talk.”

Heather stared then nodded without a word. She passed the pillar to Dopple, who steadied it while Heather bolted it into place. They worked in silence, moving around each other on sense and instinct and rhythm, until the last tree was assembled and placed around the yard.

—

When Heather tried to leave, Carlisle was waiting for her. He pushed away from the door of the hall closet where he had been leaning. “I’d like to come along,” he said, “if you’ll have me.”

“What’s the occasion?” Heather asked, looking over his slacks and sweater.

“Do I need one?” He opened the door and motioned her out.

“Hey, I won’t argue. I’m going to need an extra set of hands to cart all this home,” she said as she looked over a list of groceries.

“I thought we could get a taxi, just this once,” he said as they walked down the long and sloping gravel drive that led from the house to the main road at the bottom of the hill.

“Big spender,” she said with a laugh. “Sounds good. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, though.”

He shook his head. “No other shoe.”

After a few minutes, they reached the main road. It was a treacherous stretch, favored by motorists cutting from one side of town to the other. On either side of the House driveway, the road turned sharply and overgrown brush obscured oncoming cars until the last second. Carlisle and Heather listened and waited. Then they dashed across to the wide shoulder on the other side and turned right into town.

“I spoke to Dorian and the others about what happened when you went out,” Carlisle said.

Heather kicked a small stone farther down the road ahead of them. “They ratted me out, huh?”

Carlisle reached it and sent it ahead again. “I am under the impression that they were rather impressed by you.”

“No kidding. And what about you?” Heather sent to stone flying off to the left into the brush where it was lost. They continued in strained silence until they reached the first shopping center in town.

—

Carlisle pushed a shopping cart after Heather, who stalked the aisles with determination. “I should not have spoken to you as I did,” Carlisle said while Heather compared two brands of boxed stuffing mix. “I’m not surprised you failed to tell me about Topaz’s escapades, after the way I acted.”

“It wasn’t really his fault,” Heather said as she put two of each in the cart. “I should have thought it out before I let them go wild.”

“He’s a grown cat. He should have shown a little restraint,” Carlisle said as he struggled to open a plastic produce bag.

Heather took it from him, opened it, and handed back. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say he was distraught over a certain bobtail cat I know.” She poured in several scoops of green beans from a bin.

“Distraught? Hardly,” he said. He spun the bag and tied off the top. “He was in a snit because I did not show sufficient enthusiasm.”

Heather dropped a huge sack of potatoes into the cart. “If you say so.”

“You seem to have seen something I did not,” Carlisle said. He leaned on the handle of the cart while Heather picked out yams and chives and garlic bulbs.

“There’s a first for everything, I know,” she said. She tossed three onions to him in rapid succession and laughed when he scrambled to catch them. “Just, ease up on him. He takes it hard when you treat him like a kitten with muddy paws.”

“Then perhaps–” Carlisle started to snap then broke off with a huff. He followed Heather as she moved on to the meat department and the search for the perfect turkey. Or three perfect turkeys, as the case proved to be.

“You two might as well pull each other’s pigtails,” Heather said as she hefted the last one in.

“I beg your pardon?”

Heather rolled her eyes. “You’re sweet on him and you don’t want to admit it, so you both snap and snarl at each other. It would be cute if it wasn’t becoming a pain in my ass.”

“I would like it if he showed a bit more restraint, more forethought.”

“You might like it, but you wouldn’t like him the same way.” She leaned a hip against the meat counter and crossed her arms. “Come on, I know you. You’re convinced your bad boy days are behind you.”

“As evidenced by my four-week stretch of reading mail and paying bills without setting foot outside,” Carlisle admitted.

“Uh huh. So you’ll let Topaz be the bad boy for you. You like him this way.”

Carlisle snorted. “I do believe I will change the subject now, if you are quite finished analyzing my love life or lack thereof.”

“Fine. You go get two cans of pumpkin pie filling,” she said, taking the cart.

“You mean you don’t plan to puree it yourself?”

“Shush, you. Even I know when to make things easier on myself. And cooking for fifty cats is one of those times,” Heather said as he left.

Carlisle paused. “I do believe we have rather more than fifty right now,” he said.

“But I thought they all went away again after the Festival of Black Cats,” Heather said, sounding desperate.

“Winter is closing in and the House is a popular place to spend the cold months.”

“So how many are we up to?”

“At least seventy-five, for now,” he said with a sympathetic wince.

Heather sighed. “Make that three cans, then.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Carlisle wandered the aisles and shivered in the cold. A wool sweater was no substitute for a cat’s coat. Everything smelled vaguely of packaged chicken and floor cleaner. He grabbed a stack of pumpkin pie cans and took a meandering path back to Heather.

“I’ve got everything, I think,” Heather said, tossing a can of condensed milk from hand to hand.

“Famous last words,” Carlisle said as they got into line to check out.

“Why don’t you go use the payphone out front to call a cab while I check out? But don’t let them send one too soon. I have one more stop to make.”

“Very well. Am I forgiven for my misdeeds yet?”

Heather passed food from left hand to right and onto the conveyor belt in swift succession. “I’m not mad at you.”

“Good. Does that mean I don’t have to help you cook all this?”

Heather made as if to kick him. “Get out of here, wretched boy, before I change my mind.”

“As you wish, milady,” Carlisle said and dodged out of the way.

—

Heather knocked on the door. It was another room she had never seen inside.

“What?” The voice on the other side sounded annoyed. At least she knew she had the right room, Heather thought.

“It’s Heather,” she called back.

“Will you leave me alone if I ask you to? I can even be polite, if that helps.”

Heather grinned. So accommodating, she thought. “Not really.”

“Fine, whatever, open the door.”

The room was furnished like a human bedroom. Curtains hung in the window and matching sheets and blankets made up the bed. It was the mirror image of Heather’s private quarters, if all the papers and books and clothing were tidied up.

“I spend so much time human,” Dopple said when she noticed Heather staring, “that I got the luxury suite.” She sat on her bed cross-legged with a pile of fluffy pillows behind her back. “You’re going to catch flies that way.”

Heather closed her mouth. It was a very nice room for just one cat. Heather understood that Dopple managed all the rescue missions the House undertook: buying changing-cats from pet stores, adopting them from shelters, and stealing them from human owners. It was not done just out of charity; it was essential to maintaining the secrecy and safety of the whole changing-cat community. But Dopple lived like an ambassador among cats. Heather began to wonder if Dopple actually outranked her.

“Did you want something specific, or were you just going to admire the decor?”

Heather tossed a small tube to Dopple, who let it drop to the bed before picking it up. “I’m trying to be nice right now. It will go a lot better if you don’t talk,” she said.

Dopple raised an eyebrow at the mimicry. She turned the tube over in her hands then tore the plastic seals off it with her teeth.

“Pepper spray. So you can defend yourself the next time you need to go out. I made them let me try one. You can make it spray just using your thumb, so it shouldn’t be a problem with your hands.”

Dopple tucked it into the pocket of her jacket. Then she rolled over on her bed and started reading something. Heather’s audience with the ambassador had evidently ended. She shut the door and jogged downstairs. Debt repaid, she started planning her strategy for Thanksgiving dinner.

—

Topaz watched the sun set from his perch on a warm rock. He had slept most of the afternoon away, but awoke just in time to go on the prowl once night fell. He cleaned his face and rubbed the sleep grit from his eyes. He yawned and stretched and stepped down into the tall grass. Then he saw Carlisle, just beyond the first trees of the woods. Human. Topaz thought about turning away, finding somewhere else to hunt. He could not bear the thought of yet another argument. But Carlisle raised a hand in greeting and Topaz wove his way over, following furrows in the grass left by other cats.

“Take this,” Carlisle said and offered him one of those cat’s bane pills Heather took all the time. Most everyone else just made do with the powder by itself, though it was something awful to choke down that way.

Topaz crunched it until he could swallow. Carlisle looked away while he made the change to human. Then he handed him the ragged jeans Topaz liked to wear. He pulled them on, wishing for something warmer. The night was cold, colder still without fur.

“What’s up?” Topaz asked.

Carlisle took him by the wrist and pulled him onto a path between the trees, nothing more than a foot-wide strip worn smooth with use. “Walk with me,” was all Carlisle said.

They had to squeeze close to fit between some of the trees, whose upper branches were woven into a solid canopy over their heads. Their shoulders brushed, the wool of Carlisle’s sweater scratchy against Topaz’s bare skin.

“You’re not just taking me out here to murder me, are you?” Topaz asked.

“I had not planned on it, no.”

“That’s good. Because it would be a real bummer if you killed me.”

Carlisle stopped walking. “You are so strange, sometimes I think you are just doing it to anger me,” he said. His voice was soft, but frustrated.

“Did we come out here to argue?” Topaz asked.

“No. On the contrary, it was my intention to make amends for my no doubt intolerable behavior recently.”

“Just in general or did you have something specific in mind?”

“Heather said, if I recall, that I should ‘ease up’ on you.”

“Well, good on Heather,” Topaz said. He rubbed his hands over his arms to warm them up.

“Are you cold?” Carlisle asked. He placed a hand above Topaz’s and squeezed his arm. The touch of skin to skin — not even fur to separate them — sent a shiver of foreign pleasure through Topaz. Carlisle pulled him closer and moved his other arm around Topaz’s back. “Better?”

Topaz swallowed, mouth gone dry. “It’s a start,” he said. He took a step closer again and now their chests were touching. “Is this you making amends?”

“It’s a start,” Carlisle echoed, his face close enough that his breath warmed Topaz’s face when he spoke.

“I thought you said I was too young for you,” Topaz said, because he was not going to let go of his hurt feelings just yet. He was not that easy.

“You must have heard me wrong.” Carlisle’s thumb traced the furrow between the muscles of his arm. “As I remember it, what I said was that you were too young to know that I was once far more exciting than I am now.”

“Is that so? And now?”

Carlisle moved his hand up to Topaz’s neck, thumb now sweeping over the line of his jaw and making the pulse there stutter. “And now, I begin to see the wisdom in reliving the recklessness of my youth,” he said.

They both closed the distance between them and so there was no telling who started the kiss. Topaz brought both hands up to cup Carlisle’s face, all hesitation gone, all bitterness forgotten. One kiss turned into many, short and long and longer, while their fingers skimmed over the unfamiliar smoothness of human flesh.

Carlisle put a hand against Topaz’s chest and pushed him just far enough away to speak. “I can’t give you much more than this,” he said. “I’m no tom and–”

Topaz curled his fingers into Carlisle’s hair. “Shut up, man,” he said. “First lesson in living a reckless youth: live in the moment.”

“Well spoken,” Carlisle said and drew Topaz back into his warm embrace, where Topaz was content to stay the rest of the night, no matter how cold.

—

Rune paced along the island in the kitchen. He had seen Topaz change and disappear into the woods with Carlisle. Were they planning to spend the whole night out there?

“Should I find someone else?” Rune wondered aloud. “Dopple can’t cook, or so she says.” He shuddered at the thought of asking any other female to change. “It has to be Topaz. He’s the only one I can trust myself with.”

Then Rune heard footsteps approaching and he hid himself in the pantry. Through the gap by the hinges, he watched a satisfied-looking Carlisle walk through the kitchen and into the living room beyond. Rune braced himself. He’s just a man, he repeated in his mind again and again. You can cope with a man.

When he heard the door open and close a second time, Rune stepped out of the pantry and jumped back onto the island. “Topaz. Come here.”

Topaz jumped like he had been caught sneaking in after curfew. “Nothing! Fine! What?” He relaxed when he saw Rune, though Rune wished he could feel the same way. “What’s up, bro?”

“I need your help,” Rune said. He tried to not look at Topaz directly. Out of the corner of his eye, Topaz still looked like a golden blur. That was good. No big deal. It had worked when Heather came in with the queens that morning. It would work now.

“I kinda had plans,” Topaz said and jerked his thumb in the direction of the rest of the house, though Rune had no doubt that he meant a room with a door, more specifically.

“Please?”

The golden blur grunted and hopped onto the counter. “Shoot. What do you need?”

“Can you cook? Do you know how?”

“Not really. Be honest: not at all.”

“If I tell you exactly what to do?”

“Just be your hands?”

“Yes. Just, just be.” He couldn’t bring himself to say it, because it would mean imagining it too. “That,” he finished lamely.

“So are we cooking now? It’s kinda late.”

“That’s the plan. I need everything ready right when Heather wakes up.”

“Heather?”

Rune rubbed his paw across his nose, suddenly embarrassed and wishing he had never said anything. “I want to make breakfast for her. She’s getting up early tomorrow to cook Thanksgiving dinner.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a human holiday. American humans. It’s a meal for families.”

“And she’s cooking it for us?”

“That’s the rumor.”

“And you’re cooking for her.”

“She– She did something nice for me when she had no reason to.”

Topaz nudged him with an elbow that Rune tried not to notice. “You’re going to ruin your badass reputation, man.”

“Be quiet. So are you in or not?”

“Yeah, I’m game. What do we need?”

“You have to get her cook book. She keeps it in her office.”

“Has she gone to bed?”

“Yes, yes, of course. She insists on sleeping at night.”

“Back in a tick then.”

Rune went back to pacing while he waited for Topaz to return. Pancakes. Eggs — but how did she like them? Scrambled? Over easy? Was there any juice in the fridge? Would she like toast too? No, toast and pancakes, that’s overkill, he thought. Bacon! Did they have bacon? What was breakfast without bacon?

“You don’t seriously expect me to cook something from this book, do you?” Topaz asked, flipping through the pages of the book while he walked.

“Why not? Is it complicated?”

“Man, I have no idea what any of this means. I read the words, but I don’t get it.”

“Just find me a pancake recipe. I’ll worry about the rest.”

The two brothers both leaned low over the book. Then Rune said, “Right. First thing is flour. Big white sack, in the pantry.”

“Got it,” Topaz said. “Next?”

“Salt and sugar.”

“I can handle that.”

“Baking powder. It’s a little — there, that one. Yes. Now, in the fridge. An egg. Butter. Just grab a stick. And the jug of milk.”

“All this for breakfast?” Topaz asked with his hands full.

“This is just to make pancakes.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. How does Heather do it?”

“I wonder that myself. Okay, check the cupboard there for a big mixing bowl. The measuring cups and spoons are in that drawer.”

“Humans seriously do this to all their food?”

“Not everyone cooks,” Rune said, reluctant to start a conversation about humans.

“I would hope not,” Topaz said.

“Now, the hard part,” Rune said when they had all their ingredients and tools assembled on the counter. “We’ll make the batter, and then cook everything at the same time. I think. I hope.”

“Don’t look at me. This is all on you.”

“Just be quiet and break the egg in the bowl.” And so Rune and Topaz bumbled their way through cooking in the dead of night.

—

Heather fidgeted in her room. She could not bring herself to walk out. On the other side of the door, Topaz called to her. “How ya doing?”

“I’m not sure I can do this.”

Carlisle said, “Yes, you can. You’re ready.”

“Come on,” Topaz said. “I have to go carve the turkey.”

“Okay.” Heather took a deep breath. “Right. Here goes nothing. Open the door.”

Topaz opened it for her and he and Carlisle waited expectantly. Heather stepped into the light. One step at a time, she walked out of her room and into the hallway.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Topaz stooped down. “You’re fine. You look great.”

“Are, are you sure? I mean, I look–”

“You’re the prettiest cat in the House,” Topaz said.

“Are you ready to go downstairs?” Carlisle asked.

“I think so. Just, let me go slow.”

“Take your time,” Carlisle said. “We’ll stay with you.”

The house looked so different. Everything loomed over her. Tables and lamps became threatening giants.

“Breathe,” Topaz reminded her.

“Breathing. Let’s go.” Heather eased herself down the first stair. Then the next. She took them a little faster, letting her body move the way it wanted to over the wide steps. She reached the bottom without realizing it. Then they rounded the corner and walked into the kitchen. Around the room, the eyes of twenty cats turned to watch her. Another fifty milled through the living room and dining room and solarium. In the entire house, there was only one human. And that was Topaz.

“Want to help me carve the turkey?” Topaz asked in the silence.

Heather whimpered her assent and jumped up onto the counter. She looked around from her perch. The other cats had gone back to their conversations. No one was paying any attention to her. No one minded. Heather let out a soft sigh.

“See? It’s all good,” Topaz said. He brandished a carving knife. “Let’s see what I can do to butcher this.”

“I’m sure you’ll do fine. You managed pancakes, eggs, and bacon well enough,” Heather said very quietly.

Topaz glanced over to where Rune was talking to Dopple. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Rune made you breakfast.”

“Carlisle did tell me that Rune had a sous-chef.”

“Meh. I’m just a pair of hands.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“Something about you doing something nice when you didn’t have to. So, does this mean you’ll help me?”

Right, Heather thought. Operation Detox. “I’ll help. But only as a friend to you. And maybe to him. I still won’t seduce him.”

“If you say so.”

“I say so.”

“Check it out,” Topaz said to the rest of the room. “Turkey dinner for all.” He carried the platter of turkey, sliced more or less nicely, into the dining room. There it joined mashed potatoes, yams, chunky cranberry sauce, green beans, stuffing, gravy, and several pumpkin pies.

Topaz and Heather had brought out the cat benches for the occasion earlier that day. So some cats jumped up onto the high benches that brought them level with the table. Kittens ate from plates on the floor, which was covered by several old bed sheets to save the carpet. More cats ate at coffee tables and at the kitchen counters. The whole House had come together for the meal.

“Are you sure you don’t need any help?” Carlisle asked Topaz. “I can change and serve with you.”

“Nope. I’m doing community service today,” Topaz said brightly. “It’ll take a little while, but I’ll get it done.”

“He certainly is being mature today,” Heather said when Carlisle joined her. She sat at one end of the table. Carlisle sat next to her, while the space on her other side was reserved for Topaz.

Down at the opposite end, Rune jumped up onto the bench between Dopple and Evergreen. Heather scanned the faces at the table. Dorian and Annabelle and Lana, Valoria and Rafflesia were all there and many more besides. Heather was still learning their names and faces, getting to know them as friends. It was a slow process for her. But suddenly, in a room full of cats, Heather no longer felt like an outcast.

She looked up from her plate, where Topaz had just given her a slice of turkey that smelled, if she did say so herself, absolutely amazing. At the other end of the table, Rune caught her eye. He did not look away. Heather cocked her head and smiled. A cat’s smile is rare and lovely indeed, for they smile with their whole body, not just their face as a human does.

They had not spoken since Heather had come down to the kitchen that morning to start cooking and discovered a covered platter of breakfast. She had asked Carlisle if he knew anything — after taking a pancake to eat on the walk upstairs — and found out about Rune and Topaz’s midnight kitchen foray.

Rune made a point of sniffing in the direction of the mashed potatoes — garlic strong in the air — and smiled back. Heather’s stomach did a flip-flop that had nothing to do with transformation nervousness.

“Everybody, let’s eat,” Topaz said when he had served everyone what they wanted.

“Enjoy,” Heather said just as the cats took their first bites. “We have a lot to be thankful for today.”

—

Previous Episode :: Back to Index :: Next Episode

It is the private business of every changing-cat how and where they make their monthly shift, as well as what they do while human. There are a number of lockable rooms in the House of Cats, which afford privacy for those who desire solitude or, perhaps, just more exclusive company. But if you prefer to change in the woods behind the house, or up on the roof, or in the tub in the second-level bathroom, no one would question you. You would be left alone for two days, until the change had ended, and welcomed back when you emerged, thirsty and hungry and a little battered.

So it was with a rather guilty conscience that Topaz decided to follow Rune. He could feel the moon ticking along its path, no longer visible in the night sky, moving from Cancer to Leo by astronomical degrees at once tiny and vast. Topaz passed a pair of cats at the top of the stairs, where their tender ritual of grooming began to take on a more determined air. The change would come to them all within an hour. But what of his brother, with his stashes of dried catnip in untouched corners of the house? Topaz had never before dared to pry, but how did he spend two days as the only cat in a house of humans?

Rune’s gray tail disappeared into the attic. Topaz followed, glad that he had not yet changed and could walk silently. No other cats had chosen the attic that month, at least so far, so Topaz was the only one to see Rune trip a hidden button along the baseboard. A previously invisible panel slid back and Rune entered a secret room through a door just barely large enough to accommodate a human, but generous for a cat. Topaz chased after, seeing his chance to follow disappearing, but the panel slid back into place just ahead of him.

Topaz paced along the wall. He could not exactly find the button and waltz in there. He had never heard of or seen that secret room before, though it was well-known that the House of Cats had its share of hidden nooks. Rune would surely see him if he followed now. The door had been big, however, certainly big enough to allow a modestly sized human though. Maybe Rune slept in hiding while everyone else changed. He hated the sight of humans enough that seeing his friends turn into them probably traumatized him. Topaz sat down. He would wait. He would change and then he would go through. And if Rune was still awake and saw him, well, at least he would be large enough to not be killed outright.

—

When the change started, Topaz lay down in the middle of the attic, in an open space amongst the boxes of old papers and keepsakes. When the change finished, he had one leg over an old steamer trunk and the other crooked around it, while his torso and neck curled uncomfortably against the wall. He thrashed and squirmed free. He always thought he was smaller as a human than he turned out to be. He felt along the baseboard with fingertips that tingled with their newness. Every particle of dust felt like sandpaper against his skin. It felt like his ears were full of cotton. His nose too. Being human was hard. Something gave under his questing fingertip. The panel opened again.

It was much smaller than he had realized. He had to slither and use his folded arms to pull himself forward. Even if Rune was asleep, he would certainly wake from all the noise Topaz knew he was making. But curiosity had a hold on him and there was no turning back. Actually, there was no turning at all, he thought as he angled his shoulders this way and that to fit through.

When he finally made it out of the passage, he had to lie panting on the floor until he caught his breath and his arms stopped aching. When he rose, he brushed the dust and cobwebs from his bare shoulders and chest, then looked around the tiny room. The ceiling was low and slanted, situated as it was at the far edge of the attic. At the highest point, it was still too low for Topaz to stand upright. It was as empty as the main attic was cluttered. But on the opposite side, tucked between wall and floor and ceiling, slept a man whom Topaz had never seen before, but knew instantly.

Topaz inched forward on his knees. Topaz still had trouble judging age in humans, but thought he looked forty or so. He did not have that tired look of older humans. His hair was solid gray, but then, Topaz expected that much. He had a strange quality about his skin, Topaz thought as he looked down at him. Then he realized he was still shifting. Except he was shifting back to a cat.

A pile of dried catnip, curly leaves and tiny faded blossoms, had been pushed into an arc by Rune’s arm as he slept. The fingernails of his visible hand flexed and retracted and made a bloody mess of his fingers. As Topaz watched, his ribcage crushed itself and forced a pained groan out of Rune’s lungs. His tail came and went, as did pads on the soles of his feet. His knee jerked forward and hit the wall with a thud as he started to writhe.

Topaz recoiled in horror. He had never seen a transformation like that. Sure, it always hurt a bit. It was not fun or anything. But this was awful. Rune shrank down to cat size again, though his skin still had heat haze fuzziness to it, still changing minutely. He shivered and shook with exertion. His fur was wet with human sweat.

Topaz reached out and set a hand on him. He relaxed under the warmth. Topaz settled next to Rune with his head braced on his free hand. He looked down at the familiar tabby markings on Rune and shook his head. “You’re a mess, bro,” he whispered. “What are we going to do with you?”

—

The house was full of people. Humans. Men and women. Heather glared at a mother who was licking her child’s forehead. “You might use a cloth for that,” she suggested. She admitted that they did not all make very convincing humans, but it was so nice to be surrounded by people again. There was not a tail in sight.

There was a knock. Heather walked to the door then saw that the front room was occupied by an assortment of cats-turned-human, most of whom were blissfully ignorant of their nakedness. She hissed and shooed them out of the room as quietly as she could.

There was another knock. “Just a minute,” she called. She grabbed one man on his way out of the room. “Don’t let anyone come in here. Got it?” He agreed and hustled the lingering people out of sight. Heather smoothed her hair and opened the door.

The woman at the door wore a pearl choker. The hand she offered had manicured acrylic nails. She had the timeless face of a well-kept older woman. Heather immediately tagged her as high society and wondered what she could be doing all the way out at the House, which was not exactly next door to the nearest country club. Heather could not tell what kind of car she had parked a few feet away, but it was entirely shiny and new.

“I’m Yvonne Waverly,” she said. Her voice, when she spoke, was unusually low for a woman. “I am the president of the homeowners’ association here in Shadow Hills. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Heather Lee and likewise,” Heather said while thinking that she did not even know there was a Shadow Hills community to which she might belong. “Can I help you? Is there something wrong?”

“Not at all. I heard you had moved back here and I wanted to introduce myself.” She lifted her left hand to display a covered bottle of wine. “A little housewarming gift.”

“Would you, um, mind waiting here a minute? I’ll get you something to drink.”

“I would love to see your home. If I could.”

“Er. Well. I’m kind of in the middle of unpacking. Cleaning. Fixing the place up. You know. So.”

“I’ll just wait here then, shall I?” She gestured to the old porch swing like it might give her tetanus. Or plague.

“Please. And I’ll be right back with drinks.”

When she came back outside, Yvonne was sitting gingerly on the very edge of the swing. “Thank you,” she said as she accepted the glass of lemonade. Yvonne took a sip and left a perfect lip impression in red lipstick. “How long have you been here?”

Heather leaned back against the railing around the porch where the sun could warm her back. “A couple months. There’s been a lot to do, so it’s passed quickly.”

“I’m sure. Do you need any help?”

“Thanks, but we’re doing okay.”

“Oh, are you married?” Yvonne asked.

Heather began to feel that there was nothing this woman overlooked. She checked her clothing surreptitiously for stray cat hairs. “I just, that is, I have some friends who have been helping me. Locals.”

“That’s nice.”

“So, homeowners’ association. That must be a big responsibility,” Heather said.

“It does keep me busy. I’ll admit I did have an ulterior motive for being here, though,” Yvonne said with a not-very-abashed smile. “Your predecessor–”

“My mother.”

“Yes, of course. She was not active in our group, I’m sorry to say.”

Heather took that to mean Mother had not been interested in a cross-species game of keeping up with the Joneses. “So she never gave you the grand tour.”

Yvonne leaned forward with an expression of child-like delight. “I grew up in this town, but I never heard of anyone coming up to this property. It was the local haunted house.”

“I never knew that. I didn’t play with local kids much.” Heather steered her mind away from the one time she did play with the local “kids.”

“I didn’t either. You know what it’s like to have overprotective parents. An only child too?”

“As far as I know,” Heather said with a shrug.

Yvonne laughed. “Very clever.” She patted the space on the swing next to her. “I really just wanted an excuse to check the place out.”

“I would give you the full tour, but–” Heather sat down. There was a terrible tearing noise and the swing, both women, and two glasses of lemonade crashed to the porch.

“Remodeling. Right,” Yvonne said breathlessly after a moment. “I can see why.”

“Are you okay?”

“A little damp, I have to admit,” she said and wiped at the lemonade all over the front of her suit. “But otherwise uninjured, I believe. You?”

“Oh, swell,” Heather said as she rolled to her knees and up to her feet. She offered her hand to Yvonne and pulled her up. “Let me get you something.”

“I think I’ll go towel off at home,” Yvonne said.

“Sorry about that,” Heather said as she picked up the fallen glasses.

“Nonsense. But you get that fixed up, before someone does get hurt,” she said. Heather thought it sounded like more of a threat than a friendly comment. “You ask me, I think you have termites.” Heather prayed it was not so.

—

Heather nudged the sagging remains of the swing with her foot and pushed it out of the way. She set the step ladder where the swing once hung. With the hardware it hung from and a screwdriver from the kitchen in hand, she ascended the steps to see what the damage looked like.

“I see you got rid of that dozy cow,” someone said from the front door.

Heather, startled, lost her balance and stumbled down from the ladder. “Don’t do that,” she said. It was Dopple in the doorway. “Going out?” Heather asked when she saw the coat slung over Dopple’s shoulder.

“Maybe. What’s it to you?”

Back up on the ladder, Heather scraped at the splintered wood with the screwdriver. “Nothing much. I just wondered. Anyone else headed out?”

“None of my business if they are.”

“Seems a pity,” Heather said as she tried to tighten a screw back into the wood. “Not to enjoy the change.”

“Yes, it’s no secret how you feel about it,” Dopple said. “Most cats,” she said with emphasis, so that it meant sane cats, “don’t like to advertise the fact.”

Heather tugged on the screw and it fell out of the wood easily and released a flurry of wood shards behind it. “Damn thing,” she muttered. “You spend more time human than the others.”

“I have a job to do.”

“You’re a rescuer.” Heather twisted a screw into place with her fingers then tightened it with the screwdriver. It turned easily. “But you mean to tell me you don’t enjoy it too? You never go to a nice restaurant or do some shopping for yourself?”

“Would that serve some purpose? Would it make anyone’s life better?”

“Maybe yours.” The screw fell out of the wood on its own this time. “Shit.”

“I don’t enjoy cutting myself off from my kind, so no, I don’t think it will enrich my life. Thank you for your concern.”

“You’re welcome,” Heather said. She was no longer really listening to the conversation. She chipped off some more wood. “How do you tell if you have termites?”

“What, on you? I would recommend a flea collar, if you’re concerned.”

“Not on me. In the woodwork. Yvonne said she thinks this is from termites. But I can’t see anything that looks like one.”

“Well, if Yvonne said it, it must be true.” When Heather made no reply, she slipped on her jacket and went down the steps. “I’m going to buy some more cat trees and have them delivered to the bottom of the hill.”

Heather stopped what she was doing and looked at her. “Thank you. Ours are looking pretty ragged. You have money?”

Dopple flashed a debit card.

“Let me know when they’ll be delivered and I can take some people down to pick them up.”

Dopple shrugged and walked away. “Whatever,” she said as though Heather had been needling her.

Heather got down from the step ladder and put her hands on her hips. She looked at the overhang of the porch. It was pockmarked from time and weather and had gone gray with fine patches of mold. It did not look good, she thought, but termites sounded serious. She would have to call an exterminator or something. That meant going into town, as the House had no phone line.

Heather folded up the step ladder and tucked the screwdriver in the back pocket of her jeans. Maybe Carlisle would come with her. Or Topaz. Surely someone in the House enjoyed the human side of life. Dopple’s comments had her out of sorts, but she would prove her point if she could get a bunch of cats together in town. It could be a field trip. The termite problem fled from her mind in the face of a more pleasant project to plan. Heather put her tools away and went in search of recruits.

—

Susanna tapped her glass against the bar and checked her watch for the third time in ten minutes. He was late. She sipped her drink, which tasted only of melted ice by then. How dare he stand her up, she thought, but could not seem to muster any anger behind it. It had been a long day, which was why she was still in the bar, drinking alone, when she should have stormed out long ago.

She felt the person behind her before he ever touched her. His breath warmed her neck as he said, “You must hate me.” A hot hand curled over her shoulder and lingered as he moved around to her side and took a seat.

“Hate is such a strong word,” she said coolly. “But if you wanted to say loathe, I wouldn’t stop you.”

George Ellison didn’t laugh. His eyebrows furrowed, which made him look a little like a sulky puppy, if they came in six-and-a-half foot sizes. “My assistant informed me, on my way out the door to meet you, that the building permits for South Acacia had been sent over by courier an hour before.” He signaled to the bartender to give Susanna another drink. “I’m going to fire that nitwit, if she doesn’t ruin me first.”

“And they had to be dealt with tonight,” Susanna said. She accepted the drink when it arrived and took a sip before saying, in slightly more sincere tones, “Because your work won’t wait.”

“I wish I could disagree with you,” he said and he had that easy grin on his face again. “But you know what I’m talking about. All those clients with hands to hold. Always certain that their problems are the only things that matter.”

“I suppose,” Susanna said and favored him by turning towards him a bit, no longer half ignoring him.

“Unlike that Lee woman,” George said after he ordered a drink for himself.

“How so?”

“All those years, she couldn’t be bothered with the place. Hardly a peep out of her. Now she shows up and takes control of everything, again without a word. Doesn’t it seem a little strange?”

“Hey, it’s less work for me either way. Maybe she just got sentimental.”

“You know better than I do, I’m sure.” Susanna noted the return of his hand to her shoulder. “It would make me wonder though. Personally, I think she wants to sell the place.”

“Oh, not this again. I’ve told you, it’s set up to remain in the trust always, even if there’s no family left, even if they don’t want it personally.”

“Never underestimate the determination of a seller.”

“Or a buyer, in your case.”

“Too true. I would be curious though, to see what she’s buying,” George said lightly.

“You mean if she’s fixing the place up to sell,” she said and tried to sound as bored as possible so he would change the subject.

“Exactly. Do you still get copies of everything?”

“We’re still working with the same accountant, so yes. But I don’t see anything until she sends it to them now.”

He ordered yet another drink. Did that make it her second drink? Or her third? Susanna giggled. She clamped a hand over her mouth to stop herself, which only made her giggle more. “Mr. Ellison, I do believe you are trying to get me drunk.”

“Nonsense,” George said. “A gentleman never lets a lady become intoxicated.” The hand moved around to the small of her back.

“A gentleman should take a lady home once she is,” she cooed.

“Not a bad idea. Only I think I’ll need a few more drinks myself before that.”

“Oh, you beast. What a terrible thing to say.” She tried to slap his hand away, still giggling.

“What can I say? You bring out the animal in me.”

“Unbelievable.”

“Let me know when the next batch comes in. I’ll swing by your office and take a look,” George said.

“Oh, will you now?” Susanna asked as he helped her out of her chair and put the strap of her purse in her hand.

“Come on, you know you’re curious too. We won’t be hurting anything. Just taking a peek.”

“Curiosity killed the cat, remember?”

“Good thing we aren’t cats then, hm?” George said. She let him maneuver her out of the bar. The cool night air did nothing to clear her head. “What do you say we get out of here?”

—

Topaz looked up from the trunk of clothing when he heard someone come into the room. His human body did its best to purr at what he saw. Carlisle as a human was a dish, Topaz knew, but he had nothing but a towel around his waist at the moment and water dripped from his curly hair. It seemed that a spotted coat meant curls as a human.

“You took a shower?” Topaz asked.

Carlisle blushed, yet another human detail that Topaz loved. “It’s impossible to get this body clean otherwise. That’s all.”

“You don’t have to convince me. I like water,” he said and pulled out a pair of jeans, these ones more intact than the cut-offs he favored.

“You’re a cat.”

“Most of the time,” he replied with a wink. “What are you wearing tonight?”

Carlisle snorted. “I’m not going.”

“What? But I was looking forward to getting a little alone time with you.” He held a shirt up in the mirror. Bleh. Ugly.

“With six other cats?”

“No reason why we have to stay with the class for the whole field trip,” he said and nudged Carlisle with his hip when the other cat came over to find clothing of his own.

“Field trip. Unbelievable,” Carlisle said with undisguised scorn.

“Problem?” Topaz watched him in the mirror as he searched.

“It’s a bad idea; that is my problem. Something could go wrong.” He dropped his towel and pulled on a pair of black slacks.

“Heather’s going to bring some of her cat’s bane pills,” Topaz said when his brain got back on track. “So if anyone starts to change back early, we’re covered.”

“Oh, what a comfort. More drug use.” Carlisle flapped a shirt in his direction. “I would think that you of all people would see the danger in this plan.”

“Cat’s bane isn’t nearly as bad as catnip. And Heather has it under control,” Topaz said, surprised as well to be defending her.

“Hah! That’s rich. She disappeared for twenty-five years thanks to the stuff.”

“Okay, I’m sensing outstanding issues here,” Topaz said.

“You’re too young to understand. You weren’t here.” Carlisle buttoned his shirt and refused to look at Topaz.

“Excuse me, what the hell?” Topaz felt his face go red. “Too young? Give me a freaking break!” Nettled, he plunged on, deaf to what he was saying. “I bet I saw more on the trip over to the House than you have in, ooh, twenty-seven years.”

“Don’t imagine you know what my life was like prior to your arrival,” Carlisle said, voice as cool as if they had been discussing what he ate yesterday morning.

“I don’t have to imagine. I can see for myself right now. Going to get Heather was probably the first time you had been away from the House for as long as you’ve been here.”

“What business is it of yours, regardless?”

“Oh, hey, just gut me for wanting you to loosen up a little. I thought it would be fun to go out. You know, fun? Sounds like fun?” He waved his arms wildly as he spoke.

“Yes, how droll. I should have known you would side with her.” Carlisle turned to leave.

“I’m not siding with anybody. I just want to go on a damn date with you, you jerk,” he shouted.

“Compelling though that invitation might be,” Carlisle said from the doorway, “I believe I shall remain a recluse for one more night. If it’s all the same to you.” He shut the door — shut, not slammed — and left Topaz red-faced and miserable.

—

“So, what is anyone getting?” Heather asked as she looked over the menu. She and six other cats were seated at a long table at the back of the restaurant. She made a note to plan ahead next time, so they could get a better view. But so far, nothing horrifying had happened.

“Do they have fish here?” asked one of the others. Her name was Annabelle, a small and bright-eyed white short-hair normally.

“Yes, but don’t forget that everything will be cooked,” Heather said. She kept her voice low. “Well, they have a sushi appetizer, but this really isn’t a good place for sushi. There’s salmon under the chef’s specials.”

“I want another drink,” Topaz said. He rattled the ice in his cup for emphasis.

“You finished it already?” Heather asked. “Slow down, will you?” Topaz had been out of sorts all evening but he would not tell her why.

“Do I really have to wear this?” Evergreen, an unfortunately named cinnamon tabby, tugged at the long sleeves of his shirt. Heather had helped them all dress and had done her best to cover up their more unusual markings. In his case, it was the swirl of light and dark tan patterns on his skin, which looked like a bad tanning lotion accident. He undid the buttons and started to roll the sleeves up.

“Hey, remember what I said? We’re incognito,” she said and he reluctantly rolled the sleeves down again. “Come on, what sounds good? I’m thinking about the pot roast.”

“The chicken will be dead, won’t it?” Dorian, a truly huge, wire-haired cat, asked. He looked like a Viking with his tangle of red and brown hair and his chunky forearms. “What’s the point of any bird if it’s already dead?”

“Okay! Let’s not discuss dead things at the table,” Heather said with strained cheer. “Just try to pick something that you think you’ll enjoy. It’s one meal; if you don’t like it, no one will make you eat it again.”

“What’s a salad?” Annabelle asked. She pronounced it sa-LAHD. Cats at the House were taught to read, but some took to it better than others.

“It’s lettuce and other vegetables. I’m not sure you’ll like it much.”

“Is it like grass?” Rafflesia asked. Heather had marveled, upon meeting her for the first time, at her mother’s taste in baby names. She looked about twelve as a human. Her mother, Valoria, sat next to her and fussed over her kitten whenever a human walked by their table. They were both long-haired calicoes with green eyes that looked utterly wrong in a human face. “I like grass, but sometimes it makes me throw–”

“And again, let’s not talk about that right now. It is a little like grass, I suppose. In a manner of speaking,” Heather said, now reluctant to say more for fear the kitten would decide that salad was a good idea.

“These drinks are fantastic,” Topaz said to no one in particular. He must have asked a waiter for another while Heather was distracted by the others. “They taste like pineapple. And possibly lighter fluid.”

“Oh, that does sound great. I think I’m going to impose a two-drink limit.”

“Spoilsport,” Topaz said. “I thought we were going to have fun!”

It became increasingly apparent to Heather that Topaz’s idea of fun that night would consist of getting rip-roaringly drunk. She tried to prevent him from getting a third drink, but there was only so much time she could spend watching him. The other cats all needed her attention more than he did. She had to teach them to use silverware and straws and napkins, all of which were mostly foreign to them. She could not believe she had thought it a good idea to choose cats who were less experienced with human life. “To give them a good introduction,” she had said to Carlisle. Good god, what an idea.

Once the food was there, everyone settled down a bit. Their manners were not attractive, but they did not growl or fight over anything either, for which Heather was grateful. Topaz had gone silent some time before that. Heather wondered, watching him pick at a salmon steak, if he had ever had alcohol before. He was by far the most experienced one there, second to Heather herself. Yet Rafflesia was the only one younger than he. She wondered who he had been before he came to the House.

“I think we should go dancing,” he said suddenly after his plate had been cleared away by the server.

Heather recognized that inebriated gleam in his eyes from her own time working in restaurants. “I don’t think there are any clubs around here. This is a small town,” she said.

“Who needs a club?” Topaz asked. He pushed his chair back and Heather had visions, horrible visions, of him jumping up on the table and stripping.

Dorian clamped a huge hand on his arm and pinned him to the chair. “Behave yourself, kitten,” he rumbled.

“Check, please,” she said to the server. “Quickly,” she added with a nervous glance at Topaz.

—

“I don’t feel so good,” Topaz said. He had an arm draped over Heather’s shoulders and leaned on her heavily.

“Big surprise there,” Heather said. “Point yourself in some other direction if you decide to throw up.”

“Don’t talk about it,” he whined.

“I can take him for a while,” Dorian said.

“Thanks.” She rearranged Topaz against Dorian.

“Hey, big fella,” Topaz said. He patted a hand against Dorian’s stomach. “Nice six-pack you have there. You want to have some fun with me later?”

“Oh, this gets better and better,” Heather muttered. “Topaz, don’t hit on him. Please. I’m sorry about this,” she said to Dorian. “This isn’t quite the evening I had in mind.”

Dorian grinned. “I’m not complaining.”

Rafflesia piped up. “Yeah, this is fun!” Her mother chuckled and shook her head.

“I appreciate your saying that, but it isn’t necessary.” Heather jammed her hands in her pockets and slouched like she could shrink and disappear. “Carlisle was right. This was a mistake.”

“Are you kidding? Nothing this exciting ever happens at the House,” Dorian said. “Best we can hope for there are fights over field mice. This was cool.”

“You really didn’t hate it?”

“Naw. What’s to hate?” Dorian said. “At least he isn’t–”

And of course, that was the moment when something happened, something unexpectedly worse. Topaz started twitching. He shivered. His skin seemed to ripple.

“Shit! He’s changing,” Heather said. They were still making their way out of the shopping center where the restaurant was located. She pulled Dorian towards a narrow passageway between two storefronts. It opened on one end to the stores and the front parking lot and on the other end on the back lot.

“In here. Yeah, set him down there. Valoria, you two stand out front and look like you’re waiting for someone or shopping or something. Just keep anyone from seeing us. Annabelle, you go with them.” She dug out her bottle of cat’s bane. “Take these first. It must be the alcohol. He had more to drink than the rest of you.”

“I didn’t have any,” Rafflesia said. “Do I have to take it?”

“No, sweetheart, you’re fine.”

“What about Topaz?” Evergreen asked as he gulped a pill down.

“Too risky. It’s started. It’s really rough to force the change to stop in the middle,” Heather said and thought of her own unpleasant experiences with the same problem.

“Why didn’t you warn us about this before you let us drink?” Annabelle asked quietly, trying to make it look like she was talking with Valoria.

“I don’t drink,” Heather snapped. “I didn’t know this would happen.”

“Can we do anything for him?” Evergreen asked.

“We just have to wait for it to pass. Then we can carry him home. I’m more concerned about avoiding any unwanted attention in the meantime.”

Topaz moaned quietly and the three out front raised their voices a bit to cover it. His shaggy hair shed away and melted into the air. Fur sprang free of his skin, changing from a five o’clock shadow to a full coat in a few minutes. Bones creaked as they changed shape and size. His abdomen roiled as his organs shuffled into position. When his body finally settled, he gave one great sigh and fell asleep.

Heather lifted him and pulled off the clothing he had been wearing. Dorian cradled him in his big arms while Heather folded the clothes. “We’ll go this way,” she said and pointed to the back lot. “There’s less light. We’ll pick the road up once we’re out of sight.” So six humans and one cat slipped into the shadows between streetlights and made their silent way into the open night on the streets.

“What were you saying about excitement?” Heather asked when they were alone on the road that would take them home.

“Nothing bad happened,” Evergreen reminded her. “No one saw us.”

“That we know of,” Heather said. “I’m really sorry I put you all in danger like this.”

“Psh. Danger,” Valoria said. “Rubbish. We’re in more danger just going into our own backyard. Life is danger, dear.”

They walked in silence a while longer. Then, in the dark, Evergreen’s soft voice spoke. “We should do this every month,” he said.

“Next time, let’s go shopping for toys,” Rafflesia said. “Auntie Heather, do you know where there’s a toy store?”

Heather could not help but laugh. “I’ll make sure to find one before next Leo moon.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“And we can bring all our friends along,” Rafflesia said.

Drunken escapades and high society ladies aside, Heather found she was happy to think of these people as her friends. A little company, she decided, after all those years living alone, might not be so bad.

—

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