The Second Cat Megapack. George Zebrowski

you take care of it. That thought alone was enough to banish any temptation to pamper herself. She had lived over sixty good years, years of plenty. And I still have plenty, she stubbornly told herself many a morning. Only difference is, I don’t have to pay for all of it. That some of her finds—the four-legged ones—ended up costing her money she really couldn’t afford to spend so freely never fazed Arlene, living alone as she did, with no children or grandchildren—or even many friends, for that matter—Arlene considered the love of her “babies” payment in full, thank you. While she knew that she’d have to make the little she had last until her own SS kicked in, Arlene had long ago decided that a life lived without giv­ing, to someone, wasn’t a life.

      Her years with Don had proved that to be a fact.

      So there she was, an old woman with ri­diculously thin ankles which vanished in a pair of velcro-strapped running shoes, walking briskly down the street, her good ear cocked and waiting for the next Meaow. She walked faster, both out of need and urgency. With the gradual lightening of the sky, it was urgent that she get home before the delivery trucks began to arrive at the stores, and the graveyard shifts at the sash and door and paper mill were let out. And she knew that that cat (kitten?) needed her.

      Six years of combing the pre-dawn streets had taught Arlene that for a little animal, alone and scared, dawn is too late. With the coming of light come cars with drivers who speed up when they see something small and frantic trying to cross the street. Arlene had toed many a pulp-headed animal to the curb during her “normal” shopping hours.

      But if she could find this cat before the coming of the light—­

      Meeeaow!

      That was why it was hard to get a fix on its cries—they came from above Arlene. Look­ing up, she saw the kitten sitting on the high window ledge of the dentist’s office close to the intersection of Wisconsin Street and Fourth Avenue East. That window set in the gray stone facade was a good five feet off the ground, a small window with a deep ledge, recessed enough for a tiny kitten to hunker down close to the glass.

      “Aw, c’mon, kitty, you can come closer, I won’t hurt you,” Arlene coaxed, as she stood on tiptoes and reached for the kitten. At five foot four, she was just tall enough to brush the animal’s silky coat with the tips of her blunt fingers. The kitten was warm, exceptionally so for an animal which had most likely been sitting on that ledge all night. Its fur was as fine-textured as washed silk; as the kitten breathed its fur undulated like wind-whipped draperies, a most peculiar sensation.

      The kitten stopped crying, and edged closer to Arlene; two huge black ears sur­mounted a mottled white and black wedge of a face. It looked to be about three months old. In the spill of the street-lamp, Arlene noticed that the kitten’s eyes were tiny, baby-like. They glittered against the surrounding white fur like pebbles in the bottom of a fish tank, all watery and rounded.

      Then, as if it had sized Arlene up and found her satisfactory, the kitten jumped off the ledge into her waiting arms. Upon impact, it began to purr, a loud rumble that radiated from its chest outward, making the ribs and skin vibrate. Arlene undid the top snap on her slicker and tucked the kitten inside; as she did so, her fingers brushed against the base of the kitten’s tail. Gonads the size of large peas filled the scrotum.

      As she positioned her left arm under the kitten, Arlene thought, Awfully big down there for such a tiny baby boy…must be older than I thought. Arlene’s bag of cans clunked against her leg as she walked, but soon the kitten’s purr drowned out even that noise.

      By the time she was halfway to her home on Polk Avenue, the kitten was kneading her stomach.

      * * * *

      Not only was the kitten older than Arlene had first guessed, he was…uglier than she’d realized. When she first brought him home, she hurried past the cats and dogs winding around her legs and shoved the wiggling kit­ten into the bathroom; she dreaded having to give all ten of her animals flea baths just in case the new arrival was crawling with the little brown varmints. After dumping some food into a saucer (also scavenged, a little white bowl with a childish picture of a space­man on the moon in the bottom), she opened the bathroom door long enough to shove the food inside and slammed it before the kitten ran out. (There were litter pans positioned all over the house, including the bathroom, so she wasn’t worried about any accidents after the kitten ate.) But she didn’t get a good look at her newest find until after she’d fed her other friends, then brewed a cup of Earl Gray for herself.

      While the other animals whined, scratched, hissed, and panted outside, Arlene quickly opened the door and slipped into the bath­room. The kitten was sitting on the toilet tank, in a Sphinx pose. Sitting sideways on the toilet seat, her back to the bathtub, Arlene said as she stroked the kitten’s seal-sleek fur, “Gra­cious, you are the most awful looking kitty I’ve seen yet.” The kitten blinked a kitty-kiss at her and began purring, as if she’d just said he was the most beautiful animal in the uni­verse.

      The kitten’s capacity for affection wasn’t in keeping with his appearance; not only were his ears way too big, so huge they almost met in the center of his upper head, but his face was all…wrong.

      The too-small green eyes were only the beginning. The kitten’s forehead and nose were all of one line, unbroken by dips, bumps, or anything. Just a straight slope from the too-­close ears down to the nose leather. Arlene’s cats, while not purebreds, were similar to each other in that their noses all dipped down par­allel to their eyes in a pleasing sloping “S” curve. Years ago, Arlene had a cat named Louie who closely resembled an Oriental Shorthair, and even his nose had had a slight dip to it.

      But the kitten’s nose resembled something drawn with a straight-edge. Head-on he looked even worse, for his white face was marred in the middle by an irregular blotch which completely obscured his nose, leather and all. When Arlene glanced at him fast, it, almost seemed that he had no nose at all. And his tiny, slightly bulging eyes didn’t add to his beauty, either.

      Gently pulling back the kitten’s gums, she said, “Just want to check your teeth…good boy.” Wiping off cat spittle onto her smock top, Arlene frowned to herself. This kitten had his canines. Top and bottom, almost fully grown in. Which made him.… “Hum, lemme see—I found Guy-Pie when he was about five months old, and he had his canines” (not to mention over a hundred fleas which Arlene had drowned in a jelly-jar glass) “so you’re pretty close to that age, aren’t you?”

      The kitten purred in agreement. Arlene patted his sides; the ribs stood out like the tines of a serving fork held an inch above a table. Pitiful. The skin was sucked in close to his rump and guts, and his stifle bones felt like marbles under Arlene’s hard fingertips. And his all-black tail resembled a licorice whip.

      Outside, from where they waited in the hallway, the other cats rattled the door by sticking their paws under the jamb, while the dog nails made staccato scrabblings on the linoleum floor. The kitten ignored them, in­tent only on Arlene, who had owned, loved, and buried enough cats to know what that look meant.

      Like it or not, Arlene had a baby on her hands, a baby who had found himself a new Momma.

      Suddenly, the kitten sighed, reached for her hand with one huge-toed white paw, and rested his head against the worn blue toilet tank cover. A smile worked its way onto Arlene’s wrinkled face, and stayed there. Patting the kitten’s flanks, she whispered, “Why do I get the feeling that there’s going to be a lot of jealous animals around the house, hm?”

      The kitten blinked his minuscule eyes in reply, and purred louder than ever.

      * * * *

      Arlene knew from experience never to take an animal in to the vet’s office on a Monday; not that she had much else to fill her days, but she still hated to waste her time sitting in a noisy office full of yippy-yappy hunting dogs and poodles whose nails needed clipping.

      She did call the veterinarian office (“Not another one,” the receptionist had half-joked) to make an appointment for the next day; stool test, full shots, the works. And in be­tween making sure that her other pets were given extra hugs and soft chewy treats, she spent time in the bathroom