The Second Cat Megapack. George Zebrowski

looked at him, the less offensive his face became to her; by evening he was almost cute. The black parts of his fur glistened with delicate rainbow colors, like the wings of a cowbird or blackbird, or the surface of certain black-red petaled flowers. And the shape of his face reminded her of some­thing…by that night, when his cries pulled her from her bed, and she had to try to show him—again—how to use a litter pan (her efforts were wasted though, since he let his bladder go on the toilet tank cover, and did the other thing after jumping into the sink), Arlene finally realized what the kitten reminded her of.…a tulip. One of those bicolor ones, with the sharp points on the top of the petals, and a narrow base where the flower joined the stem.

      After he finally did his duty, and Arlene scooped the b.m. into an old yogurt cup for tomorrow’s test, she came back into the bath­room and held the kitten for a few minutes before going back to bed herself.

      “Thass all right,” she crooned, hugging the scrawny kitten, “Thass all right, you’re a good boy.” The kitten kneaded her shoulder; there was something odd about the way he did that, but Arlene was too tired to figure it out. She’d have to ask the vet about it tomorrow.

      Morning was only a few hours away, and there was scavenging to do.

      * * * *

      “You know, you ought to set yourself up as an official shelter,” the veterinarian joked as she looked in the kitten’s huge ears, checking for ear mites. “That one passes inspection, let’s see the other one.” The vet’s dark­-rimmed fingers poked in the cavernous depths of the kitten’s left ear. Arlene shuddered; she knew that both the vets had to tend to area cows, and horses, which meant that no matter how often they washed their hands their nails were still stained, but dark nails always gave her pause.

      “I don’t think I could stand working in a shelter. I’d want to keep all the animals,” she finally replied, as the young vet began to pal­pitate the kitten’s abdomen. As her fingers worked their way over the fine white and black fur, Dr. Hraber said, “I thought you did that already, Mrs. Campbell.”

      “Only the ones I find. I don’t think I could cope with ones brought in from all over.” Talk about abandoned animals made Arlene un­easy, bringing back memories of all the cats and dogs she’d either picked up or had wan­dered on her porch. Like Guy-Pie, with his rough pads and way of grabbing whole chunks out of the food bowl and running halfway across the room with them before he’d eat. Big gentle Rowdy, her leather collar stripped of its tags and attached name-tag, just an old yellow hunting dog no one wanted on the hunt anymore. Bubba, huddled shivering next to the Coke machine at the Red Owl, chunks of cow manure stuck in his white fur, his ear tips chewed by God knew what, too beat and broken to even let out a meaow.

      And those were only the animals she had found. Arlene had never answered one of those “Free Kittens” or “Puppies to Give Away” ads in the Ewerton Herald; for her, looking at them all was wanting to take them all home. True, she worried about people from labs or pit bull breeders coming to take the little animals, but as long as she didn’t see them, she wouldn’t let it pain her overmuch. She had her “children” to look after; if God saw fit to put one within her hearing or seeing, that was the animal she would take in. Just as she picked up cans or went rooting for week-­old bread in back of the IGA. There was only so much she could do. Some things, unfortu­nately, were simply out of her hands.

      “—think of a name for him yet?” The vet’s question startled her. Arlene pressed her hands against the kitten’s pathetic hips, and said, “Haven’t given it much thought…nothing much suggests itself, does it?”

      Across the white examining table, Dr. Hraber suggested, “Duke? He looks like a Duke’s mixture—”

      “No, my Don liked John Wayne. The name would make me think of him too much.” (Arlene let the doctor assume that she didn’t want to think of Don because the memory was painful—as it was, she missed the Duke more than she ever missed Don.)

      “Hummm…well, we have to put a name on the vaccination certificate—”

      “Silky? His fur is so soft—”

      “Sounds good to me. That good with you, huh, Mister?” The vet opened Silky’s mouth, and ran a dark-rimmed finger along his gum line. Silky endured the intruding digit pa­tiently. As Arlene watched, she remembered that she had meant to ask the doctor some­thing else about the kitten, but couldn’t re­member it now. Instead, she asked, “What kind of cat do you suppose he is? He’s different-looking—”

      “What kind?” The doctor waited a beat, then, as she cupped her fingers under Silky’s chin, said, “Ugly. No, seriously, it looks like there’s either Siamese or Oriental Shorthair in there, but I’ve never seen a cat like him before. I guess something bred with something differ­ent and it looked like this. I wish I could’ve seen his parents. Sometimes different breeds don’t cross very well, do they, Silky?”

      Silky looked gravely at Dr. Hraber, as if to say, Please don’t make fun of me. Arlene wasn’t the only one to notice that expression, for Dr. Hraber dropped her bantering manner and said, “The stool test should be done in an hour or so. Do you care to wait around or call later?”

      Tucking Silky’s wedge of a head under her chin, Arlene walked out of the examining room and into the waiting room, saying over her shoulder, “I’d rather call later, if you don’t mind.”

      Outside, after she had paid for the shots, Arlene nuzzled Silky’s head and murmured into the cat’s sweet-smelling short fur, “Nasty lady said my little boy’s ugly…we just won’t listen to her, will we? We won’t pay the least bit of attention, none at all.”

      But all the way home, Dr. Hraber’s remark niggled at Arlene.

      * * * *

      The CAT BREEDS OF THE WORLD book was written on a junior high level (which is where the book had come from, a discard from the middle school library), but the pictures in it were excellent, so Arlene suffered through the namby-pamby text:

      …the Oriental Shorthair is a very long, lean cat, with strong muscles. The body is shaped a little like a tube, with extra long hind legs. Some people think its legs look a little bit like a race horse’s legs.

      The Oriental Shorthair’s fur can be many different colors, as well as colored in points like its relative the Siamese (see page 59). The fur of this Oriental breed is very short, and fine-textured, like silk.

      (Arlene looked down at the cat curled in her lap and said, “At least your name fits, baby.”)

      Oriental Shorthairs have big green eyes, and even bigger ears. Their faces are trian­gular and.…­

      Arlene looked at the picture on the facing page, but there was only a slight similarity between the dark gray cat pictured and the purring kitten on her lap. The Shorthair’s whiskers were too long (Silky’s were an inch and a half and less), and there was at least an inch or more of space between the ears them­selves. Silky’s ears all but met in the middle of his head; there wasn’t room enough on top for Arlene’s little finger to rest. A little over a quarter of an inch at the most. And the Oriental’s eyes were huge, luminous and take-your-breath-away green. Her kitten’s eyes were a little bigger than the fingernails on her forefingers, ovals of less than half an inch at the widest point. Much less.

      The bodies of the two cats were closer, but there were still differences. Silky’s hind legs, while longer than the front ones, weren’t race­horse-high. And now that she looked at his front paws, Arlene realized what was wrong with them, what had hovered at the back of her mind since the night before. Silky had no claws. He had mottled pink and black pads, and the little fleshy dew-pad on the sides, but no claws.

      Sick at heart, thinking that some clod had had Silky declawed then dumped him to fend for himself, Arlene gently flexed one of his paws and turned it around, looking for the tell­tale sunken incision lines of a declawed cat. Her Beanie, many years ago, had been declawed when her neighbors gave the cat to Arlene before they moved to the Cities. That calico’s feet had felt limp around the tips of the toes, where the first joint had