The Second Cat Megapack. George Zebrowski

seasonings together, then placing the bowl of unshaped hamburger in the oven—she knew better than to leave anything edible on the counters—Arlene ran her hands under the tap, and flicked off the water from her fingers as she stomped into the living room: She was about to say something, yell something, when she noticed the odd way the cats were sitting around the front door in a wide semi-circle; all facing the two book­cases flanking the door. All the cats…except Silky. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a blur of white and black; Silky bounding from the floor to the chair by the window to the top of the bookcase between window and door.

      The other cats (as well as a couple of the smaller dogs) were watching Silky intently, as if they knew what was to come next. Arlene watched too, as Silky positioned himself on the bookcase, back legs tensed as if he in­tended to jump onto something higher than the bookcase then wiggled his whipcord body, tensed all over, and leaped into the air—­

      —and didn’t come down on the other bookcase, but kept going up in a graceful-­beyond-imagining arc, his funny clawless feet spread until the skin was stretched taut be­tween his metacarpals, and his huge, delicate, wind-cupping ears grew large, swelling out like a windbreaker sometimes does in a strong wind, billowing out above his tiny wedge of a head like miniature sails—and he was suspended there, in the air, for what had to have been seconds, until he turned his head and changed course to a point between the two bookcases, and still he didn’t come rushing down, but floated, as easy and gentle and beautiful, oh God so beautiful, as a dandelion seed freed by the wind to drift on the invisible currents of the air.

      Arlene stood numb, watching as Silky settled gently to the ground on all four feet, making only the slightest amount of noise. Just enough to have been puzzling when heard from afar. Afterward, he and the other cats ran around the room, in sheer excitement over Silky’s incredible feat. And Arlene wished that her knees weren’t knobby with arthritis; she wished she was small enough to run around in circles with her furry children, and had the right voice to bay out loud and purr and—and—she didn’t know what.

      It was a sight to howl over, to screech and meaow and cluck over. No human sound, no human word, could express what she was feeling now. It was joy. It was awe. It was more than her heart could keep inside without exploding like a firecracker suspended in a hot July sky.

      She bent down and grabbed Silky; painful knees or not, she and the cat danced around the living room, bouncing with giggles and purrs off the walls, the furniture. It was a mir­acle, as only new, as in brand-new life can be a miracle.

      Silky wasn’t a mutant, something to be ridiculed, even if he was a mutation. He was what the Cat had been striving for through the centuries; a creature of the air, a creature dappled by the sun sliding over its warm fur as it glided with the wind. One with the land, one with the air. Matching the startled birds in their flight. Escaping the ground-bound dog effortlessly. In the back of her mind, Arlene had always wondered who could’ve been so cruel as to put Silky in that high window…but he was lighter then, with the same huge ears. Suppose he jumped up, hit an air current, and floated there?

      Holding him away from her body, Arlene now understood Silky’s form, its purpose. Webbed feet, to buffer the wind. Sail ears, for the obvious reason. Strong legs, for take-off. Super-flat, super-silky fur, for low wind resis­tance. Few whiskers, so as not to interfere with the airflow. Small eyes, to keep flying dust out.

      Just like the birds, she thought, or the flying squirrels. Her sudden comparison between cats and squirrels reminded her of another species-to-species comparison someone else had already made.

      The Cornish Rex cat, named after the Rex rabbit. She’d seen the picture in her CAT BREEDS book.…

      * * * *

      When Arlene pulled out the worn book and sat down to read it, the animals and Silky quieted down too. Silky was in her lap as she paged through the book, until she came to the picture of the thin curly-haired brown cat. She scanned the next page, picking out the impor­tant facts: “discovered in 1950 by a Cornish rabbit breeder,” “Kallibunker was ‘backbred’ with his own mother, which means that in­stead of trying to mate him with another bloodline they—” “ten years later another curly-haired cat was found near an abandoned tin mine in Devon, England.”

      Arlene frowned and backtracked to the part about the “back bred” situation. She didn’t like that, not at all. When Arlene was a girl, her old cat Mammajamma mated with one of her sons. Papa had had to kill the kittens, during school so little Arlene wouldn’t see it. I wonder how many times they tried this “backbreeding” business? she asked herself, as Silky gently kneaded her thigh. Arlene paged to the back of the book, to the index, where she found the heading “Spontaneous Genetic Mutations.” One of the breeds listed there was the Scottish Fold. According to the text, a kitten named Susie was born in 1961 in Perth­shire, central Scotland, at the William and Mary Ross farm. Twenty-one days after Susie and the rest of her litter were born, little Susie’s soft ears did a 180-degree flop forward and stayed that way. And a new breed was born.

      The Rosses realized what they had in Susie (did you dance around the barn, making swirls in the straw?), and began to breed her, even though the British Governing Council of the Cat Fancy refused to acknowledge or li­cense the cat on the grounds that the cat couldn’t possibly hear, let alone have its ears cleaned properly. The new breed was banned in Britain as a show breed. Nine years later, the United States recognized the Scottish Fold. By that time, standards of perfection (“‘Objectionable?’ As in—?”) had been established: small, tightly formed ears. Round head with firm chin and jaw. Short nose and neck. Broad nose, large eyes. Short rounded body. Medium legs and tail. Short coat. Coats of all colors, eyes of blue, gold, or green.

      Then came a passage which made Arlene hug Silky closer to her pap-like breasts, and bite her lower lip:

      …breeding the Scottish Fold is very hard to do. Two fold-eared cats should not be bred together. When they are, the kittens can have tails that are too short, or stiff legs.

      Another part of Scottish Fold breeding which can be tricky is knowing how long to wait until a true Scottish Fold’s ears develop the characteristic 180 degree fold. The breeder has to wait a full three weeks before the.…­

      Closing the heavy book with a muted chuff, Arlene asked aloud, “And after the three weeks are up? What then…the bucket of water in the back yard, or a shoebox full of babies left for the vet to kill?” A part of her mind told her that she was being melo­dramatic; Silly, where do you think they get the straight-ear cats for them to breed with? But still, what of the kittens who weren’t right? The ones with the less than round heads, or the long tails and hind legs? What of those objectionable kittens? Surely, the breeders simply couldn’t afford to keep the mistakes around, no matter how adorable they might be.

      A crinkly ripping sound made Arlene pause in her thoughts, and look down at her feet. Fluff was undoing her running shoe straps, pulling on the long strip of Velcro with his teeth. Fluff was the kitten with the longer tail, the sassy, aggressive one. Arlene wiggled her toes, and both Persians jumped on her feet, hanging on with their short legs. Cute as the Dickens…but objectionable. It’s a rotten, rotten world, isn’t it, fellows?

      As if intuiting her thoughts, Silky reached with his left paw to gently caress her chin. The pad was softer than apple blossom petals, and surrounded with a tickly fringe of short fur. Arlene enclosed his paw with her larger hand, giving the paw a light squeeze. Silky blinked his ludicrously, sensibly tiny eyes and rested his wedge head on her chest.

      Stroking his velvety ears with her free hand, Arlene said softly, “What’s it to be, Silky-­love? I can take you to people who know cats, who really breed them. They’d know, they’d understand. Study you, breed you. Give you a fancy name. ‘Wisconsin Squirrel Cat’ or ‘Ewerton Flyer.’ You’d be in all the cat books, next to a picture of one of your great­-great grandkittens.” Silky reached with his other paw to touch her face; Arlene pressed it against her cheek, bending her head low to his. Clear drops of moisture fell on his fur, to roll down slowly.

      “But it isn’t fair to all the objectionable kittens, is it? And there would be objectionables, Silky, even from a kitty as perfect as you.