American Curls by Nancy Springer Read Free Book Online

American Curls
By Nancy Springer
    The minute Cindy pulled into Samantha’s driveway, she knew something was badly wrong. Both house and cattery doors stood wide open to six inches of February snow, and Samantha would never let that happen. Good grief, the kitties might catch pneumonia and die. Something must have happened to Sam, and there were no neighbors around to help, because an animal shelter always had to be way out in the country. But what could be the matter? Had Samantha fallen and hit her head, maybe?
    Heaving herself out of her ancient Pinto, Cindy tightened her scarf around her thinning mousy hair, hustling toward Samantha’s rancher at the fastest gait her plus-sized body would allow. Footprints riddled the snow, from volunteers and adoption seekers coming and going all day. But among them Cindy saw myriad little paw prints. Dear lord, every kitty in the place must have gotten out. They would freeze and starve and die. Even before she reached the house door and lunged inside, Cindy felt herself starting to cry.
    But she stopped crying the instant she saw Samantha lying face down on the carpet, her caramel-colored spiral curls soaked red with blood. This was a matter too serious for crying. She knelt by Samantha’s side, calling “Sam! Sam? Are you all right?”
    Silence, except for pathetic meows from several directions. Some of the cats had stayed inside, evidently.
    Cindy knew herself to be an idiot. Any fool could see Sam was not all right. With one chubby hand Cindy fumbled at the side of Sam’s neck.
    Yes, there was a pulse, but barely. Yes, Sam was taking a shallow breath now and then.
    Cindy staggered up, yanked an afghan laden with much cat hair off the sofa and blanketed Sam. She called 9-1-1. Then she called Devon, who was the volunteer at the head of the emergency phone chain. Not that Devon was good for much except wielding her cell phone. Devon liked to brush the kitties, not clean up after them, and she never set foot in the shelter without wearing rubber gloves to protect her French-tip manicure. But she was efficient in her country-club way, didn’t waste time being shocked, just said she’d call out the troops. After Cindy hung up, she checked Sam again—still unconscious, but breathing—then headed through the connecting door from the house into the cattery.
    Six or seven cats flowed out of boxes and rubbed her ankles, a swirl of black, white, orange. Cindy felt her eyes fill with tears at the sight of them. Standing at the wide-open door, she called into the wind, “Here, kitty kitty kitty!”
    But no kitties appeared. And oh, lord, the box in the corner was empty. Where were the mamma cat and her litter? Following the feline mother’s instinct to hide her young, Queenie had taken her weanling kittens out in the freezing cold. And already the day was darkening toward nightfall.
    Cindy began to weep in earnest. Okay, Sam had fallen and hit her head on something. But who had let all the cats out? And why?
    * * *
    “She keeps most of them in the house,” Cindy explained to the detectives. Other volunteers wandered the night with flashlights, calling, peering into shrubbery, while Cindy cleaned up the mess in the cattery. “This room is just for the ones that don’t use a litter box.” Ferals, mostly, and the poor declaws. Didn’t want to dig with their mutilated front paws. Several of them crowded Cindy’s ankles, wailing like banshees. Cats were cats, even when they were designer kitties, purebred Himalayans and Cymrics and Russian Blues and Burmillas.
    The cats lamented, and the detectives stood watching, but Cindy worked feverishly, gathering the dirty bedding, filling food and water bowls, then down on her knees scraping poop from the linoleum,. Shock wouldn’t let her sit still. The cops said Samantha hadn’t hit her head. They said somebody had hit it for her. With Sam’s favorite cat figurine, the stylized teakwood Siamese, which might have doubled as a bowling pin. The