Cat Bearing Gifts by Shirley Rousseau Murphy Read Free Book Online

seat.
    â€œWhat?” Ryan said. “Tell me slowly. What happened? Where are they? Where are you? Slowly, please! ”
    Swallowing, Kit found her sensible voice. She tried to go slowly, to explain carefully about the wreck and to explain where that was. But try as she might, it all came out in a tangle, the kind of rush that made her human friends shout, made Joe and Dulcie lay back their ears and lash their tails until she slowed, but she never could slow down. “. . . boulders coming down the mountain straight at us and I thought we’d be buried but Pedric hit the gas pedal and the Lincoln shot through and the whole mountain came thundering down behind us and when the slide stopped the road was covered with boulders and rocks and there was a pickup on the other side crashed into the mountain and into a big delivery truck lying on its side and the driver was dead and . . .”
    â€œSlow down, ” Clyde and Ryan shouted together. Ryan said, “Tell us exactly where you are. Did you call 911? How badly are they hurt? Did you call the CHP? Where . . . ?”
    â€œI called,” Kit said. “They took Lucinda and Pedric away and Pedric’s head was bleeding and Lucinda was conscious sometimes but then she’d fade and I think her shoulder is broken and the medics took them in the ambulance and I was afraid to hide in there because if they found me they’d take me to the pound and take the phone away and I could never call you to say where I was and if I couldn’t work the lock on the cage . . .”
    â€œStop!” they both yelled. “Where?” Ryan said patiently. “Where are you, Kit?”
    â€œSomewhere north of Santa Cruz but south of Mindy’s Seafood where we had dinner. When the tractor gets here and starts moving the boulders . . .” She wanted to say, I won’t be able to yowl and cry out to you, there are coyotes up here and owls who can hear everything. She wanted to say, When I’m up in the woods I’ll be scared to make a sound. She said, “Can you bring Rock? To track me? Joe can find me, but Rock’s bigger and . . . and there are coyotes and I love you both but humans are no good at scenting . . .” And she prayed that, this one time, no one was listening in on her call.
    â€œWe’ll bring Rock,” Clyde said. “We’re leaving now. Be there in an hour or less, with luck. Please, my dear, keep safe.”
    Kit hit the end button, feeling small and helpless. She wasn’t a skittish cat, she’d spent plenty of black nights prowling the dark hills above Molena Point and farther away than that, hunting and slaughtering her own hapless prey, but tonight the wreck and her fear for her injured housemates, and then the hungry cry of the coyotes, had taken the starch right out of her. She thought about her big red tomcat traveling all alone down this very coast, making his way from Oregon down into central California, Pan traveled all that way and he wasn’t scared, so why should I be? But she was. Tonight she was afraid.
    Pan had come to Molena Point following little Tessa Kraft, nearly a year after Tessa’s father threw the red tomcat out of the house. Tessa’s mother didn’t want him, either, she didn’t like cats. Pan hadn’t returned, but he had watched the household. He knew when Debbie Kraft moved to Molena Point, and he followed the family, tracking his little girl and, as well, looking for his own father.
    He could only guess that Misto, when he vanished from Eugene in his old age, might have returned to the shore of his kittenhood where he’d grown up among a feral band of ordinary cats; no other speaking cat among them, that Pan knew of, but the place was Misto’s kittenhood home. And Pan had been right, he had found the old yellow tomcat there, and he had found Tessa. And he found me , Kit thought. That’s where we found