Cat Raise the Dead by Shirley Rousseau Murphy Read Free Book Online Page A

had disappeared; she’d laugh just like everyone else did.
    Well at least when Pet-a-Pet started, she had the little cat to talk to. Holding Dulcie and stroking her, looking into her intelligent green eyes, she could tell Dulcie all the things that hurt, that no one else wanted to hear. Cats understood how you felt. Even if they couldn’t comprehend the words, they understood from your voice what you were feeling.
    Maybe the little cat liked her voice, too, because she really seemed to listen, would lie looking up right into her face, and with her soft paw she would pat her hand as if to say, “It’s all right. I’m here, I understand how you are grieving. I’m here now, and I love you.”

6
    This was not a happy morning. Joe’s stomach twitched, his whole body ached with sorrow. As he watched through the front window, Clyde backed the Packard out of the drive and headed away toward the vet’s. Poor old Barney lay on the front seat wrapped in a blanket, too sick even to sit up and look out the window, though the old golden retriever loved the wind in his face, loved to see the village sweeping by. When Clyde had carried him out to the car he’d looked as limp as a half-full bag of sawdust.
    Early last night Barney had seemed fine, frolicking around the backyard in spite of his arthritis. But this morning when Joe slipped into the kitchen just at daylight, Barney lay on the linoleum panting, his eyes dull with a deep hurt somewhere inside, and his muzzle against Joe’s nose hot and dry. Joe hadn’t realized how deeply he loved Barney until he’d found the old golden retriever stretched out groaning with the pain in his middle.
    He had bolted back into the bedroom and waked Clyde, and Joe himself had called Dr. Firreti—said he was a houseguest—while Clyde pulled on a crumpled sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. Dr. Firreti said to meet him at the clinic in ten minutes.
    Last night Joe’d gotten home about 3:00 A.M ., parting from Dulcie on Ocean Avenue so full of rabbit, and so tired from a hard battle with a wicked-tempered raccoon,that he hadn’t even checked out the kitchen for a late-night snack. He’d gone directly to the bedroom and collapsed on the pillow next to Clyde, hadn’t even bothered to wash the coon blood from his whiskers, had hardly hit the pillow, and he was asleep.
    He woke two hours later, puzzled by the faint sound of groaning. The bedroom clock said barely 5:00 A.M ., and, trotting out to the kitchen, he’d found Barney hugging the linoleum with pain. Now at five-fifteen Barney was on his way to the vet, to a cold metal table, anesthetics, a cage, and Joe didn’t like to imagine what else.
    He lay down on the back of his private easy chair and looked out at the empty street. The smell of exhaust fumes still clung, seeping in through the glass. From the kitchen, he could hear Rube pacing and whining, already missing Barney. The black Lab hadn’t been parted from the golden since they were pups. Joe listened to him moaning and fussing, then, unable to stand the old Lab’s distress, he leaped down.
    Pushing open the kitchen door, he invited the big Lab through the living room and up onto his private chair, onto his beautifully frayed, cat hair-covered personal domain. He never shared this chair, not with any cat or dog, never with a human—no one was allowed near it—but now he encouraged old Rube to climb rheumatically up.
    The old dog stretched out across the soft, frayed seat, laid his head on the arm of the chair, and sighed deeply. Joe settled down beside him.
    This chair had been his own since Clyde first found him, wounded and sick, in that San Francisco gutter. Taking him home to his apartment after a difficult few days at the vet’s, Clyde had made a nice bed in a box for him, but he had preferred the blue easy chair, Clyde’s only comfortable chair. Clyde hadn’t argued. Joe was still a