Cat Telling Tales by Shirley Rousseau Murphy Read Free Book Online Page A

home,” Joe said, not wanting to explain his nosiness. Just curious, he thought. Just . . . something about Emmylou Warren, he thought, puzzled. He watched them pull away down the street, the pale van melting into the darkening evening, its red taillights growing smaller as they ferried their two little captives home to a good meal, a flea bath, a session with the hair dryer, and a nice warm bed.
    Then, scrambling up a pine and up the shingles of a steep roof, Joe galloped away across the rise and fall of the crowded peaks, across heavy old oak branches that embraced the village houses, racing for home himself, wondering if the soft staccato of his thudding paws startled the occupants below, made them think they had rats in the attic.

5
    I t was two days later, just at dawn, that Joe woke in his rooftop tower to a bright red sunrise flickering up against the clouds above. Flickering? He leaped up from his cushions, saw flames licking and dancing among the eastern hills. Fire, running wild just where the Harper land lay along the crest. He reared up, staring, praying it was down the hill below their pastures, not their barn or house afire. He bolted in through his cat door onto the rafter, dropped to the desk below shouting, “Fire! Fire!” then realized no one was there. Remembered hearing both the car and truck drive away before ever it was light. Clyde had headed up the coast to look at a client’s 1920 Rolls-Royce that had inexplicably quit running, and Ryan left even earlier to trap one of the feral cats; the night before he had watched her tuck her cages and cat food into the pickup among her ladders and wheelbarrow.
    Spinning around, he hit the phone’s speaker and pawed in 911, his heart pounding.
    Were the Harpers’ horses trapped in their stalls, helpless? Had Max already left for work? Had Charlie seen the blaze or had she, too, left early, out with Ryan and Hanni, trapping strays? The day before, half a dozen more homeless cats had been called in, and already the three temporary shelters were full. He was still shouting at the night dispatcher when he heard a siren whoop. Quickly he broke the connection, raced into Ryan’s studio, leaped on the daybed where he could see out the east windows, reared up slamming his sweating paws against the glass.
    The sky was barely light, streaks of gray and silver, the hills still dark except for the lick of orange flames rising up mixed with smoke darker than the heavy dawn clouds. If the flames reached the Harper land, reached the Harper barn with the horses still inside . . . Even if they had already been turned out they’d be at danger, terrified by the fire, running blindly into the fences. A panicked horse could injure himself so badly that, sometimes, he had to be destroyed. Leaping for the phone on Ryan’s desk, he punched in the Harpers’ number, shivering with nerves.
    When Charlie didn’t answer he tried her cell phone. “Come on! Come on!” He was trying to calculate just how far the blaze might be from the Harpers’ pasture fence when he heard the shriek of a police car following the fire trucks. He prayed it was the siren on the police chief’s pickup, prayed Max was on the way.
    C harlie had left the ranch long before daylight, she was up above the village, kneeling in the side yard of a small clapboard cottage among a mass of scratchy holly bushes, setting a trap for an old black cat who had been hanging around the vacant house. She was about to put the bait in when a work crew pulled up in front, a truck laden with ladders, lawn mower, gardening equipment. Pretty early for a gardening crew to be coming to work.
    The driver was a handsome Latino boy she didn’t know, and there was no logo on the truck indicating any of the usual village gardening services. A car full of Mexican workers pulled up behind, parking at the curb. She watched the driver crimp the wheels in the wrong direction,