"Please. Spare me your feline sadism."
"What we do is certainly not sadism. We are part of a complicated and essential balance of nature-a part, if you will, of the God-given food chain. An essential link in the necessary…"
Clyde snatched up his pillow and whacked Joe. "Stop talking. Stop washing. Stop shaking the bed. Shut up and lie still and get the hell to sleep."
Joe crawled out from under the pillow, his ears back, his head ducked low, and his bared teeth gleaming sharp as knives.
Clyde drew back, staring at him. "What? What's the matter? I hardly tapped you."
"You didn't tap me. You whacked me. In all our years together, you've never hit me. What's with you? How come you're so irritable?"
"I'm irritable? You're the bad-tempered one-I thought you were going to take my arm off." Clyde peered closer, looking him over. "You and Dulcie have a fight?"
"You're so witty. No we didn't have a fight. I simply don't like being hit. Fun is one thing, but that was real anger. And why would Dulcie and I fight? For your information, I left Dulcie on Ocean Avenue staring in the window of that new Latin American shop, drooling over all that handmade stuff they sell. And why are you so edgy? You and Charlie have a fight?"
"Of course not. She…" Clyde paused, frowning. "Well she was a bit cool."
"And you're taking it out on me. Venting your bad mood on a defenseless little cat. What did you fight about?"
"Nothing. She was just cool. She's been cool ever since Sunday morning. Who knows what's with women?"
"Bernine," Joe said and resumed washing his paws.
"Bernine what?"
Joe shrugged.
"You mean she's in a bad temper because Bernine's staying with Wilma? But why get angry at me?"
"You figure it out. I'm not going to draw pictures for you. I don't suppose you would want to get up and pour me a bowl of milk. I'm incredibly thirsty."
"You're not saying-Charlie's not jealous. Jealous of Bernine Sage?"
"Milk is good for the stomach after a full meal of raw game. A nice chilled drink of milk would ease my mood, and would wash down that cottontail with just the right dietetic balance."
"Why the hell would she be jealous of Bernine? Bernine Sage is nothing-a bimbo, a gold digger. Doesn't Charlie…? Bernine doesn't care about anything but Bernine. What's to be jealous of?"
"If you would keep a bowl of milk in the refrigerator where I can reach it, I wouldn't have to ask. It's demeaning to have to beg. I have no trouble opening the refrigerator, but without fingers and a thumb I really can't manage the milk bottle."
"Please, spare me the details."
"And have a glass yourself-it will help you sleep."
"I was asleep, until you decided to take a bath. And now you want me to get up out of a nice warm bed and freeze my feet on the linoleum, to…"
"Slippers. Put on your slippers. Put on a robe-unless you really enjoy schlepping around the kitchen naked, with the shades up, giving the neighbors a thrill."
"I am not naked. I have on shorts. I am not going to get out of bed. I am not going to go out to the kitchen and wake up the other animals, to pour you a bowl of milk. I can't even describe the rudeness of such a request-all so you can wash down your bloody kill. That is as barbaric as some African headhunter drinking blood and milk. The Watusi or something."
"Masai. They are not headhunters. The Masai are a wise and ancient people. They drink milk mixed with the blood of their cattle to give them strength. It is an important Masai ritual, a meaningful and religious experience. They know that milk is nourishing to the soul as well as to the body of a tired hunter. And if you want to talk disgusting, what about those Sugar Puffs or Honey Pops or whatever you eat for breakfast with all that pyridoxine hydrochloride and palmitate, to name just a few foreign substances. You think that's not putting strange tilings in your stomach?" Joe kneaded the pillow; its springy softness gave him the same sense of security he had known in kittenhood kneading at his mother's warm belly. "There's a fresh half-gallon of milk in the refrigerator, whole milk."
Clyde sighed, rose, and began to search for his slippers. Joe watched him for a moment then galloped along past him to the kitchen.
And as Joe drank milk out of his favorite bowl, which Clyde had placed on the breakfast table, and below him on the floor the other animals slurped up their own hastily supplied treats, Clyde sat at the table drinking cold coffee left over from the morning before.
"I hope you killed that rabbit quickly and didn't tease it. I don't like to think of you and Dulcie tormenting…" Clyde shook his head. "For two intelligent beings, you really ought to show more restraint. What good is it to be sentient, to be master of a culturally advanced language, and, supposedly, of advanced thought patterns, and still act like barbarians?"
"The rabbit died quickly. Dulcie broke its neck. Does that make you happy? It was a big buck-a huge buck, maybe the granddaddy of rabbits. It clawed her in the belly, too. For your information, a rabbit can be as vicious as a Doberman when you…"
"Wouldn't you be vicious if someone was trying to flay you for supper?"
"We're cats. We're hunters. God put rabbits on the earth for cats to hunt-it's what we do. You want we should go on food stamps?"
Finished with his milk, he dropped to the cold linoleum, Clyde turned off the light, and they trucked back to bed again. But, getting settled, clawing his side of the blanket into a satisfactory nest, Joe began to worry about Dulcie.
When he had left her in the village, not an hour before, he thought he glimpsed a shadow moving across the rooftops. Probably a raccoon or possum had climbed to the rooftops to scavenge bird's nests. And even if it had been Azrael, Dulcie would be in control; she was quite capable of bloodying Azrael if he got fresh.
Or, he hoped she was.
The moon's light cast the sidewalk and shops into a labyrinth of confusing shadows, but the street seemed empty, and Dulcie heard no sound, nor had noticed anything moving except, high above her, the little bats darting and squeaking. Her attention was centered on the shop window against which she stood, her paws pressed to the glass, the bright colors of weavings and carvings and clay figures softly illuminated into a rainbow of brilliance. Oh, the bright art drew her. Pushing her nose against the pane, she sniffed the exotic scents that seeped through, aromas no human would detect; the faint drift of sour foreign dyes, of rare woods and leathers, the heavy stink of sheep fat from the handmade wool rugs and blankets. Studying the bold Colombian and Peruvian patterns, she thought that their strange-looking horses and deer and cats were closer akin to mythological animals than to real beasts.
Closer akin to me, she thought.
The notion startled her, shocked her, made her shiver.
The idea must have been playing on her mind without realizing, from the myths she had read-the notion that she was strange and out of sync with the world.
It isn't so. I am real flesh and blood, not some weird mythical beast. I am only different.
Just a little bit different.
And stubbornly she returned her attention to the bright and foreign wares.
She had, coming down the street, paused at each shop to stand on her hind paws and stare in, admiring handprinted silk blouses and cashmere sweaters and handmade silver jewelry, her hunger for those lovely embellishments making her purr and purr with longing.
Now, dropping to all fours, she slipped into the garden that ran beside the shop and trotted along to the back, staring up at the transom above the back door.