The kit's eyes widened with alarm, making Cora Lee laugh.
"That's what theater people say, for good luck. Break a leg. If you could talk, that's what you could say to me." Careful of her costume, Cora Lee picked up the kit and hugged her. "I'm so nervous. I haven't done this since New Orleans-not a musical. Well, it's not a musical. Experimental, Mark calls it. But for so long, I've only done speaking parts. And then I used to sing sometimes in small clubs. It still hurts to sing, Kit-like a knife in my middle. I don't care, this is Catalina's night, Catalina is alive, tonight, and she will be wonderful."
She will be wonderful, the kit thought. You are Catalina, and you are wonderful.
The music began. There was a knock at the door. Cora Lee set the kit on the dresser. "Stay here, Kit. Think good thoughts." And she left the dressing room, heading backstage behind the sets.
The kit waited only a moment, then followed her. Staying among the shadows, she hid herself in the wings behind the long curtains where she had a good view of the stage. Above her in the rafters, high over the gathered audience, Joe and Dulcie saw her. Dulcie smiled, but Joe Grey tensed. "What's she doing?"
"She's just watching," Dulcie said quietly. "She loves Cora Lee. And she loves the play; the songs seem really to charm her. She'll just sit there purring," she said complacently.
But Joe's yellow eyes shone black in the shadows, burning with unease.
"Not to worry," Dulcie said. "What could she do? She's a sensible little cat."
"She's too close to the stage. Why doesn't she come up here?"
"She wants to be close to Cora Lee, she wants a front-row seat." She gave him a sweet look. "It's opening night, everyone's talked about opening night. Of course the kit's excited." She peered down over the rafter below them, where Clyde and Ryan were taking their seats. Clyde was dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and tie, and was holding Ryan's hand. Ryan wore a long emerald green dress. Dulcie loved all the pageantry and elegance. It would be no good to have a play, if the audience didn't dress up, too.
To the cats' left sat Wilma and Susan, and Gabrielle and Mavity, all wearing long dresses and whispering among themselves. Three rows in front of them, Max Harper and Charlie were finding their places.
"Can you believe that Harper sprang for front-row seats?" Dulcie whispered. Harper was dressed in a well-tailored, dark sport coat, tan slacks, pale shirt, and tie. Charlie wore a long, rust-toned skirt and a brocade jacket in orange and turquoise that was, Dulcie whispered, "stunning with her red hair."
The house lights dimmed and the orchestra shifted from a soft tango to the opening strains of Act 1. The curtain opened to the patio of the Ortega-Diaz hacienda, filled now with angry, arguing rancheros-with Don Ortega-Diaz and a dozen of his contemporaries, resplendent in Spanish finery, discussing with Latin passion the sudden foreclosure on their lands. Not until the American, Hamilton Stanton, appeared in their midst offering to pay Ortega-Diaz's commitments, did the mob quiet. What was this? What a fortunate turn of events, that their friend could marry off the eldest of his five daughters to a rancher of obvious means and, at the same time, save his lands.
But when Catalina's hand was promised, she stepped from the shadows fiery with rage against her father; the angry violence of her song shook the audience. When the lights came up at the end of Scene 1, the theater was silent. Applause, when it broke, was like sudden thunder.
It was Scene 2, as servants locked Catalina in her room, that her saddest lament rose-and that a small movement in the shadows drew Cora Lee's attention. The cats saw her glance into the wings though her singing didn't falter. Dulcie caught her breath. Joe Grey crouched, ready to leap across the rafters and down, to haul the kit off the stage.
Dulcie stopped him, her teeth gently in his shoulder. "Wait, Joe. Watch-look at the audience."
Catalina's voice faltered for only a second as she reached out to the dark little cat that had slipped up onto her couch beside her. As Cora Lee's song held the audience, she drew the kit to her in a gesture natural and appealing. Singing with a broken heart, she cuddled the kit close. Every person present was one with them, not a sound in the darkened theater. Cora Lee and the kit held them all.
The kit appeared in two more scenes, both times when Cora Lee glanced into the wings to draw her out again, the two seeming perfectly attuned to one another. Cora Lee might be amazed at the kit's behavior, but she was a child of the theater. And the audience loved the small cat. When Cora Lee glanced into the wings at Sam Ladler, he was smiling-Cora Lee played the kit for all she was worth. When Catalina was fed on bread and water, the kit slipped in through the window grate to keep her company. The kit disappeared after the wedding and did not return until Catalina's lover, in desperation, began to ravage the Ortega-Diaz lands, stealing cattle and burning the pastures. Now again the kit was there, with exquisite timing, as Catalina herself set a trap for her lover.
In the last scene, when Marcos escaped Hamilton Stanton's vaqueros and came to take Catalina away, and when Stanton was there in her stead, Catalina stood in her chamber holding the kit in her arms, weeping for Marcos, for her part in his death, as the curtain rang down.
Among the cats' closest friends, response to the kit's theatrical adventure was frightened and guarded. While everyone in the village raved about Cora Lee's performance and about the wonderful part the little cat played, and the kit had front-page newspaper coverage, her friends worried for her and wanted badly to put a stop to her foolishness.
"You're racing too close the edge," Dulcie told her. "Don't you think people will wonder?"
"But no one-" the kit began.
"Kit, this scares me. Don't you understand what could happen?"
The kit looked at Dulcie sadly, filled with misery.
"You're lovely in the play, Kit. You're exactly what the play needed. Everyone loves you. But, Kit, you know that not all humans can be trusted. Even if they believe you're no more than a trained cat, the way Wilma and Clyde have tried to convince people, don't you know how many no-goods would steal such a cleverly trained kitty and try to sell you."
"But they wouldn't hurt me. And I would escape, I would get away."
Dulcie just looked at her. Life before the kit had been so peaceful and predictable-and, compared to life with the kit, seemed in retrospect deadly dull. "If we stick with Wilma's plan," Dulcie said, "maybe it will come right." It broke her heart to scold the kit, the kit took such joy in the play. But when she licked the kit's ear, the kit brightened.
By the next morning, Wilma and Charlie and Clyde had convinced Cora Lee that it would be best to tell admirers that she and Wilma, together, had trained the kit. They set up a scenario for the remainder of the play that included Wilma taking the kit to the theater each night, standing in the wings with her, and giving her hand signals like a trained dog. Cora Lee followed the plan, understanding quite well the danger to the kit-as far as she knew it.
But the wonder of the kit's creative performance didn't pale. To Cora Lee and to her audiences, the kit was a four-legged angel, a magical creature.
Wilma told Sam Ladler that onstage, when Cora Lee's emotions built through song, the young cat was naturally drawn to her in a powerful response. She said that was how she trained the kit. Ladler said the kit's appearance had been a nice surprise, that the kit added just the fillip the play needed. "This couldn't have happened," he said, laughing, "if Vivi had been present. She would have pitched a fit."