But maybe, Dulcie thought, Max meant nothing—his expression was bland, maybe he was just taken with her babies. He had grown to enjoy Joe’s bold and purring interruptions in the office. Now he admired Joe’s kittens; surely that was all he had meant.
Charlie said, “Wilma has already named the girl kitten, she is Courtney.”
“And this morning,” Wilma said, “John Firretti gave me another name . . . maybe not so original, but it fits.” She bent down to stroke the paler boy kitten. “Buffin,” she said. “This is Buffin.”
Charlie said, “I like it, it’s a sturdy name. He is sturdy, look at him.” She leaned down to pet the sand-colored baby. But when she picked up the other kitten, with the gray cloud marking his pale coat, he immediately nipped her and dug his claws in, making her laugh. “This one’s a little wildcat, he’s going to be a handful.” She glanced down at Dulcie and Joe, then at Wilma.
“Striker,” she said. “What about Striker? But Striker as in to protect, not to threaten.”
Behind Max’s back, Dulcie and Joe looked at each other, amused. Yes, a strong name. And a strong, determined kitten. And Joe thought, A good name for a young cop kitten—if that’s what Striker turns out to be.
Wilma looked into Dulcie’s green eyes, then into Joe’s level gaze. “Striker. I like that,” she told Charlie. When she took the kitten from Charlie she received a sharp scratch of her own. She set him down in the pen, tapped him gently on the nose when he tried for another swat. When he drew back, she gently stroked him. He looked up at her uncertainly.
“Hello, Striker,” she said, laughing, and she removed her hand before he thought to lunge again.
When Ryan brought the casserole to the table and everyone gathered, Courtney and her brothers, smelling the warm shrimp, let out lusty mewls. Even kittens with full tummies could bellow demanding cries; but a look and a soft mumble from Dulcie, and soon they quieted.
As they all took their seats, Ryan was saying, “What I don’t get is how Tekla got the jurors’ names. Doesn’t the court seal those, so no one can influence the jurors during the trial or do them harm afterward?”
“It was the jury clerk,” Max said, “a Denise Ripley, she passed the names and addresses to Tekla. They went through high school together. Maybe buddies, maybe not, but Tekla paid her well. Ripley spilled when the chief judge called her in. He got her story—I’m not sure how. Maybe she thought he would only fire her and not prosecute, though I’m sure he didn’t promise that.” Max smiled. “Ripley’s in jail now, under indictment.”
“She got what she deserved,” Charlie said, “and so did Tekla. Meredith Wilson is alive, unharmed. Because of Meredith, maybe so are a couple of deputies. And maybe those jurors, too, who were lucky enough to escape the Bleaks.”
“What would the world be like,” Ryan wondered, “if all the vindictive, blood-hungry people suddenly went up in smoke, vanished into nothing?”
“I’d be out of a job,” Max said, laughing. “I’d be spending my time with Charlie, in a long and satisfying retirement.”
“And pretty soon,” Wilma said, “with no more evil in the world for us to stand against, people would become as weak and ineffective as garden slugs.”
Dulcie thought about that. But in her mind, at that moment, the prospect of an innocent world, of a safe life for her kittens, such a dream would offer more than a few virtues.
It was later in the evening when, yawning, Dulcie watched their friends depart, that she thought a little prayer for them all, for cats, kittens, and humans. Her purr was deep, she was content with life as she and Wilma moved the kittens into their nighttime pen beside Wilma’s bed. Dulcie settled down among them, inundated by pummeling babies who did not want to go to sleep. Soothing her lively youngsters with a gentle paw, she willed herself to forget the last lingering images of Tekla’s brutal assaults, of the suffering that woman had caused.
She thanked the greater powers for all their good fortune, despite the ugliness. She thought of Pan tucked up with the Firettis, the three friends comforting one another. She thought lovingly of Joe Grey stretched out in his tower staring out at the sky and she thought, Good night, Joe, dream well—and in his tower at the same moment Joe Grey bade happy dreams to Dulcie and their three babies. The late spring night tucked warmly around humans and cats, and the kittens beneath Dulcie’s restraining paw drifted into sleep, safe and loved. Dulcie, looking out the bedroom windows to the night, hoped that Misto could hear the kittens’ purrs and could hear her own contented rumble. And they all slept, cats and humans.
It was only much later that Dulcie woke again and rose, that she trotted out into the dark living room, leaped onto Wilma’s desk, and with a quick paw she turned on the computer. She sat in its soft light thinking about Misto, thinking about the poem in her head that had been forming ever since the old cat died, the verses that wouldn’t leave her, and slowly, with her forepaws squeezed small, she shared her words on the screen, her ode to Misto.
Golden spirit, you reach down
Your ghostly paw to touch the earth you love
To touch the sea
To stroke the lakes and rivers
To caress green hills and forests
To bless this mortal land you left behind.
Though you are gone,
Your spirit dances now
In bright eternity.
You are young again and strong
You whisper, “I am with you,
I am with you, still.”
You whisper,
“When your spirits join me,
You will know all secrets.
You will then fly free,
Fly paw to paw with me.
Our spirits sailing free.”
About the Author
In addition to her popular Joe Grey mystery series for adults, for which she has received ten national Cat Writers’ Association Awards for best novel of the year, Shirley Rousseau Murphy is a noted children’s book author who has received five Council of Authors and Journalists Awards. Though her early young adult fantasies feature speaking animals, there is no speaking cat like Joe Grey and his wily crew.
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Also by Shirley Rousseau Murphy
Cat Bearing Gifts
Cat Telling Tales
Cat Coming Home
Cat Striking Back
Cat Playing Cupid
Cat Deck the Halls
Cat Pay the Devil
Cat Breaking Free
Cat Cross Their Graves
Cat Fear No Evil
Cat Seeing Double
Cat Laughing Last
Cat Spitting Mad
Cat to the Dogs
Cat in the Dark
Cat Raise the Dead
Cat Under Fire
Cat on the Edge
The Catsworld Portal
By Shirley Rousseau Murphy and Pat J. J. Murphy
The Cat, the Devil, the Last Escape
The Cat, the Devil, and Lee Fontana
Credits
Cover illustration copyright © 2016 Beppe Giacobbe
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
CAT SHOUT FOR JOY. Copyright © 2016 by Shirley Rousseau Murphy. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
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