She wasn’t sure what to do. The cat walked on her back legs and, while she was clearly naked and just as clearly female, she didn’t seem bad. The cat had gray fur tinged to black in a line along her spine. Her belly was a lighter gray, almost white, with another line passing up the middle between her… mammaries and more highlighting on the tips of her ears. She had slanted eyes and either some sort of makeup or another highlighting running back from her eyes in a line.
Emma had been watching the news — it was almost impossible to avoid unless you wanted to watch Discovery all day — and knew that aliens or something were landing in Orlando, but that all seemed very remote to her. Life in Archer had been much the same. Oh, there had been a rush on the grocery store like there was going to be a hurricane or something and a few of her friends had urged her to move back to Buffalo and stay with her children until everything passed over.
But that didn’t mean she could pick up the phone and call the police and tell them there was a three-foot-tall cat sitting in the front room watching the news. Little old ladies that did that had to go to the nursing home. There would be a time for her to go to the nursing home but it wasn’t that time yet.
So she went back into the room and watched Oprah. Oprah was cut off halfway through, though, with the news that more aliens, these ones bad guys, had landed in Eustis, which was closer to Archer than she really liked. There was a big fight going on between the aliens and the National Guard. She didn’t like that, and when the cat saw the aliens she hissed and spat something that sounded like angry words, so, nodding in request to the big cat, she changed the channel to Lifetime and sat and watched an episode of The Golden Girls. When the show was over it was getting late and the cat stood up and nodded at her.
“I have to go,” the cat said, very clearly. “I will see you tomorrow, Blanch.”
Emma didn’t bother to point out that her name wasn’t Blanch. Tracy Cooper, the poor dear, whose mind was getting a little out there, sometimes made the same mistake.
Emma went to bed at her normal hour but couldn’t get to sleep. After a while she got up and went downstairs and looked at Arthur’s collection of books. She preferred to read mystery and horror novels but Arthur had been a big reader of all those trashy science fiction novels. She suspected that somewhere in those stacks and stacks of moldering paperbacks was what she needed to know to talk to an alien cat and let her know where the litterbox was, for example.
She finally picked one up that looked as if it had been read many times called The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. It at least had a spaceship on the cover. She tried to read it but it made no sense. And the author couldn’t write very well at all; he left out all the articles. Finally, after fifty pages, she gave up and turned off the light, falling almost immediately into the light sleep of old age.
In the morning, as she was making tea, there was another scratching on the door. It was that cat again, wearing something like a long trench coat and a brimmed hat like a fedora against the early morning rain.
“Good morning, Blanch,” the cat enunciated precisely, taking off the coat and hat and shaking them.
“My name’s Emma,” Emma replied, taking the child-sized coat and setting it on the dryer with the hat perched on top.
“Mine is Nyarowlll,” the cat said. “Good morning, Emma. May I watch television?”
“Please do,” Emma replied. “I was just making tea and was going to have an English muffin. Or I think I have a can of cat food around?”
“No thank you, Emma,” Nyarowlll said. “I am not hungry.”
Emma rummaged in Arthur’s boxes again and found a book called Methuselah’s Children. It had the blurb “An Exciting New First Contact Novel” on the jacket so she thought it might help.
The book was not too long but it didn’t have much in it about aliens until towards the end. She’d gotten up for lunch and fixed herself a tuna sandwich, offering some of the tuna to Nyarowlll on a plate. The cat was watching some sort of old science fiction show with a big clunky robot and a guy in a silver suit but she said that she did not want any tuna.
When Emma came back to the sitting room she noticed that this book was by the same author that had written that silly moon thing. Apparently he did know a definite article. Maybe the moon thing was his first book; first novels sometimes were pretty bad.
She finished the book — she was a fast reader — before dinnertime. When Nyarowlll came into the sitting room looking for her Emma narrowed her eyes.
“You’re not going to change our babies, are you?” she asked. She had four children and two of them were still giving her grandchildren. Aliens had better not start changing babies. “We don’t stand for that sort of thing, here.”
“No, Emma,” Nyarowlll said. Her diction had improved, smoothed out, and if she had an accent it was slightly Midwestern. “We do not change babies. Emma, I think the thing I need to say is: Take me to your leader.” She stuck out one paw as if to shake hands.
Emma took the paw carefully, Nyarowlll looked as delicate as a big bird, and shook it, then put her other hand over it and said, gently. “Why don’t I just call someone, okay?”
There was a big barrier of police tape around a small ranch house, with two officers sitting on the hood of their squad cars smoking cigarettes, when Weaver and Chief Miller pulled up at the address they had been given. They showed their ID to the officers, then walked to the front door of the house, which was being guarded by a SWAT team sergeant.
Weaver waved at the sergeant and showed his Pentagon ID again.
“I’m Dr. Weaver with the DOD,” he said. “This is Command Master Chief Miller with SEAL Team Five. What do you have?”
“We received a call that a nonhostile alien was visiting this home. The home owner is Mrs. Emma Sand. When the first officers arrived they found a three-foot-tall… cat that walks on its hind legs. The homeowner alleges that the cat had been visiting for two days, watching television. When confronted by the officers the cat demanded to be ‘taken to our leaders.’ ” The SWAT sergeant was visibly sweating. “Upon investigation we found another gate in the woods behind the caller’s home. At that point we contacted the Department of Homeland Security, secured the area and awaited further information. The area is quarantined at this time but by the time we got here quarantine had already been breached.”
“Felinoid,” Weaver said, gently. “Three-foot-tall felinoid. Looks like a cat but it’s from another world so it’s not really a cat. And the other term you’re searching for is ‘bipedal.’ That’s walking on two legs. Gotta learn the jargon.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said.
“We’ve got it,” Miller said, tapping the sergeant on the shoulder. “You don’t get this much in Archer, huh?”
“No…”
“Command Master Chief.”
“No, Command Master Chief, we don’t.”
“Don’t worry,” Miller said, tapping him on the shoulder again. “We see it all the time.”
They walked into the front room where a pleasant-faced older woman was sitting in front of a tea service talking in low tones with, yes, a three-foot-tall bipedal felinoid.
“Hello,” Weaver said, nodding at the old lady. “I’m Dr. William Weaver with the Department of Defense and this is Command Master Chief Miller with the Navy. Are you Mrs. Sand?”
“Sands,” Emma said, starting to get up and staying in her chair at a wave from Weaver. “Emma May Sands.”
“And who is your visitor?” Weaver asked.