“It’s probably starving,” I argued back. “Poor thing.”
Elliot watched as I got a bowl out of the cupboard and put some of the dry cat food in it. I went out the back door—the one that faced up the mountain—to the wooden back stairs that gave access to the vegetable garden and compost.
Elliot’s garden was smaller, although we’d expanded it a bit this year to include corn, peppers, squash, cucumbers, and several types of beans in addition to the tomatoes, greens, and herbs that he’d already had going. He had a much more impressive composting system, though—probably because therewas just a pile here, where Elliot had constructed wooden bins so that he could have different piles in different states of decomposition.
Henry was taking care of the gardens while we were gone, and Helen had been feeding the goats and chickens, but there was no one taking care of the missing cat.
I sat down on the stairs and rattled the bowl with its dry kibbles. “Here, kitty-kitty!”
I heard Elliot snort behind me.
“You have a better idea for how to get a cat to show up?” I asked him, scanning the edge of the woods.
“Its actual name?”
I did turn to look up at him then. “And did you see anything at all in the house other than the bag of food that suggested there evenwasa cat, much less that it had a name?” I asked him.
“No…” he replied.
“Sokittyit is,” I told him. I rattled the bowl again. “Here kitty-kitty!” I did this a few more times, Elliot snorting softly every time.
Until a tinymewcame from somewhere under the house.
“Holy shit,” Elliot breathed.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” I said smugly.
It probably wasn’t a good sign that this was the happiest I’d felt since I’d gotten the call from Humbolt. But I’d finally succeeded in doing somethinggoodabout the absolute shit-show that was my family situation. I’d rescued a cat. Well, almost.
“Here, kitty-kitty!” I leaned down, shaking the bowl in what I hoped was a tantalizing manner next to the side of the stairs.
Anothermew.
“Come on out, kitty-kitty,” I coaxed, trying to figure out where the damn thing was.
And then a small—surprisingly small—nut-brown head poked out from under the stairs. The cat, or kitten, maybe, it was that small, raised its nose to sniff.
“That’s right, kitty.” I rustled the bowl again. “Food.”
The tiny cat took a few hesitant steps forward, and I set the bowl down, still sitting on the stairs. The cat looked between me and the bowl, then decided that its stomach was more important than its fear of me, and it stuck its face in the bowl and started crunching away, clearly ravenous.
“See?” I said, looking back at Elliot.
“I do,” he replied, his lips quirking in that crooked smile of his. “I see that we now have a cat.”
“I—” I’d been about to object, but then I decided I didn’t want to object. I hadn’t gone into this with the idea of taking the cat, but who else was going to? I’m sure Helen would have fed the poor thing if she’d known about it, so I suppose it was possible she’d want a mouser… But Elliot was right. I felt for the little cat, and at least if it came home with us,somethinggood would come out of this godforsaken trip.
I’d managedto coax the cat into the house, and Elliot had found a blanket in a closet to make it something soft to sleep on. We also put out the food and a bowl of water, from which the cat immediately drank.
I wanted to go out into the woods, but I also wanted to keep the cat somewhere we would be able to grab her again—and she was definitely aher, because she let me pick her up and check. She was friendly enough to allow herself to be petted and held briefly, which made me think that Momma had probably been taking care of her.
Elliot had checked with the hotel, and they’d allowed us to add a pet fee onto our reservation so that we could bring her into the room with us. We’d also stop to get litter and a box on the way back.
But before we did that, I wanted to follow the tracks I’d seen in the mud of the yard—paw prints that looked a lot like Noah’s or mine that headed out into the woods.
And I wanted to do it before I lost the courage.
Elliot didn’t approve, but he wasn’t going to stop me, although he’d made it clear that he was coming along. I’d been planning on asking him to come with me anyway, since I wasn’t terribly keen on the idea of going into the woods after my murdering father by myself. Not that I thought I was actually going tofindhim, but the possibility was non-zero. I knew going out there was a risk, but I also knew that with Elliot, we’d likely have a size and weight advantage. Two against one, and Elliot’s claws were damn scary.
