The Sign of the Cat

 

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For Bill, with all my love

 

A ship in harbor is safe—but that is not what ships are built for.

 

—John A. Shedd,
Salt from My Attic
, 1928

 

CHAPTER 1

The Cat Speaker

D
UNCAN WAS A BOY WHO COULD SPEAK
C
AT.

He had known cat language since he was small, because the cat who lived at his house took the trouble to teach him. It wasn't until he was a little older that he realized this was highly unusual.

Of course, all humans would be able to speak Cat if they were taught at the right age. But as most cats can't be bothered, the right age goes by for nine hundred and ninety-nine out of one thousand, and the chance is lost forever.

Duncan McKay was one in a thousand. Maybe even one in a million. Not that it was helpful to him now. He fingered the report card in his pocket nervously as he sat on the second-floor landing, watching through the window for his mother to appear on the crooked street below their house. He had gotten too many As this term, and she would be upset.

“Why me?” he asked Grizel, who was a very old cat by this time. “Why did you teach me to speak Cat?”

Grizel did not answer. She was crouched halfway down the stairs, watching a mouse hole. There had never been a mouse there, not once, but she was not a cat to neglect her duty.

Duncan kicked a heel against the old black sea chest that served as a window seat, and gazed out over the island cliffs to the sea. He hated not getting answers to perfectly reasonable questions. He was eleven and big for his age, and he was tired of being treated like a little boy. “Why me?” he asked again, a little louder.

“Why not?” Grizel snapped. She was testy about the subject; the other cats made fun of her because of it, and she had regretted teaching him more than once. Still, she was not a bad-tempered cat. She wouldn't have snapped at him if she hadn't been cranky from hunger and disappointed about the mouse.

She turned away from the mouse hole and looked up at the boy who sat on the second-floor landing. His face was shaded, but the afternoon sun streamed through the stairwell window and brightened his rough gray pants with their twice-patched knees.

A cat will hardly ever apologize for being rude. It usually doesn't see the point. But Duncan's lap looked warm and full of sun, and Grizel's spot on the stairs had fallen into shadow. She butted her head against Duncan's leg, blinked, and opened her eyes wide, with a tiny upward twist between her brows. This was Cat Trick #9: Melting Kitty Eyes. She had not been a kitten for a long time, but she could still act adorable when necessary.

Duncan took her on his lap and began to stroke her behind the ears.

Grizel kneaded his stomach with her paws. “I taught you to speak Cat because I felt sorry for you when your father died,” she said. “All in all, I think I did a good thing. I've been able to explain why fresh tuna is better than the stuff in a can, for instance. And you have quite a knack for purring.”

“That's nice if you're a cat,” Duncan said, watching out the stairwell window for his mother. “Only, I'm a boy.”

“You can't help that,” said Grizel. “I've never held it against you.”

Duncan didn't answer; he was trying to remember when his father had died. Had there been a funeral? He had been very small. There had been a forest of black-trousered legs around him, and someone smelling of pipe tobacco had picked him up and whispered gruffly in his ear. “You'll be the man of the house now,” the voice had said. “You'll have to take good care of your mother.”

Duncan had tried. While he was still too young for school, he tied an old shirt around his neck for a cape and practiced fighting evil villains. When he was a little older, he gave his mother all the copper pennies he found in the street. And when he was older still, he began to do small jobs at the houses where his mother taught music lessons. He gave her the coins he earned—at first the common five- and tenpenny pieces, later the larger brass barons and, on occasion, a silver-edged earl—and he tried hard to obey her rules, even the strange ones.

But some of her rules were very strange indeed.

Duncan unfolded his report card and looked at his grades with a sigh. He had made sure to get five questions wrong on his last history test, but it hadn't been enough.

Grizel tapped at the report card with her paw. “You could tell her that A means ‘Average.' Or ‘Actually Not That Good.'”

Duncan snorted.

“It could also mean ‘Annoying,' or ‘Atrocious,' or ‘Abominable'—”

“What are you, a dictionary?”

“Or you could change the As to Bs,” Grizel suggested. “Just draw a line along the bottom. And smudge over the pointy top.”

“That never works.” Duncan knew this because he had tried it before. “I could make it an A minus, maybe, but that's about all.”

Grizel yawned, showing delicately pointed teeth and a small pink tongue. “Why don't you just get a few more wrong? There's nothing so hard in that.”

“I hate getting things wrong,” Duncan muttered.

“Other boys,” Grizel observed, “would be pleased to have a mother who didn't push them to get good grades. Other boys would be
grateful
.”

Duncan did not particularly care how grateful other boys might be and made this point under his breath.

Grizel flicked her tail and went on as if she hadn't heard. “A good son might have a little faith in his own mother. A clever boy might understand that she had a
reason—
”

“For what?” The report card crinkled in Duncan's hand. “For telling me never to get a gold star, or earn a medal, or win a prize? For telling me I should never stand out?”

“For keeping you hidden,” Grizel said sharply. “And safe.”

Something cold patted quietly inside Duncan's chest. “Am I in danger?”

“Did I say that?” Grizel closed her eyes until they were slits in her furry golden face. “I don't recall using that word.”

“You said ‘safe.' And ‘hidden.' So there's got to be something she's keeping me hidden from, right?”

Grizel sank her shoulders more deeply into the round curve of her body. She seemed to grow more solid. A faint snore escaped her.

Exasperated, Duncan bounced his knees up and down. The cat held on with her claws, her eyes tightly shut.

“There's no danger,” said Duncan. “You made that up. This is the safest, most boring island in all Arvidia. It's even named Dulle, which should tell you something.”

The snoring grew louder.

“Fine. Be that way.” Duncan detached Grizel's claws from his leg one by one, set her on the floor, and looked through the window again. His mother wasn't on the street that led to their house, and he couldn't see her walking up the steep cliffside road.

Instead, he saw a striped tabby cat rounding the corner. Its head was up, its tail well back, and altogether it had the purposeful look of a cat with business to accomplish.

It stopped beneath their window and looked up, meowing.