Chapter 4

"How'd you do that?" Cindy demanded. "I've been trying to catch that little beast for the last three days! Now you get out of the car and have him ready to play dead at your feet."

The kitten did exactly that when Beth bent down and scratched his chin. The little black ball of fur rolled onto his back, waving all four paws in the air as she scratched his belly. I couldn't blame him, I'd been known to act the same way.

"What a cutie!" she said as she reached down and picked him up. "How'd he get in here?"

"We don't know," Greg said. "We got home the other night and just caught a quick flash when we opened the door. Cindy tried to coax him out with some milk but the little devil wouldn't come out if we were watching. He'd wait until we walked out of sight then sneak out and lap it up."

"Yeah, until you showed up," Cindy grumbled as she reached over to help Beth spoil our uninvited guest.

"What do we do now?" Beth asked.

"I suppose see if anybody in the neighborhood lost him. He can't be that old," I said. "If nobody claims him I guess it's a trip to the animal shelter. Either that or adopt him ourselves."

Cindy chuckled, "Tommy, you don't adopt a cat. It's the other way around."

"Yeah, but, I've never had a cat!" Beth said. "Or any pet. I don't know how to take care of him."

"Well," Greg offered, "maybe a trip to a vet? Get his shots and some idea of what to do?"

"I suppose ... Should we name him? And what?"

"Pyewacket."

All three of them stared at me.

"Pie what?" Greg looked at me. "What kind of name is that? Or did you sneeze?"

"Pyewacket. I read a book about witch hunts in England back in the sixteen hundreds and ran across the name. I guess since he's a black cat it just triggered my flypaper memory."

"So, I suppose that makes me Kim Novak?" Beth said as she continued to scratch the kitten.

"Kim Novak? The actress? What does she have to do with it?"

"You mean there's something about old movies that you don't know? Pyewacket was her cat in Bell, Book and Candle. Except in the movie he was a Siamese."

"So, what next?" I was curious what Beth would decide. We'd never had pets at home either, and I wasn't sure how a cat would fit into our lifestyle.

"Right now let's get in the house. We can't do anything until Monday anyway."

Greg and I grabbed our stuff and followed the girls ... and the cat, whatever his name was.

Once we got everything into the house—why is it coming back from a vacation always involves what seems like more stuff than we started with?—we spent an hour or so continuing our conversation from dinner.

Once Greg and Cindy went upstairs we looked at the pile of suitcases, camera bags, and backpacks and decided tomorrow was soon enough. That left our unexpected houseguest.

I rummaged around in the basement and found a milk crate that would work as short-term housing for our guest. Beth grabbed an old blanket, folded it to fit in the crate and tried to settle him down.

Right.

I came out of the shower and there he was, cuddled up on the bed with Beth.

"Um..."

"Oh, he's not staying. I'll put him back in his bed," she said, picking up the fuzzy one and depositing him in the crate on the way in to take her shower. That's when the crying began. I got up and found His Honor trying to climb out of his temporary quarters, all the time complaining to his landlord about his accommodations.

"Hey, guy. I'm not the easy mark she is. That's your bed and you're staying there." He gave me a nasty look and crouched down as if he was thinking of making a leap for freedom. "Don't even think about it," I said, "or you'll find yourself out in the hall." He quieted down, but it didn't last long.

When Beth came out of the shower the feline sympathy symphony started all over. She looked at the cat, knelt down, and petted him until he fell asleep. Then she turned out the light and climbed in next to me. After a couple of minutes I nudged her. "I'm having trouble getting to sleep, too."

It worked.

I woke up the next morning with a rumbling weight on my chest. I opened one eye and found myself looking into a pair of green eyes at a distance of about three inches.

"What are you doing out of your crate?"

"Blert?"

"Yes, you. I knew this was a bad idea." I looked over at Beth, lying there on her back with the sheet down to her waist, sound asleep, not a care in the world—just as I'd been thirty seconds before. I picked up the kitten and put him down on her chest. He gave me what had to be a smug look, curled up with his head on her left breast and promptly fell asleep. Lucky damn animal.

I got up, started the coffee, got the paper, then took care of the usual morning mumbo-jumbo. As I drank my first dose of caffeine, I considered whether I really wanted to find our lodger belonged to someone in the neighborhood or if having the little freeloader as a permanent resident wouldn't be so bad after all.

I was finishing my coffee and the morning paper when my lady came out of the bedroom. "Tommy, where did he come from?" she said, motioning to the little black furry ball in her arms.

"He was staring at me when I woke up this morning."

She looked down at the kitten. "You little pest. Are we going to have problems with you?" The cat didn't reply but I could swear he still had the smug grin on his fuzzy face.

As per plan, we spent the weekend canvassing the neighborhood to see if anyone claimed our trespasser. No one did. By late Sunday afternoon it was pretty obvious the little guy didn't have a home, so now came Decision Number Two—do we keep him or make a stop at the Humane Society on Monday? If it was left up to Beth the choice would be obvious. I'd been trying to think of a good reason we shouldn't keep him and realized I didn't have one.

And so Pyewacket became part of our family.

Monday it was back to business as usual. Beth went to her folks' shop and by eight I was in front of my computer facing the daunting task of going through the summer's worth of pictures. Knowing I was in for a long session, I thought I'd better make a call first. Jim Moore had sent me an e-mail asking me to call him when we got back from the island and I figured I'd better do it now.

"Hey, Tommy! Back already? Let me guess—a case of the Caribbean Guilts?" Jim said when I called.

"Yeah, it's amazing how too much fun and sun can do that to you."

"You've got that right. I remember the first time I heard Matt mention the possibility that somebody could enjoy a vacation too much. I thought he was kidding! Anyway, the reason I called is our new building is finished and we'd like some pictures now that we're all moved in. Interested?"

"Sure. When would you like to do it?"

"Is Wednesday too soon?"

"No, Wednesday would be good. Meet you out there or at the office?"

"Why don't you stop here and we can drive out together? Maybe about ten?"

"Ten it is. I'll see you then."

Now that Jim's appointment was set, it was time to tackle my pictures from the summer. I started by transferring them to my desktop machine, then dividing them down by type; culling the obvious losers and adding keywords to the keepers. Our new resident sat on my lap and added his comments between naps.

By noon I'd fought my way through maybe a quarter of my Caribbean shots and figured it was time to quit before my eyeballs fell out onto the keyboard. I grabbed a Coke and sat down on the front porch to watch the world go by ... and maybe snooze a bit. Cats have the right idea when it comes to time management.

"Tommy. It must be nice to sleep all day."

"Mphf? Wha ... Oh, hi. Um, how was work?" I looked at Beth, standing there in black jeans and t-shirt. With the black cat standing on her shoulder, I could almost imagine her as a witch. Oh, not the nasty kind. The sexy kind. She certainly had bewitched me!

"Get your butt out of that chair. We've got some shopping to do."

We do? "We do?"

"Don't you think we should buy our friend here something a little more permanent than a milk crate, and how about a litter box, and some toys, and—"

"Okay, okay, I get the picture. Let's hit the pet store over by Stadium Village. Maybe they can suggest a good vet in the area, too."

We were debating whether to take Pye with us when Cindy came down the stairs.

"Hi, guys. Oh, there's the little cutie!" she said as she reached out to scratch him under the chin. He stretched his neck up and accepted her attention in typical feline fashion—as homage due a superior species.

"Cindy, how would you like to watch him for a while?" Beth asked. "We were just going out to the pet shop."

"Sure! I'd be happy to!" she said as she took our freeloader out of Beth's arms. "Take your time!" she giggled as she started back up the stairs with His Honor already snuggled into her arms.

We hit the pet store near us and soon had a litter box, litter, cat bed, scratching post, feather wand, and a couple of squeaky toys. Looking at the pile of stuff I wondered what would be involved when we had kids.

We also asked at the store about a good vet in the area. They asked if we were University students and why we didn't use the veterinary school. Beth and I just exchanged looks something along the lines of Why weren't you smart enough to think of that?

Monday night we tried to convince our furry freeloader to sleep in his brand new bed and quickly learned that trying to convince a cat to do something ranks right up there with teaching a pig to sing.

The next morning I rolled over only to find my favorite cuddle spot was occupied. His Honor just looked at me, gave me a dismissive sneer and settled down for another well-deserved snooze. Me? I got up, grumbling about having to start my day without any attention. I could see The Furry One and I were going to have to have a discussion over our sleeping arrangements.

Later in the morning I called the vet school and made an appointment for that afternoon. They asked if I was a student and I told them the cat's owner was. Might as well get a student discount if we could.

After setting up a time with the vet I went back to sorting pictures. I found one I'd taken of Jamie and Cecily that day we'd met on the path and wondered if a real ghost would appear in a photograph.

The cat was snoozing on my lap when their picture appeared. He sat up and looked at the screen, his head cocked to one side as he studied the image. He jumped up on the desk, pushed his nose right up to the monitor, and started purring like mad. What was that all about? He'd never shown much interest in anything on the screen before, except for watching some of the bouncing figures on my screen saver, but for some reason Cecily's picture fascinated him. As soon as I changed to the next shot he got agitated and walked around to look at the back of the monitor as if he could find her back there. When he didn't have any luck at that, he came back and stared at the screen again. Weird—even for a cat.

When I continued to go through my pictures he watched the monitor intently, as if waiting for Cecily to come back. After a few minutes he jumped off my lap and started pacing around the room. He was still pacing when Beth got home in time to take our resident pest to the vet.

"Hi, Tommy. How was your day?" she asked as she bent down to pick up the kitten.

"Oh, okay, except for something he did a while ago." I went on to explain what had happened.

"Hmm ... Can you bring that shot up again?"

"Sure," I said as I clicked on the file. When the image appeared, Pye let out a meow, leaped out of Beth's arms onto the desk, and put his face right up to the monitor, rubbing against the screen, and purring like he had the first time.

"He'd never done that with any other picture?"

I assured her he hadn't. As an experiment, I enlarged the image so just Jamie was showing. As Cecily disappeared off the side of the screen, Pye repeated what he'd done before—walked around to check the back of the monitor, as if she'd walked behind the screen. Beth picked him up and brought him back around by me. I panned the shot over so Jamie disappeared and Cecily came back—same reaction—he cocked his head to one side, pushed his nose up to the monitor and purred.