Genelle Yardley died three days after her tea party, died quietly in her bed in the middle of the night. At the moment of her passing, a warm and gentle breath moved through her house and garden, pushing away the windy gusts that rocked the night. For a moment, it seemed, the wind was still. In the next room, where Wilma and Lori slept, the windows stopped rattling. Lori woke and sat up in bed, reaching for Dulcie. The little cat stood on the bed looking out to the garden, then turned to look at Lori and pushed her head against Lori, purring.

Taking Dulcie in her arms, Lori held the tabby cat tight. Across the room, Wilma woke. She saw the child sitting up clutching Dulcie, and she knew. Even across the village, the kit, sleeping between Lucinda and Pedric, woke and sat up. With one soft paw, Kit woke the old couple and looked at them and could say nothing.

And, blocks away in Clyde Damen's upstairs bedroom, Joe Grey woke hissing and backing into the pillow and into Clyde.

"What?" Clyde said, rolling over staring at the tomcat. "You have a pain? I told you, you ate too much shrimp."

Joe only looked at him. He didn't know what was wrong, didn't know what to think. Didn't know how to look at what he had sensed in his dreams.

In Genelle's house, Lori and Wilma listened, then rose and went to Genelle's room. She lay unmoving. There was no hiss of oxygen. Reaching out a gentle hand, Wilma felt Genelle's pulse; she waited a long time, trying Genelle's wrist and then the artery in her neck. Bending, laying her face against Genelle's ribs, she listened for a heartbeat. At last she shook her head, covered Genelle more warmly, and gently covered her face.

Genelle Yardley was laid to rest on a little hill at the edge of Molena Point cemetery. It was midday, and sunny, with a brisk wind off the sea. Genelle's view would be down over the rooftops of the village to the sea, if anyone thought she would linger to enjoy that earthly vista. After everyone who had gathered had at last turned away and gone, after the grave had been covered and the sod laid over, and it was evening and growing dark, the three cats came down from the oak tree.

They had waited a long time for the tractor to fill in the grave, a utilitarian process they didn't much care for, and for three workmen to lay the squares of sod. But they had still felt the sense of Genelle there with them. Almost, Dulcie said later, as if she laid a gentle hand on Dulcie's head. Now the cats, backing down out of the oak tree, stepped right onto Genelle's grave, onto the freshly laid new grass. They stood very still, listening. Facing into the wind. And they said their own cattish prayers for Genelle Yardley.

Though they knew she didn't need prayers. They looked up at the darkening sky and at each other and wondered not only where Genelle would go now and where life had come from in the first place, but wondered about themselves. Where they had come from, and who they were, and where they would go at some future time.

"Wonders," Dulcie said softly, "that we are not yet meant to know."

Kit stared at Dulcie, round eyed. Joe Grey licked his paw and fidgeted and didn't like to think about this stuff.

But suddenly the wind died again. All was totally still, the wind still. The cats waited.

They felt warm; they felt loved; they felt like laughing. And then at last they turned away, moving as one, and padded solemnly down the grassy hill, toward the village. Toward this life again, toward their own warm hearth fires; and they walked close together, so close that their shoulders touched, and their whiskers and ears touched, and their very cat souls joined with something huge that moved with them as they slipped away through the falling dark.

About the Author

SHIRLEY ROUSSEAU MURPHY has received seven national Cat Writers’ Association Awards for best novel of the year, two Cat Writers’ President’s Awards, the “World’s Best Cat Litter-ary Award” in 2006 for the Joe Grey Books, and five Council of Authors and Journalists Awards for previous books. She and her husband live in Carmel, California, where they serve as full-time household help for two demanding feline ladies.

www.joegrey.com

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