"They're there. But if they don't look at the brake line…"

Clyde turned to stare at him. "What?"

"The brake line. It was cut. If the cops-"

"Don't start, Joe."

"Start what?"

"You know what. Meddling. Don't start meddling. You always think-"

"If they don't look closely at the brake line," Joe said patiently, "they might not see it was cut."

Clyde sighed.

"Sharp slice. Near the right front wheel. The brake fluid-"

"Joe--"

"Brake fluid all over the road."

"If it was cut, Harper's men will find it. Don't you think they know their job? Can't you keep out of anything? You bring home two starving puppies, you don't bother to find water for them, and then you-"

"And you," Joe shouted, "you don't stop to wonder where they came from, you just bang open the front door and invite them right on in when they're probably full of ringworm and mange."

"I didn't bring them home."

"And now you won't listen when I try to tell you something important."

During this exchange, old Rube had risen from the kitchen linoleum and taken his aged black Labrador body into the laundry. Lying on the bottom bunk, he growled at the pups with a menace that drove them back into the adjoining kitchen.

The bottom half of the two-tiered bunk belonged to Rube, the top half to the cats. From there, the white cat peered down suspiciously. The other two household cats had fled out Rube's dog door to hide in the backyard; they were used to quiet dogs but didn't take happily to big boisterous puppies.

The pups, abandoning Rube and his uncertain temper, returned all their attention to Clyde, their forepaws on the kitchen table, barking in his face.

Clyde opened the lower cupboard and hauled out a fifty-pound bag of kibble.

"Don't feed them too much. You'll make them sick."

"They're starving, Joe."

"Feed them too much and they'll throw it all up."

"Don't be silly. They'll only eat what they need."

Joe headed for the bedroom, where he could find some privacy with the telephone. He had started to paw in the number of the police station when Clyde strode in and unplugged the cord.

Joe stared at him.

"Leave it, Joe. Those guys don't need your help to find a cut brake line."

"And if they miss it?"

"I'll find out from Harper."

Silence from the kitchen. The puppies had stopped chomping and smacking. Joe could hear them licking up the last crumbs, then heard them drinking again. Clyde said, "How many people in the car? Are you sure it was a '67 Corvette?"

"Of course I'm sure. I've been force-fed on your antique car trivia most of my natural fife. I know a '67 Corvette as well as I know the back of my paw. There was just the driver. Dead on impact. Maybe from multiple contusions, maybe from a strip of metal stabbed through him, maybe a combination. A man I've never seen. Went over just at that double curve, driving south. Lost most of the fluid before the second curve. I was hunting down in the canyon, heard a skid, and that baby came over the bank like a bomb dumped from a B-27, fell right at me. If I wasn't so lightning fast, it would have creamed me." He gave Clyde a yellow-eyed scowl. "That car could have killed a poor little cat, careening down into that gully, and what would you care?''

"You look all right to me. You shouldn't have been hunting in Hellhag Canyon. You know how the tides come up."

"That's typical. I'm nearly killed, and all you can do is find fault."

Two wrenching, gurgling heaves from the kitchen silenced them.

They returned to face two huge piles of doggy kibble steaming on the kitchen floor. The pups, having disgorged the contents of their stomachs, began to bark at the mess and then to lick it. Clyde shouted at them, swinging the kibble bag; the smaller pup, startled, yipped as though he'd been struck. Both pups raced around the kitchen barking. Clyde, trying to clean up the mess, yelled and swore to drive them out of his way. Joe, nearly trampled, leaped to the sink and let out a bloodcurdling yowl.

"Put leashes on them, Clyde. Take them out to the car. Take them to the pound-that's why I brought them home! So you could take them to the pound!"

This wasn't completely true, but he'd lost all patience. Couldn't Clyde handle two baby dogs? "Take them to the pound, Clyde."

"Don't be stupid! They'll kill them at the pound! Why would you bring them home and then…"

"The pound will find homes for them! I brought them home so you could drive them out there. You didn't expect me to walk way out there dragging those two? Expect me to jump up on the counter at the animal shelter and fill out the proper forms? Sometimes, Clyde, you don't show good sense even for a human!"

Clyde stared at him. The pups stopped barking and stared, too, their tails whipping and wagging.

Joe Grey, glaring at all three, leaped from the counter over the pups' heads and scorched out the dog door. He was crouched to bolt over the gate and go find a phone, when he saw Dulcie trotting swiftly along the back fence toward him, her green eyes wide with interest, her peach-tinted ears sharply forward, her whole being keen with curiosity.

4

CROUCHED ON the back fence, Dulcie had started at the sudden barking from Clyde's house behind her. Sounded like he had a kennel full of dogs in there-big, lively dogs, shouting with canine idiocy. Probably someone visiting had brought their mutts along, and Clyde was making a fuss over them, teasing and playing with them. He could be such a fool over an animal; that was what she loved best about him.

At first when she discovered her talent for human speech, she had been wary of Clyde, wouldn't talk to him. She'd left that to Joe, who had awakened from simple cathood into their amazing metamorphosis at about the same time. From the beginning, Joe had mouthed off to Clyde and argued with him, while she had hidden her new talents, too shy even to tell Wilma.

Oh, that morning when Wilma found out. When, sitting on Wilma's lap at the breakfast table secretly reading the newspaper right along with her, that instant when she laughed out loud at a really stupid book review, she thought Wilma was going to have a coronary.

Dulcie had been worrying about how to break her amazing news; she hadn't meant to blurt it out like that. But suddenly the cat was out of the bag, so to speak. And afterward, trying to explain to Wilma how it had happened, that she didn't know how it had happened, trying to explain how wonderful it was to understand human speech, oh, that had been some morning, the two of them trying to get it all sorted out, Wilma laughing, and crying a little, too, and hugging Dulcie.

Of course one couldn't sort out such a phenomenon; one doesn't dissect miracles. The closest she and Wilma could come-or that Wilma could-was to head for the library and dive into a tangle of research. Wilma and Clyde together had dug through tomes of history about cats, through Celtic and Egyptian history and myth. When they surfaced with their notes, the implications had swept Dulcie away.

Suddenly her head was filled with ancient folklore interlocked with human history, with the mysterious Tuatha folk who had slipped up from the netherworld into the green Celtic fields through doors carved into the ancient hills. There were doors with cat faces engraved on them, sometimes in a tomb, sometimes in a garden wall. Doors that implied feline powers and led deep into the earth, into another land.

Wilma's research had led Dulcie to Set and Bast, to Egyptian cat mummies and Egyptian tombs with small, cat-decorated doors deep within. From the instant she first realized that she could understand human language, could speak and read the morning paper, then realized there were books about cats like her and Joe, the entire world had opened up, her curiosity, her imagination, her very spirit expanded like a butterfly released from its cocoon.