But the barn and the hills had remained empty. She’d stayed there all day. She’d had a nice nap and then caught four fat mice. She was royally feasting on mouse when a yellow car came bumping down the narrow road that wound through the hills, and a dark-haired man and a beautiful, dark-haired woman got out to wander through the barn and outbuildings. She’d hidden from them, but she’d seen another man following them; he stopped his car high above them, beneath thick trees, and sat looking. He was a mean-faced man; he watched the couple the way a coyote watches a little cat.
When the couple left at last in the yellow car, she was sure they didn’t know he was there in the trees above them, or that again he followed them.
She’d sat for a long time in the old barn, licking up the last of the mice and feeling uneasy, wondering what that was all about. And then when she’d scrambled up onto the roof of the barn, she’d seen the yellow car parked farther down the hills. She didn’t see the white car, but she looked at the big pile of dirt in that yard and the blue blanket over the roof and she was so interested and curious that she’d trotted down to have a look.
The time was late afternoon. She knew it would be dark when she got home and Sage would be angry, and she didn’t care. She’d sat concealed in the tall grass thinking that maybe she wouldn’t go home at all. There was a narrow canyon between the hill she was on and the place where the house stood, and another hill rose to its right, dense with heavy, dark trees. The man and woman had gotten out of the yellow car and were talking to a redheaded man. She was watching them when she glanced up the hill and saw the white car hidden there among the trees. The mean-faced man had gotten out and stood watching them in a way that made her fur crawl.
It was much later when the yellow car went away. She stayed where she was, waiting and watching as that man came down the hill and walked around the house and looked in, then went in the garage. He was in there for a long time, it was becoming dusk and the fog was settling in over the hills and still he hadn’t come out. As she looked down the hill again, past the house, she saw a tall, thin couple coming up the road-and there was Kit, racing ahead of them.
She watched as the couple sat down on the stone wall and the tortoiseshell leaped up beside them. Kit stood very still, looking up the hills, looking straight at her. Tansy reared up, too, so Kit would see her. What would it hurt to go down there? What harm to sniff noses, and talk a little? What harm would that do? She and Kit looked through the fog at each other, and looked and looked, and suddenly they were running, Kit streaking up the hill and Tansy pelting down, both cats running so fast their hind paws crossed beneath their front paws like racing rabbits.
They met nearly head-on, skidding to a stop in the wet grass of the steep hill. At first, neither spoke. Kit’s yellow eyes were wide, and she was laughing; they both were laughing, and Tansy knew she’d found a friend.
17
“I AM TANSY. YOU are Sage’s friend,” the scruffy cat said smartly. “Oh, my. You would have been his mate but you wouldn’t have him. You jilted him!”
“Where did you learn that word?” Kit said, amused. “Jilt” was not a word she’d ever heard among the clowder. The stranger was the color of bleached straw, her inch-long coat standing out every which way and tangled with seeds and streaks of mud from the ditches.
“I learned that from humans, when I was a kitten, and later when I ran away from the clowder and came back to live in the village.”
“You ran away from the clowder?” Kit knew no other speaking feral besides herself who had abandoned the rule of the clowder and gone to live among humans.
“I wanted music,” said the scruffy cat. “I wanted humans to talk to me-though I never talked back. I wanted to curl up before a nice warm fire. I miss that life, I want catnip mice and kind hands, soft blankets and magical stories…”
Kit laughed at her but she knew too well that longing, and she could feel a purr bubbling up.
“I was a kitten in the village until a man put me in a box and dumped me in the hills and left me there to die. I nearly starved. Even after I clawed my way out, I was too little to hunt much. But then Willow found me and she washed me and caught mice for me, and I went to live with the clowder. But when winter was over and I got bigger and spring came, I longed for human places, I…” Tansy looked at Kit helplessly, as if she didn’t know how to describe her dreams.
Kit raised a paw, and looked away toward the village. “Come on,” she said softly. And she turned and trotted away.
The scrawny cat followed and was soon trotting beside her. As they passed the stone wall, the old couple remained very still so as not to frighten her. The last Lucinda and Pedric saw of them, the scrawny little cat was sharply silhouetted against Kit’s dark, black-and-brown elegance. Lucinda and Pedric looked at each other, and smiled, and the Greenlaws understood perfectly Kit’s flick of the ear and lashing of her tail, her silent, See you later! Don’t wait up!
But then Lucinda frowned, trying not to worry. Living with tattercoat Kit, worry was a given, they never knew what trouble she’d have her paws into. The elderly couple remained sitting on the wall, watching the two cats disappear down the hill to vanish at last among the cottage gardens as they headed into the village. What adventures the two would find, and what dangers, they didn’t want to consider. They tried to just fill up on the wonder of the moment and not let themselves think any further.
IN THE VILLAGE, Kit led the young cat along her own secret routes through narrow alleyways flanked with little shops, and then up a trellis to the rooftops. They trotted across jagged, shingled peaks and down into the dark crevices among a forest of chimneys. They stood with their paws in the roof gutters looking down at the tourists, then raced across leaning oak branches above a narrow street. They spent nearly an hour peering in through penthouse windows at couples eating supper, at ladies undressing, at children already sleeping in their beds. Tansy couldn’t get enough of the exotic world of humans that she had so missed.
As night drew down, they raced up the tiled steps of the courthouse tower to perch high above the world on its narrow balcony. If anyone were to look up and see the two little shapes crouched there, they’d wonder what kind of birds those were that had come to roost for the night. Below them, fog shrouded the cottage rooftops, so the shop lights were blurred into smeared colors along the busy streets. Through the mist, villagers and tourists headed for the little restaurants, and from the restaurants a miasma of smells was rising up: boiled shrimp, charbroiled steaks, and intriguing pasta sauces that made them lick their whiskers and that brought them down from the tower, racing down the long stairs to make their rounds of the restaurant patios. Winding among table legs and people’s feet, they paused frequently to fawn on the diners as only a cat can, smiling prettily up into the faces of strangers until they were treated to buttered lobster, rare steak, or roast chicken; and now Kit watched Tansy with increasing amusement. This waif, shy and frightened one minute, was bold as brass the next, employing spry and teasing ways until she got exactly what she wanted-Tansy was not at all as frightened and helpless as she seemed. The flip side of her nature showed Kit a skilled little freeloader. And as they left the center of the village, full of delicious treats, Tansy took the lead, scrambling to the roofs again and heading jauntily to where the village cottages climbed up into the hills.