Does the vacuum cleaner really bother you?…

Only when it jerks me out of a sound sleep; if you'll wake me up before you start it, that will help… I do love the scent of lavender in the sheets… Is there any more of that lovely canned albacore?…

Do you want to watch Lassie?…

No, Wilma. We both know Lassie is stupid…

You are a cat of impeccable taste. How about a Magnum rerun?… Oh, I would much rather watch Magnum. And could we have a little snack of sardines…?

Charlie swept into the kitchen, dressed in fresh jeans and a pale yellow sweatshirt. She had tied back her hair with a yellow scarf, the curly red tendrils already escaping around her face, the effect fresh and electric. Snatching up a handful of cookies, she hugged Wilma and punched Clyde's shoulder to move him along.

Wilma stood at the kitchen window watching as they drove away in the Packard.

She had to be more careful around Charlie. In spite of her wariness, she had caught Charlie several times studying Dulcie too intently.

She told herself that was only the gaze of the artist. Charlie did have an artist's disturbing way of staring at a person or an animal as she memorized line and shadow, as she absorbed the bone structure and muscle, committing to memory some rhythm of line.

She hoped that was all Charlie was seeing when she studied Dulcie. She hoped Charlie wasn't observing something about the little tabby cat that would best go unnoticed.

6

The cats careened uphill streaking through blowing grass, racing against time. Tangles of heavy stems whipped above their heads wild as a storming sea. Racing blindly up, the wind deafened them. Then, gaining the hill's crest, they paused to look back.

Far down the falling land, the houses were toy-sized, and along the winding streets they still saw no police unit heading up from the village. They could not, from this vantage, see up across the black, burned hills to the streets that flanked Janet's house, to see if a police unit was already parked there. The buffeting wind tore at their fur, and they hunched down, flattening their ears against its onslaught.

But suddenly, below, something moved in the grass, a huge dark shape slipping upward, a quick, heavy animal shouldering closer. The wind picked up its scent as it lunged into a run.

They spun around, exploded apart, leaped away in opposite directions-the dog couldn't chase them both.

He chased Dulcie. She could feel the beast's heat on her backside, could hear it snapping at her hindquarters. She thought it had her, when she heard it yelp. She dodged to look, saw Joe riding its neck-he had doubled back. The dog bellowed with pain and rage, twisted to grab him, and she flew at its head, clawed its ears, clinging to its face, digging in. It ran blindly, bucking. They rode it uphill, twisting, and she could smell its blood.

Riding the beast, she began to laugh, heard Joe laughing, felt the dog tremble beneath them confused, terrified. It had never heard a cat laugh.

When it couldn't shake them and couldn't grab them, it bolted into a tangle of broom, trying to scrape them off. The rough branches tore at them, they were scraped and slapped by branches, hanging onto the beast, hunching low, ears down, eyes squeezed shut.

"Now!" Joe shouted.

They leaped clear, down through tangles of dark thorny limbs dense as basket weave. The dog thrashed after them, snapping branches, lunging, sniffing. They crouched below the dark tangles, creeping away, pulsing like the terrified rabbits they hunted. Listening.

He thrashed in circles, searching.

They fled away through the thorny forest, then again they went to ground, straining to hear, to feel his vibrations coursing beneath them through the earth. Maybe he would scent them and follow, maybe not. They dared not go into the open. Dulcie, hiding and frightened, knew he was the dog that had followed her down among the houses. He was the hunter now, and she the prey, and she didn't like the feeling.

He was quiet a long time, only a little hush of movement, as if he were trying to lick his wounds.

They heard him move again, hesitantly. They dared not rear up to look.

Then, poised to run, they heard him crashing away.

He was leaving. Joe reared up, watching, then laughed, dropped down, and strolled out of the bushes, lay down on the grass, grinned at her. "You raked him good."

"So did you." She stood up on her hind legs, to see the dog amble away downhill, making for the houses below, where, perhaps, he could find a friendlier world.

They lay down in the windy sun. "We should have stayed on his back," Joe said. "He would have carried us clear up to Janet's."

She spit out dog hair. "I smell like a dog, and I taste like a dog."

Far below, the dog had stopped in the yard of a scruffy gray house with a leaning picket fence. An added-on room jutted from the back, with a small, dirty window beneath the sloped roof.

The mutt lifted its leg against the picket fence, then began to twist in circles, trying to lick its wounded back while pawing at its face. But after a while it gave up, wandered to the curb, and leaped into the bed of an old black pickup.

That truck had been in the neighborhood for some time. Several weeks ago they had watched a thin, unkempt man moving into the back room, carrying in two scruffy suitcases and several paper bags. They had watched him, inside the lit room, moving around as if he was unpacking. They had not, then, seen the dog.

"Maybe it was in the cab of the truck,'' Joe said. "Or already in the room." He looked at her worriedly. "The mutt ought to be chained." He licked her ear. "That beast running loose really screws up the hunting."

"Maybe he'll lie low for a while, after the raking we gave him."

"Sure he will-about as long as it takes the blood to dry."

She smiled, rolled over in the warm sun. But a little ripple of fear touched her, thinking of the white cat somewhere among the hills, maybe hurt. If that dog found him…

She had dreamed about him again last night, but she hadn't told Joe-the dreams upset him. Joe Grey might be a big bruiser tomcat who could whip ten times his weight in bulldogs, but some things did scare him. The idea of prophetic dreams was a scenario he did not like to contemplate. When it came to spiritual matters, the tomcat grew defiant and short-tempered.

But her dreams were so real, every smell so intense, every sound so sharply defined. In the first dreams, when the white cat trotted away, wanting her to follow, he had vanished before she could follow. But in one dream, he stood on the surface of the sea. It was a painted sea, blue and green paint, and he had sunk into the painted waves, and the paint faded to white canvas so nothing remained but canvas.

And in her dream last night she had seen him wandering through twilight, walking with his head down as if burdened by a great sadness. He stepped delicately, lifting each paw hesitantly and with care, stepping among tangles of small white bones: the white cat walked among animal bones, little animal skulls.

But again when she tried to follow, he vanished.

He had been so real; he had even smelled stridently male. She longed to tell Joe the dream, but now, heading uphill again, running beside him, she still said nothing. Soon they had left the healthy wild grass and padded across burned grass, across the black waste, crossing the path of the fire, crossing its stink.

This was the shortest way to Janet's, but they trod with care through the gritty charcoal, watching for sharp fragments, for protruding nails and torn, ragged metal, for broken glass to cut an unwary paw. Skirting around fallen, burned walls, they crept beneath fire-gnawed timbers that stood like gigantic black ribs, angling over them.