“Stop it.”

“Well?”

“The cat was at my apartment.”

“What was he doing there?”

“He was living there, Bern.”

I frowned. “I’ve met your cats,” I said. “I’ve known them for years. I’d recognize them, with or without tails. Archie’s a sable Burmese and Ubi’s a Russian blue. Neither one of them could pass for a gray tabby, except maybe in a dark alley.”

“He was living with Archie and Ubi,” she said.

“Since when?”

“Oh, just for a little while.”

I thought for a moment. “Not for just a little while,” I said, “because he was there long enough to learn the toilet trick. You don’t learn something like that overnight. Look how long it takes with human beings. That’s how he learned, right? He picked it up from your cats, didn’t he?”

“I suppose so.”

“And he didn’t pick it up overnight, either. Did he?”

“I feel like a suspect,” she said. “I feel as though I’m being grilled.”

“Grilled? You ought to be charbroiled. You set me up and euchred me, for heaven’s sake. How long has Raffles been living with you?”

“Two and a half months.”

“Two and a half months!”

“Well, maybe it’s more like three.”

“Three months! That’s unbelievable. How many times have I been over to your place in the past three months? It’s got to be eight or ten at the very least. Are you telling me I looked at the cat and didn’t even notice him?”

“When you came over,” she said, “I used to put him in the other room.”

“What other room? You live in one room.”

“I put him in the closet.”

“In the closet?”

“Uh-huh. So you wouldn’t see him.”

“But why?”

“The same reason I never mentioned him.”

“Why’s that? I don’t get it. Were you ashamed of him? What’s wrong with him, anyway?”

“There’s nothing wrong with him.”

“Because if there’s something shameful about the animal, I don’t know that I want him hanging around my store.”

“There’s nothing shameful about him,” she said. “He’s a perfectly fine cat. He’s trustworthy, he’s loyal, he’s helpful and friendly—”

“Courteous, kind,” I said. “Obedient, cheerful, thrifty. He’s a regular Boy Scout, isn’t he? So why the hell were you keeping him a secret from me?”

“It wasn’t just you, Bern. Honest. I was keeping him a secret from everybody.”

“But why, Carolyn?”

“I don’t even want to say it.”

“Come on, for God’s sake.”

She took a breath. “Because,” she said darkly, “he was the Third Cat.”

“You lost me.”

“Oh, God. This is impossible to explain. Bernie, there’s something you have to understand. Cats can be very dangerous for a woman.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You start with one,” she said, “and that’s fine, no problem, nothing wrong with that. And then you get a second one and that’s even better, as a matter of fact, because they keep each other company. It’s a curious thing, but it’s actually easier to have two cats than one.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Then you get a third, and that’s all right, it’s still manageable, but before you know it you take in a fourth, and then you’ve gone and done it.”

“Done what?”

“You’ve crossed the line.”

“What line, and how have you crossed it?”

“You’ve become a Woman With Cats.” I nodded. Light was beginning to dawn. “You know the kind of woman I mean,” she went on. “They’re all over the place. They don’t have any friends, and they hardly ever set foot outdoors, and when they die people discover thirty or forty cats in the house. Or they’re cooped up in an apartment with thirty or forty cats and the neighbors take them to court to evict them because of the filth and the smell. Or they seem perfectly normal, and then there’s a fire or a break-in or something, and the world finds them out for what they are. They’re Women With Cats, Bernie, and that’s not what I want to be.”

“No,” I said, “and I can see why. But—”

“It doesn’t seem to be a problem for men,” she said. “There are lots of men with two cats, and probably plenty with three or four, but when did you ever hear anything about a Man With Cats? When it comes to cats, men don’t seem to have trouble knowing when to stop.” She frowned. “Funny, isn’t it? In every other area of their lives—”

“Let’s stick to cats,” I suggested. “How did you happen to wind up with Raffles hanging out in your closet? And what was his name before it was Raffles?”

She shook her head. “Forget it, Bern. It was a real pussy name, if you ask me. Not right for the cat at all. As far as how I got him, well, it happened pretty much the way I said, except there were a few things I left out. George Brill is a customer of mine. I groom his Irish water spaniel.”

“And his friend is allergic to cats.”

“No, George is the one who’s allergic. And when Felipe moved in with George, the cat had to go. The dog and cat got along fine, but George was wheezing and red-eyed all the time, so Felipe had to give up either George or the cat.”

“And that was it for Raffles.”

“Well, Felipe wasn’t all that attached to the cat. It wasn’t his cat in the first place. It was Patrick’s.”

“Where did Patrick come from?”

“Ireland, and he couldn’t get a green card and he didn’t like it here that much anyway, so when he went back home he left the cat with Felipe, because he couldn’t take him through Immigration. Felipe was willing to give the cat a home, but when he and George got together, well, the cat had to go.”

“And how come you were elected to take him?”

“George tricked me into it.”

“What did he do, tell you the Poodle Factory was infested with mice?”

“No, he used some pretty outrageous emotional blackmail on me. Anyway, it worked. The next thing I knew I had a Third Cat.”

“How did Archie and Ubi feel about it?”

“They didn’t actually say anything, but their body language translated into something along the lines of ‘There goes the neighborhood.’ I don’t think it broke their hearts yesterday when I packed him up and took him out of there.”

“But in the meantime he spent three months in your apartment and you never said a word.”

“I was planning on telling you, Bern.”

“When?”

“Sooner or later. But I was afraid.”

“Of what I would think?”

“Not only that. Afraid of what the Third Cat signified.” She heaved a sigh. “All those Women With Cats,” she said. “They didn’t plan on it, Bern. They got a first cat, they got a second cat, they got a third cat, and all of a sudden they were gone.”

“You don’t think they might have been the least bit odd to begin with?”

“No,” she said. “No, I don’t. Oh, once in a while, maybe, you get a slightly wacko lady, and next thing you know she’s up to her armpits in cats. But most of the Cat Ladies start out normal. By the time you get to the end of the story they’re nuts, all right, but having thirty or forty cats’ll do that to you. It sneaks up on you, and before you know it you’re over the edge.”

“And the Third Cat’s the charm, huh?”

“No question. Bern, there are primitive cultures that don’t really have numbers, not in the sense that we do. They have a word that means ‘one,’ and other words for ‘two’ and ‘three,’ and after that there’s a word that just means ‘more than three.’ And that’s how it is in our culture with cats. You can have one cat, you can have two cats, you can even have three cats, but after that you’ve got ‘more than three.’”

“And you’re a Woman With Cats.”

“You got it.”

“I’ve got it, all right. I’ve got your Third Cat. Is that the real reason you never mentioned it? Because you were planning all along to palm the little bugger off on me?”

“No,” she said quickly. “Swear to God, Bern. A couple of times over the years the subject of a dog or cat has come up, and you’ve always said you didn’t want a pet. Did I ever once press you?”

“No.”

“I took you at your word. It sometimes crossed my mind that you might have a better time in life if you had an animal to love, but I managed to keep it to myself. It never even occurred to me that you could use a working cat. And then when I found out about your rodent problem—”