Cat Telling Tales Read Online Free PDF Page A

survive on their own, no notion how to snatch gophers from the village gardens or snag unwary birds on the wing. Many still lingered hopefully near the very homes from where they’d been abandoned, houses standing empty now. Families without jobs, moved away suddenly, leaving the village to search for cheaper rent, cheaper food, for the possibility of work somewhere else. Families who dragged away their grieving children and left behind the little family cat, to make it on her own.
    Only the boldest cats would yowl stridently at a strange cottage door demanding to share someone’s supper, only the most appealing cats were taken in and given homes, while the shy and frightened and ugly were chased away again into the cold night.
    Some of the strays didn’t even belong to this village, they had been dropped from dusty cars stopping along the highway, the drivers tossing them out like trash and then speeding away among the heavy traffic, leaving a little cat crouched and shivering on the windy roadside. All across the state, more animals were abandoned as more houses were repossessed, or leases broken. With taxes rising, fewer customers and fewer jobs, many stores had closed in the village, their windows revealing echoing interiors furnished only with a few empty boxes left in a dusty corner. Ever since Christmas Kit and Misto, and Joe and Dulcie, had watched their human friends trap the strays and settle them in volunteer shelters. Sometimes one of the four would entice a stray into a trap, a strange occupation, helping to capture others of their kind—or, almost of their kind. There were no other cats in the village like these four.
    No other cat who carried on conversations with a few favored humans, who read the local Gazette but shunned the big-city papers, who hung around Molena Point PD with an interest as keen as any cop—an interest no cop would ever believe. Misto was the newcomer among them, the old cat had shown up in the village just before Christmas, a vagabond who had once been a strapping brawler but was now shrunken with age, his yellow fur slack over heavy bones, his big paws worn and cracked, his yellow tail patchy and thin. But he was a wise old cat, and kind. Now, as they watched the white cat below, Kit gave Misto a shy look. “Tell about the cats from nowhere. Could some of these strays in the village, the ones we’ve never seen before, who seem to come from nowhere, could they be the same as in that tale?”
    The old tom laughed. “These are only strays, Kit. Pitiful, lonely, scared, but not magic. Magic is for stories, just for make-believe.”
    Kit nipped his shoulder. “We’re as different as the cats in the stories! And we’re not make-believe. Do my teeth feel like make-believe?”
    Misto swatted at her good-naturedly, and licked at his shoulder. “We’re not magical, we’re just different. If those poor strays had any magic, do you think they’d be wandering hungry and lost? They’d have made something better happen for themselves.”
    â€œI guess.” Kit cut her eyes at him. “Tell it again anyway,” she wheedled. Above them the heavy clouds had dropped lower still, and a mist of rain had begun to dampen the shingles and to glisten on their fur. The story Misto told came from France; he had heard it among the docks on the Oregon coast, listening to the yarns of fishermen and sailing men while pretending to nap among the coiled lines and stacks of crab traps.
    â€œFive centuries ago,” Misto began, “in a small French town, dozens of cats appeared overnight suddenly prowling the streets, attacking the village cats, slashing the dogs, chasing the goats and even the horses, and snarling at the shopkeepers. With flaming torches the villagers drove them out, but secretly a few folk protected them. Next day, the cats returned, prowling and defiant, and they remained, tormenting the villagers, until on a