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The
old woman left Sheldon, Tanya, and Penny trapped in the cage throughout the
afternoon. The three cats could
not fathom why she wanted them penned up in the cage and began to imagine the
worst as the hours dragged on.
Situated pill-mill around the yard were other smaller cages, now empty,
that had probably been filled with other animals. It looked as if the old woman had once had her own private
little zoo.
The
backyard now reflected the dilapidated condition of the house. Perhaps the woman had left through the
front of her small house and had gone shopping or to work. That would, they agreed, explain why
she had been gone so long.
Of course Tanya had her own theory.
“I bet she’s going to eat us,” she declared as they
lie in torpor for a while.
“No, Tanya,”
Sheldon sighed, giving her a lick, “that crossed my mine too, but I believe
that old woman’s just crazy. I’m
sure she’s done this before. When we
know she’s home, we’ll execute our plan.”
“We
might not have to play dead,” Tanya said bleakly. “She might just club us to
death when she returns.”
“I was wondering about those cages too, Sheldon,”
Penny gave him a nudge. “Why are they empty? Did those animals just die or did she sell them after
capturing them? Did the woman
really have some kind of backyard zoo?”
“I don’t know Penny,” he shrugged, looking around
the yard. “They look really
old. Maybe she once had
chickens. Her house really looks
ancient. The town probably grew
around her. I don’t think it’s
even legal to have animals caged in your backyard now.”
As Sheldon and Penny shared Tanya’s fears, they
remained nestled together, purring in spite of their alarm, the girls looking
to Sheldon to make their plan work.
******
When
the three cats were sound asleep and the sun began to drop behind the building
to signal the advance of night, Sheldon awakened from a dreadful dream in which
the old woman was coming at them with a meat cleaver in one hand. As he opened his eyes he could
hear a noise inside the darkened house, a scratchy operatic piece that made the
dwelling seem even scarier than before.
“Wake
up!” he cried into their heads. “The old woman’s back. Get ready to play dead!”
The
three cats stood up and readied themselves for the slightest squeak from the
old woman’s back door. Sheldon
uttered a clumsy prayer and Penny, who was Jewish, found herself chanting “Hear
O Israel the Lord is One...” But
the old woman never came. The
house was dark and the music played, and yet their keeper remained cloistered
inside, the mystery causing great strain on the three.
Sheldon
did not want them to have to make their escape in darkness. Their night vision as cats was, in many
ways, superior to what it was in the day, but the thought of negotiating the
street at night seemed unthinkable to him now. Just when the sun was about to burn out and it appeared as
if the old woman had gone to bed or was perhaps lying drunk in her house, the
door hinges squeaked and the three cats flopped down in the positions they had
decided upon earlier in the day.
It seemed as if darkness fell just as the old woman came outside with
her flashlight, training it immediately on their cage. Sheldon lie on his back, Penny on her
side with her legs stuck straight out, and Tanya lie crumpled in the corner
with her tongue stuck out of her mouth.
“Oh
Lordy me,” she wailed, “what happened to my cats?”
“All
right it worked,” Tanya’s thoughts flashed into Sheldon’s head, “but what if
she comes back with a trash can and sack and just throws us immediately into it
after dragging us out?”
“Don’t
move Tanya and Penny, she’s coming straight toward us!” Sheldon’s thoughts rang
out in their heads.
Flinging
the lid open and shining the light upon the three cats, the old woman cursed
and groaned then cursed again. As
Penny had predicted she would, the woman left the lid open but stood
contemplating what to do.
“Listen
girls,” Sheldon ordered gently, “as soon as we see the light retreat across the
yard, we must make our getaway.
The old woman is looking right now for something to put us in. We’ve got the element of surprise on
our side.”
When
the old woman had walked only a short way from the cage after spotting a trash
can in her yard, Sheldon sprang up and out of the cage, followed by Tanya with
Penny not far behind. The old
woman had just turned in her tracks when the Penny’s tail disappeared over the
fence as she followed the other two into to the darkened alley beyond. The old woman’s words as they ran
toward the light of the street at the end of the alley would strike the trio as
humorous when they looked back at this episode later tonight: “Come back, come
back you bastards, I’ll kill you if you don’t come back!”
“Where
do we go now?” Tanya’s question came first.
“To
the street,” answered Sheldon, “and after that in the same direction we were
heading before.”
“And
what direction is that?” asked Penny now.
“If
we can still make out the outline of the mountains in the distance, we know we
must head the opposite direction: south.”
No
sooner had they reached the street than the footfall behind them told them that
the old woman was in pursuit. As
it turned out, there was just enough daylight to see the silhouette of the
mountains, so the trio did as Sheldon suggested and headed south. As fleet footed cats, they easily
outran the old woman to begin their long journey back to Shadowbrook Arms.
******
Irma Fresco, as Sheldon, Tanya, and Penny, was now a
lost cat on the street. Unlike the
misbegotten trio, however, Irma had never been captured and held captive by a
deranged old woman. But also
unlike the trio, she was on the street by herself. It was night.
It was getting darker and darker.
She was alone. After
wandering the street for an entire day, unable to find her way out of the
maze-like buildings, poor Irma found an alley behind a restaurant on the
outskirts of skid row that had several old crates stacked up and hunkered down
in a warm corner to wait for garbage from the restaurant to be thrown out so
she could scrounge up a meal.
Through it all, her natural optimism, though tested and battered, would
not let her give-up. When she had
regained her strength and rested up awhile, she would be off again to find her
way back to Shadowbrook Arms. She
didn’t know what exactly would come next or how the spell could be lifted but
an inexplicable feeling of peace came over her as she nestled in the
newspaper-lined crate. It was as
if something incredible was about to happen to her, if only she would wait a
little longer to find out.
As
night fell again on the street, Irma looked out of her crate and watched the
old man who dumped the trash for the restaurant, pause to light up a
smoke. He was obviously a street
person, himself, though his bearing did not seem downtrodden to her. Perhaps he was down on his luck or had
always been a bum throughout his life….What did it matter? She asked herself as she began to drift
off to sleep…. At least he was a human…. He could make a living for himself…
walk in and sit down at a table, eat spaghetti with a fork, and drink a hearty
red wine.
Only
moments away for Irma was her delivery from the street, but for now she was
back in her mother and father’s home, listening to them speak Italian to each
other as they all gorged themselves on mama’s chicken cacciatore and sausage
laden spaghetti, her mother called Fresco’s supremo. She could almost smell the sauce and savor the wine that her
grandfather claimed to have made himself.
“Quel
gusto meraviglioso!” Irma murmured in her sleep.
******
On
his way home from ministering on the street—hungry, tired and footsore, Elijah
Gray, self-styled missionary for the homeless and misbegotten, was ready, as
Irma Fresco had been, for a hot meal and long night’s sleep. As he sat behind the steering wheel
listening to the Trinity Gospel Hour, he longed for the roast he had left
simmering in the crock-pot this morning.
It should be nice and tender about now, he thought, humming along with
Sister Mildred Sterling’s rendition of The Old Rugged Cross. His entire life was now devoted to the
Word. After being a down-and-out
drunk for several years, himself, and then being saved by missionaries on skid
row, he always felt guilty driving so quickly through this sector of town. There were hundreds of lost souls in
this neck of the woods, who were just like he used to be and who needed
salvation too. But unlike the
teams of missionaries who came out here in the daytime, he was but one soldier
for the Lord; and, more importantly, it was evening now. It was also quite dark.
No one in their right mind would attempt to preach to the derelicts down
here at night.
When he looked ahead and saw a man stagger out of
the alley toward the street, he instinctively pressed the accelerator with his
foot, looked the other way and began singing along with the radio, “There’s an
old rugged cross on a hill far away, a symbol of suffering and shame.”
As
a bloodied man staggered out on the road in the path of his car, however,
Elijah stopped in mid-verse, stomped his breaks, a stream of blasphemies
flowing out of his mouth. His
headlights now captured the gory visage of an elderly man who seemed dazed and
disoriented in the light. Sticking
his head out the window as he pulled his vehicle to the side of the road,
Elijah asked the man, in a croaking voice, if he was all right, feeling very
foolish when he knew very well he was not.
Grabbing his good luck baseball bat that he used
when playing on the Missionary Fellowship League and praying for forgiveness
for the blasphemies he had leveled at the man, Elijah assumed a defensive
posture as he approached the man.
Knowing this neighborhood as he did, he trusted no one. Suddenly, only a short ways ahead, the
man collapsed onto the pavement, which could, he told himself, be another
trick. On the other hand, he felt
obliged, as a God-fearing Christian, to play the Good Samaritan now.
Coming forward slowly and peering down at the
injured man, Elijah saw that the stranger was bleeding from the head and
apparently unconscious. Steadily
lowering his club, he bent down as slowly, laid the bat aside, mere inches from
his hand, and reached out carefully toward the man.
“Mister,… hey mister,” he murmured, touching the
man’s sleeve. In apparent
response, the man’s hand twitched and his leg shook uncontrollably now. “Lord,
help this poor man,” Elijah prayed, jumping up and running to his car.
“I’ve got a first aid kit,” he called back shakily,
wondering if the man was having some sort of fit.
At just that moment another pair of headlights broke
the darkness. Elijah now hoped
that, in spite of his old distrust of the police, it was a patrol car and not a
car load of thugs on the prowl.
Easing his bat down so it sat beside the car, he reached down shakily
below the front seat, found the first aid kit he kept handy for emergencies,
which had only been used once (for a paper cut he received during the mission’s
paper drive), pulled open the plastic lid, and rummaged around for band aides,
bandages, and clips. He heard,
though didn’t see, someone walking toward his automobile, his destination, he
hoped, the stricken man. Because
the stranger had stopped his vehicle in back of his and not in front of his
car, all he saw was a shadow moving in his direction. The shadow called out something, either to himself or to the
man lying in the road, but Elijah couldn’t make out the words. He now cursed the fact that his police
record prohibited him from owning a gun.
The next best thing, he realized, was his trusty bats, which lie next to
the car.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” he
prayed feverishly now.
Tucking the bat below his arm pit so it stuck out
menacingly in plain sight, he continued with a free hand to search for a pack
of gauze and antiseptic to clean wounds, ready to bring his weapon out and club
the stranger senseless if he tried to attack. His street instincts were strong now. His heart was beating so loudly he
could barely breath. For a long,
terrible moment, he forgot completely about the first aid kit and concentrated
only upon the baseball bat pressing against his ribs. Before long, the incorporeal being materialized as a human
being in his headlights. Though
Elijah felt cowardly, he continued to hold the first aid kit, ready to drop it
instantly and brandish his bat, as the stranger bent down and looked at the man
on the ground.
It was not a policeman, as Elijah had hoped. There was no way of knowing, in fact,
whether the stranger meant him mischief or not, until he turned to face him
now.
“I
think the old fellow is all right,” he called back in a deep, baritone voice
reassuringly, after moving into the lamplight to inspect the man. “He’s probably just a local
drunk.” “….Yes, I can see that
most of the gore on him is really just grime,” the stranger added reassuringly,
straightening up and walking his way.
“Yes,… of course,” Elijah mumbled breathlessly.
He couldn’t seem to find his voice now as the other
man moved toward him.
“Here, let’s bandage this old timer’s head up,” the
stranger said, reaching for the first aid kit clutched awkwardly in Elijah’s
hand.
Self-conscious of the baseball bat tucked under his
arm, Elijah tossed the weapon into the car, but held protectively onto the kit
with one hand, afterwards shakily doling out band aides, bandages, and gauze.
“No, no, we don’t need all that,” the stranger
laughed softly, pointing into the box “this little band aide should do
it,” “and maybe one of those,” he
reached in and pulled out an antiseptic tube.
Gathering his wits, Elijah held onto the antiseptic
in order to directly assist the old man.
He felt ashamed for his cowardice and wanted to make amends, but he also
wanted to show the pushy stranger who was in charge. Had he not stopped his car first and brought out his first
aid kit? Why had this strange man
felt obliged to stop?
The old man’s jerky motions earlier had evidently
been his efforts to get onto his feet, for he rose up finally when he saw the
two men approach.
“Get your hands off me; I ain’t done nothing,” he
snapped querulously, as they advanced. “I tripped over a cat, I did, ran into a
trash can and fell flat onto my face.” “No, no, back off,” he waved irritably,
“I don’t need no band aid or none of that burny stuff. I just got a little cut.”
“Please.” Elijah reached out with his antiseptic.
“Let us not forget the Good Samaritan.
The Lord wants us to tend lost sheep!”
“Hell, preacher,” snickered the old man, “I ain’t no
lost sheep.” “I got slimed when I
fell down in that alley,” he explained, wiping offal from his face, “I was in
there dumping garbage. I do it
every night for extra cash to pay for food. Shoot, this little cut on my forehead ain’t nothing. Last month, I got mugged by a bunch of
kids up on Fifth. Took all my
earnings, they did. Don’t you
fellahs concern yourselves about me.
You scared me half to death!”
As the old man rambled on about his plight on the
street, the stranger offered him some gauze to wipe his face. In spite of his initial refusal to
accept help, the old man took the gauze as well as the band aide and antiseptic
from him, bowed politely and, shaking his head at the short prayer offered by
Elijah, ambled back toward the alley from which he had emerged. There was, in fact, Elijah recalled, a
restaurant on the other side of these buildings that had been in this
neighborhood for many years, but he found it hard to believe they would hire a
local derelict to dump their trash.
“The old man’s proud,” he said to the stranger,
stretching out his hand. “My name is Elijah Gray. I used to live on the street, myself, before I turned to
God.”
“Blaze O’Dare.” the other man shook his hand
vigorously. “I’m glad to be of assistance to you.”
In the glow of the street light Elijah could see the
Egyptian ankh medallion around the man’s neck and an astrological pendant on
his coat: badges that the preacher immediately recognized as symbols of the
occult. The darkly clad man, he
also noted, had the small crafted goatee associated with sorcerers and
necromancers, his complimentary dark hair and eyes contrasting the red-headed
and beardless Elijah, whose steel blue eyes burned with suspicion now. In turn, with equal wariness, the
stranger noticed Elijah’s dark suit and the small gold cross around his neck. As if to make this discovery even more
portentous to Elijah, a small black cat trotted out of the alley shortly after
the old man re-entered, tippy-toeing anxiously into the light. Elijah could not think of anything
clever to say to such a man and sensed a similar reaction from him. Already, however, as his pulse
quickened and mind raced, Elijah felt something providential in this encounter,
as if his ordered and uneventful life was about to take a drastic turn.
At
that point, the little black cat bumped a bottle sitting on the sidewalk that
chimed against the wall. Blaze
O’Dare, who was startled this time, gasped, uttered a little laugh and followed
Elijah’s gaze to the creature, as she stepped off the curb and walked toward
the two men.
“What
else should we expect?” He forced out another laugh. “Wasn’t last night
Halloween?”
“I
see you’re in the spirit,” Elijah snarled faintly, motioning to the pendant on
his chest.
“Oh
this,” Blaze replied with a shrug, “I was at a sort of Halloween party myself—a
conference uptown.”
“I
can imagine, “Elijah said with unveiled contempt, “what sort of the conference that might be!”
“As
a matter of fact,” Blaze started to say, but then, thinking better of it,
looked down at the small cat approaching them now.
The cat was moving fearlessly toward them, purring
loudly and holding its tail high.
“I’ll
be damned!” He said, whistling under his breath.
You
probably will! Elijah thought
to himself, as he studied the little cat.
Shrugging his shoulders at the preacher’s self-righteous attitude, Blaze
mumbled good night and began walking back to his car. Elijah, who had always been found of cats, felt sudden
compassion for the little beast.
He wondered now if this had been the cat that had spooked the old man.
The
cat had the characteristics of the Devon Rex breed: a pixie-like feline with
huge fox-like, ears, an elfin face, large round eyes, and a sturdy little body
that was covered with soft wavy black fur. Though Elijah was unfamiliar with cat breeds, he realized,
even from a short distance, that this was an unusual cat.
“Meow! Meeoww!” came its plaintive reply.
“A
cat,… a black cat too,” he said, bending down hesitantly now. “What else on a night like this?” he
laughed giddily. “But kitty,” he knelt down and reached out his hand,
“Halloween is over. Where will you
now go? What will you eat?”
Immediately,
quite unlike most alley cats, she trotted over to his extended hand, rubbed it
with the side of her face, and then looked up to him with big blue eyes. Moved by this simple gesture, Elijah
picked up the strange little cat and carried her back to his car.
“What
is your name kitty?” he asked in singsong voice.
Gently
setting her on the hood of his car, he rummaged around in his pocket for
something for her to eat.
“Irma
Fresco,” she responded hopefully, purring loudly as he searched for food.
“Sorry
kitty,” he declared finally, “I just remembered: I ate those Twinkies with my
lunch.”
“I
don’t want your Twinkies,” she mentally cried. “I hate Twinkies! I want a Big Mac. I want a shake so thick you can eat it with
a spoon!”
She
wanted very much for this kind man to somehow read her mind, but when she tried
to talk, her pleas came out as so many meows: the typical sound of a hungry
cat. Although it seemed foolish,
she continued to meow plaintively to Elijah now. She also attempted to plant thoughts in his mind, as she
would a confessor, everything that happened to her on Halloween night, the
morning after, and her ordeal on the street. She was tired, hungry, and in constant danger around larger
and less friendly cats. But the
man wasn’t telepathic, she thought bitterly, or, after recalling the rude way
he treated one of the strangers, apparently very bright.
Early
this morning, before beginning an agonizingly long day of wandering through
town and hunting for food and shelter, the realization grew in Irma that
India’s spell could only be cancelled out in two ways. Either she must be killed to end her
bewitchment or Irma needed to find a formula to reverse the spell. It had seemed so hopeless for her this
afternoon that her only concern had been that she would not starve to death
before she could find such a cure.
As night came again, however, she was reminded once again that she was
running out of time. Unless the
witch was dead, India’s curse, she realized bleakly, must be broken by another
person: a white witch or sorcerer with equal powers. India had told Irma enough about witchcraft for her to know
these facts, but how could she impart this information to someone else and
actually be helped by such a person before it was too late?
******
In
the background the other man, Blaze O’Dare, had stopped in the middle of the
street to survey this scene.
Elijah Gray, Blaze marveled, had been terrified after stopping to help
the old man, and yet he took time now to comfort a stray cat. The
little cat, desperate to communicate, sat on her hind legs and moved her paws
up and down as would a pony.
Elijah began to laugh with amazement, especially when she meowed
furiously to get his attention.
Blaze, however, didn’t laugh.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled up as he considered what he
had just seen. But there was more;
Irma, realizing she had gotten their attention, did a little dance, her meows
coming out in a singsong fashion that also stopped the preacher cold.
It
was Blaze’s turn to laugh as he studied the cavorting cat.
“I’ll
be damned!” He cried with delight. “I’ll be god damned!”
“It
gives me the creeps,” Elijah fingered his cross.
“Meow,
mew-mew, meeeeeeeow, mewowowowowowow!” Irma continued to utter, almost out of
breath.
Striking
Irma as very hopeful now, as she performed, was the other man approaching and
his apparent curiosity for the unknown.
He seemed to be the smartest of the two. Although
they couldn’t hear her thoughts or understand her meows, she felt better
now. It seemed more difficult,
with each passing hour for her to recall the events of last night. It was as if she was becoming a cat
mentally as well as physically.
She had found herself purring inexplicably and licking her paws. She had humped her back and hissed in
feline fashion several times in reaction to fear or irritation. These natural feline instincts, she
feared, would gradually replace her humanity, until she was nothing more than a
feral, dimwitted beast. But Irma
Fresco knew that there were countless ways to communicate with humans. After being surrounded by drunks for so
many hours, she had found two kindly souls, not only sober but with automobiles
to spirit her away.
She
would do everything she could think of to prove how human she was. As both men looked down in awe, she
covered her eyes with her paws, then covered her ears and mouth. Afterwards, she rubbed her tummy,
growled like a dog and then wiggled her scratchy little tongue.
“I
assume she’s been trained to do that stuff,” Elijah blurted anxiously, “but
I’ve never seen a cat do that!”
Suddenly
she jumped off the hood and, for a few seconds, the two men were afraid she would
run away. After dipping her paws
into water in the gutter, though, Irma was trying to write something. This was immediately evident to the two
men. The large swath of letters,
however, were impossible for them to decipher, especially now that Irma was on
the verge of exhaustion and she was too weak from lack of food to adequately
move her paws. After trying to
write a quick SOS, she collapsed onto the pavement and meowed softly to
herself. I need a computer or large
piece of cardboard and something to paint with, she thought to herself…. I need food…and sleep.
Reaching
down with a mixture of compassion and wonder Elijah picked up the little black
cat.
“This
is no ordinary beast!” Blaze exclaimed, reaching out to pet the purring cat.
“No,
it’s certainly not,” Elijah agreed, feeling her little heart pounding in her
chest.
Cradling her gently in his arms, he felt her body
trembling, not from fear he was certain, but from lack of nourishment and
fatigue. Elijah harbored
suspicions for Blaze O’Dare, in spite of the miraculous event they both
shared. The perceptive mister
O’Dare noted that the preacher was holding the black cat protectively, not
merely affectionately in his arms.
Elijah was, in fact, remembering how important the black cat was in witchcraft
and the occult. He wondered now if
the stranger had this in mind as he marveled at the cat.
“Please,
I’m interested in these sort of things,” Blaze said delicately. “Let us share
this event, my friend. I have a
lot of contacts for such matters.”
“What
sort of contacts,” Elijah’s distrust deepened. “I believe in the Good Book,
sir. You seem to be someone who
dabbles in the occult.”
“I’m
a good sorcerer,” Blaze blurted. “I don’t consort with evil spirits, nor do I
mock God.”
“So
you admit it, do you?” Elijah looked at him incredulously now. “You admit using
the black arts!”
“No,
I admit to no such thing,” Blaze explained tersely. “I believe in God’s powers
and the magic of other holy books too.
In fact, I’m a Roman Catholic.
I just know there are other spirits and forces that can be harnessed as
well.”
“Sir,”
Elijah held firm, “if you play with the Devil, you’re gonna get burned!”
“Poppycock!”
Blaze said, stomping his foot.
During
their conversation, Irma searched her tired mind for a way to communicate with
these men. Elijah now stuck the
little cat into his jacket as if to protect her from this man. Irma stuck her little black head out
and meowed.
“Oh
please,” she thought frantically, “give me something to communicate with. “In God’s name, help me before its too
late!”
Irma’s
shoulder now rubbed against something in his pocket that beeped when she placed
her paws on it. At first she
thought it might be his cell phone, which would be useless to her now. Then, it dawned upon her what the
object might be. The two men
ceased arguing about whether or not the sorcerer was evil or not and listened
to the sound.
“What’s
that noise?” Blaze asked, watching the cat poke her head out and meow.
“It
sounded like the little calculator I bought last week,” Elijah smiled, reaching
in to grab the cat. “My little friend has found itself a toy.”
“How
very strange.” Blaze frowned, as the preacher lifted her back out. “It’s
holding onto the calculator with its paws.”
“Let
go kitty,” Elijah tried to pull the calculator from her paws. “Why it’s holding
on for dear life!”
“Oh
yes, it’s definitely trying to communicate with us,” Blaze clapped his hands in
delight. “Set it on the ground and see what it’ll do.”
“It’s
so exhausted,” the preacher protested. “Will it have the strength?”
“We
owe it to the cat, reverend,” the sorcerer insisted. “Let’s put it in the light
and see what it does.”
As
Elijah and Blaze watched in wonderment, Irma began inputting numbers into the
calculator that equaled letters of the alphabet. It was very difficult with cat paws, especially in her
current physical state. She found
the five on the keyboard and then tapped the zero, followed by another five.
“Lemme see,” “Elijah said, squinting down at the
tiny calculator screen, “it looks like 505.”
“No,”
Blaze exclaimed, slapping his forehead with his hand, “it’s an SOS. It just gave us a
distress call!”
“Nonsense,”
Elijah shook his head, “it’s just playing with it. A cat can’t do that!”
“Okay,
let’s try something else,” Blaze clasped his hands excitedly. “Kitty, if you
were giving us a distress call, press the following series of numbers: 5, 7, 3,
2, 8.” That’s the pin number for
my debit card.”
As
she punched the numbers into the calculator exactly as Blaze directed, Irma
realized that she was making a breakthrough. Still not believing his own senses, Blaze insisted on
performing an even more definitive test.
This time, as she sat serenely in the lamplight, he told her to do a
mathematical problem. Irma, after
remembering her high school math, pressed the square root key and squared the
number 8. She then divided the
result, 64, by 8 and then divided random numbers into each other and then
multiplied the dividend by the divider to achieve the same result. For dramatic effect she bowed to them
in the most human-like pose possible and waited with her paws folded for their
response. The two men stared at
her in even greater disbelief.
Elijah reached down and picked her up, not even bothering to also
retrieve the calculator on the ground.
Blaze picked up the device and looked at the numbers and placed it with
great reverence into the preachers vest pocket.
“Isn’t
that the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen?” he asked the preacher now.
“Yes,…
it’s a miracle,” Elijah said,
analyzing the cat.
“This
is a remarkable beast,” Blaze declared, pulling her gently from his hands.
“Fear not my little friend, you are among friends!”
“But
this can’t be possible:” Elijah muttered with a dumbfounded expression “a cat
who does mathematical problems and writes words?”
“This,”
Blaze said, holding her up to the light “is no ordinary cat, reverend. Look at those fox-like ears and those
big blue eyes. I’ve never seen a
cat like this before. Although you
can’t tell by its anatomy, this poor beast was once a human. It’s
under a witch’s spell!”
Irma
mewed softly in protest as she was held up to the glow and was studied by the
men. The sorcerer was hurting her
fragile ribs, and yet he understood her dilemma the best. Unable to cry like a human or express
her thanks, Irma Fresco did the next best thing when he sat her back on the
hood and began licking his hand.
In order not to hurt the kind man who first gave her notice, she licked
his hand too. With great
affection, her original rescuer picked her up again, rubbed her head and gave
her a kiss. As Blaze marveled at
how powerful such a witch must be, the preacher remained silent. Obviously unwilling to look to a supernatural
cause, himself, Elijah found her existence too inexplicable to attempt such an
explanation.
It
did not matter to Irma what the self-proclaimed sorcerer believed. Thanks to his perceptiveness after the
good preacher discovered her on the street, she now had two protectors and
advocates. She didn’t need vocal
chords or mental telepathy to talk to humans. She could communicate with her paws.
After
being placed back inside the first man’s jacket, she continued purring loudly,
waiting impatiently for another miracle to happen in her life: to be changed
back into her human form.
******
For
a moment, as the preacher and sorcerer discussed this marvelous cat, Blaze
argued on behalf of it’s humanity.
The preacher, on the other hand, stubbornly refused to believe such a
thing. It seemed to Elijah Gray
that the basic Biblical premise of man’s uniqueness was at stake now. There was nothing in the Holy Bible
about such transformations. But it
was an argument that he couldn’t win.
There were no verses from the Bible he could quote to support himself or
religious counter-arguments he could use.
Deep down in the rational part of his mind, he could find no other
explanation for the cat’s performance tonight except for the blasphemous one
uttered from Blaze’s mouth: it was under
a witches spell!
“Well,”
he confessed wearily, “I would rather believe it was actually human than an
infernal spirit.”
“Believe
two things reverend:” Blaze spoke with great respect, “I am not a servant of
Satan and this little cat is no infernal spirit. It is, you of all people should know, a creature of God!”
Seeing
conviction in the sorcerer’s words, Elijah shrugged, yet shook his red head in
despair. Under normal
circumstances, he would have held up a cross to this man and recited Christ’s
exhortation “Get thee behind me Satan!”
But the preacher, like the cat, was exhausted after such a long day...
and something else, he would not admit even to himself, played in his conscious
mind... . Was it excitement, an inexplicable wonder lust for the unknown? Was it the Devil, himself tempting his
logic now?
Whatever
it was, he now had a miraculous cat!