Read Online Cat Tales by Alma Alexander - Free Book Online

Foreword
     
    At a recent social gathering, someone left a
knot of people talking about a random topic, was away for a short
time and by the time that he returned the subject had already
changed … to cats.
    "What is it about writers," he asked,
apparently genuinely puzzled. "You leave them alone for five
minutes and they start talking about cats?
    I don't know about writers, but cats… have
had a certain kind of mystique to them ever since the first one
deigned to permit itself to become "domesticated" and call a human
hearth its home. They are the perfect subject for so many things –
not least being writerly conversations at literary parties. They
are walking metaphors, they were once worshipped as gods and they
have never forgotten it, and even the most klutzy or stupid cat
manages to give an impression of a certain kind of focus and
concentration and insouciance, as if they all know precisely where
they are going (if not exactly how they plan on getting there).
Cats are just walking stories, waiting to be told. And because they
are so mysterious, so self-possessed, often remote (as though they
lived on a different world, as perhaps they do), the stories that
lie hidden behind those calm eyes of emerald green or warm amber
are always mysteries. A cat does not kiss and tell. But they DO
seem to tease, and flirt, and invite you to find things out… if you
can.
    Cats have (naturally) played a certain part
in several of my own stories. I present three of them for your
enjoyment.
    Welcome to the Alexander Triads, Book 2: Cat
Tales.
     
    Alma Alexander
    Summer 2011
     
    'Homemaker' was one of those
oddball stories, written because I heard it call me but then left
behind in a drawer (or, in this instance, a hard drive) because
there was no obvious thing to do with it. The story, told from the
point of view of a cat, was strongly anthropomorphic, and it had an
oddly 'young' feel as though I had been aiming it at children –
which I hadn't, which I rarely do. When a magazine by the name of
Renard's Menagerie turned up, some years after this story was
written, and asked for stories just like this one – stories that
were animal-centric and even stories written from the animal's POV
– the market seemed tailor-made for this particular tale. I sent it
in, and they published it in July 2007 .
     

Chapter 1:
Homemaker
     
    I'd been keeping an eye on Janine Murray for
some time from the safety of the bushes behind her home. She was
the new kid in town, skinny and shy, with a pair of John Lennon
spectacles always half-falling off the end of her nose. I'll admit
she wasn't exactly promising material. This one would be a pushover
to win. But to make something of her… to Make this family… that
would be a different story. However, I always did thrive on
challenges.
    "Mom," Janine called the first time I allowed
her to see me, shivering on the back porch, "there's a black
cat…"
    But I was gone. In the first few encounters,
it was important to keep the mystery going.
    The next time, I stayed a little bit longer.
After that, I almost allowed her to touch me. And then I came to
within a whisker's breadth of the saucer of milk she was offering
before diving back into the bushes as if something had startled me.
The more elusive I was, the more determined she became to "tame"
me.
    "We don't need a cat," I heard her father
snap one evening. He was always banished to the back porch for his
evening smoke, by himself, and it was a good time for either Janine
or her mother to get him alone and ask him for things. That comment
was good news, actually – Janine had obviously asked if they could
keep me – but the tone of her father's voice was not exactly
encouraging. But I would give it time. I could see that they needed
me.
    The first time I allowed Janine to see me
actually lapping at her offering on the porch I waited long enough
to know that she had gone to get her mother and that they were both
watching me eat from the back door. I