Read Online Cattitude by Edie Ramer - Free Book Online

sweet
stuff.”
    And she could never lie to Fletcher. If she
saw or felt something, she told him. And she always saw or felt
something. Sometimes it was the blackness of death, purple of
sickness, red of anger, pink of passion or green of money.
Sometimes it was a series of pictures she didn’t understand—but the
family members did. As they drove away afterward, Fletcher would be
chortling while she clasped her head, trying to turn off the
pictures of other people’s lives.
    They were turned off now. Looking at the
house, she felt nothing, saw nothing. The only emotions she’d felt
since she’d become a cat were her own.
    Her grief and sadness diminished. Her
heartbeat skipped. She wanted her hands back so she could clap them
together. Her tail went up, waving in the air like a victory flag.
No more visions, no more emotions, no more blinding headaches.
    She felt lightheaded. As though a gorilla had
sat on her shoulders her whole life and had suddenly leapt off and
disappeared.
    “Here, kitty.”
    Sorcha squealed and darted into the evergreen
bushes bordering the front of the mini-castle. Green needles
brushed against her thick fur, a piney smell penetrated her
nostrils. Quivering, she pressed against the rough brick.
    “Don’t be scared.” Through the branches,
Sorcha saw patches of blue denim as someone knelt in front of the
bushes. The voice was pitched high and sounded like a child’s. “You
can come out. I promise not to hurt you. Here, kitty, kitty.”
    A face pressed to the ground, peering at
Sorcha through an inch gap between two of the bushes. A girl. Small
face and nose, big ears and eyes. “Come out, kitty. I’ll give you
food. I left my sandwich on the porch. Wait here, I’ll get it.”
    Food. Sorcha stretched her neck to see
the girl better.
    The face disappeared. The girl scampered
away. A moment later she was back, waving a sandwich in front of
the bushes. The smell of turkey wafted into Sorcha’s nostrils.
    A hum reverberated inside her. She tried to
stop but it got louder.
    “Are you purring?” The girl’s voice sparkled.
“For me or the sandwich?”
    Sorcha’s front legs began doing an odd dance,
patting the ground in front of her one foot at a time, as if she
were kneading bread. She’d never had much to do with cats but it
was something this small feline body needed to do. The same way she
needed to move her hips when she played a Beyoncé song.
    “I can leave it here.” The girl slid backward
on the grass.
    Sorcha’s kneading slowed.
    “I’m at the sidewalk now. You can come out
and eat.”
    The voice sounded farther away. Sorcha
stopped her kneading and pressed against the brick wall. The smell
was calling to her to come and eat it. Her body urged her to go,
her mind argued to stay. It was the same way she felt before every
client’s reading.
    Still shaking, she took a tiny step forward.
Was she walking into a trap? Her cat ears heard the wind slap
against the leaves. If the girl moved, surely she’d make more noise
than the wind, giving Sorcha time to run back to the wall.
    She took another step. Another. And another.
Still huddled between the two bushes, she stopped, needles bunching
against her fur. She stretched out her neck. The half sandwich lay
on the ground inches away. Like bait for a fish. Sorcha peered
around instead of rushing forward, even though her empty stomach
protested.
    The girl sat cross-legged beneath a maple
tree, her elbows resting on her knees, her hands cupping her
cheeks. She beamed at Sorcha.
    “It’s okay.” The girl’s voice pitched high
and gentle in the singsong way people spoke to babies. “I promise
not to hurt you.”
    Sorcha darted out the last few inches,
grabbed the bread with her teeth, ripped off the top layer, tossed
it aside, then bit into a slice of shaved turkey. Carrying it in
her mouth, she dashed back between the long-needled branches to her
refuge against the brick. She tore at the turkey, chewing and
swallowing with