copy of A Farewell to Arms “—aren’t. Although half that problem will be solved in a few days.”
Rik didn’t say anything, but that fine line appeared between his dark eyes again. Down one of the aisles, I heard the unmistakable sound of cat spray hitting something hard, and hurried to see what Oscar was doing, yelling “Bad cat! Bad-bad-bad!” There was a tell-tale puddle on the worn floorboards near the rack of children’s books—Oscar had targeted the children’s dictionary the kittens used to fancy. They’d been ignoring the book for the last few days, so I’d placed it back on the shelf, but now it was ruined. Gingerly pulling the thick book out of the stack, I noticed something odd imbedded in the top of the spine—a shed claw-cover, which gleamed softly in the center of the now-damp spine, as if the book had been pulled out by one downward-moving cat paw, from the top, the way a person might pull out a book, rather than the way a cat would to it—by raking on the spine itself, until the book wiggled free of the rest or, the shelf.
Oscar’s puddle of urine began to spread on the floor, so I ran to the back room for a paper towel, the ruined dictionary with the imbedded claw momentarily forgotten. But as I was mopping up the mess, I head Rik shout, “No, you guys, c’mere—” and I knew instantly that the kittens had escaped.
I ran, wet paper towel still wadded up in one hand, to the window, which was now a mere tableau of books and fading pictures—no more Scooter, no Mittens. Rik was outside the door, looking quickly up and down the street, but when he turned to reenter the store, I knew just from looking at his face. They were gone. And the terrible thing was, I could so easily imagine their flight—Scooter with his long side-fur rippling like a soft curtain along his hips and flank. Mittens with her small fox-like face moving quickly from side to side, both of them running fast, their legs scissoring in the spring sunlight, as they hurried down some alley-way.…
Rik tried to explain what had happened, but I was devastated. He’d been placing some new Dean Koontz books on the bestseller’s shelf, when he heard the door jingle, but no incoming footsteps—only the sharp scrabble of many claws hitting hardwood, then the door jingled shut again. By the time he’d turned around, and gone to the door, both of them had vanished. And my store was located in the middle of a side-street, which meant they could’ve gone in any direction.
On top of everything else, my front door pulled outward, being an old wooden and glass door that I’d kept because it was so antique and old-fashioned…so the kittens, if they moved as one, might have been able to shove it open.
Sick at heart, I left the store, and went searching for the kittens in the alleys near my business, calling and pleading for them to come back, but it was as if they’d never existed. All I had left of them was a framed copy of that Metro section photo, and a claw-casing stuck in the spine of a ruined children’s dictionary.
After I’d given up looking for them, long after Rik had closed the store for me (he’d left a note on the counter, which merely read “I’m so, so sorry” in his large, flowing handwriting), I went to the back room, and picked up the blanket they’d slept on for the last couple of months. It still smelled of their fur, a warm, slightly “hot” scent which reminded me ever so slightly of old paperback books and binding glue. My bookstore kittens even smelled like books…but when I squeezed the blanket next to my chest, I felt something hard inside. I’d long ago put the cores of the nesting doll sets back on the shelf, so I couldn’t imagine what the kittens had shoved into the folds of the blanket, until I shook it, and a tiny bridge pencil, the kind of writing implement no bigger around then a coffee stir-stick, and only half again as long, fell to the floor.
“Where in the world did they get that?” I muttered, as April and Oscar tentatively came into the room, and began rubbing on my legs. Looking down at Oscar, I remembered the dictionary he’d sprayed, and—still hugging the furry blanket close to my heart—walked back into the store-proper, where it rested on the floor near the children’s shelf.
I began leafing through it, and soon found that some of the pages had been marked up, with random pencil scrawls that resembled that “graffiti” style of printing used for hand-held electronic notebooks. I’d seen Rik use that style of writing; according to some of the Tech sections I’d read in the Pioneer Press and Star Tribune, it was very popular with young computer-users. Looking down at the scribbles on the pages, I realized that someone had been trying to copy some of the words, printing clumsily at first, but with increasing legibility—and, if I held the book just so under the overhead lights, I could also make out thin fine scratch marks at the tops of the pages, as if someone with very long, needle-tipped nails had been paging through the book—
The possibility was so absurd, yet so…plausible, I found myself breathing hard and fast, while I rifled the pages of the book, looking for those oddly-printed letters, and, ultimately, words.
“A” “B”…all the way through “Y” and “Z”. Then, short words, “AN” “TO” “AND”…and on to the inevitable “CAT”.…
Those strange mitten feet. So much like a hand, with an opposable thumb. And that bridge pencil was small and thin enough to just fit in that narrow space between those bifid paws.
Rik leaving the light on, along with that book. Did he give them the pencil, when he visited them that night? Or had they used it in the lab?
Leaning heavily against the rack of children’s books, feeling the horizontal thickness of the shelf edge dig into my back, I paged through the dictionary, looking at the last pages of the book, and what was written there:
“BOOK GOOD. READ MORE? OPEN THE DOOR, READ MORE AT NIGHT.”
They had grammar. They had punctuation. And, I assumed, they had human genes, mixed in with feline ones. Maybe even a dash of raccoon, for additional manual dexterity.…
Rik and his roommate Jake worked in the genetics department. Not cleaning the lab, like Rik had implied. And not merely working with rodents, either. How long had he been working with me, five, six years?
It didn’t take that much time for those folks who added a bit of jellyfish DNA to a white rabbit, in order to make its fur glow green under black light, to create their living work of “art”…but it would take time for Rik and Jake and whoever else they worked with in that lab to teach a “hu-line” chimera to read.…
Or spend time letting them read, I thought, as I looked at my small literary sanctuary, my private bookdom…which was much like a school for Hemingway kittens. They had the time, and the light (be it from the backroom, or from the streetlamp which shone into my window at night), and all the schoolbooks they needed. I supposed that whatever Rik or Jake or whoever created the kittens did to them changed their eyes, made them able to read two-dimensional print even as they may have sacrificed their innate ability to see well in low light, so they needed regular light to read…and they already had the “hands” to turn a page. I couldn’t watch them every second while I was in the store, so it would have been so easy for them to surreptitiously turn a page while looking at whatever book Rik had propped open before them.
And if they could read, they could understand…the only question was, did they escape on their own, or did Rik let them out, perhaps handing them off to a waiting friend?
I’d been so insistent about getting Scooter neutered, when of course Rik couldn’t allow that—
Scooter was about five or so months old, close to teen-age years in human terms. Perhaps he was almost ready to graduate from my “school” already…and took Mittens along with him when he left, if leave on his own he did. Or, maybe he and Mittens needed to find an easier way to write, perhaps on a computer screen…if they could manage a bridge pencil, a stylus would be
