The Catswold Portal

She crouched on the white line in the center of the highway, dazed by the lights now coming from both directions. Again tires squealed, another car skidded, and she ran wildly as it slid sideways. Through its open window a woman screamed at her. She could taste the smell of burning rubber as she fled toward the gravel ditch beside the diner.

She scrambled and slid down the side of the ditch to safety.

Above on the highway the car straightened and went on, the driver cursing.

There was water in the ditch. It tasted faintly of dog urine. She drank, gulping, then rested, panting and pawing at her sore eye.

At last her heaving heart slowed. She roused herself and began to stalk the smell of food. She climbed out of the ditch and crept across the parking lot, taking shelter under a car ten feet from the steps of the diner. She stared out at the door where the smell was strongest. The noise of the juke box, of boots moving inside on the wood floor, and of raised voices and occasional shouts made her tremble. Suddenly the door was flung open, noise blared out, and she fled as three men swung out loudly arguing, clumping down the steps toward her. Panicked, she streaked through the darkness toward the rear of the diner.

There she paused, drawn by the smells from the four garbage cans.

She could smell dog, too. Warily she stalked the garbage cans, then jumped onto one. She pawed at the lid and when she could not get inside, she moved to the next can.

All four were sealed tightly. At last she leaped down and slunk back to the front of the building.

As she crouched beside a truck, huddled against its rear tire, two women came out of the diner. They were quieter than the men, and she didn’t run. They saw her white parts catching the light from the diner’s window, and they began to croon over her. She backed away from them under the truck, tensed to run. But then the women went back inside.

She was still there when they returned, knelt down beside the porch, and pushed a paper plate under it. “Here, kitty. Here kitty, kitty, kitty.”

She smelled the food, close enough to make her drool. She didn’t come out until the women had left.

Then she fled underneath, and stalked the plate.

Convinced there was no danger, she attacked the food. She gulped fried hamburger, potato skins, and spaghetti. She ate until her stomach was distended. Then she curled down beside the plate and slept.

When she woke, the diner was silent. No noise, no lights. She stared out from under the porch at the expanse of blacktop. The shelter of parked cars was gone. She crouched in the blackness beneath the porch, watching and listening. She saw no movement, and she heard no sound to threaten her. Far in the distance thrummed the soft hoot of an owl.

She finished the potato skins and spaghetti, then chewed the greasy paper plate to remove every last bit of goodness.

She came out from under the stair pawing at her sore left eye and staring warily around the parking lot.

When she was certain that nothing threatened, she sat down in the center of the blacktop and began to wash her front paws and her face. Then she sat staring toward the south. From that direction something drew her. Faint, incomprehensible images touched her. Dark spaces beckoned. In her puzzled feline thoughts, stone caverns waited, and safety.

She rose and left the parking lot, trotting due south along the shoulder of the highway.

When trucks passed she veered into the tall grass. She passed under an occasional oak tree, and glanced up into its branches, where instinct told her height meant safety. When she came across the fresh scent of another cat she ran. She kept moving steadily, obsessed with the sense of deep, sheltering caverns somewhere ahead.

She traveled all night. By morning her left eye was matted and oozing, and the pads of her feet were beginning to crack. At first light, as the sky began to redden, she climbed, exhausted, into an oak tree. She curled into a concave where three branches met, and slept.

She came down at mid-morning, hungry again. The sense of stone caverns drew her on, she kept moving and did not turn aside to hunt; she knew little about hunting; a kitten must be taught by its mother to hunt with skill.

Late in the afternoon she approached an abandoned shack. She was very hungry. She watched the shack and listened for a quarter of an hour, then she crawled underneath it to rest. Here she stumbled on the scent of mice. Investigating, she discovered a mouse nest. She ate the six baby mice, then stalked the cobwebby darkness where the mouse smell was strongest.

She caught a grown mouse not sufficiently wary. She killed it quickly and ate it, but she caught no more. It was that night, when she tried to catch a rat, that she learned how viciously a small beast could attack, and learned how to fight her prey.