Dancing Cats of Applesap Page 3

  “The more I thought about those rabbits, the more I thought how Miss Toonie’s cats would be out on the street soon, getting shot at and kicked around, with nobody to love them.

  “I felt like one of those cats myself, sort of homeless and scared. Every time I closed my eyes I’d see Victor’s shotgun pointed straight at me, and I’d run, in my mind, up a tree. But even trees aren’t safe against shotguns. I guess I must have run around like that in my mind for about two hours trying to think of good places to hide. In the end, I fell asleep. But there was no place good enough to be completely safe.”

  Melba pauses, fiddling with the telephone cord.

  “Do you have a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records around anywhere?” she asks, suddenly changing the subject. “I haven’t read it lately. Maybe they already have a section on dancing cats. Living in a small town like Applesap, New York, I don’t always hear about what’s going on in the world.

  “I was thinking: if those cats turned up here, they’ve probably turned up in other places too. A place like New York City has probably had smarter and fancier dancing cats for years. If that’s true, I sure would look silly calling up the Guinness Book about a plain old thing that happens every day.

  “I’m tired,” says Melba, getting up again, but slowly this time. “I think I’ll go outside and sit on the porch, if you’ll excuse me. I need to be alone to think the problem out.”

  Chapter Six

  VICTOR’S SHOTGUN BLAST CERTAINLY had knocked the stuffing out of Melba. In gloom, she stayed in her room most of the next day, which was Saturday. The sky had turned an evil gray during the night. Rain was falling. Out on the front porch lay the carcasses of five skinny rabbits. Melba tried not to look at them when she came down for breakfast.

  Victor was out on the porch too, skinning a sixth and keeping an eye on the muddy vegetable garden that ran along the side of the house. Miraculously, the groundhog had escaped the shoot-out of the day before.

  “I bet he thinks he’s some smart hog,” grumbled Victor.

  “How do you know he’s not a girl?” asked Melba from the kitchen.

  It was still raining at four o’clock when Melba left her room again and came down to pick an umbrella out of the hall closet. There isn’t much that’s worse than sitting around a house that has a lot of dead rabbits lying just outside the front door.

  Melba went out, by the back door. She didn’t intend to go to Jiggs’. She intended never to look at that drug store again. But, in her misery, she splashed down Orchard Street, and plodded along School Street, and shuffled up Dunn Street until, almost by accident, she found herself standing in front of Jiggs’ Drug Store.

  It was closed. Outside, the rain had beaten the store’s wooden shingles to a sodden black. Inside, all the lights were out. Melba edged up to the grimy window and peered through. Nothing was stirring. She tried the wooden door. It was locked.

  No! It wasn’t! The door opened. Melba was standing hesitantly in the open doorway, a little afraid of running into Mr. Jiggs, when up from behind the soda fountain counter popped Miss Toonie like a fuzzy piece of toast, and up with her sprang one-eyed Butch and about twenty other cats. Twenty more leapt suddenly from behind the candy rack and then another thirty at least peeped out from thirty other hiding places around the store.

  “Well!” shrilled Miss Toonie, in her most ill-tempered voice. “It’s about time you got here. We’ve been waiting for hours!”

  “But how did you know I was coming?” asked surprised Melba, when she had been invited in and was sitting astride her usual stool.

  “What on earth do you mean?” squawked Miss Toonie. “We knew you were coming because of the plan. And what is it, by the way? We’re all dying to know how you’re going to save us.”

  At this, the cats moved in from all directions to surround Melba. Some rested on her feet; others crowded onto the counter near her elbows. One hundred and ninety-nine cat eyes looked expectantly at her, and Miss Toonie’s cat face stared out from the middle of them.

  “What plan?” gasped Melba.

  “Now that really is the limit!” howled Miss Toonie. “You go stamping around this store telling Mr. Jiggs he’s a spineless worm (which he is, of course) for selling out without a fight, and then you go stamping off in a perfect fury. And now here you are back again with nothing to show for it at all. When people get angry they usually do something about it! I guess you’re about as spineless as everyone else around here.

  “Come along cats,” said Miss Toonie, waving them off with an arm. “False alarm. Let’s get packing. Jiggs wants the whole place in boxes by Monday morning sharp. That’s when he signs the final sale papers,” she added, turning to Melba. “He’s over seeing the dry cleaners now to negotiate the price.”

  “Hey, wait a minute!” shouted Melba. “I didn’t know I was supposed to make a plan!”

  “Who else?” shrugged Miss Toonie. “You as good as said you would.”

  Melba blushed and gulped. Then, since they were slipping down anyway, she took off her glasses and began to polish them hard on a shirttail.

  Chapter Seven

  “MAYBE YOU NEED SOME food for thought,” Miss Toonie said. “There is nothing like a hot fudge sundae for stirring up brain cells.”

  “No, thanks. I’m not hungry,” said Melba. She was sitting on the stool doing her best to think straight and fast. It wasn’t something she was very good at. Victor, of course, was the fast thinker in the family. With him around all the time, Melba hadn’t gotten much practice on making plans over the years. She was used to standing about saying things like:

  “What shall we do now, Victor?”

  Or:

  “Victor, are you sure it will work?”

  Melba wished her brother were here to take over. He would have about ten plans ready in as many minutes, and being older, he could probably carry them out better.

  “How about if I ask Victor? He’d know what to do,” Melba asked Miss Toonie.

  “Not on your life!” she squawked in alarm. “I’m not letting that gunslinger anywhere near my cats. The only plan he’d think of is how to get them out in some field for target practice.”

  “I guess you’re right,” admitted Melba. She pushed two cats out of her lap and put her elbows on the counter.

  “I can see we’re crowding you,” said Miss Toonie. “Nobody can think with a bunch of cats breathing in her face. We’ll take ourselves off to the back room and let you alone for a while. It’s feeding time, anyhow.”

  “That’s all right,” said Melba, but Miss Toonie put two fingers in her mouth and blew a low, sharp whistle.

  It was answered by a bustle from all corners, an unfurling of cat tails and a beat of cat paws marching across the room. Melba swiveled around on her stool to watch the exodus.

  To her surprise, the cats did not come forth in a pushing, scampering jumble. Instead, they lined up, head to tail to head in the sort of queue you see in front of the movie theater on a first-run night.

  How was this? Each cat seemed to know its exact place in the lineup. While some cats waited their turn, others dropped into line, one at a time, in what appeared to be a well-learned order. There was no hissing or scratching to get ahead. Quietly, as if it were the sort of thing cats did more naturally than any other, they took their places and stood at attention, their tails shot straight up in the air. Broken down, earless, and legless, they looked like a proud column of old soldiers about to set off down Main Street for the Memorial Day parade.

  When the last cat was in place, the line went the length of the store. It ran out of space at the comic-book rack, sailed around and doubled back to the lipstick counter, and continued along to where the rubber gloves and shower caps were shelved. There it tapered off, and in silence each cat looked ahead through the tail of the one before it, waiting for some further signal.

  It came, another low whistle from Miss Toonie. Forward surged the line into the back room, while Miss Toonie, bending at
the waist, gave a fond rub to each back passing through.

  When the last cat had passed, she turned proudly to Melba and, in keeping with the military air of the procession, dashed off a stern salute.

  “Sorry for the delay,” she said apologetically. “It doesn’t do to have them herding about. Tears up the place and then old Jiggs is cross.”

  “But…” gasped Melba.

  “Oh, the cats understand quite well,” Miss Toonie went on. “They’ve run a tight ship from the beginning. I guess they figured out early on that order was the key to staying on in this store.

  “You know, out on his own and singly, a cat doesn’t appear to have much sense of order. People always complain that cats have minds of their own and lead stubborn, independent lives. And that’s true. It’s true for any animal that lives apart.

  “But get a mass of smart animals together, whether it’s elephants, ants, or cats, and you’ll see how order gets set up right away. Everybody pitches in to make life more bearable for himself and everybody else. When you’re living at close quarters, it’s the only possible way of getting along.”

  “That’s fantastic!” exclaimed Melba. “What else do they do besides march?”

  “Nothing else that I know of,” shrugged Miss Toonie, “and it’s not so fantastic really. Look at the circus. It’s got ponies and dogs and tigers walking about in lines all over the place. And doing a lot more besides.”

  “That’s right,” said Melba. “A lot more besides. You could work up an act with these cats and join the circus. Why haven’t you done it?”

  “The circus!” said Miss Toonie, scornfully. “My cats are not traveling performers! They’re quiet, ordinary folk who want to live together in quiet, ordinary ways. It’s not so much to ask, is it? A roof over one’s head and a regular dinner hour?”

  Miss Toonie took hold of her handkerchief and swabbed her nose violently.

  “Now you sit there and think!” she barked at Melba. Then she swayed off tragically into the back room after the cats.

  Melba sat on at the counter flicking dead flies to the floor in a dreamy way. As she sat, a smile spread over her face. Flick went a fly off the counter. Tick went a part of her brain.

  Melba was launching the tenth or eleventh fly when the idea came. A sort of crazy idea it was, but she couldn’t be choosy at a time like this.

  “Miss Toonie!” yelled Melba. “Miss Toonie, come here!”

  “It’s funny,” says Melba, reappearing suddenly from the front porch, “but when people expect you to do a thing, put their trust in you somehow, then suddenly, you begin to think maybe you can do it. And before you know it, even if you’re shy as a groundhog, you find you have done it and that it wasn’t very hard at all.

  “For instance, I’m a little nervous right now, maybe you’ve noticed, about calling up the Guinness Book of World Records. They’re a big outfit. They don’t like to be bothered with nobodies from places like Applesap, New York. Maybe they’ll laugh when they hear about the cats and tell me to go fly a kite. Maybe they’ll hang up in my face. I’m nervous about it, but listen!

  “Now that I’ve told you I’m going to do it, you kind of expect me to go through with it, right? And since you expect me to do it, I feel a little better about picking up the phone. You’re on my side, backing me up, if you see what I mean.

  “So, here goes. I’m really calling them, right now!”

  Chapter Eight

  WHILE THE CATS FEASTED on black raspberry ice cream and hot dogs (“Might as well give them the works,” sniffed Miss Toonie. “Nobody else is going to buy this stuff now.”), the old lady listened to Melba’s plan. She blinked, and scratched her ear. Then she shook her head.

  “It’ll never work,” said Miss Toonie. “Better think of something else.”

  “Why wouldn’t it work?” asked Melba. “The cats would be doing the same thing they do now, only out where people can see them.”

  “Listen,” said Miss Toonie, waving off a fly. “It’s one thing to march around when dinner is waiting in the next room. Quite another to go parading along Main Street. My cats are afraid of that street, anyhow. They’ve got bad memories of being mowed down out there.”

  “We could pack a lunch,” urged Melba. “They’d follow you if they knew you were carrying food.”

  “Can’t say whether they would at all,” grumbled Miss Toonie.

  “We’d go tomorrow afternoon. It’s Sunday and people aren’t out driving around so much,” said Melba, feeling, suddenly, a little like Victor. “Most people are hanging around their back yards wondering what to do next. Sunday is slack time in Applesap, just the time to draw attention to ourselves.”

  “Now see here,” snapped Miss Toonie. “I’m not going to have my cats making fools of themselves to entertain a few nitwits lolling about after Sunday dinner. And what would happen after that? I don’t see where it would lead.”

  “It would lead,” said Melba, polishing her glasses with determination, “right back to the store. Don’t you see, Miss Toonie? We need customers, and fast. Why we’ll have every kid in town following the cats down the street, and every man and every woman close behind wondering what’s going on. And when they get here they’ll be meeting up with each other and milling around and talking about the cats. And that’s when some of them will start wanting a coffee or a soda. And others will start remembering some little thing like pipe cleaners or shower caps that they need, and the next day more people…”

  “And the Super Queen is closed on Sundays!” cut in Miss Toonie.

  “That’s right!” shouted Melba, just remembering.

  “And in they’ll come to get what they can’t get anywhere else for once!” snickered Miss Toonie, showing her first healthy interest in customers in years.

  “And just to celebrate Jiggs’ staying open on Sundays,” said Melba, as if it were always part of the plan, “you’ll be serving free ice-cream cones!”

  “Now, wait a minute,” coughed Miss Toonie, pulling up short. “I’ve never in my life heard of Jiggs giving away free ice-cream cones. He’s always been a straight businessman: no slick advertising, no come-on tricks, no free giveaways.

  “Of course,” she added slyly, “he needn’t know what we’re up to.”

  Miss Toonie shot a thoughtful look through the front windows, opened her mouth to say something else, and…suddenly closed it with a click.

  “Hush down,” she told Melba. “Jiggs is here. That’s his car I see driving up.” She made a dash toward the back room for the cats.

  “I don’t know what that man thinks,” she called to Melba, “but he’s never yet figured out it’s his goods keeping these cats from starvation.”

  Hoot! went her low whistle, and in an instant the cats marched out in double time and their food trays were slung in the sink for washing. Then everyone fell into position in his usual pile or under his usual rack. By the time Mr. Jiggs arrived, small and yellow and toting a large brief case stuffed with final sale papers, Miss Toonie had her face in a movie magazine.

  Mr. Jiggs shuffled gloomily through the store without a word. When he stooped to pick up his guitar from behind the drug counter, a hundred cat tails twitched and one hundred ninety-nine eyes watched the movement intently. Mr. Jiggs passed out of sight into the back room. Soon the store was filled with the sound of his long, sad strums again. All around Melba the cats, apparently satisfied that nothing unusual was afoot, were closing their eyes and resting their chins on their paws. A general purr arose, vibrating the air like the noise crickets make on a warm moonlit evening.

  If Miss Toonie was irritated by Mr. Jiggs’ strumming, the cats, Melba noticed, were soothed by it. They loved the music, clearly, and listening herself, Melba had to admit its beauty. The melodies were a little sad perhaps, but beautiful, as sad music is that comes straight from the heart.

  “Pss-sst!” hissed Miss Toonie, interrupting the sleepy quiet. She beckoned Melba closer.

  “We can’t talk here,�
�� she whispered. “If I know old Jiggs (and after all these years I guess I know him), he’s socked in for the evening with that instrument.”

  “I’ve got to go home anyway,” said Melba apologetically. “It’s almost dinner time and my parents will be wondering where I am.”

  “Right!” said Miss Toonie. “I’ll meet you back here at eight o’clock sharp tomorrow morning. We won’t have to worry about Jiggs then. He spends his Sundays locked up in his house with the shades drawn.”

  “Why does he do that?” asked Melba getting down from her stool.

  “Who knows,” whispered the old lady. “He used to be a nice, regular fellow, a man who could hold his head up in town and feel proud of himself. Why he’d walk down the street and people would take their hats off to him and ask him for Sunday dinner and such.” Miss Toonie shook her head.

  “That was a long time ago, before the Super Queen came to town. Afterward, when business began to fall off, he went into hiding. I guess he couldn’t face up to the folks who used to be his customers but had gone over to the Super Queen. He’s still a proud man, that Jiggs,” said Miss Toonie wistfully.

  “But spineless!” she added with an ill-tempered snap, and she gazed fiercely at the cats, who lay about her like children in soft, sleepy piles. Then smoothing her skirt she came around the end of the counter to fetch her coat and hat. A minute later she was holding the door open for Melba, and the two went out into the rain, groping to raise their umbrellas against the wet and the trickle.

  Chapter Nine

  MELBA WOKE UP THE next morning (a fine, blue Sunday morning), and the first thing she did was have an attack of the jitters. This was nothing unusual. The jitters were as much a part of Melba’s life as the weather. Like the weather, they came and went, blackening some days with dread, clouding up others with worry, blowing an hour to nervous pieces and then dying down and fading away again.

  The jitters might attack three times in one week or three times in one day, or they might settle in for a sweaty-palmed siege. Often, they came at the worst possible moment: when Melba wanted to answer a teacher’s question but then (the jitters!) couldn’t open her mouth; when Melba tried out for the school play but then (gasp—the jitters!) could only choke and gurgle on stage.