Dancing Cats of Applesap Read online

  A knocking on the front door broke the silence. Miss Toonie tensed.

  “Don’t answer,” she whispered. “I’m not seeing people.” Melba sat still. The knock came again. Then, after a pause, a mournful call:

  “Miss Toonie? I must see you, Miss Toonie.”

  Silence, while the old lady shook her head at Melba and Melba bit her lip.

  “Miss Toonie!” came the cry again. The rapping was more insistent. “It’s me. Jiggs. Open the door for heaven’s sake!”

  Melba sat up in surprise, and even Miss Toonie showed a bit of interest in this announcement.

  “What does he want?” she hissed.

  Melba shrugged in amazement. “Have you seen him since the march?”

  “Of course not!” whispered Miss Toonie. “I figured he’d locked himself into his house for good. And well he might after what he did to my cats. Dancing after hours, what a thing!” she said bitterly. “Tell him to go away.”

  “Shouldn’t you find out what he wants?” said Melba.

  “Should I?”

  “Yes. You should. Maybe he’s decided to reopen the store.”

  “Hah!” snorted Miss Toonie. “He’s deeper in debt than I am.”

  “Well?” said Melba.

  “Well!” Miss Toonie spluttered and gave in. “All right then! Open the door and let the spineless fool in!” But she was drawing herself up on the sofa and smoothing her fuzz into place as Melba flung open the door and helped the yellow-faced Mr. Jiggs totter into the room.

  Chapter Seventeen

  MR. JIGGS TOOK TWO wobbling steps into Miss Toonie’s living room, and stopped.

  “Is he here?” he gasped. “He must be here! I’ve been everywhere else!”

  The old man was worn out. He clung to Melba’s arm. But his eyes raced madly around the room and small drops of perspiration shone on his hairless forehead. Mr. Jiggs swayed to the right to peer into Miss Toonie’s dim, lacy dining room. He veered left and looked up the steep stairway to the second floor. He staggered forward again, wiping his hand over the top of his head.

  “Who?” Melba was crying.

  “Who on earth?” Miss Toonie was calling out.

  Mr. Jiggs was too distraught to answer directly.

  “The back porch,” he panted. “Where is the back porch?”

  “I don’t have a back porch,” snapped Miss Toonie, losing her patience. “And will you kindly tell me who it is you are barging about my house looking for?”

  Mr. Jiggs wilted, and dropped into a chair by the front door. But he sat forward a second later, beckoning to Melba.

  “Go look,” he wheezed and pointed, “at the back yard. Some door or other. Some window. I saw him, you know. Nearly had him. And he was sitting on my back porch!”

  “Who!” shrieked Melba and Miss Toonie together in final desperation.

  “Butch, you fools!” roared Mr. Jiggs. “Who else?”

  He wilted again, and laid his head against the back of the chair, and closed his eyes.

  Miss Toonie shook her head.

  “See?” she muttered at Melba. “He’s gone crazy. I told you not to let him in.”

  But Melba was watching the old man closely. How small he looked, flung back in the chair. And his face, she noticed, was not red or purple or bulging, but white. It was white and very frightened.

  “Mr. Jiggs?” she asked gently. “What has happened to Butch?”

  “He’s gone,” came the answer. “Escaped!”

  “When?”

  “Early this afternoon.” Mr. Jiggs opened his eyes. “I nearly had him,” he moaned again. “But he couldn’t wait. He saw them coming after him.”

  “Who?” said Melba. Miss Toonie knew the answer to that. She was already on her feet.

  “The humane society,” whispered Mr. Jiggs. He glanced over his shoulder. “They are searching the neighborhoods around Glowville and Applesap. And they have made radio broadcasts. I’ve heard them myself. Rabid, they say he is. Crazed. Dangerous!” He turned and appealed to Miss Toonie.

  “He isn’t, you know. He just wanted to get out.”

  Without a word, Miss Toonie wheeled and ran for the windows on the far side of the house.

  “He’s hurt,” Mr. Jiggs called after her. “Cut. The barbed wire!”

  “I can’t see him,” Miss Toonie shouted back. “I’m going out to call.” A door banged shut.

  “Barbed wire!” cried Melba. “What happened?”

  Mr. Jiggs insisted on getting up again. He positioned himself by the living room’s front windows and, like a fearful sentry, peered around the edge of the curtain at the street.

  “I heard a noise—a sort of cry—from my back porch,” he began, “and when I lifted the shade to see what it could be, there was Butch! Well, it wasn’t the first time, of course. He knew my house. He used to come sometimes from the store to find me late at night. Then we’d keep each other company. But this time, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’d seen him not an hour before at the pound, you see, cooped up with all the others.”

  “Butch came to visit you?” interrupted Melba in amazement. Mr. Jiggs shrugged. His pale face reddened.

  “And you went to see the cats?” Melba persisted.

  “Of course I went!” Mr. Jiggs flung the curtain aside and looked far off down the street. “I couldn’t leave the cats there to rot by themselves. I went every morning,” he said, turning to glare at Melba. “And what’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing!” cried Melba. “Only we thought you didn’t care. Miss Toonie said you…”

  “Miss Toonie! What does Miss Toonie know!” Mr. Jiggs choked and swung back to the window. “She didn’t see me. I saw her, though, moping in front of the cages. I wasn’t about to let her see me!”

  “But why?” asked Melba, thinking suddenly that this was the first conversation she had ever had with Mr. Jiggs. Poor old fellow. He looked beaten down in a new way now; a new, terrified, cornered way.

  He was wearing a lumpy, gray raincoat much too large for his small frame. It made Melba think again of what a fragile old man he really was. His roarings and bellowings were not so very frightening when you looked closely. He used them, thought Melba, like the raincoat itself, as a rather flimsy cover against a lifetime of bad weather and worse luck; against disappointment and self-disgust and people who had once expected great things from him (Druggist of the Year, perhaps!), but who now, like Miss Toonie, only shrugged and frowned when his name was mentioned.

  Poor lonely man. Melba felt sorry for him. He had not one friend to stand by his side: not a grumpy Miss Toonie; not even a brother who was a wild man. He was too embarrassed to allow himself any friends.

  “Never mind why,” Melba said quietly. “What about Butch?”

  Mr. Jiggs swung around again and fixed her with a fierce eye.

  “Well, as I was saying, I saw Butch. But before I could get to him, he ran off. Then I saw a black humane society van coming down the street, and I was beginning to put two and two together when the telephone rang. Without thinking, I answered. It was the humane society calling to report Butch’s escape. They thought he might turn up at the store, and wanted to warn me. Hah!” Mr. Jiggs face puffed with anger.

  “Butch had jumped an employee, a woman who was walking the cats in an outdoor pen, they said. He leapt on her, and from her onto a fence. And he clawed his way up and escaped through barbed wire over the top. They know he was cut because of the blood. And the woman is scratched. She is hysterical. She thinks Butch is rabid. Only a rabid animal would act in such a crazy way, she said. Only a sick cat would rake itself through barbed wire and run to get away!

  “But don’t you see?” shouted Mr. Jiggs. “He’d had enough. Miserable cat! I’ve had the feeling myself!” He was shaking with anger now and Melba found herself stepping away from him. After all, there was nothing flimsy about Mr. Jiggs’ rages. They were ugly and menacing, a threat to everyone within earshot. Melba was backing slowly into the kitchen when a door
banged again. Miss Toonie shot into the room.

  “Butch is not here,” she announced. “But the humane society is!”

  Melba and Mr. Jiggs spun around to the windows, and gasped. Outside, a little way off, a black van was moving cautiously down the street. A man was walking beside it, keeping pace. He stopped to examine a back yard, and when he stopped, so did the van. And then together they proceeded on again. The man was wearing heavy leather boots. In his hand he carried a stick.

  The van came abreast of Miss Toonie’s house, and now Melba could see the gold letters painted on the side: Glowville Humane Society. The van stopped. A door opened and a second man stepped out, a big man in identical leather boots who gestured and called the first man over. They met on the sidewalk and spoke to each other. But their eyes, as they talked, were probing the bushes in Miss Toonie’s front yard, and the ragged weeds in her flower bed, and finally, the steps of her front porch.

  It was as the three inside the house watched this scene with wide-open eyes, and strained to overhear the conversation, that another noise suddenly caught their ears.

  “Meow,” came the noise, soft and shy.

  “Mew,” from somewhere out back.

  “Meow,”—let me in—Butch was calling.

  Chapter Eighteen

  LATER, MISS TOONIE WAS able to recognize Butch’s flight: how he had instinctively chosen the only road that might take him direct from Glowville to Applesap; how he had arrived at the drug store (bleeding badly, the signs were there on the front step) and prowled around its shuttered windows in vain; how he had sought out Mr. Jiggs’ house, where, sighted by the black wheeled monster that dogged his heels, he had bolted into brush, and dragged himself through back yards, in a direction he vaguely sensed might lead to Miss Toonie.

  (“But how did he know?” Melba was to ask, many times, in the weeks following. “He’d never been to Miss Toonie’s house!”

  “Blind luck,” was Victor’s answer.

  “Humph!” said Miss Toonie. “You can think that if you want!”)

  Later Miss Toonie explained everything, but now—now Butch lay on the kitchen floor with a gaping wound running down his left side. It shocked them all to see it.

  “Towels!” bellowed Miss Toonie. “In the linen closet, top of the stairs!”

  Mr. Jiggs raced for them.

  “Antiseptic!” he roared down.

  “In the bathroom cabinet! Get the cotton, too!”

  “Hot water!” they cried, converging again in the kitchen while, in the middle of their rushing, Melba knelt at Butch’s head and stroked the sad, beaten-up face. It was streaked with mud. Burrs snagged in the fur. Butch’s one eye was open. It seemed sleepy and distant. Melba stroked softly and tried to whisper comforting words.

  “You’re home, old cat,” she told him. “Don’t worry. You’re home and nothing can happen to you now.”

  But even as she spoke a loud knock sounded at the front door. And Miss Toonie, at work cleaning the wound with a piece of cotton, heard it. And Mr. Jiggs, turning up the stove under a pan of hot water, heard it. And they all froze.

  “The humane society!” breathed Mr. Jiggs. No one could think of what to do next. They stared at each other. They stared at Butch, lying torn and bleeding between them. No one could think of anything at all.

  “They’ve seen him,” croaked Miss Toonie. “They know he’s here!”

  Panic, like a cold icy light, spread over the kitchen, and, as if it had been struck by a fairy tale curse, the little group turned to stone. Time passed. The knock came again, harder this time.

  Perhaps from long experience, Melba was the first to move. After all, she’d had some practice dealing with icy spotlights and turning to stone. Jitters—and they were thick in the room at that moment—were things she battled daily. But jitters were usually frightened feelings that Melba had about just herself. Now, she was frightened for Butch, who lay bleeding to death at her feet, and for Miss Toonie, who loved him, and for Mr. Jiggs, speechless with terror.

  Perhaps it was being frightened for everybody that gave Melba the courage to move. Perhaps it was forgetting about herself.

  Melba stood up and, out of habit, adjusted her glasses.

  “Miss Toonie,” she said softly, “you hide Butch. Carry him somewhere. Anywhere. Mr. Jiggs will bring the towels and cotton.

  “Quick!” she added, for they were slow getting started. “Take him to the cellar. I’ll handle the humane society. I’ll tell them you’re not here.”

  “They won’t believe you,” groaned Miss Toonie. “Oh, what shall we do? What shall we do?”

  “Yes, they will believe me,” whispered Melba, “if I do it right. I’ve got an idea. I think I can manage.” And suddenly, she knew she could manage. Her mind was clear, and cool, and very, very smart.

  “Go on,” whispered Melba, as another loud knock rattled the door.

  A minute later, Melba was opening it timidly. And smiling politely. And rubbing her skinny elbow—she knew just how to do that—in such a way that anybody looking at her would know she was a shy little girl who was afraid to answer questions. Anyone who looked would see in a minute that she was scared to death of her own voice; too scared to be much help in finding a crazed, rabid cat; too shy to tell anyone anything but the absolute truth.

  “Nobody is here,” murmured Melba to the two giant men who stood on the front porch in their creaking leather boots. “And I haven’t seen any cats today.”

  The leather boots were suspicious. Hadn’t a frightened neighbor just reported seeing a large gray cat in this very back yard? Hadn’t the men themselves watched someone—an older woman perhaps?—open a window and scoop something—perhaps that very cat!—off a ledge? Wasn’t this Miss Toonie’s house, and she a known lover of cats?

  Was she? Had they seen that? Melba rubbed her elbow harder and looked confused. But underneath the tortoise-shell glasses sliding crookedly on her nose, her mind sped smoothly down a single track.

  “Oh! It was me you saw,” she answered meekly. “I wasn’t scooping anything. Just cleaning the house and shaking out a dust rag. Miss Toonie isn’t here. She went to look for the cat.”

  The men shrugged at each other. They scuffed their boots on the ground and looked over her shoulder into the living room.

  Wasn’t anyone else here at all?

  Melba shook her head.

  Was Melba absolutely sure she hadn’t seen that cat?

  Melba was sure. She was so timidly sure, and so seemingly terrified by the thought of a rabid cat on the loose, that the men began to feel embarrassed.

  “Didn’t mean to upset you. Nothing to worry about!” announced the man with the stick.

  “You stay in the house,” added the other. “There’s no way to tell what a crazy cat like that will do next.”

  Melba nodded, and twisted her fingers into a fantastic knot. Behind her glasses, her eyes narrowed slyly. Her plan was working!

  The man with the stick caught the look. Instantly he was suspicious again. He beamed his eyes on Melba’s face like a bright light, and for a moment Melba thought he was looking straight through her. Straight through into the cellar below, where three forms huddled in the darkness, listening, and trembling, and fearing the worst.

  But who could be suspicious of Melba’s small, shy head bent over that extraordinary snarl of fingers? The man dropped his eyes and turned to go.

  “Take care,” advised his friend. They walked back to the van and continued along the street, moving slowly, terribly slowly, so slowly that it seemed to Melba an hour passed before she dared fling open the cellar door and call triumphantly down to those hiding in the gloom.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “LIGHTS!” CRIED MISS TOONIE. Melba licked the switch at the top of the stairs. Mr. Jiggs’ pale face looked out from behind the furnace. “Gone?”

  “Gone!” yelled Melba. “I did it! I did it!” There was a scuffling and a scraping behind the furnace. Then Mr. Jiggs was lumbering up
the stairs with an energy Melba had never seen in him before. And he was shaking her hand, and bellowing like an ecstatic bull: “Brilliant work! Splendid job! Miserable cellar! We thought you’d never come!”

  He flung himself back down to Miss Toonie, helping her to her feet and propelling her across the floor. Butch lay cradled, amidst towels, in her arms.

  “Stop pushing! You’ll squash the poor cat,” she snapped. Mr. Jiggs, however, was not to be contained. He leaped and fluttered about her, and when she stumbled mounting the stairs would have picked her up and carried her, Butch and all, if she hadn’t kept him at bay with one elbow.

  “Look what she’s done! Made a bandage out of cotton, and in the dark too! He’s stopped bleeding!” crowed Mr. Jiggs. He pumped Melba’s hand again and pranced out to the living room windows to inspect the street himself.

  “How is Butch?” Melba asked Miss Toonie as she lowered the cat gently onto the kitchen table.

  “He’ll be all right,” she answered sternly, “if that old fool will stop shouting.”

  But even through her sternness, she looked pleased and couldn’t help giving Melba a bony hug. Melba blushed and grinned with pride.

  “It’s about time a plan of mine worked.”

  “We couldn’t imagine what you were doing up there,” said Miss Toonie, smiling. “Jiggs was sure they had dragged you kicking and screaming off to jail. He was really quite worried. We couldn’t hear a thing, you see!”

  Melba grinned again. “I was being shy,” she said breezily. “It comes in handy sometimes.” Then, from the living room, Mr. Jiggs exploded with an enormous sneeze that made them both jump, and laugh.

  “He’s allergic to cellar dust,” Miss Toonie confided. “We had to stop him up with towels while you were handling the humane society. I’ve never seen a man so terrified to sneeze. I think he would have strangled himself rather than give us all away.” The old lady seemed unaccountably cheerful over this report. And when Mr. Jiggs appeared in the door threatening another gigantic explosion, she handed him her own handkerchief before pushing him off into the living room. He backed away, shamefaced, and erupted violently up the front stairs.