Cat's Eyewitness Read Online Free Page B

behaved.”
    “Most times.”
    Within seconds Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker marched through the mudroom into the kitchen, the delicious smells curling into their nostrils.
    Desi, the black and white kitten, and Lucy, the red tabby, puffed up like blowfish.
    Tucker ignored them as they spit at her.
    “Worms,”
Pewter said.
    “Oh, Pewts, they’re scared enough.”
    As the kittens crouched low and crept forward toward the visiting animals, Harry sat down and took a sip of her espresso, whipped cream swaying on top. “God, this is fabulous.” She then relayed Susan’s fears.
    “She could ask him,” Alicia kindly said.
    “Susan won’t. She’s kind of paralyzed,” Harry observed. “Also, she doesn’t want to hear a lie.”
    “She’s feeling left out. Overreacting. Right now he can’t spend a lot of time with her,” BoomBoom remarked. “And he never flirted with me. She has nothing to worry about.”
    “That puts him in a special class.” Alicia ate some of her whipped cream with the small demitasse spoon. “I don’t know Ned as you all do, but, without intending to stray, people do fall into one another’s arms.” Alicia turned to Harry, who never could get used to looking into those fabulous violet-tinged eyes. “And Susan is ninety miles away, beginning to worry about turning forty, I expect. I’m not saying Ned is having an affair, but sometimes it just . . . happens.”
    “It never happened to me.”
    BoomBoom couldn’t resist. “Put on a little makeup, hike up your boobs in a lace lift-and-separate bra, and, Harry, it will happen.”
    The two women laughed as Harry, face red, looked deeply into her cup. “I can read whipped cream. Did you all know that? Other fortune-tellers read tea leaves or tarot cards, but I read whipped cream, and this whipped cream tells me there are two bad girls tormenting a saint. Karma! Beware of karma.” As they laughed, Harry’s mind flashed back to the statue. Since she had grown up with BoomBoom, she knew the blonde was accustomed to her hopping from subject to subject. “Susan and I saw the Virgin Mary cry blood! Today. Weird. Scary, actually.”
    Harry filled in BoomBoom and Alicia about this strange event as well as why both she and Susan were at the monastery grounds.
    The kittens became emboldened enough to slink toward the grown cats.
    Little Lucy, belly flat on the heart-pine floor, reached out and batted Pewter’s fat, fluffy tail.
    “Hey.”
Pewter flicked her tail.
    “It’s alive!”
Lucy shrieked, jumping back.
    Desi, rocking back and forth, eyes wide, couldn’t believe Pewter’s tail.
    “It’s too short. Now, my tail is the proper length for my body.”
Mrs. Murphy slyly thrashed her tail a bit.
    “My tail is not too short. It’s full. I have Russian blue blood. My bones are big.”
    “Oh, la.”
Mrs. Murphy rolled her lustrous eyes.
    “What’s a Russian blue?”
Desi squeaked.
    “A figment of her ever-active imagination.”
Mrs. Murphy rolled over, displaying a creamy beige tummy.
    Pewter turned her back on Mrs. Murphy.
“Alley cat.”
    “Oh, bull, Pewter, we’re all alley cats. This is America. Even the humans are alley cats.”
    “Am I an alley cat?”
Little Lucy softly came up to Mrs. Murphy, who rolled over to look the tiny bundle of red fur in the eye.
    “You are.”
    “Are you my mommy?”
Lucy asked.
    “Ha!”
Pewter hooted.
    Desi padded up to Mrs. Murphy. He squeezed tight against his sister.
“We don’t remember our mommy very well. She didn’t come home one night.”
    “Where were you?”
Tucker joined with the cats.
    At first the kittens puffed up, then calmed down when Tucker, who seemed very big, smiled at them reassuringly.
    “We lived in a washing machine down in the ravine.”
    “Ah.”
None of the adults said anything after that, since all knew their mother had been killed in some fashion.
    “How did you find BoomBoom?”
Mrs. Murphy inquired.
    “She and the other pretty lady were riding and we