Chapter 6 #2
It wasn’t long before we had our first visitors, a young couple with a child who fell instantly and irrevocably in love with a pair of Clowder’s kittens.
Delighted by this unexpected success, I waived the fee, which was more of a suggested donation anyhow, and they left the shelter with a delighted child and two additions to their family, while Clowder seemed only too pleased to have her burden lightened.
“Back down to forty-eight,” I muttered to myself with a smile. I wasn’t just happy that the kittens had found a good home; two fewer cats meant two fewer mouths to feed. Given the state of our finances, it would come as a great relief if we could reduce our charges to a more manageable number.
The sky cleared after lunch and golden light streamed through the windows.
The rumble of horse-drawn carts and the occasional automobile outside formed a pleasant backdrop—this part of the city was much more bustling than Rue Sainte-Roseline.
Banshee claimed a patch of floor lit by a sunbeam, rolling onto her back and generally behaving as if she’d forgotten she’d changed locations, which was entirely possible.
The shelter cats had nestled into their new blankets with pleasure, and looked entirely ridiculous set against the gold thread and costly wool, though naturally they displayed only self-entitlement and had already put rents in more than one scarf.
The only exception was Thoreau, who had sniffed the glittering scarf I offered him with suspicion before returning to his well-worn flannel bed.
I began, for the first time, to feel optimistic about our prospects. Had all my anxieties been nothing more than an overactive imagination, fuelled by my recent brush with destructive magic? Perhaps my mysterious landlord was simply an inept businessman.
Unfortunately, my success that morning was proven an anomaly rather than the start of a run of luck; the few visitors we had after lunch were more curious about us than interested in bringing home a pet.
I spoke to an elderly couple who lived above the library, then a young waitress at La Fin.
While we exchanged pleasantries, I noticed Yannick speaking to a small, elegant woman by the counter, who wore a cloak lined with luxuriant fur.
Her hair and eyes were dark against a pale face, and there was something about her that drew my eye, though I couldn’t put a name to it.
Banshee, meanwhile, had worked herself into one of her panics. She paced about, howling silently at me, her spine stiff with tension.
“Hush,” I told her, a ridiculous admonishment from my perspective, but certainly Banshee seemed to think she was clearly communicating her feelings.
“Go find His Majesty, if you’re in that much of a state.
” The large cat often had a calming influence on Banshee, even if he did sometimes respond to her panic by repeatedly swatting her on the head.
The waitress left and the woman in the fur approached me. “Cats, hein?” she said, smirking at them, then at me, as if I were in on some joke. “That’s a new one. What happened to that uptight woman? The one with the scarves?”
“She—decided to change locations,” I said. Something about the stranger made me uncomfortable. “Without notice, I was told.”
The woman nodded, seeming unsurprised. I couldn’t guess her age, nor could I tell which animal her coat had been made from. Without another word, she turned and strode to our back room, closing the door firmly behind her.
This was odd, but because I’d seen her talking to Yannick, I assumed she was some associate of his, who must have therefore felt she had special dispensation to wander about as she chose.
This annoyed me, but when I went to see what the woman was up to, I found the little sitting room empty.
So she had gone out the back door, then, choosing to use the shelter as a shortcut between Rue des Hirondelles and Parc Saint-Aimé.
I tripped over the Persian rug as I turned to go—the corner had a habit of folding over on itself.
élise and I turned our attention to my afternoon checklist, which primarily consisted of grooming tasks—nail trimming and checking the cats for matting.
Thoreau required regular bathing due to his age, and one of the other adults had an allergic rash I was attempting to treat with a lotion I’d purchased from a sheep breeder.
“How many checklists do you have?” enquired Yannick, who for some reason was still hanging about.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to,” élise muttered as she expertly manhandled Fant?me, a pale Siamese who disdained nail trimming more than most.
I rolled my eyes. “Morning, afternoon, and evening,” I replied. “Hardly a vast number. And it prevents us from overlooking any chores.”
“You’re forgetting the weekly checklists,” élise said. “One for the shelter, the other for the accounting.”
“Well, yes, but—”
“And the monthly checklists,” she went on. “And the monthly inventory. And all those diagrams of our donations and expenses you keep in the filing cabinet.”
“Those are charts, not checklists.”
“Ah, charts.” élise gave Yannick a knowing look—he was beginning to smile. “Agnes’s second-favourite occupation.”
I threw a comb at her.
“It must be hard,” Yannick said slowly. He was sitting at one of the wooden tables, which still had several scarves scattered across it, petting little Marmalade, who’d fallen asleep in his lap.
Yannick had initially reacted to the cats with polite puzzlement, but he had warmed to them quickly, which had improved my opinion of him.
“Running this type of charity, I mean,” he elaborated. “Most folks don’t see much value in the creatures, do they?”
He looked immediately stricken by his own bluntness, seeming to assume I’d take offense. I merely replied, “We’ve had our ups and downs. Our income has always been small—we’ve survived this long because we’re organized. We don’t have the funds to be wasteful or sloppy.”
“And have you always had so many?” Yannick said, glancing at the rows of cages, stacked two high.
“Last spring was a bad one for kittens,” I said with a sigh.
“But the number of stray cats has been going up every year—which means the number of cats freezing to death on the streets has also been increasing. We’ve estimated that around a thousand cats survive each winter, though most aren’t adoptable.
To put a dent in the population, we’d need to start neutering the ferals, but we don’t get nearly enough donations to afford that.
We do what we can for the tame ones, but I fear the situation is only getting worse. ”
“My,” Yannick said, blinking. “I had no idea it was such a complicated problem.”
élise released Fant?me, who gave a parting hiss and stalked back to his bed to sulk. “We could use more donations,” she said. “More volunteers. What charity couldn’t? But we’ve gotten by, and who knows what the future holds? It’s helpful to have a reasonable landlord.”
She gave Yannick a grateful look, allowing her long lashes to droop a little. But the look also had a question in it, and after a moment, Yannick said, “It was in our interest to have the place rented out as quickly as possible.”
He looked nervous then, as if he’d said too much. Muttering something about inspecting the plumbing, he excused himself.
élise and I exchanged meaningful looks. élise didn’t share my concern about the shop, and had lectured me for even thinking of turning down Yannick’s offer.
“So much the better if the place is haunted or cursed” had been her position.
“The only good landlord is one starved for rent and desperate to please. Warts and snakes are easily dealt with, and the most ghosts can manage is making a nuisance of themselves, which makes them no worse neighbours than the living.”
I turned to find Mina at my elbow, fiddling with her fingertips.
“What’s wrong?” I said. “Is it His Majesty again?” For His Majesty liked to terrorize Mina, hiding in corners and lunging at her ankles as she passed.
The feral creature sensed weaknesses in people as well as in other cats, and took as much delight in exploiting them.
“Officer,” she said. “Just there. What does he want, do you think?”
I turned to look in the direction she indicated.
A man with reddish hair and a pale, freckled complexion stood before the cage containing the two kittens I’d recently rescued, holding his hand up to the bars.
The sister, whom I’d christened Lynx for her temperament more than anything else (her brother was Monk), was attacking his fingers with gusto.
The man did not look like law enforcement to me, but I didn’t question Mina’s assessment.
I squeezed her arm and went to stand beside him.
“Would you like to hold that one?” I said politely. “She’s a bit feisty, so if you’re new to cats, I might recommend her brother.”
He turned, smiling at me. I sensed something then, a certain piercing quality in his gaze, which I felt take my measure in a single glance. His smile, though, was amiable enough. He was around my age, and uncommonly handsome, with sharp features and dark eyes framed by long lashes.
“I’m only browsing,” he said.
“Ah.” I nodded towards the cats with mock gravity. “And were you looking for a specific size or colour? We have a broad selection, as you can see.”
He smiled again, more genuinely this time. “I actually dropped by to welcome you to the neighbourhood.”
“That’s kind of you.” Lynx was now sticking her front paw through the bars, slashing impotently at the air by the man’s shoulder. I clicked open the lock on the cage door and lifted the cat free, then plunked her into the man’s arms.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but she seemed to want a proper introduction.”
He gave a surprised laugh. The black cat froze briefly, on her back in the man’s arms, before delightedly attacking the lapel on his wool coat.