Chapter 1
Cali Jacobs knew the Cat Distribution System was at it again when her phone lit up with a string of texts.
Alert! Kitten spotted at trash bins outside the convenience store. Cute. Fast. Couldn’t catch it. Let’s keep our eyes open, team.
Saw it prancing down the sidewalk outside the cafe this morning. Gotta be a Maine Coon with that fluffy tail. If they hadn’t just brought out my pancakes, I would’ve caught it.
Promises, Lynne. Promises.
More like priorities, Minka. They were YOUR pancakes. No more tips for you.
Guys! I saw it, too. Post office around noon, chasing a squirrel across the street. Kitty gets around! Anyone notice if it has a collar or tag?
She couldn’t help but smile. Her plan to rescue all the cats in Autumn Ridge was already working.
Let’s strategize at Nine Lives Club tonight, she texted back. Mission: Maine Coon.
Thumbs up emojis flooded her screen.
Cali pushed her horn-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose, inhaled the sweet, familiar smells of aged paper and binding glue, and got back to work on the staff’s front desk schedule for the next two weeks.
Being a librarian in Autumn Ridge was a far cry from corporate life in Eastmoor, her old metropolis several hours away by train.
Eastmoor was gritty and cold New England, even in summer, with an industrial rail-and-factory backbone.
Here it was inviting and warm somehow despite the cold and full of the fluffiest, cutest creatures she’d ever laid eyes on.
More than once her eyes had misted over in the park and she found herself saying, “Aww. Would you look at that bunny or chipmunk or, well, anything worthy of a soft, uncontrollable squeal?” Every once in a while the residents made that warm feeling bubble to the surface, too.
But the cats dominated. Even though she’d only been in Autumn Ridge a couple of years, she’d noticed the uncanny number of stray cats who called the small town home.
Cats outside the diner, pawing for crumbs.
Cats with legs stretched above their heads in grooming outside the yoga studio.
Cats curled in sleep against the library doors when she arrived each morning.
She found herself arriving earlier and earlier to coax them to the back with bowls of milk and kibble.
She’d scratch their heads and the sweet spot where their tails met their back then run back inside to intercept the staff.
She never knew where they disappeared to when she peeked her head outside again, but she knew somewhere, somehow, some other Autumn Ridge citizen was preparing their lunch and waiting for them.
Everyone had to chip in to make it work.
It wasn’t fair, she thought, all those stray cats.
But it made sense for a small, friendly town surrounded by miles of farmland.
Strangers from the nearby city probably abandoned cats in the fields all the time, thinking they’d be better off fending for themselves than left at a shelter.
But a shelter was exactly what Autumn Ridge needed and didn’t have.
Enter the book club.
Before Cali arrived, the library held Saturday read-alouds for the kids, computer skills for retirees midweek, book fairs and puzzle-offs.
Those fit easily into the tempo of the sleepy northeastern town.
Then, at Cali’s suggestion, the library held extended hours on Thursdays for an adults-only book club. Naturally, Cali was the host.
She wasn’t too sure about the group at first. An uppity retiree, a sarcastic café owner, the florist, a hunky firefighter and a handful of other personalities.
Their years of residence in the town alone outnumbered her years on earth by ten-fold, she was sure.
So the stereotype of small towns breeding small minds was about to be tested.
But the book club proved her wrong and quickly became her people—misfits with random interests and strong opinions.
She remembered their first argument over whether the covers of Laurie Gilmore’s Dream Harbor series were too innocent-looking for their heat levels.
“My young grandson found The Cinnamon Bun Book Store and asked if he could read it with us. It’s because those covers all look like cartoons!” Mrs. Ellery insisted. “He even tried sneaking it into his school bag. Can you imagine what would’ve happened if he got to that beach scene in chapter 11?”
“Just buy him the coloring book,” Bastet suggested. “Completely G-rated, if I’m not mistaken.”
Over the next year they dove into banned books and queer romances, books about religious cults and the cult of consumerism together. Until one Thursday Cali woke up and realized she was home. Uprooting her city life to take a chance on Autumn Ridge had been the best thing to ever happen to her.
When book club conversation went off-topic one night—as it often did—the members discovered they’d all taken in one or more of the stray cats of Autumn Ridge.
All of them, that is, except Cali. She’d wanted another cat ever since she inherited her grandmother’s A-frame house overlooking the lake.
But her heart was still broken over the loss of her first and only cat.
A petite tabby with delicate paws and the greenest eyes she’d ever seen.
They’d been together since she was a teenager.
She missed kitty cuddles under her blanket each morning and the gentle meows reminding her it was time to be fed.
How was it that Autumn Ridge felt so right, but being in Autumn Ridge without a cat felt so wrong?
Cali never confessed this to anyone before.
But as the book club members went round-robin, sharing stories of their own rescue kitties, she felt compelled.
Every morning she set a can of pate on her back porch, wishing another stray would find her.
It had attracted the attention of a few raccoons but not much else.
She was a firm believer that the next cat finds you, not the other way around. It had been that way with her first.
The book club members rallied around her.
Then a light bulb went off in Cali’s head.
Since Autumn Ridge couldn’t afford to build a shelter, what if they—the book club members—made a network to rescue every stray cat that found its way to Autumn Ridge instead?
Like a neighborhood watch, but without the crime or drama?
Or like a group of matchmakers for cats?
“That may be the best idea I’ve ever heard, Cali,” Mrs. Ellery said. “Count me in!”
Thus, the Nine Lives Club was born. They still loved their book club talks and debates, of course. But once the spines were closed, the discussion turned to the town’s stray cats.
A thud sounded behind Cali, and she glanced over her shoulder, scanning the library. “Oops.” An elderly volunteer sighed over a toppled cart of books while a kind patron whisked over to help her collect and reorganize them.
At least she’d whispered. That’s more than could be said for the rest of the library this week.
City Hall across the parking lot was adding the new courthouse building for almost six months.
And although they were notified of possible noise before it began, no one was quite ready for the cacophony of jackhammers, grinders, and nail guns that suddenly appeared that week.
Cali nibbled at the temple of her rectangular glasses and turned her gaze toward a small mirror on her desk. Behind her, a dust storm from the construction swirled against the window. Even her view of the apple orchard in the distance was ruined by this renovation.
She sighed and pulled a hand through her wavy dark brown bob.
A shock of white hair fell onto her forehead—a gift from the stress of Eastmoor.
People always assumed she was older than she really was because of it.
She puckered her lips and blew it away then checked her teeth for red lipstick stains.
Four smiling brooches sparkled against her chest just beneath the Peter Pan collar of her khaki button-up blouse.
The screech of metal against metal made her jump from her seat. “Yikes. The only thing louder than the town’s stray cats is this racket.”
It was almost her turn at the help desk, so she shuffled out and over. She scribbled the last couple of names into time slots and grabbed her Purride & Purrjudice mug.
The hours ticked by, marked by an occasional bright scream or hiss from the construction outside. All the while a mid-pitched drill droned on, to the point she almost abandoned the desk. She tallied the usual bits to share with the staff:
How many times have you been asked how to reset a password? Fourteen—which may have broken their current record. She’d have to check.
What was the most unique encounter you had today?
An older man asked some very sensitive and specific questions about his odds for prostate cancer, to which Cali confessed she didn’t know the answers.
He huffed and patronizingly asked, “Didn’t you have to read all the books to get hired at this library?
” She recommended he speak with his doctor.
The hacking and sawing finally ceased at 5 p.m.. Relieved, Cali trekked back to her office to grab her blue trench coat and her wallet.
She only ever had time for a quick trip to Minka’s café across the street before she needed to set up for the Nine Lives Club.
Good thing Minka was also a member of the Nine Lives Club and would have her usual already waiting to get her through the night: a chicken salad sandwich in a buttery croissant, a warm coffee, and a treat for later.
That’s why she needed to run over to the café, to pick her treat.
Since the weather chilled ever so slightly this morning, her mouth ached for pumpkin cream cheese muffins or those apple cider donuts the café carried around this time last year.