Chapter Eight #3
Leo went to assist Abigail, who was still sprawled on the sofa, but clearly fighting a losing battle as the Persian had managed to free one paw and was using it indiscriminately on his sister’s shoulder.
The cat’s bared claws were unsheathed like tiny but lethal daggers as she slashed and hissed and fought for freedom.
As he tried to grab the feral menace from beneath her, no mean feat now that both Snifferson and Barkington had joined the fray, one of those claws caught Abigail’s cheek and she yelped.
To his sister’s credit, she barely recoiled an inch at the onslaught, but that was all M’Lady needed to break free. She scrambled up the back of the sofa, a substantial and still squawking blackbird clamped in her jaws, and made a bolt for the door with both dogs hot on her heels.
Miss Kendall made a valiant stab at throwing her body at the door to slam it before she got there, but M’Lady was a cat on a mission, and that mission was to escape the lot of them with the poor blackbird at speed.
However, despite his advanced age, Barkington wasn’t having that, and somehow managed to get in front of her before she could shoot upstairs with her flapping prey.
The cat growled at the little dog in warning, her paw raised ready to take a swipe at him too, but Barkington stood his ground.
He barked back at her and guarded those stairs with his life while the rest of them, Snifferson included, fanned out behind her to block every other conceivable exit.
Leo carefully shrugged out of his coat, trying not to do anything to distract the cat from hissing at the spaniel, who was doing his level best to keep her attention.
He knew from bitter experience that the only way to prise anything out of M’Lady Whiskers’s evil fangs was to ensure that the hissing devil was properly restrained first. And the only way to effectively restrain her, as he knew to his cost, was to wrap her up tight like a blasted Egyptian mummy.
He held his coat up like a net and lunged, miraculously managing to engulf the hissing Persian in the fabric, but she was having none of it.
She wriggled and bucked like a thrashing salmon as he tried to bundle her up in it.
Then, in a blaze of fluffy white and flapping black feathers, she emerged and decided to use her claws and the back of his scalp to haul herself out.
As he cried out in pain, Miss Kendall grabbed the cat’s back legs. “I’ve got her!” And clearly she had because M’Lady protested by sinking her front claws even further into his skull. “Can somebody try to prise her mouth open?”
Of course that somebody was Abigail, because Emilia, who was always about as much use as a chocolate teapot during a crisis, was still screaming.
The altercation now happening directly on top of him, Leo had to reach up behind himself and try to blindly unhook each individual claw from his skin, but no sooner had he freed one paw and started on the other, then in the claws went again.
“Let go, you wicked animal!” He had no clue what his sister was doing to the cat but whatever it was, it was done with tremendous exertion. “Release your damn jaws or—Urgh!”
Blessedly, the claws finally retracted from his scalp just as Miss Kendall hugged the cat to her chest with such speed that M’Lady’s grip on the blackbird lessened enough for it to escape.
Panicked and afraid, it flew directly into Emilia’s screaming face as it made its own bolt for freedom, then straight into a window.
It flapped disorientated above their heads for a few moments before it flew a haphazard course down the hall.
The cat, of course, took umbrage at that and greater umbrage at Miss Kendall, who was still hugging the hissing demon for all she was worth, despite the flailing claws that were slashing out now with a vengeance.
Somehow, the darned cat twisted and hooked one of its paws into her hair.
Then, as if M’Lady knew how to inflict maximum pain, she used Miss Kendall’s no-longer-neat chignon for purchase, arched upward, and tried to bite her chin.
Yet still, with commendable bravery, his newest employee tried to keep the cat imprisoned—but she was fighting a losing battle.
Within seconds, M’Lady had broken free again and followed the blackbird down the hall in hot pursuit, nowhere near ready to give up her prize.
Both dogs then chased after her, closely followed by Miss Kendall and Abigail, while Emilia finally found the wherewithal to do something useful and helped Leo up from his prostrate position on the floor.
By the time Leo caught up with them, the terrified blackbird had sought refuge in his study.
It flapped a squawking, warning circle around the ceiling while the cat menacingly scaled his bookshelf to get to it, both his dogs barked for all they were worth, and his poor wounded scalp throbbed like the devil.
“ENOUGH!” As he bellowed that at nobody in particular, the bird, with perfect timing, whizzed above his head and deposited a well-aimed and doubtless nervous splatter of droppings directly on his shoulder.