The Blessings of the Animals: A Novel - By Katrina Kittle Page 0,50

from looking at her that she’s . . . God, I don’t even know what you’d call it.”

I nodded. “It’s like a mental disorder. We mostly see it in women. It’s like they collect animals. Sometimes it’s all different kinds of animals, sometimes it’s just one kind, but most commonly it’s cats. It begins with good intentions, but then it crosses a line.”

“Booker killed a couple of her cats,” Dubey admitted, looking sheepish. “That’s how I discovered how bad it was over there.”

Booker looked up at me, fanning his enormous ears.

Dubey continued. “I let him out and saw him dash for something. He caught a cat, shook it, and that was that. The cat was dirty and didn’t have a collar, so I just assumed it was feral, but the next day he killed another one. And then, one evening, I saw Charisse back by the garages. She was calling the names Spike and Maxine over and over. I went out to talk to her, and she said she was missing two of her cats. She described them perfectly, and I felt horrible.”

“Wait a second,” Helen said. “She can’t possibly—”

“Right!” Dubey said, nodding. “But at the time, I had no idea. I was heading into her yard, gearing up to confess, when all these cats started coming from everywhere and following her. She has names for each and every one of them.”

“This is weirder than we thought,” Helen whispered.

“I told her we ought to call Animal Control about all the strays, and she said they were hers. And I said, ‘Isn’t there a limit? Some kind of city ordinance about how many you can keep?’ and she changed in an instant. She got nasty about Booker and said she bet he’d harmed her cats, but at that point I was too freaked out to tell her the truth. By then I pictured her being crazy enough that I’d come home someday and find Book’s head in a boiling pot.”

“This is too big for us,” I said. “We have to call the police and Animal Control.”

We made the appropriate calls. Our description was horrifying enough, and the day quiet enough on the crime front, that within an hour we were in business. The police ordered Charisse Beaumont-Clay to open her door or they’d force entry. I’ll be damned if Dubey wasn’t right—she looked furious, yet totally normal. She wore stylish jeans, a pretty sweater, makeup. She was my age, perhaps younger, which tipped me off balance. How did someone end up this way? There was nothing to indicate why she shouldn’t have friends in her life who would intervene.

Once inside her house, I blinked against the ammonia sting of tomcat urine. Each room was full of cat beds, climbing platforms, and scratching posts. In the basement were five plastic kiddy wading pools acting as litter boxes, and I had to hand it to her—they were relatively clean. But there was no masking the accumulative stink, especially with so many unneutered toms.

Charisse was in tears, but not hysterics, as Helen and I tried to explain the health issues—similar to a refugee camp’s—in keeping so many animals together.

“There are pretty rampant fleas,” I said—they visibly peppered the coats of the white cats and speckled my boots. “With fleas come other health problems.”

Only when Animal Control began to remove cats did Charisse reveal signs of disorder. “My babies,” she cried. “Who do I keep? How can I choose? You can’t ask a mother to choose!” She picked up a beautiful calico and cried, “Gina? How could you forgive me?” but as she did, her sleeves fell down to mid-forearm, revealing an almost scabies pattern of flea bites.

We helped Animal Control put plastic collars on each cat and label them with permanent marker, and sure enough, just as Dubey had indicated, Charisse told us the names of each one of her cats.

“How will I know what happens to them?” she asked. “Will they kill them?”

I couldn’t make promises. “Not if they don’t have to. They’ll only euthanize them if there are health problems, like feline leukemia.”

Her eyes went wild. “That’s so unfair! They live a long time with leukemia before they get sick! The vets always want to kill them right away. Monsters!”

I murmured what kind words I could, then Helen and I went outside, where I told the Animal Control guys, “Don’t let the shelters put any of these cats in their general population. They need to be quarantined. There’s a whole slew with