Free Cat Playing Cupid by Shirley Rousseau Murphy Page B

been no talk of selling them like common beasts. The buyers lived in the village, and when one pair of cats had kittens, which is rather rare, the buyers in turn sold them. When the cats in the Welsh house learned this, that they were indeed being treated like livestock, they wanted only to get away.
    â€œThey tipped a bookshelf over against a window, breaking the glass, and escaped. They searched for their friends, were at last able to find the four, they freed them.
    â€œOne of their descendents was your mother, Dulcie. She remained with Genelle Yardley all her life. You wereborn on Genelle’s bed. You were the only one of the small litter that would grow up to speak.” He looked from Dulcie to Wilma, then stroked Dulcie. “Genelle felt certain, when Wilma took you home to be her kitten, that if and when you did speak, Wilma was the kind of person who would guard your secret.
    â€œBut years earlier, when the captive cats were all free, they headed up into the open hills, where they soon found the lush acreage of the Pamillon Estate. The property was beautiful then, with vast gardens, flowering bushes and trees among which to hide, and there they took shelter. There were several branches of the Pamillon family living there then, in the mansion and in several guest cottages that have since become uninhabitable.
    â€œThe cats lived on the estate through several generations, and they were fed and loved by the Pamillons. My father doubted anyone knew the truth about them, doubted the cats ever spoke to anyone. But there was one daughter, Olivia, who seemed especially fond of her cats, and he wondered sometimes about her.
    â€œI was in my second year at Davis when the Pamillons undertook some repairs and remodeling of the estate. It may have been then that most of the cats moved away, into the farther hills—there were fewer and fewer visits from the Pamillons for shots or to treat an occasional illness.
    â€œAnd then, at about that time, there was some kind of dissent within the family, and gradually the extended family, aunts and uncles and their children, moved away and seemed to lose interest in the property. Olivia remained, living as a recluse in just a few rooms. She stayed active in the village for a long time, but then as she grew older shefired gardeners and housekeepers and maintenance people, and let the estate fall into disrepair. There were two cats she would bring to me for shots, but I felt sure the rest had moved on.”
    â€œMaybe,” Kit interrupted softly, “maybe they traveled way south, on the coast, where I guess I was born, the place I first remember.”
    â€œMaybe,” Firetti said. “I went up to the estate occasionally because I was concerned about Olivia. I didn’t see any other than the two cats that stayed with her. I always thought the family held on to the property simply for the increasing land value. It’s a big, sprawling family, all scattered now, and apparently at loggerheads with one another. The estate has been divided and redivided, with numerous deeds and trusts and wills drawn in such a way that no one can sell his share without approval from the others. I know one attorney who did some work for the Pamillons, and he said the titles and legal entanglements were almost impossible to sort out and set straight, with so many conflicting restraints and demands.
    â€œIt was knowing about the speaking cats,” Firetti said, “that started me feeding and trapping the stray cats of the village, as my father had done. He fed and trapped all the feral cats around the wharf and the village, and continued to do so long after he retired. He spayed and neutered them and gave them shots to keep them healthy and then turned them loose again.” He laughed. “That might have been the first TNR program.
    â€œHe made very sure, of course, that none was a speaking cat. Not much chance, they were too clever to be trapped. He would have