Free Cat Found by Ingrid Lee Page A

just a short way to go — ten feet — five….
    Johnny grabbed back the gun. “You shoot like a girl,” he laughed.
    The pellet landed squarely in Snowflake’s ear just as she reached her little house. Snowflake crawled inside. The day was growing cold.
    Somewhere in the distance a siren sounded.
    The wail spooked the boys. “Gimme the bag!” Johnny cried. He dumped the gun inside. “Let’s get out of here!”
    The two boys scrambled down from the balcony and raced up the chapel alley. As soon as they hit the street, they slowed down. They acted as if they were out for a walk. When they got to the corner store, they went in to buy a drink.
    “Johnny,” bragged his friend, “next time we take that gun, I’ll blow one of those cats right out of its hide.”
    Johnny shook his head. “Aw,” he scoffed. “You’d better stick to darts.”
    Snowflake bled. All her being drained out of the hole in her ear and the hole in her side. She could feel herself leaving. Still, she pushed. She pushed until one white kitten in a sac of light hit the straw. Snowflake couldn’t see her baby, but she searched with her nose. She found the warmth. She licked it clean, her tongue working even as her life seeped away.
    Then the world went black.
    There was no more time to birth the others. Snowflake and her kittens had to go.
    They left the white one behind to do the living.

NINETEEN
    C onga flinched from the pop of the gun. As soon as the two boys disappeared, she walked through the loft door and looked over the edge of her world. A long time ago she had faced a hailstorm of gravel in a dead-end alley. The stone-thrower had promised he would get her good.
    Now he had found her again. Now he was keeping his word.
    She had to save her babies.
    Conga grabbed a kitten by the scruff of the neck. The jump to the stable roof was easy. She crawled down the crates and crossed the chapel yard. The colony cats kept to their hidey-holes while she wound between the old barrels and boards. When she reached the fence, she put all her weight on her back haunches and sprang for the rim. The kitten swung lightly from her jaws as she went up and over. She sprinted for the one place in the townwhere she knew that she could hide her kittens — the coal cellar.
    It was under the house behind the chapel.
    Once upon a time that house belonged to the chapel. A preacher lived there, crammed in with his wife and six children. For a few coins and a wagon of coal, the preacher led the prayers in the chapel. The money went into the mouths of his children, and the coal went into a little room dug behind the house. A steep tin chute helped the coal fall down. On bitter winter nights, the preacher crept to his basement, opened a door, and shoveled the black rock into a bucket to burn in the kitchen stove. But there was never enough. Gradually the preacher’s heart grew as black and bitter as the coal. One night he packed up his family and disappeared.
    So did the chapel bell.
    That was a long time ago. The town grew and grew, and pretty soon the preacher’s old house was just another house on Haven Street. Over the years it passed from owner to owner. They tossed trash down the coal chute — rusty engine parts, leftover garden brick, even the seat of an old Ford sedan. The last owner threw some boards over the hole and built a veranda on top.
    Now Conga ran under the deck and crawled between the rotten boards. She skittered down the chute and dropped her kitten into the foam spilling from the car seat. Then she whirled around and headed back to fetch the other two. By the time she left the chapel yard with her third kitten, she was getting tired. She lost her footing and bounced off the fence. Looking for an easier jump, she crossed under the mulberry tree by the old plant pot.
    The smell of death waited there.
    Conga stopped with her young one in her mouth. She sneered at the blood stuck to the edge of the pottery. When she crouched, she could see the still