Free Cats Triumphant by Jody Lynn Nye Page B

to pass the time. Now, let me tell you about the siege of Valorin…”
    The kittens against her chest purred their approval.

Gil couldn’t keep Shadow out of anything. The four-year-old ex-tomcat considered a closed door or any other blocked egress to be a personal challenge and an affront to his feline sensibilities. Although what Great-aunt Erma was speaking about, sitting there at the front of the room in her ancient rocker, could affected Gil’s entire future, he had only half of his attention on her. The other half was fixed on the black cat.
    Just as he feared he would, Shadow nudged open the lid of the old coal-box next to the marble fireplace and climbed inside. The lid dropped shut with a bang. Aunt Erma turned a gimlet eye toward the noise and cleared her throat irritatably. Embarrassed, Gil got up to retrieve Shadow. Thank God coal-bins were just for show these days. All he needed was a cat daubing sooty footprints all over the spotless mansion.
    “Gilbert Todhunter, are you listening?” Great-aunt Erma asked, turning her wheelchair toward him. She was a deceptively frail-looking old lady with wispy white curls arranged around her narrow head.
    “Sorry, Auntie,” Gil said, sitting down. He tried to hold the restless cat still. An almost impossible task, with his cousin Charlotte’s white English bulldog Augustus right behind them, giving him the eye. Charlotte herself was watching Gil. In a room full of cousins, Charlotte was the only one he really worried about. Gil believed the old saw that people and their pets were a lot alike. Certainly he was tall and rangy, with black hair like his cat’s. Charlotte, was short, pale, and stocky, with bowed legs like her dog’s, and tenacity to match. At home in Philadelphia, Charlotte had her own consulting firm. She was an efficiency expert. Gil thought it was probably because she loved telling other people what to do. She had brought Augustus in hopes he could sniff out Great-great-grandpa Todhunter’s scent before anyone else.
    “I’m old,” Erma was saying, “and I’ve got all that I need for what time I believe I have left. So, what I mean to do is to choose my successor to the Todhunter fortune, while I’m still alive. I have seen too many family fortunes cut up into small pieces and ruined by squabbling heirs. I hate that. I want the estate to pass down the generations intact. I have no children of my own, so I have invited you, my great-nephews and -nieces to participate in a little contest. The United States government did it once, and now I’m doing it. I’m starting a little land rush, right here in my very own home.
    “You could say my grandfather all but invented land speculation. He waited for homesteading settlers to return here from the land rushes, and made them good offers for their stakeholding deeds. Everybody was happy. They got cold, hard cash, and he got land, which looked worthless at the time.” She smiled, and her blue eyes glinted sharply. “At the time. Grandpa knew better. His deals made him very rich. I’ve lived very well on the interest alone. Most of the deeds have never even been exercised, so I left them exactly where Grandpa did. They’re still good, and worth a tidy little fortune. Winner takes all: land, house and money.”
    “Where are the deeds?” Charlotte asked, setting her heavy jaw in a way that made her look like Augustus. The twenty or so other cousins leaned forward, avidly.
    “Patience, Charlotte,” Erma snapped, her stentorian voice belying her ninety years. She looked around at them all. “You’ll hear the rules, and not one person will leave this room until you do. You may have one companion to assist you, human or otherwise.” The glints lit briefly on Shadow and Augustus. “The deeds are in a small, brass correspondence box hidden somewhere in this house. The contest will be over at nightfall, or when someone finds the box. And it begins...now!” With that, the old woman lifted a