It didn’t seem quite right to be out here without her walker. They kept telling her not to go out without her walker. But Edith had no very clear idea where it was. Of course, That Christa would scold her again but there was no help for it. She just had no clue where the walker might be. At the moment, she actually had no clue where she was herself. Usually she DID know, though it was strange how many times she turned out to be wrong. But she almost always had an idea.
Not this time. This was not the Kitchen or the Dining Room or the Living Room. It was not even the Yard. It was a path, a dirt path. Edith had not walked on a dirt path since…whose garden was it? It was a friend of hers but…. Anyway, there was no Garden here; there was just a path. That Christa could probably tell her…and scold her for being here. Who did That Christa think she was? And who, exactly, was she?
Nice day, though: just enough sunshine and a little breeze. She put a frail hand up to brush back a wisp of white hair. She hoped That Christa wouldn’t find her too soon.
It would have been nice all the same had there been someone on the path to talk to, to ask where the path was, and where she was. All she could see on the path ahead was a dark spot. Aiming for this, she realized it too was moving. Edith walked faster. A squirrel or even a mouse would at least be company.
She should have fallen on her face without the walker and That Christa, but she didn’t. And in any case, it didn’t matter. That was a tail: a long black tail rising like a proud flag. A cat was on the road ahead!
Edith had always been a city kid. Cats weren’t supposed to be on the road by themselves: anything could happen. Her hurried shuffle became a near run. The cat, hearing her approach, turned to look over its shoulder.
“Don’t run!” she called. “It’s okay! I won’t hurt you, Mysterion!”
Mysterion? What kind of name was that, and why…. Of course! She nodded as she came up to the cat, which had sat down on the path. It looked her over with an air of amused contempt that reminded her of….
Mysterion! Of course! That’s who it was: she recognized the little white squiggle on his throat. “I thought That Christa told me you died. I was going to the kitchen to feed you but the kitchen was moved.” Edith could have snatched him up and hugged him, but of course Mysterion would never put up with that sort of thing.
“Where are we going?” There was no reply, of course. Edith hoped she wasn’t quite silly enough to expect that. Mysterion just walked on. He seemed to know where he was going. She had never heard of anyone finding their way home by following a cat but there was a first time for everything. And it was VERY nice to see Mysterion again, walking past the pink and white flowers blooming at the side of the path. Maybe they would find their way to That Christa, who would see that Mysterion was perfectly all right.
Edith took a deep breath of the cool air, and, looking down, found a second cat, black and white, was walking next to Mysterion. Mysterion always hissed at the neighbor’s cats, but acted as if he didn’t even see this one.
“Who’s your friend?”
The new cat looked back at her. It was Pull Socks, a rascal if ever there was one: fond of hiding stray laundry. But he had quietly sat with her all those long days between the death at the Home and Fritz’s funeral. Hadn’t Pull Socks died, too, though? Edith almost wished That Christa was there to ask.
Anyway, there he was. Edith wondered if it wasn’t just a little silly, a grown woman following two cats along the path. Pull Socks was stretching, enjoying the walk and the sunshine, with Mysterion just walking straight ahead, head high. Their shadows almost touched the toes of Edith’s slippers. She squinted into the sky. She should have worn her gardening hat and gloves. The spots on her hands…well, they seemed to be going away, actually. That HAD to be a sign of something terrible.
While she was checking the backs of her hands, a third cat had somehow come past her to join Mysterion and Pull Socks. Edith recognized him at once.
Paulie: oh, Paulie! She shook her head. She remembered tripping over Paulie. Not his fault: as she had told Fritz, she should have known he’d be there the second she stepped into the kitchen. But, oh, those weeks in the wheelchair. Her knees were never the same again: how could one person fall on her knees so often?
Paulie had always been a cuddling cat. Edith stepped a little faster, to catch him up, buy frowned. There was an orange tabby with them now, batting at Mysterion’s high tail. Mysterion would never have allowed this. But Mysterion never knew Maybe. Maybe was years ago, named by Willa from the way Edith kept telling him “No! No!”
“He doesn’t know no no; he’s just a maybe,” said Willa…no, Willa’s daughter, Clare. Willa had…three children now, all grown, and a round bulldog named Spencer. Edith shook her head, again. Darling dog, Spencer, but…a dog? Her daughter?
And now there were five. Edith immediately recognized Moo Ting, adopted from her oldest grandson when he got that job in…Guatemala. The boy called him Satan, but she didn’t want that name in her house, so she renamed him after her favorite button on the TV remote. Moo Ting loved to sleep on the old ironing board, because of the reflected heat from the cover. Fritz had given her that ironing board: her first Valentine’s Day after they were married. He hadn’t guessed at that point that it would be used years later by a cat. It had taken her a while to convert him to cats.
Edith never saw how Ine got up on the refrigerator, so she not surprised that she hadn’t seen him join the group. Ine, named from her grandkids’ attempt to imitate the sound he made when he saw them coming, was her only Siamese. Fritz, of all people, brought him home, having found the cat in an abandoned house. Edith knew very well that Ine was dead. It was cancer of the jaw, which never seemed to affect Ine especially. The lower jaw just gradually disappeared, and they’d had to….
The road ahead was becoming crowded with cats between the rows of peony bushes. (Willa loved peonies: roses on steroids, she called them.) There were Gravy and Dumpling, that crazy couple, who had snatched French Toast right from Willa’s plate. (Before she had syrup on it, thankfully.) Gravy had been very alpha, nipping hair from between Dumpling’s toes, to Dumpling’s squealed objections. AND he clawed that blue couch to smithereens. Fritz always talked about replacing it, but he never did, not until Dumpling and Gravy were both gone. He’d given it to Willa and her friends, for their clubhouse, and after that Jennifer from down the block had taken it. Jennifer had cats, so she broke in, she said.
Edith clapped her hands. And here was Stephen, with that catnip banana he always carried everywhere! Stephen loved dry cat food, but Mysterion and Gravy preferred the canned. Looking around the group, she could name the cat foods each liked best and the flavors. After flavors of cat food were invented, of course. Fritz went on refusing to breathe around the Tuna Specials, as he called them, long after… Oh, Gravy would have loved Mew Mousse, if it had existed. Maybe that’s why he wanted the French toast. And here came Pookie, with a little “Mau” as a greeting to the others. Where were they all coming from?
She realized she had known for some time where they were going. She realized she was correct when she saw the long line of people ahead of the ten…a dozen cats. Edith took her place at the end of the line.
Mysterion, however, marched past hem, with Gravy and Stephen and the others following. “Come back!” she called, in a loud whisper.
“Come back” she said again, now in that Mommy Voice which had always impressed Willa and never, never any of the cats. She’d have to go after them. “Sorry,” she said to the man ahead of her in line.
Her knees didn’t hurt, and she didn’t feel the least bit dizzy. Still, it was ridiculous to think she could catch them all.
She couldn’t catch ANY of them. She followed them right up to the front, until all at sat between her and that massive locked gate was a desk, behind which sat a huge stern man with a long beard and a massive ledger.
He was speaking in an earnest way to the woman at the front of the line. Edith froze, knowing she was intruding here.
“Come back!” she said again.
“Mau,” said Pookie.
This was not addressed to her. The big man raised his eyes from the ledger.
“Yes?”
The cats sat down on the path and LOOKED at him. Edith knew that Look: it called for an open door, a can of tuna, or the brush. This Look was not directed at her right now. It was a directed at the long-bearded man, who met the Look with raised his eyebrows.
He waved a hand. “Go ahead, then.”
And the cats led Edith through the gate.
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