A Clutter of Cats
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About this ebook
It's late spring and young artist Gerry Coneybear and her twenty cats are thrilled to finally be able to get out of the house and into the garden surrounding her 200-year-old house on the Ottawa River. But Gerry is having a time keeping her curious cats in their own yard, safe from the new neighbours' large dog. Her neighbours' marriage isn't quite what it should be, and when the philandering husband is murdered, the wife is the obvious suspect. Or ought to be. As events unfold next door, Gerry watches from her garden, where she picks rhubarb, weeds, and plants her flowers, catnip and herbs, all supervised by her cats and her friend and part-time housekeeper Prudence. A terrible car crash, an eccentric train engineer (and his equally eccentric wife), and a midnight visit to the house next door all contribute to this cozy mystery coming out all right in the end. And there's jam-making. And ghosts.
Louise Carson
Born in Montreal and raised in Hudson, Quebec, Louise Carson studied music in Montreal and Toronto, played jazz piano and sang in the chorus of the Canadian Opera Company. She has published seventeen books: three collections of poetry -- A Clearing, Dog Poems, and The Truck Driver Treated for Shock; three stand-alone works of fiction -- Mermaid Road, Executor, and The Last Unsuitable Man; The Chronicles of Deasil Widdy trilogy -- In Which (shortlisted for the 2019 QWF price for Children's literature and the 2019 ReLit Award), Measured, and Third Circle; as well as the stand-alone prequel to the Deasil Widdy books -- Rope: A Tale Told in Prose and Verse; and her Maples Mystery series -- The Cat Among Us, The Cat Vanishes, The Cat Between, The Cat Possessed, A Clutter of Cats, The Cat Looked Back and The Cat Crosses a Line. Her poems have appeared in literary magazines, chapbooks and anthologies, including The Best Canadian Poetry 2013, 2021 and 2024. She's been shortlisted in FreeFall magazine's annual contest three times and won a Manitoba Magazine Award. She has presented her work in many public forums in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Saskatoon, Kingston and New York City. Carson lives with two cats in St-Lazare, Quebec, where she writes and either shovels snow or gardens, depending on the season.
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A Clutter of Cats - Louise Carson
Part 1
DANGEROUS TO KNOW
Melancholy cried out. The flames were becoming hotter and hotter. No matter how small she made herself, there was no escaping them. She clawed at the sides of the metal barrel but they were slippery and she couldn’t climb out.
She could hear the jeers of the drunken men who’d tossed her, some paper, and a book of lit matches into the barrel. She stretched as far up the side of the barrel as she could, screaming as she felt the flames burn her hind legs and tail.
She punched at the smooth circle of hot metal in which she was trapped but it was no good. It was too deep and too heavy to tip, and the fire was eating her.
Then there was a deluge of water, and steam and smoke choked her. Oh, my God!
she heard a woman’s voice say and a different voice, a man’s, angry, saying, I’m calling the police!
And then pain and silence and the dark.
The girl turned and twitched in her sleep, moved her feet, disturbing Melancholy, who woke, trembling. When the memories came to her, it was better if she was alone. She jumped off the bed and out of the room. The other cats on the girl’s bed remained asleep.
Early morning. She would go outside. She slowly and awkwardly hopped down the stairs. The burned ligaments, muscles, tendons and even bone had healed, but she would never be flexible. She moved through the big room with the large table where many of the other cats were asleep. She didn’t associate with them much.
She pushed against the square of carpet tacked over a small wall opening at the back of the room—the house’s homemade cat flap. For three seasons’ use only. She stepped out onto the narrow wooden deck, then down onto the flagstone path, both of which ran along the back of the house, and surveyed the day.
Fine. Warm. Dry. She padded along the path, feeling the stones’ coolness, and paused near the girl’s car, parked at the side of the house. There was a garden shed the other side of the car and in front of that, standing as close to the edge of the road as she could, was a young woman in a long pink dress.
If Melancholy had cared at all about clothes she might have noticed that the pink was a faded mauve, and that the details of the dress—the piping around neck, bodice, sleeves and cuffs—were black.
As it was, she did notice that the woman was blonde and pale, and that while her skirt moved as cars passed close, there was no sound of flapping cloth.
The woman did nothing except turn her head first one way then the other, looking first up the road where a small hill ascended, then down where the road disappeared around a sharp curve.
Bored, Melancholy turned and descended the stone steps from the parking pad to the lawn, keeping close to the shrubs and flower beds that edged it. She entered the thicket beyond the flower beds and paused, forgetting the woman.
Birds darted in and out of the newly leafed-out raspberry canes and wild roses. Perhaps a bird would land agreeably close to her nose and she—there—no—it fluttered out of reach. The stump of her tail quivered. It had taken many months before she could trust that its instinctive responses would no longer pain her. She felt her tension release.
Beyond the thicket was the yard, partially overgrown, partially lawn, of the large white house next door. A car pulled into the driveway that circled behind it. A woman got out hurriedly, looking furtively around her the way squirrels did when they left the safety of trees for the ground. Melancholy could tell this woman was older by the way she moved.
The woman opened one back door of the car, releasing her big black dog. Melancholy stiffened until she saw the dog was on its leash. The two entered the house, the woman reappearing alone holding some newspaper. She opened the trunk of her car, then stuffed something wrapped in the newspaper in the garbage can. The woman inspected her hands, then went back inside. The cat dozed.
She woke when she heard the sound of a bike arriving behind her at her own house. The cleaner. Then she heard the girl come out of the house, calling something to the cleaner. Melancholy turned to observe her current owner.
The girl had taken her coffee and sat at the picnic table on the lawn, staring at the lake. She sipped, making little mmming noises. The cat’s stomach growled. She supposed she’d missed breakfast. The girl tossed her long hair back and sighed.
Melancholy turned her attention back to the house next door. The dog and woman had reappeared. This time the dog was off its leash and it trotted straight to the garbage can. The woman called it away.
1
Away they go cluttering like hey—go mad. (1759)¹
I often look through the thicket at the big white house next door and wonder about the lady who lives there.
The opening words to her Aunt Maggie’s story The Laughing Child
slid into Gerry’s head as she watched her new neighbour and her black Labrador retriever loiter in their backyard. The woman seemed to be inspecting her garden, neglected for many years by her predecessor.
Gerry was not the ten-year-old girl from fifty years ago as her aunt had been, peering at the mysterious elderly lady next door and writing a curious little composition for school.
Gerry was a grown-up lady (ostensibly), though at the moment, crouching in the underbrush that separated the two properties, trying to unobtrusively coax the most difficult of her twenty cats back onto her property, she didn’t feel very dignified—for all her twenty-six years.
Now that the house was occupied, and by a large dog as well as two people, she assumed her cats would not be welcome to slither through the brambles in search of excitement in its backyard. Besides, she’d seen the speed of the Labrador chasing squirrels. He hadn’t caught any yet, but he’d come close. Neither she nor her cats needed that kind of excitement!
Psst! Lightning!
Gerry tried to suck lips quietly—the traditional cat call—not that most of them bothered to respond unless she waved a treat in front of them. As she opened and closed her mouth goldfish style, she came out with an indistinct clicking sound.
The cat in question, a mostly black shorthaired tortoiseshell with an orange zigzag above her nose, glared. She would no doubt have been vigorously thrashing her tail, if she’d had one. As it was, her whole body quivered with tension. Fixating on Gerry, she seemed unaware of the canine threat behind her. Even though disaster seemed imminent, Gerry, an artist, couldn’t help noticing how pretty Lightning looked, surrounded by the low clumps of purple violets that overran the thicket, tender green shrubbery above.
The neighbour wandered back toward her house, calling her pet. Her inspection must be over. Gerry took a step, a twig cracked, and the dog’s head swung in their direction. Gerry and the two animals froze. Gerry sneezed. The dog gave a startled muted bark and began trotting towards them. Then it accelerated.
Gerry flung herself on Lightning. Thorns scratched her bare arms and nettles prickled her legs. She grasped the cat who grasped back. Ahhhh!
breathed a by now well-punctured Gerry, still trying to be discreet.
The neighbour noticed the fracas—well, she could hardly not—and called her dog. Shadow!
It stopped just short of the thicket. Its owner approached at a lope. For the first time, Gerry saw her new neighbour close up.
She was tall, late middle aged, with greying long brown hair tied back, and glasses. A permanent frown line furrowed her brow. She was dressed modestly but nicely in beige summer slacks, sandals and a white short-sleeved jersey. A necklace of chunky wooden beads completed the ensemble. She quickly leashed the dog and stared confusedly at Gerry who was holding a struggling Lightning above her head.
Oh, hello.
Gerry tried to sound nonchalant. My cat was wandering onto your property and I was trying to get it back. Onto my property.
She lowered the cat, turned and released her. Lightning shot back into Gerry’s yard, disappearing from view. The dog whined and strained at its leash.
His owner jerked the plaited leather and said, Hush, Shadow.
Gerry carefully picked her way through the shrubbery toward them and stuck out her hand. I’m Gerry Coneybear. Welcome to the neighbourhood.
The woman looked at the somewhat grimy and newly bloodied hand. She repressed a shudder. I won’t shake, if you don’t mind. I’m going out in a moment.
Gerry withdrew the hand and grinned. Sorry. I was pulling a few weeds. That’s when I noticed the cat was over here. Good thing for us your dog is so well—
She’d been going to say trained but evidently the woman had decided to be sociable, for she interrupted Gerry with I’m Edwina Murray. And this is Shadow.
Gerry bent over. The dog sat. Hello, Shadow. Pleased to meet you. Catch any squirrels yet?
He looked at her with his intelligent brown eyes. Edwina spoke for him. Not yet. Not here, anyway. But he keeps trying. Barks at them from inside the house. Most annoying. Actually,
and here she looked around her vaguely as if seeking someone. Actually, he belongs more to my husband, Roald.
Gerry had seen the husband, a large fleshy man with a red face, arguing with one of the tradesmen who’d been working on the house for several months. Oh, yes? May I pet Shadow? I love dogs.
When Edwina nodded, Gerry crouched next to the dog. Who’s a good boy?
she crooned as she scratched his head. The dog closed his eyes. His tongue lolled out of his mouth. He panted slowly.
I see you do. Yet you have cats.
She said this somewhat accusingly.
Gerry stood up. It’s a long story. Basically, I inherited them. From my aunt. Along with the house. Like you.
She stopped in some confusion, not wanting to seem curious, though she was.
Edwina merely nodded. That’s right. My great-aunt, actually. Or maybe she was a cousin. A great-cousin. I’m not sure. Two generations separated us so it’s hard to say. My great-grandmother was Helen Parsley, the original owner of the house with her husband, and my Aunt Winnifred’s mother. Winnifred didn’t have any children.
She added matter-of-factly, Like me. Well, I do have an appointment.
You must come for tea one day,
Gerry offered.
Tea?
Edwina seemed confused by the invitation then collected herself. Yes. Tea. That would be nice. Goodbye for now.
Thinking that tea and lunch sounded like a very good idea, Gerry retreated to her own house. But first, she paused on the parking pad next to the side kitchen entrance and gazed at the view.
For over two hundred years The Maples, family home of the Coneybears for many generations, had stood, its back to the road to Lovering, surveying that other, older road, the waterway that was the Lake of Two Mountains, as this part of the Ottawa River was called. The building rambled away to her right, yellow with white trim, its formal garden showing tulips, daffodils and other spring flowers of which Gerry was still ignorant.
The property’s lawn, speckled with little white wild violets, sloped gently to the wildflower garden, not yet in flower, then to a pebbly beach and shore. A green canoe was drawn up there.
The lake itself, on this beautiful mid-May day, shone blue-grey, its dimpled surface moving only slightly, while on the opposite shore, a pine forest steadfastly separated lake from sky. Word of Lightning’s close call must have spread through the feline community, for none of its members was visible on Gerry’s property.
Gerry took a deep breath of contentment and went inside. Her tiny kitchen’s tidiness was only marred by the evidence of the cats’ breakfasts. Twenty little saucers were drying in the dish rack. From upstairs she heard the sound of the vacuum. She checked the time. Noon. Time for her and Prudence to have their lunches. Time for Prudence to have a break from the never-ending task of keeping Gerry from wading knee-deep in cat fur. She put on the kettle and reached for a giant tin of Scottish shortbread, not without some guilt at not having baked for over a week. Dang it all!
she protested to herself. I’m on holiday!
She’d had a burst of energy and creativity that month, had had a weekend garage sale that had considerably emptied out her shed of its odds and ends of old furniture and tools, and managed to get ten extra days’ worth of her comic strip Mug the Bug done. As she’d already had another ten strips filed, that meant she could take the next two, three or even four weeks off. She smiled in happy anticipation.
No Mug. No art class to teach. No deadlines of any kind. No Dibble to market. And money in the bank.
Dibble was her self-published children’s book The Cake-Jumping Cats of Dibble, and the art class was just a little one she gave at the house to a few locals. The people of Lovering scattered in the summer; some to distant cottages or foreign destinations (though why one would want to leave Lovering in the summer, the one season everyone waited for through the six-month-long winters, Gerry couldn’t figure out); and some to pursue outdoor activities like playing golf and tennis, though gardening was the one hobby many of Lovering’s inhabitants held in common. She wondered if her new neighbour was a gardener. She’d have her work cut out for her, if so.
Gerry herself had decided to get her hands dirty this summer and found she quite enjoyed it. She’d had no idea how relaxing weeding and moving perennials around could be.
The vacuum cleaner noise ceased. Gerry opened the kitchen door. Prudence! Lunch break! I’m making tea.
She waited.
All right,
came the distant answer.
Gerry closed the door. She poured a bit of boiling water in the brown teapot to warm it, then swooshed it around before pouring it down the sink. She took a mason jar of tea out of the cupboard. The tea was a new flavour, Earl Grey Cream, superior, Gerry thought, to the traditional Earl Grey, and a gift from a friend. She packed three teaspoons of the leaves into a vintage white china tea egg and carefully screwed it closed. One of her Aunt Maggie’s cherished possessions.
Another of the cherished possessions scratched at the kitchen door. All right! All right! I’m coming!
she called, adding fresh boiling water to the pot and loading it along with all necessary tea accoutrements onto a big round tray. No cats in the kitchen was the almost always strictly enforced (except at cat meal times) rule.
The waiting cat was Seymour, the newest addition to Gerry’s feline family and one of the cats who had not belonged to her aunt. A small black shorthair, he was usually a polite gentleman. The previously rescued tortoiseshell, Lightning, hovered nervously in the background. What’s up, Seymour?
Gerry queried, placing the tray down on the big table by the lakeside window.
Then she forgot the two cats as, once again entranced by the view, she looked dreamily out the window.
In fall, winter and early spring, she would probably have set her and Prudence’s tea tray on the little table between the two rockers facing the fire, but now it was summer (well, practically), Gerry couldn’t get enough of her backyard view: green lawn, though brown or yellow in patches; flowers poking up; and the trees, mostly maples, soft with partially opened leaves. She picked Seymour up and absently stroked him. As only the second of her cats that she’d selected herself (the first being the kitten Jay from a batch of five brought home by her motherly marmalade tabby Mother) she had a special spot in her heart for him. She looked at his little face, slightly disfigured by the absence of one eye. Who’s a lovely boy?
she crooned, rubbing her face in his fur. He purred and pushed his head against her chin, seeming to say, That would be me.
She sneezed. Disturbed by the sudden violent sound, the cat jumped down.
Sounds like someone’s got allergies,
commented Prudence, going into the kitchen to get her lunch, a peanut butter and sweet pickle sandwich with accompanying bag of potato chips.
Today’s flavour was vinegar. She offered the open bag to Gerry as she sat down at the table. Gerry took one and got her own already prepared chicken sandwich from the fridge.
Various cats, hearing sounds of snacking, sidled or stalked (depending on their character) into the room and ranged themselves comfortably around the seated pair—the young woman with red hair and freckles, and the older woman, grey hair pulled back in a bun, her small mouth pursed.
A big marmalade (Mother) corralled a small black and white cat (Jay), and, holding it firmly between its front paws, began a thorough grooming. The black and white cat squirmed as another small cat (Ronald)—white with a black moustache—strolled by, smirking. We’ve all had to put up with it,
he might have been saying.
He joined three grey-striped cats who were flipping and flopping on the braided hearthrug, using each other’s tails as toys. A large tuxedo cat sat nearby, licking a paw.
"I don’t think I do," sniffled Gerry,