Question Mark Tails

‘What is it about that mouse that drives me so nuts?’ I thought for the tenth time today. Or maybe the eleventh. ‘She’s got the same pale grey fur as I do. Only softer and thicker, like she’s brushed it with a bur while counting a hundred strokes.’

I crept along the floorboards of the old church on her trail. ‘She’s got the same polished onyx eyes as mine. Only they twinkle like stars when she smiles.’ I peeked around the corner. Nothing there. ‘She’s got the same pink paws as me---only finer when she beckons me with a single finger for me to come hither. The same long tail---only it teases me in the shape of a question mark before slipping out of sight.’

She’d been here in this very spot just moments before, I could smell the sweet musk of her breath as it lingered and clung to my whiskers. She’d eaten a Ritz that morning.

“Darby Tufkins! You git yer butt down here right this instance!”

A good imitation of my mother’s voice. I laughed and turned around. “How long you been following me cousin?”

He sat on his haunches and waggled a finger at me, just like my mother did. But instead of scolding me he laughed, doubling over. Sitting up, Maury said, “Just the last ten minutes. You chasing Billie-Jean again? Man, you gotta be more careful…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re right.”

“That damn cat is wicked quiet. And acting odd. She’s up to something for sure. It’s a good thing she’s white.”

I nodded agreement as I followed Maury back the way we’d come---along the floorboards, behind the credenza, and down the hall to a small crack chewed just large enough for us to squeeze through. Cecilia was indeed so white she practically glowed in the shadows. And although this was just an illusion, her yellow eyes inhaled the moonlight, turning her head into a lantern with two windows. Spooky as hell.

“Your Ma asked me to find you, it’s true.”

“What’s going on?”

“Don’t know. But Steff’s been missing two days now.”

“I’m sorry Mo. I’m sure she’s---"

“Don’t. You know as well as I do, she’s been eaten.”

I hung my head in sorrow for Maury and his missing sibling. Through the wall we crept in hushed silence. We tunneled right a few feet and came out a small hidden cavity behind an infantry of dusty wine bottles (supposedly filled with the blood of Jesus) standing sentinel below the shelves of flour, corn meal, sugar and salt. We lived in the walls of this pantry. Continue further along and you came out under a spigot in the backyard of the church. The yard was a vast unkempt forest of grass and dandelions and stands of wild blackberry bushes. It was tramped down between the few rows of grave markers that humans occasionally came to visit. The yard was very old, most of the relatives of the long deceased were deceased now themselves. Even the old minister and his wife were old.

To us, they were ancient, like walking, talking Druid monoliths, living decades of years---maybe even ten long. For us this was unfathomable. Our lives were measured in weeks, our elders in months. In the time of my great-grandparents, the man had set traps, mostly in the pantry and attic. The elders passed on stories of such nightmarish images they swore were true: sticky paper your feet stuck to until you shriveled and wasted away slowly, wooden slats that had metal arms that came down upon your neck---you were lucky if you were killed right away. Poison was the worst and thankfully the shortest lived. The Pastor had been horrified to discover he’d inadvertently murdered owls and foxes and raccoons as well as my kind.

Then his wife had brought home Cecilia. The human couple had decided this would be the most humane of all. They said it was the way of nature, the cycle of life. Blah blah blah. After our numbers had been decimated by half, my Uncle Joby had lost his mind. He ran out to the cat one night screaming, “Why can’t we all just get along?!” None of us had known that sweet-tempered, mild-mannered Uncle Joby had been suicidal.

It was dark outside. Us surviving mice huddled together under an old wooden crate that smelled of orange rind and hickory. Cousins Sible and Jeri stood by the opening, watching for the cat, their whiskers quivering, alert to any nearby movement, not unlike bats using echo-sonar to navigate.

My mother said, “She’s been especially stealthy. Prowling along on her tippy-toes. Tail high in the air.”

All three dozen of us nodded solemnly. We’d all felt something ‘off’ in our bones and to hear it voiced aloud made us shiver as if we’d suddenly been tossed into December.

Someone squeaked, “I can’t hear her at all anymore.”

“Nor can I,” said another.

The squeaker said, “She’s been leaving the church---”

“Yes. More often. She’s like a ghost that drifts on the air…”

My mother said, “What’s odder than her pacing all night is the grin on her face---”

I shivered again and added, “The toothy grin and Jack-o-lantern eyes! Downright frightening.” I spied Billie-Jean near the back. She was holding her three little sisters whose darks eyes were scared round spots in their nearly white baby fur. She caught my eye and winked at me while the rest of the mice nodded. I blushed hotly under my grey fur.

Just then the most god-awful wailing reared up across the yard behind us. “OOOOOOWWWWWrrrrrrrrr! Ooooooowwwwwrrrrr!”

The little ones screamed. The sentinels cried, “Get down and freeze!”

“What new hellish behavior is this?” I cried, covering my ears lest they bleed.

The cat sitting upon the headstone closest to the woods at the edge of the graveyard swung her head in our direction, her white fur luminescent in the moonlight, her yellow eyes like lasers, pinpointing our location.

My family was a grey streak in the dim light, a locomotive of fur and whiskers. In seconds they were all gone. Only Billie-Jean and I were left. I tried to take her in my arms, but she said, “The babies need me. Come on! The cat!”

I looked across the yard. The cat was gone. It was unnerving. Better to have her in your sights. I followed Billie-Jean inside the wall where she went with her family and I with mine.

The next day we saw no signs of the cat. That meant little except that we had to be extra alert. Our mothers declared that we could only leave the walls in pairs and never alone. I searched for Billie-Jean regardless. Up the wall slats to the top shelf, I popped out amongst boxes of crackers and cereal and canisters of delightfully sweet baking supplies. This was the most dangerous shelf of all. Underneath the dusting of yeast and dust and spider egg casings, was an abstract speckling of old bloodstains. My family’s ghosts haunted this shelf. And here it was I found fresh prints. Hers. She’d been drawn again to her favorite. The Ritz.

A giggle swung my head to the end of the shelf. She peeked an eye out from behind a Triscuit box then ducked out of sight leaving only a tail posing a question. Oh, that little minx. Today I would catch her…and make her mine.

I followed her scent and the barely noticeable cracker crumbs she left on purpose. I tried to be wary of my surroundings. I was being disobedient, and perhaps foolish, but soon there would be the two of us, and we’d be within the protocol.

I made my way down to the floor and slipped under the door…just as a scream pitched at me and nearly knocked me over. A high-pitched scream---nearly as supersonic as those whistles only dogs can hear---the scream of a mouse. I raced towards where the sound had been flung from. The church’s narthex was a vast space, in my large ears I heard the scream over and over, echoing through the room that in the dark was as expansive as the universe was to humans.

I stopped stupidly in the middle of the aisle in the middle of the pews. I smelled her faintly, she was bleeding. My fur stood on end when I smelled the cat. ‘Wait! Not Cecilia. She smelled faintly of the lavender/oatmeal/flea killing soap the pastor’s wife bathed her with. This was a male scent---pine trees and…and…ew…putrid rotting squirrel carcass.

‘Did something just move over there? A shadow come to life?!’ I ducked behind the leg of a pew and peeked out, not daring to breathe. I stared into the dark and I felt it staring back at me. As I backed up further under the bench a shadow two rows ahead condensed into a darker mass. Two round, pale green windows opened. Like Celia’s yellow ones but green.

I understood then and kicked myself mentally for being so daft. It was a male cat, and he was huge and black as sin. I ran for my life back to the hole under the credenza in the hall. Panting, I leaned upon the wall, held my face in my paws, not surprised to find wetness there.

“Dude! Thank goodness you’re back! Meeting in ten…wait. Are you okay?”

I took in Maury’s face and the concern plastered there and I couldn’t help it, I sobbed openly. Gasping, I said, “Billie’s been taken---”

“---Yes! We know. The Jonesy twins heard the screams and reported to the elders right away…”

“Oh god. So, Mother knows I’ve been out alone?”

“Yes. But she understands, I think. You had to go after her.”

Ten minutes later, in the meeting crate, my mother silently scolded me with her eyes which was far worse than her sharp tongue. All the mice were present but one. She led the meeting, talking of Billie-Jean’s demise.

“But she’s alive!” I cried, not caring if I was punished for telling how I knew this. The new information I also knew was worthy of redemption. “It’s not Cecelia!”

All six-dozen-minus-two ears perked up and faced me like small round radar dishes. I took three deep breaths and said, “It’s a male cat. Bigger. And worse because he’s black.”

It felt as if all the air in the crate had been sucked out as my audience gasped and held their breath. Whiskers quivered, tails flicked in agitation.

Mother said, “Darby, tell us everything you know” And I did. Mother then reinforced the laws and updated everyone on other news…

The meeting wore on but I hardly heard a word of it. Those eyes, those delicate paws, that fur and wonderful teasing tail. My heart felt as if it had a long sharp bamboo skewer through it. Like the kind the humans used when barbequing veggies on the grill.

Like before. A ululant howl cut the meeting short.

There she was again on the gravestone, howling towards the woods. Not as eerily beguiling as a wolf’s or as engagingly musical as a coyote’s. But as terribly assaulting to the ears as the wailing of an out-of-tune pipe organ. “OOOOeeeeewwwwrrrRRR!”

The mice fled. I remained. I had to know what became of Billie-Jean. I plugged my ears with my fingers and watched.

A cry from the woods returned Cecilia’s terrible cry. “AAAAAAooooooooooaaarrrrr!”

‘Him.’

***

I watched the white vision of loveliness leap from the top of the grave marker. I had heard those mice again too, screaming pitifully in their hidey-hole…or wherever. Pah! I cared not at this moment. I was hidden in the shadow of an old oak just outside the cemetery fence.

I was invisible. She was not. She glowed like Mother Catresa. The eyes in her amazing feline face were like the windows in a lighthouse; she was the siren. Her call was the most musical herald ever heard by a tomcat’s ears. The notes strong and the wailing massaged my heart muscle…and the muscle below my tail. Each night she’d sung her siren song I’d grown bolder, listening…hearing her.

Here she came into my woods. On tip-toes, with white tail flagging not with surrender, but with challenge. She smelled strong. She wanted me. My black fur, like Dracula’s cape, enabled me to trapse through shadows unseen. I followed her. She looked back, a come-hither grin on her face; she could hear me but was playing hard to get…and I was game. The game was torture of the most exquisite kind. Her tail formed a question mark before it vanished behind a gravestone.

“ROWWWeerrroowww!”

Her delightful sexy song was fading. ‘???...Oh that little minx. She was teasing me now. Beckoning me to pursue her.’ I was unable to not follow. I wished I had a gift for her. Something truly special. Not just a mouse, she had plenty of those. I followed her strong perfume, wracking my brains for a woo-ful gift, one that would make her melt into my arms.

***

I watched the cats frolic in the graveyard. Then turned back to the church, intent on following the scent of Billie-Jean, Her terror was a sharp tang assaulting my nose. She was alive. Frightened near to death, but alive. Blood on the wooden floor in the sacristy of the church where the cat slept infuriated me. It was near impossible to keep my head. But I persevered through the red fog of anger. Instead of rushing into the small room, I stopped and stood on my hind legs, sniffing the air.

The cat’s scent was strong in the sacristy. The male had been here too, though briefly. A dozen candles were lit on a shelf over a bed that looked cozy and soft, the waxy scent was faintly vanilla-ed. Her bowls contained cool fresh water and a scattering of kibble. I screamed to myself, ‘No!’ as I wandered like a zombie to the kibble as if struck by voodoo. I went instead to the scent of the bleeding mouse in the cat’s bed.

She was alive!

A quick go over of her wounds determined she was bleeding from puncture wounds over her neck. Oh, that silky fur matted with blood broke a thing inside of me. Her back left paw was broken as was her right front. She lifted her head and sniffed…then smiled. I was pleased to see droplets of blood on her muzzle…not hers. I should have taken one last look and sniff around. But I needed Billie-Jean in my arms. I pulled her to ne. She winced and clung to me desperately, showing me that beautiful smile. This was the happiest I’d ever felt in my short life; these moments as I held her in my arms at last were the sweetest I’d ever known.

I should have taken one last look around and one last sniff. Regardless, I would not have seen the other cat.

He was a shadow. A phantom. A grim reaper.

***

My beauty came into the church and howled her siren song.

I smiled and appeared to her like a cat-shaped shadow infusing itself into the soft light of the sacristy of the church she lived in. I liked it here. I could smell a least three dozen mice in the walls. I had checked out her living space, rolling in her bed to entice her with my heat-infused, wild odor. She came to me, her question mark tail curling around mine. Her heat scent was intoxicating, making me high as a kite. She teased and batted me…and took me to her bed.

I stopped before it and she looked at me imploringly and with eager wanting. I returned the torture she’d been inflicting.

I held up a paw. She came forward. I batted her nose and she scowled…but her eyes lit up, big and round and yellow as she saw what my gift was.

On a long bamboo skewer was not just a single mouse…but two entwined in an embrace.