Part 3
“I heard you,” Nora said.
She believed she had.
For the first week, the kittens did little that could be called charming. They ate, slept, pushed one another away from Clover’s belly and made surprisingly loud complaints whenever they became cold or lost.
Nora weighed them each morning while Clover ate. She wrote the numbers in Lena’s notebook and drew arrows beside changes. The black-and-white male gained steadily. So did his calico sister and the orange brother.
The gray female barely changed.
Lena came after work on the third evening. She checked the notebook before taking off her coat.
“You caught it early.”
“She nurses. I’ve watched her.”
“Nursing and getting enough aren’t always the same.”
Together they called the clinic. Dr. Shah had Nora bring Clover and the kittens in the following morning. No infection or obvious abnormality was found, but the gray kitten needed closer monitoring and brief supplemental feeding if she continued to lag.
Nora listened to every instruction twice.
The kitten received the temporary name Pip because Lena said they needed something shorter than “the little gray one” for the records. Nora pretended not to like it. By the next morning, she had written PIP in careful block letters at the top of the weight page.
For several nights, she set an alarm and slept on the guest-room floor. She did not handle Pip more than necessary. She helped the kitten reach Clover before the stronger siblings crowded in, then moved away.
Lena took the midnight check on Friday. At two in the morning, Nora woke to find her sitting against the bed with cold coffee balanced on one knee.
“You could have woken me.”
“You were snoring.”
“I don’t snore.”
“Then somebody has hidden a bulldog in your closet.”
Nora laughed before she could stop herself. Clover lifted her head at the sound, watched them and lowered it again.
Lena’s smile faded first. “She would have been spayed by now.”
“I know.”
“I’m not saying it to punish you.”
“It doesn’t sound that way.”
Pip squeaked. Both women looked toward the closet.
After a moment Lena said, “Traps fail. Cats disappear. People promise to keep feeding and stop. I couldn’t guarantee she would come back.”
The admission loosened something in Nora’s chest.
Lena rubbed at a coffee stain on her sweatshirt. “But leaving things as they were didn’t keep her safe.”
Nora looked at the four kittens. “I liked that she came to me.”
“I know.”
“I liked being the one person she trusted.”
Lena nodded once. She did not forgive Nora, and Nora did not ask her to. But at three, when Pip finally settled with a full belly, they drank fresh coffee at the kitchen table for the first time in eleven weeks.
During the following days, the kittens’ eyes opened one by one. The black-and-white male stared at Nora through one open eye and one sealed one, looking personally offended by daylight. Pip was last.
When the gray kitten finally looked back at her, Nora sat beside the closet and whispered, “Look at those eyes.”
Pip stared past her shoulder, unfocused and solemn.
At two and a half weeks, Nora allowed Mrs. Daley, a longtime client, to peek into the room from the doorway. Mrs. Daley squealed when the orange kitten crawled over Clover’s foreleg.
Clover’s body tightened.
That evening she carried the kittens, one by one, behind an armchair in the workroom.
Nora found her dragging Pip across the threshold by the scruff and panicked.
“Clover, no. Not in here.”
She reached for the kitten. Clover dropped Pip and hissed, striking the floor inches from Nora’s hand.
Nora froze.
The cat picked Pip up again and disappeared beneath the pressing table.
Lena arrived with an enclosed playpen and surveyed the room: thread cones, cords, the rolling rack, the pin magnet Nora had left beside the machine.
“She moved them because the room stopped feeling safe.”
“It was one visitor.”
“To Clover, it was one visitor she didn’t approve.”
“I can’t let four kittens live under an industrial iron.”
“No. So make the guest room quiet again and give her a better hiding place.”
They moved the low cardboard box into the closet and draped a sheet across half the opening. Nora cleaned the room, closed the door and waited.
It took Clover nearly an hour to carry the kittens back. Nora did not help. She sat on the floor with her hands folded until the last small tail vanished behind the sheet.
By the end of the fourth week, the household had changed character. A shallow litter pan appeared. Soft food ended up on paws, faces and once on the wall. The kittens learned to stand, then to walk badly, then to run without acquiring any sense of distance or consequence.
The black-and-white male became Otis. The calico was June, the orange male Milo, and Pip remained Pip.
Milo discovered how to climb the mesh playpen. Otis learned to open the gap where the zipper met the floor. June ambushed anything that moved, including her own tail. Pip watched from behind the water dish until the others had tested each new danger.
One afternoon Nora opened the guest-room door carrying clean fleece. Otis shot between her ankles. Milo and June followed.
“Come on, fluff balls. Back inside.”
They scattered in three directions.
Pip emerged last, looked at the open doorway and ran directly up Nora’s jeans.
“Hey—easy on the denim.”
Tiny claws found the fabric above her knee. Nora caught Pip gently around the body before she reached the pocket.
“Truce?”
Pip bit the air near Nora’s thumb.
“No? All right.”
By the time Lena arrived, Nora had returned three kittens and was lying on the workroom floor trying to coax Milo out from beneath a rack of bridesmaid dresses.
Lena stopped in the doorway. “I thought clients weren’t allowed in the kitten room.”
“They staged a prison break.”
Lena lowered herself beside Nora. Without looking at one another, they blocked opposite ends of the rack. Milo trotted out and straight into the carrier.
For ten minutes, they laughed like nothing had happened between them.
At seven weeks, Riverbend posted the kittens for pre-adoption. Applications arrived quickly for Otis and Milo. June drew interest too, although Lena believed she and Pip might do best together. Pip followed June everywhere and became distressed when separated from her for more than a few minutes.
Nora read each application twice.
Marian Vale came for a fitting on a Tuesday. She had brought Nora years of reliable work: holiday dresses, charity dinners, two daughters’ weddings and now a granddaughter’s pageant gown. Marian noticed Pip sleeping in the playpen before Nora could close the guest-room door.
“Oh, look at that little silver one.”
“She’s still in foster care.”
“My granddaughter Sophie has been asking for a kitten since their old cat died. Her parents finally agreed she could have one after school lets out.”
Nora should have handed Marian the Riverbend application card. A stack of them sat beside the appointment book.
Instead, she lifted Pip from the playpen.
The kitten settled against her shirt and began to purr.
Marian touched one finger to Pip’s head. “She’s lovely.”
“She’s shy with most people.”
“So is Sophie. They might understand each other.”
“There’s an application.”
“I’ll fill out whatever is necessary. But they can only take one.”
Nora glanced toward June, asleep on the other side of the playpen. Lena had said the two females appeared bonded, not that the decision was final.
“She’ll be ready in another week or two,” Nora said.
“Could you hold her for us?”
Nora thought of Marian’s family, their elderly cat and the business Marian had sent her over the years. Most of all, she imagined knowing exactly where Pip had gone.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll hold her.”
She wrote PIP—MARIAN on the calendar beside the final week of June.
Lena saw it three days later. She stood at the kitchen counter with the foster notebook open in front of her and tapped the calendar with one finger.
“What did you promise…”
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