“Khat, is that you?” And then, when I heard a familiar, throaty meow and some urgent scratching on the other side of the door, I cried, “Khat, it is you! What are you doing in this house, you bad kitty? You come out this minute, do you hear? This is not your house. You don’t belong here.”
If you think I’m in the habit of lecturing delinquent cats through the locked doors of other people’s houses, you’re wrong. But in this case, I felt completely justified. And what’s more, I felt equally justified in giving the door a very firm shove with my shoulder.
That did it. The old door opened with a shriek of rusty hinges, and I stumbled inside. The back entry was dark and so full of ancient dust that I had to sneeze. But there was Khat, winding himself around my ankles, butting his head against my calves, and meowing imperiously as if to demand, “What took you so long? I expected you two days ago!”
I bent over, scooped him up in my arms, and snuggled my cheek against his dusty fur. He might have been a bit lighter for having missed out on Lila’s French fries and cream gravy for the last few days, but not noticeably so. He allowed me to caress and croon to him for a moment, and then jumped out of my arms, landing lightly on the floor. With a peremptory crook in his tail, as if to beckon me to follow him, he made for the dark stairway at the end of the hall.
That was when I heard it. A low, distraught moan, almost inaudible. Khat meowed again, more loudly, and again I heard the moan.
“Is somebody here?” I called. I fumbled for the wall switch beside the stairs and a bare bulb came on. “Do you need help? Where are you?”
“Mrrrow!” said Khat, and raised his paw as if to point.
That was how I found her. The narrow stairway to the second floor had collapsed, and the new owner of the old Gillis house—a heavyset woman in her mid fifties—had fallen through, all the way into the crawl space under the house. She was half-sitting, half-lying on the dirt, pinned down by a heavy wooden beam.
It took only a few minutes for the Pecan Springs Fire Department to answer my phone call, and by the time a couple of burly firemen had dug the victim out and hoisted her up, EMS was there to take her to the hospital.
Later, I learned that the woman’s name was Ivy O’Toole, and that she had recently purchased the old house with the intention of fixing it up. But on Tuesday afternoon, as Ivy carried a big load of books up the stairs, the rotten wood had given way beneath her. Her injuries weren’t terribly serious—a concussion, several cracked ribs, a broken ankle, and dehydration—but she was convinced that she would have died if it hadn’t been for Khat.
“It wasn’t just that he kept me company the whole time,” she said when Hark, Khat, and I went to visit her in the hospital, “although that by itself was enormously cheering. He’s a very companionable creature with a remarkable vocal range. It’s almost as if he’s talking to you.” She turned to me. “But if you hadn’t come looking for him, China, I have no idea how long it would have been before someone came looking for me. ” She gave a rueful laugh. “Weeks, probably. I don’t know a soul in Pecan Springs.”
“Look pretty,” Hark said cheerily, and snapped a photo of Ivy sitting up in her hospital bed with Khat K’o Kung in her arms. Hark was pleased because a dinky little lost-cat story had developed into a much more satisfying cat-saves-human-life story, and was now front and center on Page One, under the banner headline, THE KHAT WHO BECAME A HERO.
When the Enterprise hit the streets the next morning, Khat was an instant celebrity. A day or so later, a television crew from Austin came to interview Ivy and me and shoot some footage of Khat, who assumed an air of imperial dignity, scarcely condescending to glance at the camera. For the occasion, Ivy gave him a new red-velvet cat collar, hung with a gold medallion that said
If you think I’m in the habit of lecturing delinquent cats through the locked doors of other people’s houses, you’re wrong. But in this case, I felt completely justified. And what’s more, I felt equally justified in giving the door a very firm shove with my shoulder.
That did it. The old door opened with a shriek of rusty hinges, and I stumbled inside. The back entry was dark and so full of ancient dust that I had to sneeze. But there was Khat, winding himself around my ankles, butting his head against my calves, and meowing imperiously as if to demand, “What took you so long? I expected you two days ago!”
I bent over, scooped him up in my arms, and snuggled my cheek against his dusty fur. He might have been a bit lighter for having missed out on Lila’s French fries and cream gravy for the last few days, but not noticeably so. He allowed me to caress and croon to him for a moment, and then jumped out of my arms, landing lightly on the floor. With a peremptory crook in his tail, as if to beckon me to follow him, he made for the dark stairway at the end of the hall.
That was when I heard it. A low, distraught moan, almost inaudible. Khat meowed again, more loudly, and again I heard the moan.
“Is somebody here?” I called. I fumbled for the wall switch beside the stairs and a bare bulb came on. “Do you need help? Where are you?”
“Mrrrow!” said Khat, and raised his paw as if to point.
That was how I found her. The narrow stairway to the second floor had collapsed, and the new owner of the old Gillis house—a heavyset woman in her mid fifties—had fallen through, all the way into the crawl space under the house. She was half-sitting, half-lying on the dirt, pinned down by a heavy wooden beam.
It took only a few minutes for the Pecan Springs Fire Department to answer my phone call, and by the time a couple of burly firemen had dug the victim out and hoisted her up, EMS was there to take her to the hospital.
Later, I learned that the woman’s name was Ivy O’Toole, and that she had recently purchased the old house with the intention of fixing it up. But on Tuesday afternoon, as Ivy carried a big load of books up the stairs, the rotten wood had given way beneath her. Her injuries weren’t terribly serious—a concussion, several cracked ribs, a broken ankle, and dehydration—but she was convinced that she would have died if it hadn’t been for Khat.
“It wasn’t just that he kept me company the whole time,” she said when Hark, Khat, and I went to visit her in the hospital, “although that by itself was enormously cheering. He’s a very companionable creature with a remarkable vocal range. It’s almost as if he’s talking to you.” She turned to me. “But if you hadn’t come looking for him, China, I have no idea how long it would have been before someone came looking for me. ” She gave a rueful laugh. “Weeks, probably. I don’t know a soul in Pecan Springs.”
“Look pretty,” Hark said cheerily, and snapped a photo of Ivy sitting up in her hospital bed with Khat K’o Kung in her arms. Hark was pleased because a dinky little lost-cat story had developed into a much more satisfying cat-saves-human-life story, and was now front and center on Page One, under the banner headline, THE KHAT WHO BECAME A HERO.
When the Enterprise hit the streets the next morning, Khat was an instant celebrity. A day or so later, a television crew from Austin came to interview Ivy and me and shoot some footage of Khat, who assumed an air of imperial dignity, scarcely condescending to glance at the camera. For the occasion, Ivy gave him a new red-velvet cat collar, hung with a gold medallion that said
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