Cat Seeing Double by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

but there were limits. Watching his best manpush through to take his place, Max fixed him with a look that would intimidate the coldest felon.
    Clyde’s sly grin told him that indeed cats were among the wedding guests; and the faintest scrambling sound behind Max told him those guests were now above his head, in the branches of the eucalyptus tree—doing what? Cats did not attend weddings, cats did not know about weddings. Max looked down the long grassy aisle to Charlie, needing her commonsense response to such matters. This business of weirdly behaving cats left him out of his element, off-center and shaky, as nothing else could do.
    Â 
    The instant Clyde parked, the three cats had leaped out of the open convertible and streaked across the empty eastbound lane hoping not to be noticed on the dark street. Slipping into the crowd, swerving between shoes and pant cuffs and silk-clad ankles they stormed up the far side of the giant eucalyptus. Concealing themselves among its leafy branches, they looked down on the crowd below, massed in the falling evening among the sheltering trees.
    â€œOh,” Dulcie whispered. “Oh,” said the kit. The faces of the villagers were lighted from beneath by candles and torches like the faces of children carrying votive candles in solemn procession. The scene put Dulcie in mind of some ancient woodland wedding performed in a simpler time, perhaps a Celtic ceremony in a far and magical past.
    The minute Clyde took his place beside the groom, Wilma began her measured walk up the grassy aisle,her step dictated not by wedding music, for there was none, but by the rhythm of the sea that broke some blocks away on the sandy shore, the surf’s eternal hush deep and sustaining. Behind Wilma, the bride approached on the arm of Dallas Garza between the flickering lights, her dress gleaming white. “She’ll have sponged it,” Dulcie whispered.
    Some of the wedding guests sported bandages; but only Cora Lee French was in the hospital. “For observation,” Clyde had said. Cora Lee’s lack of a spleen after her attack and surgery last spring prompted her doctor to keep close watch on her. Very likely, the cats thought, Cora Lee was fully prepared to enjoy the wedding secondhand from her friends’ eager descriptions and from the plates of wedding cake and party food that would be carried over to the hospital.
    As Charlie, Wilma, and Dallas took their places, Dulcie felt a tear slide down her whiskers. The ceremony was simple. At, “who gives this bride to be wed?” when Detective Garza led Charlie forward to stand beside Captain Harper, Joe Grey muttered a little prayer that in all the confusion Clyde hadn’t lost the rings. Only when Clyde slipped his hand in his coat pocket and the ring boxes appeared, did the cats relax, watching with fascination as the traditional words to love and to cherish formed a deep and solemn promise. Dulcie’s eyes were indeed misty. Looking down through the branches, the cats watched Max Harper place the gold band on Charlie’s finger. As Charlie slipped Max’s ring on, another tear slid down Dulcie’s nose, a tear that no ordinary cat could shed. Joe looked at her intently. “What’s to cry about? This is the start of their new life.”
    â€œA tomcat wouldn’t understand. All females cry at weddings, it’s in the genes.”
    But in truth all three cats were touched by this human ritual. The kit snuffled into her whiskers; and as the villagers gathered around the bride and groom kissing and hugging them, the cats moved higher up the great tree, easing out along a wide branch through the softly rustling foliage, where they had a wider view of the village street. As Max and Charlie mingled with their friends, and someone’s CD player brought alive the forties swing that Charlie and Max loved, Ryan and her Uncle Dallas left the party hurrying in the direction of the police