Cat Tales by George H. Scithers Page A

progressive grounding that she did not shout at Gummitch but softly summoned her husband.
    By the time Old Horsemeat arrived the young cat had refreshed himself and was coming out of his “well” with a sudden backward undulation. He passed them in the doorway with a single mew and upward look, and then made off for the kitchen.
    The blue and white room was bright with sunlight. Outside the sky was blue and the leaves were rustling in a stiff breeze. Gummitch looked back once, as if to make sure his human congeners had followed, mewed again, and then advanced briskly toward his little bowl with the air of one who proposes to reveal all mysteries at once.
    Kitty-Come-Here had almost outdone herself. She had for the first time poured him the bottled water, and she had floated a few rose petals on the surface.
    Gummitch regarded them carefully, sniffed at them, and then proceeded to fish them out one by one and shake them off his paw. Old Horsemeat repressed the urge to say, “I told you so.”
    When the water surface was completely free and winking in the sunlight, Gummitch curved one paw under the side of the bowl and jerked.
    Half the water spilled out, gathered itself, and then began to flow across the floor in little rushes, a silver ribbon sparkling with sunlight that divided and sub-divided and reunited as it followed the slope. Gummitch crouched to one side, watching it intensely, following its progress inch by inch and foot by foot, almost pouncing on the little temporary pools that formed, but not quite touching them. Twice he mewed faintly in excitement.
    â€œH E’S PLAYING with it,” Old Horsemeat said incredulously.
    â€œNo,” Kitty-Come-Here countered wide-eyed, “he’s creating something. Silver mice. Water-snakes. Twinkling vines."
    â€œGood Lord, you’re right,” Old Horsemeat agreed. “It’s a new art form. Would you call it water painting? Or water sculpture? Somehow I think that’s best. As if a sculptor made mobiles out of molten tin.”
    â€œIt’s gone so quickly, though,” Kitty-Come-Here objected, a little sadly. “Art ought to last. Look, it’s almost all flowed over to the wall now.”
    â€œSome of the best art forms are completely fugitive,” Old Horsemeat argued. “What about improvisation in music and dancing? What about jam sessions and shadow figures on a wall? Gummitch can always do it again — in fact, he must have been doing it again and again last month. It’s never exactly the same, like waves or fire. But it’s beautiful.”
    â€œI suppose so,” Kitty-Come-Here said. Then coming to herself, she continued, “But I don’t think it can be healthy for him to go on drinking water out of the toilet. Really.”
    Old Horsemeat shrugged. He had an insight about the artistic temperament and the need to dig for inspiration into the smelly fundamentals of life, but it was difficult to express delicately.
    Kitty-Come-Here sighed, as if bidding farewell to all her efforts with rose petals and crystalline bottled purity and vanilla extract and the soda water which had amazed Gummitch by faintly spitting and purring at him.
    â€œOh, well,” she said, “I can scrub it out more often, I suppose.”
    Meanwhile, Gummitch had gone back to his bowl and, using both paws, overset it completely. Now, with nose a-twitch, he once more pursued the silver streams alive with suns, refreshing his spirit with the sight of them. He was fretted by no problems about what he was doing. He had solved them all with one of his characteristically sharp distinctions: there was the sacred water, the sparklingly clear water to create with, and there was the water with character, the water to drink. U
    Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) was best known for his Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series of sword-and-sorcery adventures, but he also wrote a broad range of fantastic fiction, including such classics as The