Cattitude by Edie Ramer Page B

thing that Ted
used and poked at buttons, the way she’d seen him do so many times.
On the fifth button, the screen lit up. A man came on, and she felt
a spurt of recognition. Beau from The Love Chronicles .
    Clapping her hands, she sat down to listen.
Since she was still stuck in this body—she shuddered—it appeared
necessary for her to speak like a human. Who better to teach her
than the characters from Tory’s favorite TV show?
    She stared at Beau’s mouth. Other animals
would find human speech hard to learn. Dogs, for instance. But she
was a cat, gifted at birth with a vocal range that went from a roar
to a hiss, a purr to a yowl. Learning human speech would be a piece
of tuna.

CHAPTER 7

    Sorcha hid in the woods all afternoon,
watching the road. Twice she saw a gray car drive up and down
slowly, the person inside searching for someone. This was a rural
road, lightly traveled. It had to be Deavers. Besides the gray car,
only a dozen cars and SUVs, a Sears van and a cable TV truck had
sped past. After a while, she nodded off until the roar of a school
bus engine woke her.
    Rustling sounds came to her ears, something
coming through the trees. She lifted her nose and sniffed, smelling
another animal. A bear perhaps? Did bears eat cats? As her
heartbeat tapped a hip-hop dance, a raccoon jumped out from between
two trees and dashed straight toward her.
    Sorcha squealed and took off, running so fast
she felt as if she flew. About a quarter mile from Fletch’s wrecked
car, she lost the scent of the raccoon. She kept running but more
slowly. From the pads of her four feet to her tail to her whiskers,
she trembled. She wasn’t sure if raccoons ate cats but didn’t want
to find out the hard way.
    Another quarter mile or so she came upon a
cast iron fence. She followed it...and followed it...and followed
it. A smell floated by her nose. Turkey. Smoked. Her human mind
said yech . Her cat body said yum .
    Saliva gathered in her mouth and she looked
at the bars of the fence. Could she squeeze through? Somehow she
had to get into the grounds. She’d been ready to die only a few
hours ago, but the needs of this new body were too strong to
resist.
    Licking her mouth, she spotted the gates.
They were open, which meant they couldn’t have dogs. Or maybe they
had ones that let themselves be trained by their humans to stay
inside an unlocked gate.
    She sniffed, then wondered where this disdain
came from. She liked dogs. Didn’t she?
    She was so confused.
    Oh, Fletcher, if you’re in heaven watching
me, I hope you realize what you caused. A thought wiggled into
her mind, like a worm in an apple, that maybe Fletcher wasn’t in
heaven. She sniffed again, this time with sadness. The hell she
believed in was life on earth without Fletcher, the only person
who’d ever claimed to love her.
    The curved driveway was long and concrete. In
the distance, she could see the outline of a structure. She
squinted but it didn’t get clearer, as if these cat eyes needed
glasses. Although the cat brain had to be much smaller than her
human one, it seemed to be holding all her human knowledge. She’d
read somewhere that humans used a small percent of their brain. Too
bad no one except herself knew for sure how true this was.
    Was the cat inside her body having similar
problems adjusting? How wonderful it must be for the cat to be a
human. It probably never wanted to be a cat again.
    The smell of smoked turkey grew stronger and
she detected a hickory taste. Her body wanted it with the same
urgency that made her gobble a package of chocolate chips on the
night before her period. She dashed toward the smell, whipping
along the driveway like a racehorse.
    A dozen yards away from the house, she slid
to a stop and stared, her hunger forgotten in her amazement. It
looked like a small castle. She imagined what Fletcher would say: “Some folks throw money around like it’s candy. See anything in
their future, honey? We could use some of that