Interwoven Stories -- Old, Yet New



Cat Bearing Gifts [by] Shirley Rousseau Murphy

[New York]; HarperCollins, [2012]

978-0-06-180694-0; $19.99

This series, if you do not know it, revolves around a group of cats who live in a small town on the California Coast called Molena Point, with their humans.  The difference is that the cats can talk, and do, to their human friends, who feel special ties to their cats.  Joe Grey, Dulcie, Kit, and Pan are the major cats.  Ryan, a contractor, and Clyde, a mechanic and car-restorer, are married and own Joe, as well as a Weimaraner named Rock.  An older couple, the Greenlaws – Pedric and Lucinda, own Kit, and retired parole officer Wilma Getz, owns Dulcie.  Pan has just arrived in Molena Point and he and Kit are an item.  The only person who knows about the cats is Charlie Harper, the wife of the Police Chief, Max Harper.  Max doesn’t know about the cats, but he does get telephone tips from them about evils in the village, especially from Joe Grey.

Kate Osborne, an interior decorator, has returned to California, and is living and working in San Francisco.  She has returned from her travels with riches and tales of the Nether World, which is a lost kingdom, where she once lived, and where her parents died battling the evil there.  This is also the place where, it is believed, the talking cats came from.  There are legends and stories of the cats, some of which Pedric knows and tells.

Lucinda, Pedric, and Kit have gone to visit Kate, and they are on the way back from San Francisco with purchases for their home, as well as treasures from the Nether World, which they plan to store in safety deposit boxes in Molena Point.  On the winding highway, they are crowded off the road by two trucks – one, a delivery van, the other an old pickup containing Vic and Birely, a couple of low-level crooks.  There is an accident, with all of the vehicles careening off the road.  The driver of the delivery truck is killed outright.  Birely, in the passenger seat, is badly hurt, and Vic, although bloodied, is not much hurt.  Their truck is undriveable.

The Lincoln Town Car driven by Pedric is a bit dinged-up, but it is driveable.  Pedric, however, is concussed, and Lucinda has broken bones.  The little tortoiseshell, Kit, is fine.  However, Vic decides to take the Town Car, so he throws Pedric and Lucinda out of it, then, deciding that, if he leaves Birely, he might talk, takes him along, and drives away.  Kit runs back and forth between her people, keeping them awake and compos. Then, she takes Lucinda’s phone and calls 911, bringing the sheriff and paramedics, who take Lucinda and Pedric away.  Lucinda wants Kit to be found, but the paramedics don’t want to bother looking for a cat – they need to get these people fixed up. Kit realizes she would probably be caged in an animal shelter, which she couldn’t break out of, in a strange town where she wouldn’t know where her humans went, so she skedaddles into the woods as the ambulances drive away.

Then Kit gets scared – she is aware that there are coyotes coming to where she is and she calls Clyde and Ryan on Lucinda’s phone.  They bring Rock to track Kit and keep the coyotes at bay, and, of course, the cats come too.  They retrieve Dulcie, Ryan shoots one of the coyotes, and they drive away unscathed, heading for the hospital in Santa Cruz, where Pedric and Lucinda have been taken.

Meanwhile, Vic drives Birely to a stone building – a kind of garage structure, above the home that Birely’s deceased sister Sammie once lived, which is now occupied by Sammie’s chosen heir, Emmylou Warren.  Emmylou has discovered money in the walls of the house, and she is remodeling, partly to fix up the house, but also to find all of the money. She had also stashed some in the old stone building currently being occupied by Vic, Birely, and the Greenlaws’ Town Car.  Vic and Birely had originally been coming to the house to take it over as Birely’s inheritance, and to find the money.  Now, Birely is barely hanging on and Vic vacillates back and forth about what he will do: stay with Birely, leave Birely there to die, or take Birely to the hospital.

Meanwhile, all the friends are gathering around the two injured ones, keeping Pedric awake, with Kit in his presence, and Dulcie staying with Lucinda and standing in for Kit while Lucinda drifts in and out of consciousness.

Pan had come to Molena Point after he’d been thrown – quite literally – out of the house he shared with a little girl named Tessa, her older sister, Vinnie, and her mother, Debbie. The one who threw him out was Debbie’s husband, Eric, who is now in prison.  Debbie spends much of her time shoplifting from stores in Molena Point.  She had been fencing the stuff locally, but Vic has gotten her a bigger chunk of change for the stolen items, so he’s going to do it again.  Since she is living in a house owned by Ryan and Clyde, Ryan gives her an ultimatum to either return the materials and apologize, or leave the premises.  Debbie, of course, has no plans to do either one.

Vic finally makes up his mind to do Birely in, but this is after Emmylou has taken him to the hospital after finding him in her outbuilding, so he has to do it in a “medical” way, so the hospital gets blamed.  He botches it, the cats take over, and he flees – to an extremely fitting comeuppance.

This is a fun cozy series, with delightful conversation bordering on the mythology behind the cats, which is quite interesting.  Kit and Pan need to work on their relationship, which is quite nicely done. Recommended.~lss-r

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Library book.