narrow worry-line appeared on his forehead again, as he began patting the head of my pencil-holder cat, his rings clanging against the smooth ceramic. “But those kittens aren’t wanted…Scooter’s would be. How about we start letting the customers see him, and Mittens, to create a demand? Nothing like a pair of literary kittens to bring attention to a bookstore—”
I still wasn’t sure about letting the people see the Hemingway kittens; I was used to seeing their strange paws, but not everyone was into cats with large mitten feet. Glancing around the cat-print covered walls of my shop, I noticed that Susan Herbert and Mr. Wysocki didn’t choose to use polydactyl cats in their paintings, despite their human-like paws. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure if all my clients would realize what a Hemingway cat was…after all, Minnesota was, and still is, F. Scott Fitzgerald country.
It was almost as if Rik had read my mind, for he suddenly said, “Picture this…Scooter and Mittens in the window, with books by Hemingway and Fitzgerald, maybe even an opened copy of The Great Gatsby—it’s be a heck of a photo op, at the least. You now, free advertising.…”
College boy had me there. For more years than I cared to admit, I’d made do with a small weekly ad in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Star-Tribune, the cheapest one I could get, just enough to let readers know I was Out There. And while my “Barrett and Browning” cats attracted quite a bit of passer-by attention, I’d never been daring enough to try to create a window worthy of newspaper attention. I suppose it was being brought up during the age of Self-Praise-Stinks, the motto my parents drummed into my head almost from the cradle, but this was the Information Age, and I realized that Rik’s idea was a good one.…
It took a little coaxing to lure Oscar and April out of “their” window (plus the small canister of cat treats Rik bought helped), but Scooter and Mittens seemed to instinctively understand what was wanted of them.
Rik had done some searching on the Internet and found some pictures of the descendants of the real Hemingway cats which he downloaded and printed out in color, and I’d found some art-quality prints of both authors, which I mounted on poster-board. I knew the sunlight would bleach out all the pictures within a few weeks or less, but I didn’t plan to keep this particular display up all that long—Rik promised me that a friend of his who worked at one of the papers would just “happen by” and take a photo of the new window display, and just as Rik had managed to “find” me some new store-cats within hours of my asking about them, he made sure that his friend came through for me.
He photo ran on the front page of the Metro section of the Pioneer Press by the end of the week. A generous four-by-six color picture, showing the bottom half of the sign above the window, and all of the display itself.
Surrounded by easel-propped photos of the Florida Hemingway cats, and the prints of Ernest and F. Scott, Mittens and Scooter were lying before an opened copy of Gatsby, their distinctive mitten feet resting on the exposed pages, their heads cocked at quizzical angles as they “read” the words before them. The caption read, “Hemingway-0, Fitzgerald-2”. The rivalry between those two gentlemen may have been decades old, but judging by the reaction that photo generated, feelings for Hemingway and Fitzgerald still ran as fervent and deep as the on-going Packer-Vikings brou-ha-ha. Every copy of anything written by either of the two authors sold out within a couple of days, and when Rik and I weren’t waiting on customers, we were supervising photo ops with the kittens and cat-lovers who couldn’t wait to have their picture taken with one of the Hemingway kittens.
Since neither of the kittens displayed a penchant for ripping or shredding book spines, or honing their many claws on the edges of the shelves, we’d taken to leaving them out during the night…although with all the increased attention Barrett and Browning was enjoying lately, I did have qualms about letting people see the kittens at all hours—
“—suppose someone tries to break the window, and take them?”
“This is a low crime neighborhood…and that window is double-paned. Would take a lot of effort and make a lot of noise to break it. Besides, I think the kittens would be smart enough to make a run for it if anyone was after them—”
“There’s a difference between being personable and smart, Rik…look how they let anyone hold them. I just don’t know—”
“Did anyone try to get at Oscar and April? They’re just as good-looking, and personable—”
“They’re also fixed,” I reminded him, “While these two—” I cocked my head in the direction of the window, where Scooter and Mittens were busy “reading” an old opened hardbound copy of A Farewell to Arms “—aren’t. Although half that problem will be solved in a few days.”
Rik didn’t say anything, but that fine line appeared between his dark eyes again. Down one of the aisles, I heard the unmistakable sound of cat spray hitting something hard, and hurried to see what Oscar was doing, yelling “Bad cat! Bad-bad-bad!” There was a tell-tale puddle on the worn floorboards near the rack of children’s books—Oscar had targeted the children’s dictionary the kittens used to fancy. They’d been ignoring the book for the last few days, so I’d placed it back on the shelf, but now it was ruined. Gingerly pulling the thick book out of the stack, I noticed something odd imbedded in the top of the spine—a shed claw-cover, which gleamed softly in the center of the now-damp spine, as if the book had been pulled out by one downward-moving cat paw, from the top, the way a person might pull out a book, rather than the way a cat would to it—by raking on the spine itself, until the book wiggled free of the rest or, the shelf.
Oscar’s puddle of urine began to spread on the floor, so I ran to the back room for a paper towel, the ruined dictionary with the imbedded claw momentarily forgotten. But as I was mopping up the mess, I head Rik shout, “No, you guys, c’mere—” and I knew instantly that the kittens had escaped.
I ran, wet paper towel still wadded up in one hand, to the window, which was now a mere tableau of books and fading pictures—no more Scooter, no Mittens. Rik was outside the door, looking quickly up and down the street, but when he turned to reenter the store, I knew just from looking at his face. They were gone. And the terrible thing was, I could so easily imagine their flight—Scooter with his long side-fur rippling like a soft curtain along his hips and flank. Mittens with her small fox-like face moving quickly from side to side, both of them running fast, their legs scissoring in the spring sunlight, as they hurried down some alley-way.…
Rik tried to explain what had happened, but I was devastated. He’d been placing some new Dean Koontz books on the bestseller’s shelf, when he heard the door jingle, but no incoming footsteps—only the sharp scrabble of many claws hitting hardwood, then the door jingled shut again. By the time he’d turned around, and gone to the door, both of them had vanished. And my store was located in the middle of a side-street, which meant they could’ve gone in any direction.
On top of everything else, my front door pulled outward, being an old wooden and glass door that I’d kept because it was so antique and old-fashioned…so the kittens, if they moved as one, might have been able to shove it open.
Sick at heart, I left the store, and went searching for the kittens in the alleys near my business, calling and pleading for them to come back, but it was as if they’d never existed. All I had left of them was a framed copy of that Metro section photo, and a claw-casing stuck in the spine of a ruined children’s dictionary.
After I’d given up looking for them, long after Rik had closed the store for me (he’d left a note on the counter, which merely read “I’m so, so sorry” in his large, flowing handwriting), I went to the back room, and picked up the blanket they’d slept on for the last couple of months. It still smelled of their fur, a warm, slightly “hot” scent which reminded ever so slightly of old paperback books and binding glue. My bookstore kittens even smelled like books…but when I squeezed the blanket next to my chest, I felt something hard inside. I’d long ago put the cores of the nesting doll sets back on the shelf, so I couldn’t imagine what the kittens had shoved into the folds of the blanket, until I shook it, and a tiny bridge pencil, the kind of writing implement no bigger around then a coffee stir-stick, and only half again as long,