CHAPTER 7

When she wasn’t helping Jared in the makeshift clinic in the Locksley Mall, Janina was out plastering every available notice board with flyers featuring Chessie’s ID pic and the reward for her return. She talked to everyone she could stop and told them about the fire and how Chessie was missing and asked them to look for her.

One day she stopped a woman laden with parcels, boarding a battered farm tracker.

Janina showed the woman the picture.

“Just a minute, honey,” the woman said, setting her parcels in the passenger seat and turning back to Janina. She shoved back her long dark brown hair, the plait of which had loosened during her shopping, wiped her hands on the thighs of her blue denim pants, and took the picture from Janina, glanced at it, grunted, and returned it. “Sorry,” she said. “Don’t recall seeing one like this.”

“You’d notice her,” Janina insisted. “Not only is she beautiful but she was about to have kittens when she disappeared.”

The woman shrugged and started to walk away. “Hmm, well, I’m not much for cats. But kittens, you say? When was it she disappeared again?”

The woman’s expression was both annoyed and speculative. Maybe she had a lead!

“Nearly two months ago, after the fire in the vet clinic at Hood Station.”

“Huh. Well, what a shame. That crew must set great store by her to be offering such a hefty reward.”

“Oh, yes, ma’am, and her kittens too. She’s a very valuable cat, but more than that, we love her and we need her on our ship. She’s an important part of the crew.”

The woman glanced at the flyer again, her eyes lingering on the line about the reward. “Well, I hope you find her, honey.” Then she turned back to put her parcels in her flitter.

Janina said, “Ma’am, if you see her or hear from anyone who might have seen her, please would you call me at Dr. Vlast’s clinic in Locksley? I’m working with him until the new clinic is ready on Hood Station.”

“Umm-hmm,” the woman said. “I sure will.”

Since Janina began posting the flyers, people had shown up at the clinic with cats of all coloring, ages, and both sexes, some with kittens, some without, trying to claim the reward. A few had short hair or showed the Siamese strain. Did they think the large longhaired tortoiseshell Chessie had somehow managed to don a disguise and go incognito?

Jared said it was the triumph of hope over common sense, something he’d seen a great deal.

Some of the cats were so matted they looked to be made from balls of dirty felt instead of fur, some were battered and scarred, many looked starved, and all looked frightened. Jared did what he could for the pretenders to Chessie’s throne, but ultimately they had to be returned to the arms of their disappointed bearers, though some were abandoned at the clinic. Janina made it her job to look after these and tried to find homes for them, though it was clear that most cats were not highly valued on Sherwood. Often they were considered to be as troublesome as the vermin they hunted.

She kept hoping as she continued her rounds of cleaning and filling feeding dishes, mucking out stalls, hosing down kennels, and changing litter boxes. It was useful work and she didn’t mind it, but the familiar routine of caring for the cats tore at her heart, even though she was glad to be able to help them. They wound around her ankles and purred up at her and she patted them and spoke kindly, but they were just not Chessie. She and Chessie had been a team for ten years—more than half her life, and all of the best part. She missed her desperately and also missed the camaraderie with the crew.

Under other circumstances, the prolonged opportunity to work with Jared would have cheered her, but he was run off his feet now that the people (and their animals) of Sherwood had him all to themselves. They called him night and day to attend difficult births or accidental injuries, and he was often so exhausted he barely seemed to recognize her. When there was a lull, he spent it in his makeshift lab, preoccupied and focusing on his work.

She often found him frowning at slides and tubes of the mysterious glittery substance, which they were finding in more and more animals, but when she asked him about it, he shrugged and said only, “I’m checking it out.”

Two weeks later, she was grooming the last poor matted moggy brought in by a hopeful. He was a gray and black male who had been spitting mad when he arrived. His temper hadn’t improved much since. Jared had long red scratches running down his hands from this fellow, but the cat seemed to like females—or at least Janina—somewhat better. She was clipping one of his mats when the office door jingled.

“Nina, there are people to see you,” Jared called from his exam room in the front of the clinic. She wished people would make appointments instead of popping in any old time with the poor im-poster cats for her inspection. Every time they did, her hopes rose, and every single time they’d been dashed. Bracing herself for another letdown, she plopped the recalcitrant tom back into his cage, washed and dried her hands, and walked deliberately into the waiting room.

She saw two people at the desk, a woman and a boy, each carrying something. She was trying to remember where she had seen the woman before when she heard the plaintive mew.

The mew.

“Chessie?” she asked, thinking surely her ears were deceiving her. But she heard the mew again and knew she was not mistaken. “Chessie!”

“So you do recognize her?” a slightly familiar female voice asked. “You’ll not deny that she’s the very cat you told me about. The one you’re looking for?”

Hurrying toward them, Janina recognized the woman she’d spoken to in the mall. The woman peeled a blanket farther away from the beloved furry face with its long magnificent whiskers. Chessie appeared uninjured. Her tufted ears had twitched forward at the sound of Janina’s voice.

Janina reached for her. Oh, Chessie!” The bundle the woman relinquished was much lighter than the beautiful cat had been when Janina placed her in the kennel at Jared’s station clinic. “You’ve had your kittens, haven’t you?” she asked, lifting an edge of the blanket to see the rest of Chessie more clearly.

“She did but they was all lost save this one here my boy’s got,” the woman said, indicating a bright-eyed fluffball peeking out from the shelter of the boy’s arms. “And she’s been poorly he says.”

“Poorly?” Janina’s heart dropped. Was she to regain her friend only to lose her again? She hurried to the examining room door and popped her head in. “It’s her! Someone found Chessie but she’s sick. Jared, she’s light as a feather. I can feel her bones.”

“Take her in exam room two. I’ll be right there,” he said, and he sounded happier and more excited than he had since the disaster.

“Even if she doesn’t make it, I still get the reward, right?” the woman asked anxiously, following Janina into the exam room, the boy trailing reluctantly behind them.

“If you had her and you knew she was sick, why didn’t you say when I met you before?”

“She didn’t know about it till my dad and me had it out when he tried to take Chester with him,” the boy blurted out. “Dad found your cat and kept her in the barn. He said not to tell Mom because she doesn’t like cats and wouldn’t let me keep her.”

“But I tried and tried her locator signal and got no response.”

“I reckon it must not work out our way, honey,” the woman said. “Jubal didn’t know she was yours. Don’t take it out on him. He saved her last kitten. I didn’t know a thing about it till I heard them carrying on and saw your cat. I recognized her right away.”

While the woman explained, Janina laid her bundle down on the exam table, a rather rickety metal folding table of the sort set up in meeting halls and at fairs. Chessie was indeed much thinner than she had been. Her nipples were still distended.

“She had a really hard time when she birthed the last kitten,” the boy said. “It died, but Pop wouldn’t let me call Dr. Vlast. He said she’d make it or not, and she did.”

“She only had the one other kitten?”

Tears welled up in the boy’s eyes. “No, ma’am. There were more but they got caught out when they were learning to hunt …” he said, his voice quivering. Janina wanted to cry herself. Poor Chessie! Poor baby kittens.

Jared entered the room and examined Chessie thoroughly. “She’ll need some repair,” he told Janina. “I can’t be sure but I’m rather afraid her breeding days may be over. However, she should be able to return to her other duties before long, as long as she has her able assistant.” He nodded toward the kitten, who was batting a string the boy dangled for it. “I’ll tend to her now.”

He carried Chessie from the exam room back toward the operating theater, and Janina, who couldn’t bear to be separated from her—having finally found her—started to follow.

But the voice of the boy’s mother stopped her in her tracks. “So, how do we collect the reward?”