The Thirteenth Cat by Mary Downing Hahn

Author:Mary Downing Hahn
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780358394099
Publisher: HMH Books
Published: 2021-09-07T00:00:00+00:00

13

Although the sky had paled to gray, light shone from the kitchen windows. Inside, Aunt Alice and Mom talked in low voices.

Lila dropped her dress and started toward the house, but Nia stopped her. “Where are you going? We have to hide our dresses.”

Lila whirled around and hissed at Nia. “You’ve been bossing us around all night,” she said. “I hate this dress. Why do I have to hide it? What do I need it for?”

Nia twitched her tail. “Without that dress, you’ll never be a girl again.”

Lila twitched her tail too. “How do you know so much?”

“Back off, Lila!” Nia arched her back and growled. “I lived with Dupree for a long time. When I tell you to do something, I’m not bossing you around. I’m trying to help you.”

Lila looked at me as if she expected me to side with her. I hated to let her down, but without Nia’s help, we’d be cats for the rest of our lives.

I rubbed against Lila’s side. “Please do what Nia says. We can hide the dresses right there.”

I pointed to a huge forsythia bush in the middle of the backyard. “See how the branches hang down to the ground? There’s a big space underneath them, almost like a cave. The dresses will be totally safe.”

Lila ignored both Nia and me, but she hid her dress with ours under the bush.

By the time we’d finished, the sun was up. Aunt Alice heard us on the porch and opened the door “Well, well, look who’s here—the raggle-taggle cats have come home for breakfast.”

Mom looked at us with absolute indifference. She hadn’t bothered to comb her hair and she wore the same baggy T-shirt and faded jeans she’d had on yesterday. Without makeup, she looked older and sadder. A different person altogether.

“No need to make a fuss over them, Alice. Cats can take care of themselves.”

I was beginning to think Mom didn’t like cats as much as I’d thought. I wondered who was taking care of Suki. Desperate for my mother’s attention, I stood on my hind legs and rested my front paws on her lap. “Mom, Mom,” I begged. “Can’t you at least pet me?”

When she continued to ignore me, I slunk to my food bowl, almost too depressed to eat. Mom had become a stranger to me. Someday, when I was a girl—if I was ever a girl again—maybe she’d be herself again.

While the three of us ate, Aunt Alice and Mom continued a conversation we must have interrupted.

“As I was saying,” Aunt Alice began, “I woke up around three a.m. and went downstairs to fix myself a nice warm glass of milk. I heard a car and looked out just in time to see the mysterious old cab pull out of Miss Dupree’s driveway. I didn’t actually see her, but I’m sure she was in the car.”

She ran a hand through her hair. “It was the weirdest thing, Ellen. As the cab pulled away, the black cats, plus a white one I’d never seen before, ran after it yowling up a storm.

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