The Secret Lives of Cats

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Homer Ziff wanted to know how his outdoor cats spent their days, so he attached a tiny digital camera to their collars—and discovered a mystery in his own backyard.

Winner of the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award for 2008, this Anthony-nominated story was one of the most talked about stories of the year.

"Rusch is a great storyteller—easily the equal of Patterson or Koontz."

—Analog

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Jan 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781519956224

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

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The Secret Lives of Cats

The Secret Lives of Cats

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

WMG Publishing, Inc.

Contents

The Secret Lives of Cats

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About the Author

The Secret Lives of Cats

Homer Ziff didn’t believe in old adages, but after his long and eventful spring, he couldn’t help but think that whoever put the words curiosity, cat, and kill in the same sentence had to be onto something.

It all began about his own curiosity—about his cats. Homer Ziff lived alone with two indoor cats and six outdoor cats. Well, six he could pet and hold; there were others—the friends, neighbors and hangers-on, he called them—who visited at meal time or for a rest on the back forty in the mid-afternoon sun.

Not that he had a real back forty. But his back yard was an impressive three acres, complete with woods and stream. One of the reasons he bought the house was that it had the best of both worlds: in the front, he had a small lawn that led to a quiet residential street; in the back, he had the acres of property that covered a protected wetland. No one would ever build behind him, the lots next to him were full, and the houses across the street had reached their maximum size according to code.

He knew his neighbors by sight (rather like he knew their cats) and he would nod at them whenever he saw them, but didn’t engage in conversation. He couldn’t bring himself to talk to them, not after his first attempt, when he’d stuttered at a man several doors down, and the man had rolled his eyes and walked away.

Homer would liked to have blamed his surly neighbor for his own lack of congeniality, but that wouldn’t be fair or accurate. Homer didn’t engage most people in conversation. He had a stutter that got worse when he was nervous.

Over the years, he’d learned to prefer his own company. He liked being alone with his thoughts and his cats and his property.

And it was his thoughts that made being alone possible. Not that his thoughts were original—sadly, they weren’t—but they were organized, and that had given him an edge. Once upon a time, he had been a professor of physics at Oregon State University. A rising star when he was hired, he’d become a stalled star by mid-career—a man for whom the great things expected never materialized.