The Year of the Cat: A Cat of a Different Color: The Year of the Cat, #1

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Dean Wesley Smith, Annie Reed and 4 more

In A Cat of a Different Color, the first volume of WMG's The Year of the Cat series, editors Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch worked to find stories that featured cats that were just a little surprising (an impressive feat for cats, anyone would have to admit).

Just a little weird. A little different.

Which makes these stories amazingly fun to read. After all, for cat people, reading about cats equals the fun of being with one.

Almost. Just don't tell the cats.

 

Includes:

"Familiar Territory: A Winston and Ruby Story" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

"The Conscientious Cat" by Agnes A. Sandham

"The Mouth that Walked" by Dean Wesley Smith

"Do Not Resuscitate" by Dory Crowe

"Myrtle's Boxes" by Louisa Swann

"Ornamental Animals" by Ray Vukcevich

"Christmas, Interrupted" by Lisa Silverthorne

"Blame it on the Ghosts" by Annie Reed

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: May 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393152965

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.

Book preview

The Year of the Cat: A Cat of a Different Color

The Year of the Cat: A Cat of a Different Color

Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch

WMG Publishing, Inc.

Contents

Introduction

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Familiar Territory

Agnes A. Sandham

The Conscientious Cat

Dean Wesley Smith

The Mouth that Walked

Dory Crowe

Do Not Resuscitate

Louisa Swann

Myrtle’s Boxes

Ray Vukcevich

Ornamental Animals

Lisa Silverthorne

Christmas, Interrupted

Annie Reed

Blame It on the Ghosts

Newsletter sign-up

About the Editor

About the Editor

Introduction

Kris and I are both cat people. We love cats. Period. All types, all sizes, all shapes.

In our 34 years together, there has never been one single moment we have not had cats. In fact, when we moved out to Oregon in our first few months together, we had Kris’s Siamese named Buglet screaming in our ears the entire drive from Wisconsin to Oregon.

That’s what cat people do.

We love them, feed them, clean up after them, and talk to them like they understand every word we are saying. And you know, sometimes I think they do.

And other times I am convinced they do, but just don’t care.

At one point, when Kris and I first moved in together in a big house outside of Eugene, Oregon, we ended up with 14 cats. We had hers, mine, theirs, and ours. Kris had three, I had two, we inherited five starving cats from the previous owners of the house who had abandoned them, and then one of those cats had kittens in the first week we were there.

Fourteen cats. That was crazy. Now twenty-four years later we have only two in our condo in Las Vegas. But like all cat people, we are always on the lookout to rescue more.

Allyson Longueira, the publisher of WMG Publishing is also a cat person. As is Gwyneth Gibby, the associate publisher. So I have no memory of the exact origin of this idea to do one hundred cat stories in twelve books over an entire year. But the idea makes complete sense that Kris and I would edit the books and WMG Publishing would publish them.

The idea is to find one hundred cat stories that Kris and I would love to reprint in these nifty volumes over twelve months. Eight stories in some books, nine in others.

And what we can promise readers is that every story will be high quality and entertaining. We have no desire to try to pick the best one hundred cat stories of all time. I am not sure that would even be possible, any more than it would be to pick the best cats of all time.

We just want to create twelve books that contain one hundred cat stories we have loved to read.

And that we feel that readers will love to read as well.

In the order they will appear over the next year, the titles of the twelve books are:

Book One

A Cat of a Different Color

Book Two

A Cat of Perfect Taste

Book Three

A Cat of Disdainful Looks

Book Four

A Cat of Strange Lands

Book Five

A Cat of Cozy Situations

Book Six

A Cat of Space and Time

Book Seven

A Cat of Heroic Heart

Book Eight

A Cat of Roving Nature

Book Nine

A Cat of Artistic Sensibilities

Book Ten

A Cat of Fantastic Whims

Book Eleven

A Cat of Feral Instincts

Book Twelve

A Cat of Romantic Soul

---

In this volume, A Cat of a Different Color, Kris and I worked to get stories that had cats that were just a little surprising (which is going some for cats, we have to admit.) Just a little weird.

A little different.

We think we have achieved that and we hope you will enjoy the read. We sure did, putting this all together. After all, we are cat people, and reading about cats is almost as fun as being with one.

Almost. Just don’t tell your cat I said that.

---

Dean Wesley Smith

LasVegas, Nevada

Familiar Territory

A Winston and Ruby Story

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

I wanted to start this entire series of cat anthologies off with one of my favorite Kristine Kathryn Rusch cat stories. And she has written a lot of them. As co-editor, Kris initially fought me on the idea, but I finally won. So starting off this first book is a wonderful story of Buster, who wanted a Viking funeral. This story is the start of her wonderful Winston and Ruby series.

Kris is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling writer of almost two hundred novels and hundreds and hundreds of short stories. She is the only person to win the Hugo Award for her editing as well as her writing. You can find her wonderful short stories regularly in Asimov’s, Analog, Ellery Queen, and Hitchcock’s magazines. You can find links to her work and her essays at kriswrites.com

Every morning they went clamming. Winston would carry the pail, and Buster would trail behind, stopping to sniff dead fish and complaining when his delicate paws sank in wet sand. Sometimes people would coo over him—they seemed drawn to a cat on the beach—but usually they would watch from a distance.

Winston knew the town thought him strange. They called him that crazy guy with the cat, and most never visited his shop. Only tourists came in, and they usually bought the mass-produced items, not his specialty items. Those he sold to select customers who never returned, although they recommended the store to their friends. He did a steady mail order business, shipping weekly all over the United States, Canada, and Europe.

He didn’t care about the money. It was merely a way to maintain his warm and cozy home, built on a cliff overlooking the sea. He had worn a path from the back door to the beach near the small town of Seavy Village, and he and Buster tramped down the path daily at first light, crabbing if the tides allowed, and playing in the sand until nine a.m. Then Winston returned home, showered, and drove to his shop on a decrepit section of Highway 101. Buster complained about the drive, but flirted with the customers shamelessly while Winston studied his books behind the counter.

It was a small life, as magic ones went, but it was his, his and Buster’s. They had shared it since Winston fled San Francisco twenty years before and arrived in Seavy Village to find the cliff house for sale, and a rain-soaked kitten who spoke perfect English huddled beside its front door.

Only this morning, Buster didn’t wake up. He remained curled at the foot of the bed, eyes half open, skin already cool. They had known the end was coming—few cats made it to twenty and remained as healthy as Buster—but they hadn’t thought it so soon. Kind of Buster to wait until Monday, the only day the shop was closed.

Winston put his hand on Buster’s still black-and-white side, and wished that instead of all his tiny powers, he had a single large one: the power over death.

But he didn’t, and he never would. He sighed once, cradled his best and only friend for a long time, and then padded into his workshop to build a ship.

Buster had requested a Viking funeral.

The cat, being 90% feline and only 10% familiar, didn’t care about state regulations regarding the ocean. He didn’t care that it was against the law to throw anything into the waves. He didn’t care that Oregon hated people tossing the ashes of loved ones onto the sea, and would probably charge Winston with a felony for tossing a dead body in.

You can cover it, boss, Buster had said. Use a small spell, a shield or something, to make sure nobody sees you.

I thought cats hate the water, Winston replied, a tad grumpily.

You observe, but you don’t see, Buster said. Cats love the water. They just hate to get wet.

You’ll get wet with a Viking funeral.

Naaaw, Buster said. I’ll be ashes by the time I hit the water.

Why do you want a Viking funeral? Winston asked.

Buster had looked at him from his perch on top of an end table. The look implied that Winston knew nothing about cats. Blaze of glory, my friend, Buster had said. Blaze of glory.

What Winston knew about Viking funerals came from his English lit class in high school over three decades before; half a dozen old movies; and a program he had fallen asleep to on the History Channel. Some of the Arthurian myths had Merlin give Arthur a Viking death: the proud king, wrapped in his fur robes, heading out to sea in his burning boat. Winston had made the mistake of telling Buster that story one rainy afternoon when they should have been mixing a love potion for a woman in Puget Sound.

Buster had adored the idea.

Winston didn’t like the parallels. Buster was supposed to be his familiar, not his king, and while Winston had clear talents, he was no Merlin. No wizard had been that great in over a thousand years.

But in the time they had been together, Winston had only denied Buster one thing—(Neutered, boss. Neutered. You know what that sounds like? Sounds like nullified. How would you like it if I neutered you?)—and he had done that for Buster’s safety, and for the sanity of all the female cats in Seavy Village. Buster had mellowed as he got older, when he saw the effects sex had had on the wild toms. The fights they get into, Buster had said, and all over a woman who’ll slap ‘em when she’s done. Somewhere around the age of ten, Buster realized that his sex drive would have shortened his life, and while he never admitted that Winston had made the right decision, he had stopped focusing on it.

Buster loved his life near the sea, with the storms and the fish and the adoration of the tourists who filled Winston’s shop in the summer.

Buster loved all twenty years of it, and who was Winston to deny him his final request?

The ship, when finished, was two yards long, and two feet high at its lowest point. A dragon’s head with oddly feline features rose from the front to guide the ship