The Year of the Cat: A Cat of Heroic Heart: The Year of the Cat, #7

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Dean Wesley Smith, Carole Nelson Douglas and 5 more

Everyone knows dogs save people. Cats do too, in a different way.

Although cats feign an aloof detachment, they possess great heart. A cat rescue comes on its own terms and in its own time, and always with dignified heroism.

From a fantastic Midnight Louie story by Carole Nelson Douglas, where Louie meets Sherlock Holmes, to a familiar rescuing other familiars from a natural disaster, this volume showcases a broad spectrum of heroic cats.

Includes:

"A Baker Street Irregular" by Carole Nelson Douglas

"Cat in Love" by Dean Wesley Smith

"Nine Lives" by E. Nesbit

"Gilroy and the Kitten" by Jamie Ferguson

"Disaster Relief" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

"Christmas, Interrupted" by Lisa Silverthorne

"The Coffee Curse" by Stefon Mears

"Of Cats & Lost Socks" by Liz Pierce

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Nov 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393138990

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 Heroic Heart

The Year of the Cat: A Cat of Heroic Heart

Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch

WMG Publishing, Inc.

Contents

Introduction

A Baker Street Irregular

Carole Nelson Douglas

Cat in Love

Dean Wesley Smith

Nine Lives

E. Nesbit

Gilroy and the Kitten

Jamie Ferguson

Disaster Relief

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Christmas, Interrupted

Lisa Silverthorne

The Coffee Curse

Stefon Mears

Of Cats and Lost Socks

Liz Pierce

About the Editor

About the Editor

Introduction

Cats, in many ways, and in many fashions, tend to rescue people and other creatures. Not in a Lassie!! Get Help! kind of fashion. Cats would just sort of look down their nose if you asked them to do something like that and then turn and walk away, tail flipping, insulted at even the idea of such a thing.

But still, even though they would be the last to admit it, they do seem to care about people and other creatures in their lives, and when needed they do rescue people in one fashion or another.

In previous and coming volumes, there are lots of examples of this kind of cat action, but in this book we gathered some of the best examples.

Here are titles of the twelve volumes of cat stories we are putting together.

--- 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

This volume is called A Cat of Heroic Heart because that’s how cats pull off their rescues…from the heart. And since cats can sometimes bend time and space and sometimes use what seems like magic to get what they want, that is what we focused on here.

From a fantastic Midnight Louie story by Carole Nelson Douglas where Louie meets Sherlock Holmes to a cat as familiar saving other familiars to a wonderful story of cats, magic, and coffee, this volume is chock full of heroic cats.

In fact, I would say in this volume there is more magic than in any other of the Year of the Cat volumes. Magic used as only cats can really use it, from their heroic hearts.

Dean Wesley Smith

Las Vegas, Nevada

A Baker Street Irregular

Carole Nelson Douglas

In all of cat fiction, there is one cat that seems to stand out above all the others. Carole Nelson Douglas’s Midnight Louie. Carole has written over sixty novels and a ton of short stories. The Midnight Louie mystery series consists of at least 19 novels and many short stories and is one of her most famous. And most popular.

In this wonderful story, Carole says it contains, Sarah Bernhardt, jewels, and snakes and a panther, and Irene Adler introduced at the end. In fact, the last line of this story leads right into the story we published in the fifth volume. This is one you don’t want to miss.

You can find a lot more about Midnight Louie novels and stories and Carole Nelson Douglas’s bestselling writing career at https://carolenelsondouglas.com/

It’s not that I prefer male roles, it’s that I prefer male minds.

Sarah Bernhardt

---

LONDON, 1887

There I am in my usual position, with my back to the wall.

Only this wall is made of sooty, solid brick, without so much as an occasional windowsill that a bloke can sink his nails into for a fast climb upward.

That is behind me. In front of me stands another wall, a ragged, rank-smelling living wall of the worst guttersnipes I have ever laid eyeballs on. They have chased me into this cul-de-sac with a hail of sticks and stones (and other less sharp if more odiferous offerings of the London streets), and even now are debating whether to cut off my tail or my head.

I catch the glint of steel amid the rust, and the odd glimmering tooth behind the smoke-smudged grins. I recognize this unhappy gang of street Arabs as the worst enemy of my kind and prepare for a mad but likely fruitless dash through their closed ranks. I expect to leave some part of my hide behind, perhaps even my life.

’Ere now. Wot’s this cat done to you?

The speaker is the same species as my tormenters: human boy, but he is taller and wears a better grade of rag. I recognize a certain street-sent authority in his tones.

They mumble, of course, and cannot come up with a clear case against me, other than that I am black of coat and alone.

No sense doin’ away wi’ a cat that can catch rats and mice. I’ll take ‘im.

More grumbles, but the filthy ranks part as the taller boy comes near. Come on, puss. Ole Wiggins’ll find a nice piece of work for you, all right.

I do not fancy putting myself into the custody of one of these young ruffians, but this Wiggins seems to have some place among them and there are times when it is best for my kind to appear meek and mild.

I allow him to pick up my panting form.

"Oof! A heavy-um. You must be good at your game, big fellow. Off we go now."

As Wiggins walks between my would-be murderers they part like a thatch of greasy hair before a flea-comb.

This Wiggins is not a strapping lad, and soon he is puffing from carrying me about. Luckily, he soon is ringing the bell of a door far too respectable for either of us.

At length a bustling, motherly sort of lady opens it, lifting her sparse eyebrows to meet the lace edging the cap on her snowy head.

What’s this, young Wiggins? You don’t mean to say that Himself has ordered a cat for some reason?

No, ma’am, Missus Hudson. But I thought that per’aps ’im and the doctor would like a crayture around the place. ’Tis too quiet-like upstairs, and some street beggar-boys were settin’ to kill it.

Oh, the poor thing!

The door swings wide. There is nothing like being a potential victim for stirring sympathy in the female breast, a fact the wily Wiggins seems to know as well as myself.

"But I doubt he will have anything to do with that creature," Mrs. Hudson calls after us while Wiggins hauls me up a long and dim stairway. I count seventeen steps.

At the top is a closed door, on which Wiggins knocks.

Moments later the door is opened by a City-lookin’ chap, very smart and well-fed in his appearance.

Well, Master Wiggins. Has he sent for you then?

No, sir, Doctor Watson. I came on me own. Found this cat about to lose ’is ’ead to an ugly mob and I figgered you and Mr. ’Olmes might like some company. ’E’s heavy enough to be a champion mouser, an’ that’s the truth.

Hmm. Dr. Watson frowns as I am dumped on the floor like a hod of coal. "I wouldn’t mind a nice, gentle cat, but I doubt that he fancies the breed, though he is as fastidious as one. I’ve never heard him mention one, as a matter of fact."

This glaring omission is about to be corrected, I predict, for a tall, thin bloke comes from an adjoining room. He is in the process of thrusting his angular arms into a jacket.

What’s this, Watson? Wiggins? Has someone left a curiosity on the doorstep?

’E’s curious, all right, Mr. ’Olmes, Wiggins says, stepping aside along with Dr. Watson to reveal my not-so-humble self.

A cat? Mr. Olmes says, wrinkling his upper lip in the same fashion I do when presented with a particularly rank supper. An unreliable and woman-like creature, with none of the dog’s supreme sense of smell and need to make itself useful around the house.

’E’s a tom, sir, and he will eat vermin.

So will a boa constrictor, but I do not keep one about the premises. Speaking of which, \I am expecting a ratherer, celebrated client at any moment. I hope you will stay, Watson, totranslate, as it were. And Wiggins, tote that animal elsewhere. Perhaps Mrs. Hudson has a yen for a sneak-thief about the kitchen.

The chastened Wiggins complies by hoisting me over his shoulder like an unneeded sail and heading down the stairs, up which drifts a sublime scent of mincemeat scones blended with an exotic attar of gardenia, sandalwood and cinnamon. So much for looking down one’s long, persnickety nose at a cat’s sense of smell.

I instantly deduce that the celebrated client is entering the door below and wiggle until I escape Wiggins’s too-careless grasp.

’Ere now, you rascal—get back ’ere or I’ll ’ave your whiskers!

I have been more obscenely admonished by those bigger and uglier than the likes of Wiggins and pay no heed, not when I smell a rat.

The rat turns out to be an exotic variety, perhaps a vicuna. It is also dead and meekly decorating the hem and collar of a cut-velvet coat.

"Sock-rah Blue! cries the lady who wears the coat. Is this a new sort of butler Eeenglish? She pauses and frowns at the looming stair. And am I expected to scale these stairs like an alpiniste? Mon Dew! But the Eeenglish like their exercise."

With that she lifts her ratty hem and sweeps upstairs.

I scamper after, ignoring Wiggins’s outraged orders to return.

At the top, she raps the door smartly with the silver head of the parasol she carries, which is tall enough to serve as a cane.

The now-familiar form of Dr. Watson opens the door and I reenter the rooms on a wave of perfume and foaming skirt folds, virtually invisible when I insinuate myself beneath the flouncing fur.

"Meestair ’Olmes?" she inquires.

N-NoMadame. Dr. Watson proceeds to blush, a most awkward human propensity that I am happy to avoid by virtue of my furry coat. I had no idea that he was expecting…

Madame Sarah Bernhardt, comes the tall man’s thin, high voice.

He is standing by the chimneypiece, which is cluttered with a pungent array of knickknacks arranged for the seeming sole purpose of being knocked down by a clever cat. Art Nouveau purists may complain about overstuffed Victorian domiciles, but I find them admirable for my principal avocations: napping, claw-sharpening, and eternally rearranging the accessories.

A near-by tabletop glints with vials and decanters that will shatter into many pretty shards when overturned, a veritable millionaire’s playroom to a lowly street waif like myself.

But Madame Sarah Bernhardt is not interested in anyone else’s toys. The appointment was made for the ‘Marquess de Ligne’, she says haughtily.

A bit of wishful thinking on your part, no, Madame? Mr. Olmes removes a catnip-like pinch of loose herbs from the toe of a Persian slipper and stuffs it into a pipe bowl. You have not yet married the nobleman in question.

Madame Sarah bridles, as they say, though I do not see reins anywhere near her person. You will not smoke that disgusting pipe in my presence.

Forgive me. An unthinking habit. Mr. Olmes steps away from the fireplace to indicate an upholstered seat.

Madame Sarah regards it as I might contemplate a dog carcass, then impales her parasol tip in the carpet and launches her voluminously swathed form at the spot, seating herself as if she were an empress, which she has impersonated on occasion. There is no disguising her face and figure, which I have seen on certain theatrical posters around old London town.

I also see, despite the richness of her flowing garb and the softly frizzled cloud of hair surmounting her small, sharp face like a scarlet fleece, that she is a frail bird of sorts, slight and bony and often cold, no doubt, because of that. Such a person is in vital need of an enterprising pet and warming protector, like myself.

I arrange myself under the folds of her train, enjoying the shelter of such a rich tent, but peeping out from the rat-fur hem.

I should be able to solve the matter of your missing diamonds, Mr. Olmes says thoughtfully, but I cannot speak to their continuing safety if you persist in displaying them to the public.

There was no word in the papers of the loss! Your deductive powers are as phenomenal as they say.

No, Madame, but there was much word in the papers of their presence, and that one fact leads to the other conclusion as a rainbow follows rain. A child could deduce as much.

Mr. Olmes gives a chilly little bow. In his own way he is as skillful a performer as herself. I can feel her robes shift as she straightens her small form to give him closer attention. Despite the heaviness of her attire, she is a creature of fog and phantasm, an airy, artful female, like more than one feline fatale I have known.

"You must think me a child, Meestair ’Olmes, for risking my pretty baubles, but it is as Mr. Barnum does in America: good advertisement."

"I would be bold enough to say, Madame, that you require no more advertisement than yourself