LITMIR.BIZ

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      “But my friends say it all the time.”

      “Maybe you need some different friends.”

      Rosie stomped her foot and crossed her arms over her chest. “The people who leave their pets behind are total jerks then.”

      Chuck crossed his arms in solidarity with her. “Anyone who would abandon a pet is awfully selfish, that’s for sure.”

      “I only saw kitties up there, no doggies,” Rosie said.

      “That’s because lost dogs tend to wander along roads and get picked up and taken to shelters right away,” Chuck explained. “But cats are skittish. They know they’ll get eaten by coyotes and foxes and other predators, so they hide. Pretty soon, they go feral. The ones that manage to survive may have been somebody’s pets at one time, but not after a while. Plus, there’s plenty of food for cats in national parks—mice and birds and baby rabbits.”

      Blood drained from Rosie’s face. “Baby rabbits?”

      “Afraid so. Cats hunt whatever’s small enough for them to sink their teeth into. House cats kill millions of birds every year all across the country. So far, bird populations in places away from cities and towns, like national parks, are doing okay. But if too many cats get left behind in the national parks, you can probably guess what’ll happen.”

      “The birdies will get wiped out in the parks, too!” Rosie clasped her hands in front of her. “Then there would be no birdies left anywhere. Or baby rabbits.” She looked at the sandstone ridge rising beyond the trailer, her brows arched. “We have to catch the cats up there. We have to.”

      “How about this?” Janelle offered. “You can chase the cats around up there in the rocks all you want while we’re here. Just make sure you tell us you’re going up there first.”

      “Yay!” Rosie cheered. She thrust a fist in the air. “Cat, cat, kitty cats!”

      Janelle turned to Chuck. “What do you think?”

      He swept the ridge with his eyes. It climbed gently to the top along its entire length. “It looks pretty safe,” he said to Rosie. “But if you come to any steep places up there, you have to stay away from them, okay?” He turned to Janelle. “I bet none of the cats will let her anywhere near them anyway. In fact, I guarantee it.”

      Now, atop the ridge, Chuck squeezed the back of Rosie’s neck as she held the gray cat in her arms.

      So much for his guarantee.

      He let go of Rosie’s neck and stroked the cat’s matted fur. The feline laid its head against Rosie’s chest and closed its eyes, purring.

      “This one doesn’t seem the least bit wild.” His hand came away from the cat’s fur gritty with sand. He wiped it on the leg of his work jeans. “Not yet, anyway.”

      Rosie nuzzled the cat’s back with her chin, coating her jaw with a film of red dust. “That’s why we have to take this one with us. She’s not very wild yet, like you said. She probably just got left behind a little while ago. But if we leave her here, she’ll get fer—, fer—”

      “Feral,” Chuck finished for her. “How do you know she’s a she, anyway?”

      “I checked. She let me. She doesn’t have a penis, not even a little one. I’ve been learning about all that stuff from Mamá.”

      “Oh, you have, have you?” He cast a sidelong glance at Janelle.

      “So, Rosie,” Janelle said, ignoring Chuck, “you’ve found a girl cat named Pasta Alfredo.”

      Chuck eyed the furry creature in Rosie’s arms. “Maybe she’s been reported lost within the last day or so. Maybe she’s even owned by one of the campers staying here in the campground right now.”

      “That means we have to keep her,” Rosie proclaimed.

      “Only until we can find her owner,” Janelle said. She asked Chuck, “Right?”

      Rosie begged, “Pleeeeease.”

      Chuck groaned.

      Janelle cocked an eyebrow at him. “You promised none of the cats would let her near them. This is all your fault.”

      “No, Mamá,” Rosie said. She puffed her chest with obvious pride. “It’s all my fault!”

      Rosie skipped down the sloped rock leading to the campground ahead of Janelle and Chuck, the cat clutched to her chest. Janelle descended behind her.

      Just as Chuck turned away from the crest of the ridge to follow them, a flash of movement caught his eye.

      6

      He studied the stone plugs and rolling undulations of slickrock atop the ridge.

      Nothing moved.

      He watched, unblinking.

      Still nothing.

      Janelle stopped and called up to him from below. “What are you waiting for?”

      “I thought I saw something,” he hollered back down to her over the howl of the wind, his eyes on the spine of the ridge.

      “Probably one of the cats.”

      “Maybe,” he replied, though whatever movement he’d seen definitely had been caused by something larger than a cat—and he had seen something, he was sure of it.

      When nothing more revealed itself, he descended to Janelle. A rush of wind buffeted them as they trailed Rosie down the long stone ramp.

      “She won us over pretty easy,” Janelle said.

      “This whole thing with the girls getting lives of their own, I’m not sure I like it very much,” Chuck replied. “We can’t even say no to Rosie anymore, much less Carmelita.”

      “Rosie’s way more of a handful than Carm was at her age. I dread when her teen years come along. Carm is just acting a little self-centered these days. Who knows what Rosie will get herself up to.”

      “Rosie? Are you serious?”

      “Believe me, you have no idea.”

      “You’re speaking from experience, aren’t you?”

      “No teen ever in the history of the world was as stubborn as I was. I still don’t know where it came from. But there was no way I was going to let my parents tell me what to do about anything, no matter what it was. Any advice they tried to give me, I was determined to do exactly the opposite—which, in the South Valley, was just a bad idea waiting to happen.”

      In her teen years, Janelle had abandoned her family in Albuquerque’s rough South Valley neighborhood to take up with a seedy local drug dealer, the girls’ father, now deceased.

      “Except …” Chuck urged, knowing the happy ending to come.

      “Except I got Carm and Rosie out of the deal.” Janelle slung her arm around Chuck’s waist. “And, eventually, you.”

      He snugged her to his side. “I got you and the girls out of the deal, too.”

      “Compared to what I put my parents through, there’s a lot to be said for the fact that, pissy as Carm has been of late, her biggest complaint isn’t that big of a deal. The main thing she’s upset with us about is that we keep insisting on dropping her off and picking her up from the climbing gym, instead of letting her catch rides with the older girls.”

      “She’s two years younger than anyone else on the senior climbing team,” Chuck said. “It’s bad enough imagining the things the older girls are filling her ears with while they’re at the gym. I don’t want her hanging with them any more than I can help it.”

      Janelle squeezed his waist as they descended the sloping

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