Cat Striking Back

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

(Joe Grey Cat Mystery Series, Book 15)

Morrow (a HarperCollins imprint), 2009
Hardcover: ISBN 0061123978
Paperback: Avon, ISBN 0061124001
E-book: HarperCollins
Large Print: Harperluxe, 0061885061
Audiobook: Download and digital rental (CD no longer available)

Winner of the Cat Writers' Association's
2010 Muse Medallion

When Joe stumbles on a victimless murder scene in an empty swimming pool and enlists Dulcie and Kit to search for clues, the celebrated felines quickly realize that the criminal is still in the neighborhood. Several houses bear signs of break-ins, but nothing appears to be .~ missing. Curious, the furry detectives break and enter, themselves, searching for evidence that even a cop might miss.

A murder without a body -- burglaries without anything stolen -- nudge the cats’ growing concern for the safety of their human friends. The mystery increases when a feral cat joins the three, throwing everything they’ve learned into confusion and, in a frightening attack, forcing the cats themselves to confront the sick-minded killer.

Quotes from the reviews

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"Magical." --Publisher's Weekly, September 14, 2009

"I love it when Joe Grey is able to hang out at the police station and read computer screens, and overhear conversations. . . . You will love the characters -- the cats in the story are incredible and immensely lovable. A purr-fect mystery." --Armchair Interviews.com, September 21, 2009.

"Murphy's . . . premise, a mystery that withholds the identities of both the victim and the perp, is intriguing." --Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 2009

Excerpt from the story

The setting moon laid its path across the sea, brightening the white sand and the little village, picking out the angles of its crowded roofs and glancing off the windows of the shops and cottages; moon glow caressed the shaggy pines and cypress trees and pooled dark shadows beneath them along the narrow streets. The only sound, at this predawn hour, was the hush of waves breaking on the shore. But inland, all was silent. Where the hills rose round and empty, the moon’s path washed in bright curves. Between the moonlit hills, the narrow valleys were cast in blackness so dense that the tomcat had to make his way by sound and by whisker feel, by familiar smells, by the degree of the slope and the feel of the earth beneath his paws, rocky or soft or bristling with dry grass or smooth where sand had blown across the narrow game trail, each encounter marking more clearly his exact location in relation to home. The tomcat traveled alone, encumbered by his heavy burden.

Padding down toward the first scattered houses, he walked clumsily, not his usual bold gait but spraddle legged and awkward, stepping wide around the half dozen mice that dangled against his chest, their tails gripped tight his sharp teeth.

He was a big cat, muscled and sleek coated, as silver-gray as burnished pewter. A narrow white strip ran down his nose, and his belly and paws were white, too--one paw spattered, now, with mouse blood. His tail was docked to a short, jaunty length, the product of a kittenhood disaster. His yellow eyes gleamed with the look of a fighter, but his eyes were alight, too, with a smile; he turned once look back up the hills behind him, watching his tabby lady Dulcie and their younger, tortoiseshell friend Kit move away, trotting higher up across the open land. He had only just parted from his two companions, the lady not satisfied only with hunting, but hurrying off to folk their overly curious noses--typical females, he thought tenderly.

Take care, Joe Grey thought, watching the two cats moving swiftly away up the moon-washed hills.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Pushing through a forest of stickery holly bushes into the overgrown side yard, trying to keep his dangling charges from catching on the protruding thorns, he was just approaching the empty swimming pool when a smell stopped him, a smell that made his fur bristle.

When the divorcing couple vacated the house, the pool had been drained. Why they hadn’t covered it, why the city hadn’t made them cover it, the tomcat didn’t know. The concrete and tile chasm was cracked and stained. Silt and debris had collected in its bottom into a sour-smelling mire. But now, another kind of stink drew him up short, a scent far stronger than the rancid mud or the sweet, musty smell of the mice he carried.

The stink of death, of blood and human death.

As many murders as the tomcat had witnessed in his busy life, he knew that smell intimately, but he still found human death unsettling, not at all like the death of the simpler animals who were his normal prey.

Sniffing again, he told himself this might be animal blood, but he knew it wasn’t. He stood looking around him, listening. . . . .

As he approached the abandoned pool, the grass growing up through the cracks in the coping tickled his paws. Standing at the edge, he looked over.

In the first weak light of dawn, the mud and slime on the bottom still held the blackness of night; the view was murky even to a cat’s sharp vision. He could see that one area had been disturbed, the mud and moss so churned up that surely something much larger than himself had squirmed around, or had been moved around, and then had been dragged across the pool to its far side; the drag marks were accompanied by a line of shoe prints embossed sharply in the mud. A man’s shoes, and the indentations had been there long enough to have filled with seeping, muddy water, The double trail led to the tile steps which, if the pool had been full, would be underwater. The tile was covered with slime that would be slippery, but the wide track led upward and over the coping to the tile apron. Moving around to stand above the steps, he studied the disturbed surfaces.

From this angle, he could see dark spatters of what looked like blood. Letting the mice rest for a moment on the tile while still firmly gripping their tails in his teeth, he took a good whiff.

Yes, blood, Human blood, nearly dry now despite the damp surround. He could tell, by other scents, that it was a woman who had died here,

The footprints and the slithery smear headed across the patio to the concrete drive and straight up toward the street. He followed, taking care to leave no paw prints on the pale cement. Halfway up, the trail stopped. From that point on, the drive was unmarked. Someone had dragged the body from the bottom of the pool to this juncture. And then, what? Studying the concrete, he found several small marks where the tire of a car had picked up mud and deposited it. Sniffing along the concrete, dragging his mice, he caught the faint scent of the man, too, though it was so mixed with the smell of human blood and of sour mud that he wasn’t sure he would be able to identify it if he should smell it again later. There were no other tire marks, no other footprints. The tomcat, standing alone on the empty drive dangling his mice, studied the surrounding yards and looked up and down the street.

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