Cat Laughing Last

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

(Joe Grey Cat Mystery Series, Book 7)

HarperCollins, 2002
Hardcover: ISBN 006620951X
Paperback: Avon, ISBN 0061015628
E-book: HarperCollins
Large Print: Beeler, ISBN 1574904388
Audiobook: Download, CD, and digital rental

Winner of the Cat Writers' Association's
2002 Muse Medallion

Violence and theft at a yard sale? Murder because of an eBay auction? The body on Susan's Brittain's breakfast room floor first thing in the morning, and all her treasured purchases flung about and broken are not a good start to Susan's day. But the criminal involvement is far wider than she imagines, and will disrupt many more lives than hers. Joe Grey and Dulcie suspect as much. The two cats, with their unique ability to break-and-enter where the cops can't go, begin to gather evidence.

Meanwhile the cats' human friends deal with a famous author and his ill-tempered wife as they try to produce his play without coming to blows. And several senior ladies seek an innovative solution to retirement security, using their revenue from eBay and yard sales. But Joe Grey and Dulcie, digging into California history, discover that certain artifacts appearing at those same sales hold the key to the puzzle. The crudely carved antique casks, legacy of a Spanish bride two-hundred years dead, are the link the cats have searched for.

Yet it is the tortoiseshell kit, fascinated by the delights of theater production, who nearly gives away the cats' greatest secret. Kit, with her own surprising venture, almost alerts the entire village that these cats can speak and are more perceptive, sharper of wit than most humans could ever imagine.

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The ebook can be purchaed at Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and Kobo. The print edition can also be purchased at Amazon and is widely available in other bookstores, where it can be special-ordered if it is not in stock.

Quotes from the reviews

"The series premise remains delicious, executed with wry pungency and affection for life's small pleasures." --Kirkus Reviews

"As always, Murphy successfully, walks the fine line between maintaining the cathood of her felines and endowing them with sentiency." --Booklist, January 1, 2002

"Fun fare for cat fans." --Library Journal, January 2002

"The book's charm lies in the clever cats and the people they care about. This is a must read for those who enjoy the feline side of sleuthing." --Romantic Times, January 2002

"Shirley Rousseau Murphy has not only captured the essence of feline behavior in Joe Grey and Dulcie, she has also given them believable personalities that are completely in keeping with an 'attitude' that any cat owner will immediately recognize." --Bob Walch, Monterey County Herald, February 10, 2002

Excerpt from the story

The man lay facedown, bleeding into the braided rug of Susan Brittain's breakfast room, the fallen keyboard of Susan's computer dangling from the edge of her desk and dripping blood onto his face. The sliding glass doors of the large, bright room stood open, admitting a damp, chill breeze. The white shutter doors of the floor-to-ceiling cupboards had been flung back, the contents of the shelves thrown to the floor, a jumble of office supplies, boxes of costume jewelry, and ceramic dishes. Susan's prized houseplants were crushed beneath broken ceramic planters and heaps of black potting soil; every surface was dusted with soil and with clinging black powder where a plastic bottle of copier toner had burst open, the inky haze charring a blood-splattered doll and crusting the lenses of Susan's good reflex camera.

One shoe print was incised in the toner powder but had been partially smeared away. The computer had been turned on, the program on the screen a list of eBay auction items showing photographs of each offering with its price. The time was 6:30 a.m. Susan had been gone from the house for half an hour. As the victim lay committing his blood to her hand-braided rug, across the village three seemingly unrelated events were taking place, three small dramas that might, at a future date, help construct a scenario of interest to Molena Point police and to one gray tomcat and his tabby lady.

At the south side of the village, in the old mansion that housed Molena Point Little Theater, a young tortoiseshell cat prowled alone among the sets, her bright, inquisitive mind filled with wonderful questions. She was not hunting mice or snatching spiders from the cobwebs that hung in the far, high corners of the raftered ceiling. Her curiosity centered on the theater itself. She had watched the sets being built and painted, marveling at the green hills that looked so very like the real Molena Point hills over which she ranged each day. When she backed away from the sets, as the artist often did, the rolling slopes seemed nearly as huge and throbbing with light, the land running on forever along the edge of the Pacific. Only these hills didn't smell like green grass and earth, they smelled like paint. And no houses nestled among them, just scattered oaks, and wandering herds of longhorn cattle and deer and elk, from a time long past.

"Did Molena Point truly look like this?" she whispered to the empty theater. "All wild and without people? And such big animals everywhere? Were there no little cats then? And no rabbits or gophers to hunt?"

Every wonder that the kit had encountered in her short life had demanded vociferous response. She had to talk about each new event, if only to herself. She stood watching the hills, filled with questions, and she looked above her, too, at the ropes and props of the theater, at the catwalk where she liked to prowl, at the electrical buttons and cords that operated the various curtains, and at the overhead pulleys and lights, all complicated and wonderful. Muttering among ragged purrs, she sat admiring the set of the Spanish hacienda, with its deep windows and ornamental grills, and its broad patio with masses of roses blooming.

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

Several blocks away, in the crowded front yard of the Roy McLeary residence, as villagers gathered for the McLeary yard sale, an altercation was about to erupt over a small and unprepossessing wooden box that lay half hidden among cast-off household accessories and scarred furniture. A clash of emotions that would amuse and surprise the dozens of early bargain hunters, and would sharply alert the two cats who lay draped over the branch of a huge oak at the edge of the yard, greatly entertained by the intense atmosphere of the early gathering.

Joe Grey and Dulcie, having come from a predawn hunt up on the open hills, had arrived before daylight prepared to enjoy the bargaining.... Among the dark, prickly leaves, Joe's sleek silver gray coat blended so well that he was hardly visible. But one white-booted paw hung over the branch, and the white strip down his face and his white chest might be glimpsed among the dense foliage by an observant visitor. His yellow eyes gleamed, too, watching, highly intrigued by the human passion to possess another person's broken cast-offs, Beside him, Dulcie's green eyes were slitted with amusement. The tip of her dark tail twitched, and her dark brown stripes blended with the oak's shadows. Neither cat anticipated the trouble that was about to explode below them; neither was prepared, this morning, for the innocent gathering to turn violent.

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