Cat Spitting Mad

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

(Joe Grey Cat Mystery Series, Book 6)

HarperCollins, 2001
Hardcover: ISBN 0061050989
Paperback: Avon, ISBN 0061059897
E-book: HarperCollins
Large print: Wheeler, 1587241587
Audiobook: Download, CD, and digital rental

Winner of the Cat Writers' Association's
2001 Muse Medallion

"I am a cat, Dulcie. A free spirit. A four-legged unencumbered citizen. I don't need to answer to any human." Joe Grey is mad enough to spit! No matter what Clyde, his irritating human "owner," says, he's not keeping his paws off this case, not when Max Harper's life and the future of law enforcement in the town of Molena Point are at stake. While Joe has certainly delighted in playing countless smug tricks on Max Harper, Molena Point's head lawman, he's never had anything but respect for the dedicated cop. Now Harper is in trouble. Big trouble. Two of his horseback riding companions have been viciously murdered on the trail, and Dillon, the spunky young girl who accompanied them, is missing. All the evidence points to Harper, and he doesn't have a single witness--at least not a human one!--to vouch for his alibi. Joe knows Harper is innocent and is hissing to prove it--and to rescue his young friend Dillon before it is too late. He and Dulcie must keep their night-eyes sharp and their soft paws moving to avoid both a vicious killer and a hungry cougar prowling around the town's hills.

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Quotes from the reviews

"Cat lovers will cuddle right up to Joe and his pals, but the story has plenty of murder and mayhem for those who take their detective fiction straight up." --Publisher's Weekly, December 11, 2000

"The sixth mystery featuring sentient, talking felines Joe Grey and Dulcie, now abetted in their investigations by the tortoise-shell kitten introduced in Cat to the Dogs, will have their fans wanting to down the sometimes scary, madcap tale in one gulp. Yet again, murder shocks the small town of Molena Point, California, but what gets Joe spitting mad is the fact that some lowlife has done a masterful job of framing Chief of Police Max Harper. Although Joe delights in his ability to disquiet the chief with anonymous phone tips, the crusty cat has a deep respect for Max. Add to the mix the 13-year-old girl who witnessed the murders and then disappeared, a puma roaming the wooded hills outside of town, and an escaped con who kills cats and hates Max, and the pace never falters. The felines work around the humans to solve the case, and, as usual, the cat-human interactions and repartee enhance the plot." --Booklist, December 1, 2000

"I'd bet a pound of catnip that this detective series starring Joe Grey and Dulcie, two feline private investigators who take solving murder cases into their own paws, is penned by a cat. And Cat Spitting Mad, [Murphy's] latest novel, only makes me marvel more at this magical series.... If you've enjoyed Murphy's previous Joe Grey books or are enthralled by her monthly serial mystery in Cats, Cat Spitting Mad will be a treat--and further confirmation that Murphy is in a class by herself." --Cats Magazine, June 2001

Excerpt from the story

It was the tortoiseshell kit who found the bodies, blundering onto the murder scene as she barged into every disaster, all four paws reaching for trouble. She was prowling high up the hills in the pine forest when she heard the screams and came running, frightened and curious--and was nearly trampled by the killer's horse as the rider raced away. Churning hooves sent rocks flying. The kit ran from him, tumbling and dodging.

But when the rider had vanished into the gray foggy woods, the curious kit returned to the path, grimacing at the smell of blood.

Two women lay sprawled across the bridle trail. Both were blond, both wore pants and boots. Neither moved. Their throats had been slashed; their blood was soaking into the earth. Backing away, the kit looked and looked, her terror cold and complete, her heart pounding.

She spun and ran again, a small black-and-brown streak bursting away alone through the darkening evening, scared nearly out of her fur.

The was late Sunday afternoon. The kit had vanished from Dulcie's house on the previous Wednesday, her fluffy tortoiseshell pantaloons waggling as she slid under the plastic flap of Dulcie's cat door and trotted away through the garden beneath a light rain, escaping for what the two older cats thought would be a little ramble of a few hours before supper. Dulcie and Joe, curled up by the fire, hadn't bothered to follow her--they were tired of chasing after the kit.

"She'll have to take care of herself," Dulcie said, rolling over to gaze into the fire. But as the sky darkened not only with evening but with rain, Dulcie glanced worriedly toward the kitchen and her cat door.

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

Joe stood a moment on the covered back porch, his sleek gray coat blending with the night, his white paws and the white strip down his face bright, his yellow eyes gleaming. Then down the steps, the rain so heavy he could see little more than the dark mass of Dulcie just ahead, and an occasional oak tree or smeared cottage light. Already his ears and back were soaked. His empty stomach rumbled. The scent of roast lamb followed the cats through the rain like a long arm reaching out from the house, seeking to pull them back inside.

Along the village streets, the cottages and shops were disembodied pools of light. They hurried uphill, their ears flat, their tails low, straight for the wild land where the cottages and shops ended, where the night was black indeed. Sloughing up through the tall, wet grass, along the trail they and the kit usually followed, they could catch no scent of her, could smell only rain. They moved warily, watching, listening.

It was hard to imagine that a mountain lion roamed their hills, that a cougar would abandon the wild, rugged mountains of the coastal range to venture anywhere near the village, but this young male cougar had been prowling close, around the outlying houses. Nor was this the first big cat to be so bold. Wilma had, on slow days as reference librarian, gone through back issues of the Molena Point Gazette, finding several such cases, one where a cougar came directly into the village at four in the morning, leaving a lasting impression with the officer on foot patrol. Wilma worried about the cats, and cautioned them, but she couldn't lock them up, not Joe Grey and Dulcie, nor the wild-spirited kit.

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