Disheveled and breathless, Noble scanned the rows of seats for an empty space. All eyes were back to looking anywhere other than at him. There was an empty seat by a greasy window on the left side in the very back, and he took it.
He knew that he’d seen what he’d seen. Hadn’t he? They’d been so busy at the office with the latest project that they’d barely discussed the possibility of this one turning back up. The first year, of course, they’d been on guard, and the year after that, but then a third went by with no cat-related incidents, and frankly, there was plenty of other oddness to deal with. They’d simply assumed that the trees and the cats were done, and that was that.
Noble rubbed his eyes. He had been running; it was possible that he hadn’t seen things clearly. It was Arbor Day and the power of suggestion was powerful indeed. But what had made the bus stop, then? He was sure no MBTA driver had ever waited for a sprinting passenger in the history of Boston.
He looked out the window. The bus made its way down the street in fits and starts, lumbering impatiently through morning rush hour traffic. As the bus shuddered to a stop at a red light, cars and trucks and mopeds in the other lane zipped past the trees lining the sidewalks. Most were saplings with small leaves just beginning to unfurl, but the bright yellow aspen on the corner stood taller than any of them. It certainly had more cats—three, by his count.
It took a second to register. Noble stared: he fixed the tree in his gaze like a lion stalking its prey, eyes moving from branch to branch, looking carefully at every detail. The black and white cat was there, joined by two others: a gray tabby, and a calico. All three were lounging in the branches, legs tucked beneath themselves in full catloaf position. The tabby and the calico seemed to be looking down at the street, but the black and white looked back at him, also unblinking.
His eyes watered, and he couldn’t hold out any longer: he blinked, trying to be quick about it, but it was no use. As soon as his eyes opened, the aspen was gone, replaced by some other uninteresting native species, maple or oak. He wondered if anybody on the street had noticed. He doubted any of the bus passengers had; if they had, they were keeping it to themselves.
He kept a careful watch now, looking back and forth at the sidewalk on one side of the street, then the other, but every tree was frustratingly typical. Not one featured even a single cat.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. He wasn’t prepared to start thinking about what to do if this turned into a full-fledged Arbor Day cat situation. He maintained some hope that he was only hallucinating or suffering a catastrophic medical event.
If it was real, there was no point avoiding it, he decided. He exhaled deeply, reopened his eyes, and looked around some more. This time, the tree was sprouting from the back of a tow truck in the left lane. The three previous cats were joined by a fourth, an orange tabby. The black and white cat was staring at him as before.
You look just like Eloise, he thought, as the bus began to move. The tow truck moved too, tree and all; it seemed to be just fine towing foliage. The Eloise-looking cat closed its eyes languidly, then re-opened them; it was a gesture of trust from cat to human. Noble paused. He knew the whole thing would likely vanish if he looked away. The cat blinked at him again, less patiently this time.
He gave in. He sent his own blink-coded greeting, looking directly at the cat’s eyes and slowly closing his own. What are you trying to tell me? he thought, willing his question through the ether and into the other’s feline brain. But, as expected, the tree on the tow truck was gone when he reopened his eyes, replaced by a light blue sedan with a crumpled hood.
He leaned back in his seat. This was happening. The cats were back. The question was, what was he going to do about it?
