Upstairs in Susan’s sewing room, where the radio with the green cat’s eye played soft music, Rose held her head tilted a little to one side listening to a distant whip-poor-will. Khui thought she was the most adorable cat he’d ever seen, only now he was sure she hated him.

After he’d broken down and confessed the things he’d done to her friends, she had a perfect right to order him out of the house.

Rose regarded Khui with a level gaze. Finally, she told him, “Life is a whole chain of events that lead up to the present, Khui. We make peace with the past and ask forgiveness, especially from ourselves.”

Like sunshine after the rain, she smiled at him.

“It’s who you are now and what you do with your life from now on that matters most, Khui.” She touched his paw and held it there.

Khui's sense of relief was only temporary, suddenly broken into by the screams of cats arguing out in the hall.

“I’m telling you, I’m not going in there!”

Khui jumped on the alert as soon as he heard the doctor’s voice.

Rose craned her head trying to see around the side of the chair.

With wide eyes, she said, “That’s Chocolate!”

“And I know the other voice,” sighed Khui.

The door burst open and Chocolate shoved the doctor into the room.

“Get your paws off me you big vampire! Look at those teeth. You should see a vet and have them cleaned. What do they call you, Count Choculate?”

“Close.” Rose snickered.

“I’d like you to look at my friend’s sister,” the Siamese cat insisted.

“Don’t you cats understand Common Cat Language? As I’ve already told Eddy, I’m retired, which means I’m not taking on any new patients now or never, or any more again! You got it?”

“Just take a look at my sister’s friend,” insisted Chocolate.

“You said it was your friend’s sister, you big dope!” Dr. Mina pushed back. “And stop shoving me.”

Rose leaned farther around the arm of the chair.

“Oh Chocolate, sweetie. What are you doing to that cat?”

“Java says she’s a doctor.” Chocolate gave Mina a fierce look.

Mina glared back at him.

“Eddy invited her up here to see you.” He told Rose sweetly.

“He didn’t invite me. You shoved me.”

Mina shouldered him off her foot.

“Be nice Chocolate.” Rose appealed with her big eyes.

The Siamese cat cast his eyes down contritely, scraping deep lines in the nap of the carpet with his sharp claws.

Dr. Mina looked in disbelief between a frail cat leaning over the arm of the chair, and the muscle-bound brute who melted humbly under the gaze of those large beautiful eyes.

“But where’s Uncle Eddy?” Rose asked Chocolate.

“Uncle Eddy?” Dr. Mina rolled her eyes.

“Is this some kind of an inbred clan?”

“Not really,” offered Rose. “It’s only that we’re all from the East Woods.” Rose sank back into her blanket. “Special cats live there,” she added, almost inaudibly.

Dr. Mina sniffed sarcastically, “Special cats. I should have known.”

Thoughts of the East Woods were interrupted when Eddy stumbled through the door carrying Dr. Mina’s medical kit in his teeth.

“I told you not to bring that up here,” Mina stamped her foot.

Backpack straps dangling from the doctor's bag tangled in Eddy's feet. Trying to keep his balance, he tripped over a fold in the carpet edge and fell with a heavy thump. The bag rolled the rest of the way into the room.

Dr. Mina scowled into Chocolate’s penetrating yellow eyes.

“I know, just take a look at your friend.”

“Please,” he appealed.

Mina gathered what was left of her dignity and looked up curiously at the young cat in the armchair. Rose looked back, her big round eyes squinting a little in pain.

Mina broke away from Rose’s critical gaze to glance around the long sewing room. She wondered why there were no electric lights burning. It seemed odd to her that the only illumination was from the full moon flooding through the tall windows, while elsewhere in the house, the people seemed to crave electric light as a life-giving force.

She saw that all of the floor lamps in the room had been unplugged. Looking around more closely, Mina was surprised that every plastic toy lying on the floor had been badly chewed and there were teeth marks in the electric cords

Dr. Mina fought a rising sense of dread. They’ve pulled out all the plugs because she chews the wires. The radio wire must be tied off above the floor so she can’t get at it.

From the first moment Mina stepped into this curious house, she had a sense there was something wrong. The condition of the room and the obvious distress of the patient made her paws sweat. Mina licked her lips, fearing the shadow of death she’d seen so many times before. Feeling the room with her inner senses, she felt herself face to face with what they called trrrik-yah, or in Common Cat Language, simply ‘the Chaos,

The evil is on this planet, she murmured under her breath.

Dr. Mina was a strong cat, indifferent to the kind of agony and shocking injuries she’d seen in foreign service. Like all dedicated health workers, Dr. Mina was a true hero, although she would be the last to admit it. With effort, she managed to compose her thoughts.

She told Rose, “My name is Dr. Mina. I’m a medical doctor.”

It was something she’d said to her patients a thousand times before, but tonight she could only hope it was true.

Rose dug her paws into her blanket. Susan and Bill had taken her to see a lot of doctors, even to the big teaching hospital in Philadelphia. But all they did was hurt her.

So now here was a cat — with a medical bag, no less!

Looking down from her chair, Rose said, “I’m grateful to you for trying to help, but there’s nothing anyone can do for me now.” She pointed toward the window with her nose. “In the daytime you can see them out there.”

“See what, Rose?” Mina asked.

As she turned toward the window, she noticed Eddy, Chocolate, and Khui had left the room.

Rose said, “Look down into the yard, Doctor, at that group of white stones to the right of the driveway. There’s a place for me with all the other cats who came before, and the other animals, the squirrels and the birds. Bill buried Java’s rat down there yesterday.”

Dr. Mina felt an emptiness in her heart, like the grim tolling of a distant bell. But she cut Rose off sharply.

“We’ll have none of that Little Miss Cat! We all wind up there eventually, it’s true. But not for you, just yet!”

Her eyes hardened, not at Rose, but inwardly at the overwhelming sense of helplessness. A memory from long ago welled out from an empty time when the red gloves had taken her kittens away from her and she never saw them again.

Mina looked down into the valley, listening to the cries, the fox’s yip, the little peepers, the musical coos of the raccoon kits crying for their mother. She lingered at the window reflecting. Engineers like Khui glowed over what they called the Saah-Ray, that dimension they penetrated to travel through space and time.

Mina hated the word. Under the mantle of those obscure subatomic depths they manipulated so carelessly, lurked an unspeakable evil. At one time, the beings on her world had known how to control it, but the knowledge was lost. Now, they simply traveled through time and space without regard to the consequences. She had no idea how her skills could save even one Earth cat once the fabric had torn.

She took a breath. Turning back to Rose, she asked the young cat what medications she was taking.

Rose didn’t know their names, so Mina studied the pharmacy vials on the side table, hoping against hope the cat was only suffering from a bacterial infection or a chronic inflammation of the lower GI.

Mina asked, “Would you mind if I examined you, Rose?”

Rose drew back. Doctors only hurt her with their poking and prodding that never seemed to help. But she knew her friends were waiting outside the door, so for their sake, she resigned herself to the pain.

“If you must. . . But please don’t hurt me too much, the way the others do. Especially here,” Rose indicated her abdomen.

Opening her bag, Dr. Mina attached a small device to her paw. She hopped up on the seat cushion and moved it all around, working quickly without touching Rose. When she was finished, she jumped down to study her tablet.

“You don’t have to pretend, Dr. Mina. They try not to talk in front of me, but I know it’s —” This time Rose cried out in pain when a spasm tore through her.

Mina looked at her sharply. “What they think it is, the growths inside are only the symptoms. Treating symptoms is not a cure.”

“So what’s wrong with me?”

Mina pulled a dispenser of cat treats shaped like little fish from her medical kit. “These will relieve your pain, Rose. Eat two now, and one more if you wake up feeling uncomfortable. They’re non-narcotic and safe — I make them myself.”

“What’s wrong with me, doctor?” Rose insisted.

Mina puffed an impatient breath. “How can I explain it? If I told you that the structure of life comes from something underneath we can’t see, you’d think I was a quack.”

Rose tilted her head and laughed. “A doctor who’s a cat is afraid I’d think she was a quack? Seriously?”

Dr. Mina cracked a smile. “Yes, there is something funny about that, now you mention it.”

Rose said, “I’ve always known that there’s more, Dr. Mina. Like the powerful energy you can’t see inside the radio cabinet playing beautiful music.”

Mina watched Rose crunch the little tablets. “Fortunately her teeth are good,” she thought to herself with a dark glance across the room at the low table covered with bite marks.

“I can stop your pain, Rose, and stop the evil inside you from spreading, but I’m afraid what I need to cure you can’t be found on Earth.”

She dug around in her bag and hooked out a woody stem. Passing it up to Rose, she told her, “This will ease the craving in your stomach. Chew on this whenever you feel the urge to gnaw on something, it will make you feel better.

Rose sniffed the stick. “You’re one of those space cats, aren’t you! MeMe said one was a doctor.” She tilted her head quizzically. “But she said they were blue.”

“I used to be blue — something happened.”

Mina looked Rose in the eye.

“Listen to me Rose, I’ll do everything I can for you. But this other thing has to be our secret. No talk about cats from outer space to anyone.”

“I promise, Dr. Mina, cross my heart. Between friends.” When Rose smiled, it was like the clouds had parted.

“I’m feeling better already. Thank you Dr. Mina.”

“Between you and me, it’s just Mina. Between friends. And that stick comes from your woods across the field, not from the other side of the Galaxy. Chew on that, not the furniture”

Outside in the hallway, Mina found Khui waiting with Eddy and Chocolate. She led them into a shadowy room across the hall so they could talk.

“Keep an eye on her tonight, Khui. As soon as it’s light, you and I will go for a hike up on that mountain. I need to look for certain herbs and a tree which I hope grows in these parts. I’m getting too old to go marching around in the woods on my own.”

“We know the mountain,” Eddy offered.

Chocolate stepped up next to him with his strong tail held up.

“We can guide you — it’s dangerous up there.”

Dr. Mina looked at the resolute blue eyes of the big white cat whose fur seemed to glow in the dark. Next to him, the dark brown Siamese blended into the shadows, his yellow eyes flashing fire. It was obvious these cats cared deeply for each other and would fight to the death for their friends.

When she was a medical student on planet Alna, close relationships were considered abnormal. Mina knew now she’d missed many opportunities in her life. She could have had a friend. She’d been close to a cat named Cara when they were growing up, but their friendship was discouraged. She wondered where Cara was now.

Inwardly she praised whatever force had brought this little band together to surround Rose with their love. Mina remembered something Cara had told her a long time ago.

You get the call and you have to follow it.

While she turned that idea over, she continued to wonder about Rose. Those from her world had once cured this thing, but the answer had been forgotten long ago. What if all of the knowledge of everything that had ever been discovered was waiting for a key word or the right idea to trigger a universal memory into the imagination of whoever was searching for it? Maybe as simple as the trigger which brings on what the French call déjà vécu, feeling you‘ve already lived through an experience.

Silly idea! Life is not so simple. Mina dismissed the thought.

And made up her mind.

“I’m staying here Khui.”

Khui didn’t know what to think. This was so unlike Mina. Shut inside herself, he’d never known her to even smile at a patient.

But a moment ago Rose had told him, Khui, it’s what you do with your life from now on that counts. First him, and now the doctor.

Mina stretched her paws up on the windowsill and gazed out at the mountain, wondering what sort of spell the little cat in the other room had cast on all of them.

Looking down at the barn across the back yard, Khui told Mina, “We won’t need that ship of ours anymore. With Mau locked up safe, Sona has a plan to stop this invasion by making a case for Earth directly to the Emperor. She can use the ship’s communicators to speak to the Foreign Ministry.”

Dr. Mina shook her head. “She’ll have to do it on the way Khui, I need the ship, to return to Alna so I can search the ancient records, what’s left of them. I just hope the security police won’t stop me before I can return to Earth.”

A thundering boom shook the house.

Picture frames fell off the wall. Several windowpanes cracked. The cats disappeared in a panic down the hallway. By the time they crept back to look out the window again, they saw that the heavy doors down at the barn were lying at odd angles on the ground.

With a musical blast, Sona’s ship glided out over the back yard. Rising up, the ship gained over the roof and disappeared into the night.