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“I find that hard to believe,” Art said, his frantic headshake belying his dispassionate tone.

Catching the hint, I changed the subject back to the cat. “Bath, then food. Then we’ll see.”

“Wait! She still needs a name!” Viv protested as I held out my hand to help Art to his feet. The little cat squeaked again in protest at being jostled as Viv pushed herself up off the floor.

“How about Pipsqueak?” I suggested. “It’s gender-neutral and perfect for a tiny thing that makes funny noises.”

“Oh! That’s so cute!” Viv squealed. “Hi, little Pipsqueak! Is that your name?” she asked it, bringing it up to her face until they were nose to nose and staring each other in the eye. The cat responded by patting her cheek gently and squeaking again.

We all laughed.

“Guess he likes it,” Art said, reaching over to rub the cat’s head again.

“She has great taste,” Viv replied tartly, turning away to get the cat out of reach of his finger.

“We won’t know if it’s a girl or a boy until we get it into a nice warm bath,” I replied, just as tartly. “So let’s go before we all catch fleas or whatever else it has.”

“What should we feed her?” Viv asked, leading the way to the staircase ladder, calling out to Merry on the way. “Hey! Little weirdo! Look what we found in the wall!”

The cat wasn’t black at all. It was a pale gray tabby with little pink toe beans tipped with ridiculously sharp claws.

It was also definitively a she.

I rubbed the welts on my arm and tried hard to feel compassion for the scared little thing looking at me smugly from the safety of Viv’s arms. The cat was much happier wrapped in a large towel than she had been neck-deep in soapy water in the kitchen sink. The only thing we’d had to wash her with was dish soap, but I figured that anything safe for baby ducks couldn’t hurt a stray cat who’d been subsisting on whatever she could scrounge up in the walls of an old house.

“What can I feed her?” Viv asked, rounding on me, sparing my arm a quick wince.

“I’m not actually sure,” I replied, frowning as I tried to remember what Peggy had brought over.

“Milk!” Merry cried. “Cats like milk!” His excitement faded quickly when he darted to the fridge and threw it open only to find it more or less empty.

He recovered quickly and spun around, slamming the door hard enough to make the whole fridge shudder. “I have cookies in my backpack!”

“Let’s be gentle with the fridge, buddy,” Art suggested mildly. “And I’m pretty sure that I’ve read somewhere that milk is bad for cats. Cream is better because it has no lactose.”

“Cream has no lactose?” I asked, frowning. “That’s weird. How?”

Art shrugged and reached for his phone to look up the answer.

Viv let out a frustrated groan. “Dad! Can’t you look it up later? You know, after we feed the cat?” she whined.

“Oh! I know what we can feed her,” I said.

I found what I was looking for in the second cabinet I checked and triumphantly held up a can of sardines. “It’s not cat food, but I don’t think she’ll mind.”

Pipsqueak proved me right by almost levitating out of Viv’s arms to throw herself on the kitchen table before I had even finished opening the can. She scarfed down the sardines as fast as I could dish them out, only stopping when I pulled the plate away so Art could replace it with a small bowl of water.

“Slow down, little one. You’re going to make yourself sick. How about a little water before you eat more?” he said, petting her gently.

The cat glared at me as she rubbed her head lovingly against his hand.

“Hey! You be nice to her,” Art admonished the little cat, picking her up and flipping her over, cradling her in his hand and lifting her up to look her sternly in the eye. “She’s the one sharing her dinner with you!”

The little cat stretched out a lazy paw that she rested on his nose, stuck out her tongue, and crossed her eyes in response before closing them and drifting off to sleep in his palm. My heart thumped. In a few hours, those hands might be holding me. I could still feel them, so big, yet so gentle, pressed against my back where they’d rested when we kissed. My face flushed and everything inside me liquified as I imagined them there again.

“What do we do now?” Viv asked in a hushed whisper when her dad placed the little sleeping bundle back in her arms.

He shrugged. “I guess we figure out some sort of temporary kitty-litter solution before we can get some real supplies at the store tomorrow, and then we sort out some dinner and sleeping arrangements for the humans.”