The Big Cat Nap

line and reach out to hold the ankle of the person in front. In this way the captives formed a human chain. It was all within the rules. The closer the chain stretched to the fifty-yard line, the greater the chance that someone would be able to free thecaptives. They’d then rejoin the game, giving them an obvious advantage if the other team’s players were still held prisoner.
    The whistle blew; play resumed. The faster players remained free. The intensity grew. The sidelines erupted.
    “Humans invent some funny games, don’t they?”
Cazenovia mused.
    Mrs. Murphy sauntered down, jumped up on the stone wall at a distance from Pewter but within speaking range of the Lutheran cats.
    “I’m not speaking to you,”
Pewter huffed.
    “Good. You’re a bloody bore.”
    “I resent that,”
Pewter snapped.
    “Come on, you two. We want to enjoy the day,”
Lucy Fur, with authority, spoke.
    Pewter jumped down into the cemetery just as the reds were freed, their chain having grown longer so it was easier to have a free player touch a captured player without being captured herself. A huge roar went up.
“I hate them all,”
she grumbled. The gray cat walked to the far side of the cemetery, toward the large old stately tombstones.
    Mrs. Murphy moved closer to Elocution, Cazenovia, and Lucy Fur to chat.
    Pewter sat for a moment on the back side of the large Trumbull tombstone, a huge recumbent lamb on top of it. She sniffed. Sniffed again.
    “Hmm.”
She walked around the tombstone—and stopped cold.
    Leaning against the carved family remembrance, bolt upright, was a young man, eyes staring into space. Dead as a doornail.
    “Hey! Hey!”
Pewter shouted.
    Of course, the other cats paid no attention, so she tore through the graveyard and screeched to a halt at the bottom of the wall.
“There’s a dead man in here.”
    “They’re all dead.”
Cazenovia laughed.
    “But someone is leaned up against a tombstone!”
Pewter panted.
    Mrs. Murphy jumped down and ran to her friend, anger forgotten. The two cats hurried around the Trumbull monument.
    Mrs. Murphy put a paw on the dead man’s leg, looked intently at what she could see of the corpse.
“No wound. No blood. How did he die?”
    Pewter also stared at the body.
“Could he have been strangled?”
    “His eyes would be bloodshot,”
Mrs. Murphy replied.
    Pewter wailed,
“Why does everything happen to me?”
    No point in arguing, so the tiger just nodded. The two cats raced across the well-tended graveyard.
    As they sailed over the stone wall, Mrs. Murphy called over her shoulder to the three cats,
“Dead body at the Trumbull monument.”
    This was too good to be true. Cazenovia, Elocution, and Lucy Fur hopped down to run in the opposite direction.
    Calling out before she reached Harry, Mrs. Murphy hollered,
“Tucker. Tucker, I need you.”
    All the commotion surrounding the game drowned out her voice.
    The two cats reached the dog, and Mrs. Murphy rapidly filled her in on their discovery.
    “I was the one who found the body,”
Pewter corrected the tiger, who had said
“we.”
    Stifling the urge to smack the gray cat, Mrs. Murphy simply agreed, then ordered,
“Tucker, take Mom’s hand. Pewter, you and I need to get behind each leg, stand on our hind legs, and push. Sooner or later, she’ll get it.”
    Tucker, on her hind legs, grabbed Harry’s hand gently in her mouth. The two kitties started pushing. Standing just inside the limed sidelines, Harry resisted them.
    “Guys.”
Harry shook off Tucker.
    Fair, amused by their antics, returned his attention to the evenly matched game. The contestants were now showing the effects of hard running.
    “Mother, pay attention!”
Mrs. Murphy screeched as loud as she could.
    Tucker barked, taking Harry’s hand again, leading her a few steps.
    “What is wrong with you all?”
    Arms across his massive chest, Fair looked down at the animals. He could read their behavior better than most humans could. Not that Harry was oblivious to their methods of communicating, she just had never been accused of being overly sensitive.
    “Honey, I’ll follow them. You can’t leave your ref duties.”
    “Damn, these people are hard work.”
Tucker allowed herself a brief complaint.
    Looking at the dog, Pewter unleashed her claws.
“It’s refreshing to hear you not defend Mom for once. You’re always sticking up for her.”
    “I love her, although at this moment I’m loving her a little less,”
the dog replied.
    “They’re