Wilma brought the bowl to the couch and held it as Dulcie lapped. She'd been terribly thirsty. She gulped the milk down, nearly choking. The afghan was so warm around her, the milk so heartening.

When the bowl was empty she closed her eyes. Her paws and tail felt heavy but her body seemed weightless, as if she were floating.

She slept.

For some time after the little cat slept, Wilma sat beside her puzzling over what might have happened. She had found no open wound, no bite mark, no real indication of a cat fight. She didn't understand what those strange, hurt places were on Dulcie's body, little areas tender as bruises.

Whatever had happened, Dulcie had certainly bloodied something. She hoped she did a good job on the creature.

The little cat was no slouch in a fight. Dulcie could hold her own with most dogs. And she wasn't always on the defensive, either. She had been known to provoke other female cats unmercifully.

This little tabby was tough. Beneath that sweet smile, Dulcie was tough as army boots. Before she was a year old she had established in her six-block territory a realm of personal safety where no dog or cat dared challenge her. No, whatever chased her today must have been a stranger to the neighborhood.

When she was convinced that Dulcie was all right, Wilma left the little cat sleeping and went to get dressed. This was concert night. Tickets for the short season of the village concert were sold out months ahead, and tonight was a special appearance of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra presenting Schoenberg. She chose a full, flowered skirt and a hand-knit top, the first dress-up clothes she'd had on in weeks. As she opened her jewelry box and selected a cloisonne clip to hold back her gray hair, she half expected Dulcie to hear the small squeak of the lid opening, and come trotting in. The little cat loved to paw through her collection of barrettes; bright jewelry fascinated her as much as did pretty, soft clothes.

She heard no sound from the living room, and when she looked in, Dulcie was deeply asleep, out like a light. As she left the house, she thought of locking the cat door, of keeping Dulcie inside. But the idea of a gas leak or of fire, with Dulcie shut inside, sickened her.

If whatever had chased her was still out there, Dulcie would know it. She'd stay in. Or she would go only onto the back porch, where she could see the street but slip quickly away, back into the house.

She drew the draperies in the living room and dining room, and in the kitchen she pulled the curtains, wondering why she was taking such care. Whatever had been after Dulcie wasn't going to be looking in the windows. Half the time she left the curtains open at night, as did her neighbors. She'd gotten spoiled, living in Molena Point. Spoiled and soft. In the other towns where she had lived, she had always covered the windows at night.

She opened a can of salmon, Dulcie's favorite, and emptied it into Dulcie's clean blue bowl. But she didn't leave it in the kitchen; she hated to smell up the house with fish. She set it out on the porch, just outside Dulcie's cat door, where she would find it when she woke.

She went on out the back door, locking it behind her, and along a little stone patch to the attached carport.

Backing out of the drive she looked carefully around the yard and along the street for strange animals. Heading down the hill toward the village, she watched the sidewalks, but she saw nothing unusual, no strange dogs. Only one man out walking, a thin, stooped figure walking away from her. She didn't recognize him, at least not from the back, but the village was full of tourists.

Dulcie woke three hours after Wilma left. She knew at once that the house was empty by the quality of total silence, the air congealed into absolute stillness, a dead response to her seeking senses which occurred only in an empty house.

She prowled the rooms for a while, looking up warily at the windows. Wilma had drawn the draperies before she left. Usually she forgot. Twice Dulcie leaped up under the draperies, crouching on the sill to look out.

Each time she looked, beyond the cold glass the dark street was empty. And within the shadows of Wilma's front garden, no one was standing half-hidden. No one standing against the dark trunks of the oak trees; and the flower beds and stone walks were undisturbed by any intruder.

Of the houses across the street, three were dark, and five had lights on. At the Ramirez house the porch light burned as if the young couple was expecting company. The Ramirez's were one of her favorite families. Nancy Ramirez wore the prettiest silk nighties; and usually she left the back door unlocked.

She jumped down from beneath the draperies and warily approached her cat door.

The carport light shone in through the plastic. She sniffed the cold evening air that seeped in around the free-swinging door. She couldn't smell the man, but she did smell salmon. Wilma had left her a nice bowl of salmon. Ravenous, she pushed out onto the porch.

She studied the yard and street briefly, then dived for a bite of the nice red fish.

A rank smell stopped her. She stared at the dark, rich salmon, and backed away. It smelled bitter.

The salmon smelled of death. Of poison. Her nice supper had been poisoned. She stood staring around the dark yard, sick with anger.

She knew about poison. The neighbor's collie died last summer after eating a dead rat. Dulcie had approached the body of the unmoving dog where it lay sprawled across the lawn of the neighbor's house. The time was dawn, the sky was hardly light. She was the first one to find the dog; it would be another hour before the family rose and discovered him there.

She had stood beside the rigid beast, shocked. She had never seen a big animal dead, only birds and mice. He was so still, his body so unlike the dog she had known. Empty. Horrifyingly still and empty.

She had liked that collie; he was always kind, he never chased her. Shivering, she had crept closer to the unmoving beast. She didn't have to stretch forward to touch him, to know that he was dead, to know the hard, stiff, dry condition of what remained.

His spirit was gone. His tan-and-white body was nothing but a heap of fur. The sweet spirit of the collie had fled.

She had crept closer at last, and smelled the collie's face, sniffed at his mouth.

He smelled bitter. A foreign, metallic bitterness.

Exactly like her salmon. She could taste the smell.

The thin, hunched man had done this. Had poisoned her supper.

A growl rumbled deep in her throat. She hissed at her supper bowl, then put her shoulder against it. Pushing, she shoved it across the porch and over into the pansies.

Jumping down, she dug a hole and pushed the bowl in-her dear blue bowl, that she loved.

She buried the bowl and the salmon deep, pawing flowers and earth over the mess, stamping the dirt down with hard, angry slaps.

Finished, she scented along the steps and soon found the man's sour smell. She followed it. Ears back, tail jerking with rage, she tracked him across the garden through a low bed of leafy ajuga and along the sidewalk. Above her across the dark sky, clouds had rolled in to hide the moon. Following his trail, thinking about the poison, and thinking about his flying feet hazing her along the cliff, she flinched at every shadow.

Trotting up sidewalks and through gardens, she studied all the black concavities in the neighbors' dark yards, but she saw no unfamiliar shape, only the black silhouettes of bushes and trees. But his scent was there, on the sidewalk. She followed it for two blocks before she lost it among car smells and the reek of dog pee. And even after the trail had vanished she pushed on.

She didn't know what she meant to do if she found him. Sure, go for his throat. But her rage wouldn't let her rest. Her poisoned salmon was the last straw.