Battlescars (7 page)

She looked up to see Dyson watching with amusement in his eyes. “Who is this handsome fellow?”

Kayla stood up. “Sit, boy,” she said, and Mr. Marbles dropped and sat as still as a stone. His eyes followed Kayla’s every move, but he didn’t get up from the position she had ordered him into. “Good boy,” she said, scratching his ears again, and then she turned to Dyson.

“This little guy is Mr. Marbles,” she said. “We call him the ‘house dog’ because he lives here and has the run of the place. He’s not eligible for adoption, not because of anything he’s done, but just because we’re in love with him and he seems to be perfectly at home here.” She motioned to a small kennel in the corner with the door wide open. “He sleeps there. He has all the food he wants, as you can tell, because he’s fat as a tick. Isn’t that right, buddy?”

Mr. Marbles responded by wagging his tail so hard he almost fell over.

“He loves us. He seems to want to stay here, and when a new animal comes in, he’s the welcoming party. He’s been growled at by dogs three times his size and he just wags his tail like he’s inviting them to come on in anyway.” Kayla stopped talking and smiled down at the dog. “We love our Mr. Marbles, yes we do, don’t we?”

Mr. Marbles broke his position and burst onto his hind legs, jumping up on her again, licking at her face. Kayla laughed and pushed him down, petting him with both hands while Dyson enjoyed the view. Not only was Kayla gorgeous, but she was sweet and caring as well. Dyson examined Mr. Marbles.

“What’s his story?” Dyson asked. “He looks strange.”

Kayla smiled. “He has a glass eye. That’s where the name came from.”

“Really?” Dyson knelt closer to look and got a lick of his own from Mr. Marbles. Kayla watched as he put his hands on the dog’s head and rubbed him hard, wiggling his ears around and earning a contented wag from Mr. Marbles.

“When he got to the shelter two years ago, he had been used as a fighting dog,” she said softly. “He was the dog that was used as bait for the others, to get them ready for the bigger fights. He was bitten and scratched and basically tortured for all of his life. He lost his eye in a fight, so far as we can tell. See the marks around it? Those are scars from dog bites.”

She watched closely as Dyson took all this in. He swallowed hard, and then put both hands on the dog’s face, one on either side. Mr. Marbles stood stock-still while Dyson looked into his eyes for a long time, without saying a word. Kayla watched as the moment dragged into minutes. The sounds of the shelter seemed to fade away as man and dog regarded each other, saying things with their eyes that Kayla didn’t understand.

Finally he looked up at Kayla. “Yet he trusts me, a perfect stranger. What an amazing heart he must have.”

Kayla blinked back sudden tears. She was proud of Mr. Marbles, but she was also touched that Dyson understood so quickly and clearly what a gift Mr. Marbles was capable of giving anyone. “His heart is bigger than anything I have ever known,” she said.

Dyson stood up. If Kayla hadn’t been looking right at him, she would have missed the brief sheen of tears in his eyes. Seeing that made her heart beat a little faster – this was a man who could be moved by the plight of a small creature. That spoke volumes about his true character, didn’t it?

“Come on,” she said, clearing her throat. “Let me introduce you to the rest of the crew.”

The next thirty minutes were enlightening. Kayla watched as Dyson greeted the cats and dogs in the shelter. Sometimes he touched them; sometimes he kept his distance. He assured her that he had taken Benadryl and had more in his car, so he would be fine when he played with the cats. He seemed to have a deep compassion and understanding for the animals that said he truly understood what they had gone through. Kayla found herself wondering about his past, and what might be there in his history that allowed him to relate so well to the animals who had seen abuse, neglect and pain.

Then they got to Leon.

Leon was an absolutely gorgeous cat by anyone’s standard. His luxurious coat of fur was soft as silk. He was black with white markings all over him, but what was especially striking was his face: he had black ears, a solid white face, and a single swipe of light brown down his nose. The color stood out from the rest of him and made him appear distinguished in a way that everyone noticed the moment they looked at him.

Leon was also distinctive because he had only three legs.

Kayla had heard part of his story, and it was so horrifying that she tried not to think about it in any way. She sometimes had nightmares about what it must have been like for Leon. That’s why she spent extra time with him, petting and talking to him, until he looked forward to her visits.

Leon would have been prime adoption material except for one issue: He didn’t like or trust people. He had been hurt so badly that now any human looked like a potential threat to him. It was a passionate hatred, the kind that led him to be vicious. Trying to pet Leon often ended badly, with visitors covered in scratches and the furious cat hiding in the corner, his ears laid back and his hisses coming through loud and clear. He hated people so much that simply putting him in a carrier was occasionally impossible.

Kayla warned Dyson of all this as they approached Leon’s cage.

“Let me go to him,” she said. “I’m the only one who can.”

Leon was watching them with his usual suspicious glare. When Kayla reached the cage, however, a transformation took place. Leon stood on his three legs and arched his back. He purred so loudly that Kayla was sure Dyson could hear it from across the room. When she unhooked the latch, Leon was waiting for her. He slipped his face through the gap and rubbed against Kayla’s hand, his eyes almost closed, purring so hard she could feel him vibrating under her palm.

“It’s good to see you too, buddy,” she said, and scooped him up into her arms.

Leon snuggled into Kayla’s arms and glared at Dyson. She felt the change in him as he surveyed the new person: the tension in his paws, the way he pushed back against her as if he trusted her to protect him from the evil man in front of him.

Dyson didn’t try to cajole the cat. He didn’t try to get on his good side. He simply stood there and looked at him. He didn’t smile or talk. He just stared at the animal and stood very still. Leon started to knead on Kayla’s arm, but he didn’t stop his staring contest with the man in front of him.

Out of the blue, Leon suddenly meowed.

It was a sound that startled Kayla. She had never heard it before and had always wondered if Leon might not be able to meow at all. Once she was over the shock, she realized something else. That meow hadn’t been angry or worried. It had been more curious than anything.

Dyson took one step forward. He held his hand out toward the cat. He wasn’t nearly close enough to touch him, but he was close enough to let the cat catch his scent. Leon continued to stare and he laid his ears back, a silent warning. But he didn’t hiss. He didn’t even appear to want to.

“Amazing,” Kayla breathed.

Then the most extraordinary thing happened. Dyson stepped forward, this time to well within reach. He held his hand out again, and after a long moment of regarding him with suspicion, Leon leaned forward to sniff it. Kayla was prepared for a sudden burst of claws or a vicious bite.

Leon surprised her by beginning to purr.

“I’ll be damned,” she said.

Dyson took the plunge and touched Leon’s head. Leon pulled his ears back a bit more but otherwise stayed still and let the strange man touch him. After only a few strokes he was purring, the sound growing louder and louder as Dyson became more confident. His ears moved forward as his tension eased. Soon Leon was staring at Dyson with half-closed eyes, kneading his claws on Kayla’s arm so hard that it hurt. He pushed against Dyson’s hand.

“He likes me,” Dyson said, obviously delighted.

Kayla was completely confused. This was a cat who hated everyone with a passion and had taken weeks to warm to even Kayla’s careful attention. But Leon was purring like a flattered suitor within five minutes of setting eyes on Dyson. If anyone had told her such a thing would happen, she would have laughed and called them crazy.

By the time Leon was struggling to get out of her arms, she was no longer worried that he would go after Dyson with his claws ready to kill. But she was still amazed when Dyson reached out to take the cat and Leon went willingly, settling against Dyson and putting his paws on his shoulder. Leon then proceeded to look around the room without a care in the world, enjoying the new sensation of height.

“This is impossible,” Kayla said, and Dyson chuckled.

“Nothing is impossible.”

“But he hates people. All people.”

“Maybe I’m not a person,” Dyson mused. “Maybe I’m an alien. He’s the only one who knows it.”

“That would explain everything,” Kayla said with a grin.

“Or maybe he just recognizes a kindred spirit,” he said, running his hand down the cat’s back. He whispered something Kayla couldn’t hear, and Leon started to purr even louder. Then he suddenly wanted down, and jumped from Dyson’s arms. He landed sprightly on his three legs, acting as though he had always been that way, and moved down the hallway.

When he saw Mr. Marbles, he hissed. The dog looked at him blankly, used to the grouchy feline.

Kayla laughed and shook her head. “That really was amazing,” she said. “He adored you. That’s just unheard of for Leon.”

Dyson shrugged. “He knows I’m worth a chance,” he said.

Kayla thought about that as she turned to Leon’s cage. She looked in at the litter and wrinkled her nose, getting busy with her work but thinking about what Dyson had said. Was he worth a chance? Leon had seen something in him, something good. So had Mr. Marbles. If there was anything in the world Kayla trusted, it was the instincts of animals. They seemed to know more about people than people often knew about themselves.

The more Kayla got to know Dyson, the more she thought that perhaps the revelation of Leon’s adoration wasn’t the last surprise she would find.

Getting to know him?

Kayla realized that she had been thinking in terms of seeing him again after this. In fact, she was already dreading the moment when they would have to part, and she had toyed with the idea of inviting him to dinner with her. But she didn’t want to make him think she had time for a relationship.

Besides that, she had too many issues in her past that made it very difficult to get to know anyone, much less someone like Dyson, who seemed to really like her. She would eventually have to explain why she kept her distance, and that wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have with anyone. It was something she would rather just keep to herself. Life was easier that way.

Even though Kayla could list all of her reasons for wanting to keep her distance from Dyson, she couldn’t deny that he was interesting…and there was something about him that was mysterious. She found herself wanting to know the secrets that made him tick. But if she learned what his secrets were, didn’t that mean she would have to reveal her own?

She really had to stop thinking about this.

“If you want to help me out you can get more litter from the back,” she told him, but when she turned around she found him standing there with two litter bags already in hand.

“I read your mind,” he said, flashing her that winning grin.

“You certainly did,” she praised, but at the same time she blushed, hoping he couldn’t read
all
the thoughts that had just gone through her head.

F
our hours later Dyson was surprisingly tired from a full day of work. They had changed out all the litter boxes and walked all the dogs, cleaned out the kennels and laid down fresh blankets so the dogs would have a comfortable place to sleep. They had made sure all the animals were fed and watered, then spent some time playing with them all. They tossed balls for the dogs and rubbed their ears, then plied the cats with catnip and rubbed their bellies as they stretched with pleasure.

Leon let Dyson scoop him up and put him back into his cage. He leaned over and whispered into the cat’s ear. “Thanks for getting me on her good side, Leon.”

The cat purred and rolled over for a belly rub.

Mr. Marbles saw them to the door. He seemed sad that they were leaving, and kept jumping up on Kayla as if to make her stay. She finally told him to sit and walked away, leaving him looking forlorn as they closed the screen door behind them.

“How about dinner?” Dyson asked. “I’m starving.”

He could barely believe his ears when she said, “I know a great place.”

“Want me to drive?”

She smiled at him as she slid into the passenger seat. Dyson stood there for a moment, looking back at the shelter. She was actually in his car, spending time with him after their day of volunteering. He was tired and hungry, but the idea of spending more time with her had him energized. He was counting his lucky stars that he would be able to get to know her a little better.

The restaurant she had chosen had a nice little outdoor section, and they made the most of it by sitting underneath one of the brightly colored umbrellas. It was neither too hot nor too cold, just the perfect kind of day that begged for outdoor fun. Dyson ordered water for both of them and watched her over his glass as she looked around at the people.