Asprin, Robert Lynn – Catwoman – Tiger Hunt (With Lynn Abbey)

But what about his relics, his fetishes? Did she try to remove them herself? In garbage bags tossed into an alley or dumpster? Should she turn his apartment into a funeral pyre? That would put his neighbors at risk. Were they more or less innocent than Rose?

Selina shook her head violently and growled with primitive anguish.

“I don’t know what to do,” she confessed, regretting—for a moment—that she lived without friends or family, with only the cats and Catwoman as advisers. For another moment she considered going to the mission. Her thoughts reeled—rather like seeing every scene from a movie simultaneously. She watched herself enter Old MoJo’s office, tell her tale, while the veiled woman laughed herself int a frenzy. The humiliation Selina felt was real, even if the scenes she imagined were not.

She sat where she was, not moving but not falling asleep, either—simply waiting for things to change, to get worse.

Worse came in the form of small piece of warm, wet sandpaper rasping her cheek: a cat harvesting the salt of her exertions. Selina cocked her head and squinted. The gray tiger kitten. Had she expected anyone else? Pretty soon she was going to have to give the little guy a name. Slipping her hand beneath his plump barrel-belly, Selina hoisted him into the air. She swiveled her wrist, thinking about names. He gouged the air with half-grown claws and bared his milk teeth.

“Not afraid of anything, are you?”

Selina lowered him to the floor. He arched his back once his toes touched down. His tail shot up and the soft kitten-fur fluffed like milkweed down. He hissed mightily. She reached for him; he stood his ground, undaunted by her larger claws.