Misha sat with Noah in the living room, letting the pajama-wearing boy hang onto her collar. Slowly, she rose to stand, pulling him up with her. It was her way of teaching the boy how to use his legs rather than crawl. She was gentle with Noah, as if he was her own pup. Misha knew her game was a distraction. It allowed Jacob and Abigail time to scour the house for the cat she knew they would not find. The quicker they realize Akhi is gone, the sooner they'll search outdoors for him, she calculated.
When Akhi had bolted out the pet-flap and into the night, Misha took it upon herself to alert her family. She had barked frantically in front of Akhi's food bowl until Jacob came to check on her. Though her loud warnings had woken Noah, it was an emergency. Abigail had brought the crying toddler down the stairs in frustration and was the first to realize Akhi was nowhere to be seen. Once Abigail had noticed he was gone, Misha stopped barking and began to whimper on the kitchen floor, by the missing cat's bowl.
As the yellow retriever watched Jacob and Abigail on their hands and knees, peering under their couch with a flashlight, Misha thought back to the first few weeks after Akhi came to live with them as part of their family.
In those early days, the tiny black cat with the white donut shape on his fur had cut a tear on the underside of the family's living room sofa. He had crawled inside, hiding from the unfamiliar humans and the large dog he didn't know.
It was probably the one place he felt safe, Misha realized. Their owners had left out food and water by the kitchen island for their new cat, but Akhi didn't come out. After a few days of worrying over the skinny cat's lack of appetite, Jacob openly talked about sending Akhi to a shelter.
Misha realized that the future of this anxious, feral cat was resting on her shoulders. The yellow retriever could relate to her new feline roommate, as she had also needed to adjust to new homes over her lifetime. Every night, while Jacob and Abigail slept, Misha used her snout to push Akhi's food bowl from the kitchen over to the living room couch, where the scared cat was quietly waiting.
It had taken several nights, but Akhi eventually gave in and cautiously crept out of a gray fabric crevice. Misha patiently waited for him, lying down at an unthreatening distance, making sure the new cat was the one to eat from the bowl, and not some rodent that could have snuck into the house. It took almost the whole night for Akhi to creep over to the bowl and scarf down a few morsels, before quickly sprinting back to the bowels of the couch.
After a week of the same pattern, Akhi began to sleep out in the living room, near Misha's doggie pillow, rather than inside the couch. Jacob and Abigail were thrilled that their scrawny new cat had regained some weight.
Despite this bit of progress, Akhi still had incredible fits of panic and anger, caused by minor things. More than once, their humans came home to a piece of furniture with claw marks shredded into it, or felt Akhi bite their hand when a loud siren passed the street outside their townhouse. After an especially bad episode, where Akhi scratched the leg of Abigail's visiting aunt to the point of needing stitches, Misha realized he would need her help to subdue the worst of the instincts he had learned from a year living on the streets.
Misha smiled as she remembered the nights, while the humans slept, that she would teach Akhi the ancient techniques of Rakaaz, the heightened awareness that all Circle of the Paw members were taught upon initiation into the order.
Mastery of Rakaaz allowed the Gibborim to focus on the task before them and to better help their humans during an emergency. It was a special training that gave the practitioner the ability to process information at a greater than usual speed. Despite a prohibition on teaching Rakaaz to outsiders, Misha had done so in secret, hoping that it would give her friend the ability to calm his spirit with his new family. Even Akhi was kept in the dark about exactly what he was learning. And just maybe, she had thought, the training would give Akhi a head start in joining her among the ranks of the Circle's Gibborim, one day. If only he knew.
After a season of training, Akhi had stopped scratching the furniture and would even patiently sit on Jacob's lap in the evenings, allowing himself to be pet and loved by his humans, even with the loud blare of the television filling the room. More than once, Akhi had slept on the foot of Jacob and Abigail's bed. At the time, Misha had thought that whatever emotional damage that plagued the troubled cat had been fixed by the self control gained from Rakaaz training.
Painful memories don't so easily fade, Misha realized as Noah successfully stood up while bracing himself on her, bringing the yellow Labrador back from her memories of the past.
"Where could Cagney have gone?" Abigail asked Jacob in a puzzled tone.
"I checked Noah's room while he slept," Jacob said. "I checked our room, as well."
Misha racked her brain trying to think of a way to communicate with them that they would understand.
"We looked in the couch. We refilled his bowl. That always gets him to run to the kitchen," Abigail continued.
Jacob looked down and stared into Misha's mismatched eyes. "Any idea where your friend went?" He asked rhetorically.
Misha cocked her head to one side before lowering herself to the floor. After Noah rolled off, she shot back up and trotted over to the rear door, pointing to the pet-flap with her snout and softly whimpering.
Abigail's brow furrowed as she looked at Misha.
"Do you think Cagney ran outside? Did something spook him?" Abigail asked. Misha began to wag her tail vigorously.
"Oh no." Jacob threw back his head with his eyes closed, clamping his teeth together.
"What?"
"I yelled at him "No" pretty loudly after he scratched Noah," Jacob said, shaking his head.
"Do you think he ran away, though?" Abigail was surprised. "That's so unlike him."
"I was pretty harsh with him, I think," Jacob admitted. "I was just too wound up from the day." He stood there, staring off at the wall. "Noah is going to be heartbroken."
"I'm heartbroken!" Abigail shot back.
"So am I," Jacob admitted in a soft tone. Misha could hear the regret in his voice.
"I hope he wasn't attacked by that fox that we keep seeing coming and going in the garden." Abigail strained her eyes peering into the darkness of the rear window.
"Aca. Aca. Aca?" Noah questioned from the floor. Jacob picked the toddler up off the ground.
Jacob and Abigail looked at each other with sadness on their faces, Misha noticed.
"We need posters up and down the street," Abigail said, taking charge of the search. "I'll start making one. I can also post something on that neighborhood app." Her face became lost in the harsh blue glow of her phone.
"We don't have any recent photos of Cagney. They're all of Noah." She shook her head. "What about this one? It's the newest one we have."
Abigail held up her phone to reveal a digital photo of a six-month-old Noah. In it, the boy was smiling as he rested his chubby upper body on Akhi's side, with an arm wrapped around the black cat. While Noah was in focus, the cat was blurry.
"It'll have to do. It's already pretty late," Jacob said as he shot his wrist-watch a glance. "I can put Noah back down to bed and make dinner for us. I'll put out some water and cat food in the back yard for him, in case he comes back tonight."
"When I finish the posters, I'll put them up on the nearby trees and poles. I'll take a flashlight and check around the block a few times, too." Abigail offered.
Misha watched silently as Abigail went upstairs to the home office and Jacob began making a new bottle for Noah. Misha didn't know where Akhi was going, but she knew who might be able to help in her search.
Without attracting too much attention, Misha stepped outside into the garden through the pet flap. After relieving herself along the bushes as an alibi, she scanned her head side to side looking for something. She barked softly at the night's sky.
"Alaric, where are you?"
As if on cue, the familiar orange-breasted robin jumped up on top of the garden's wooden fence. Misha smiled at the site of the common songbird.
"Sorry for the delay, Mish," the bird chirped. "I thought I saw a worm in your neighbor's backyard."
Misha ignored the apology. Time was of the essence. "Alaric, I need to send out a message."
Alaric was a member of the Avian Guild, a group of birds that delivered private messages between animals and communicated important news, for a fee. The Guild prided themselves on not just the accuracy of their messengers, but their legendary neutrality as well.
The Avian Guild was just as willing to deliver communiques sent between Circle of the Paw Gibborim as they were to deliver those sent between Legion of Mischief brigands. This annoyed some of the Gibborim, who wondered why the Avian Guild constantly failed to "do the right thing" and stop delivering the messages of so-called thieves and criminals. But, despite the controversy, the Avian Guild kept to their founding credo that "communication lays the egg of peace" and refused to change their ways, delivering messages quickly across the animal kingdom, no matter the source. For Misha, there was simply no better alternative for communicating with her Circle of the Paw comrades with the speed and accuracy that she needed.
"Understood," the robin replied. "Is this message going to just the local phalanx or should I pack for a longer trip?"
"Just Commander Lupo."
"Okay. I am ready for your message." The robin stared off into the distance in order to focus on remembering the precise wording of the message he would be transcribing. For a brief tailwag, Misha admired the training that Alaric must have gone through to become such an accurate messenger.
"To Commander Lupo, I request an..." Misha hesitated before deciding on what level of seriousness she would assign to the situation. "...urgent meeting, tomorrow night, after humans are asleep. At the Rittenhouse burrow."
"Anything else you want to add?"
Misha shook her head from side to side. While it was protocol to organize meetings by way of the Avian Guild, it was unwise to broadcast the topics of those meetings by the same method. Even in dire situations, one never knew who was listening to a message being memorized. Furthermore, despite their impeccable reputation, the Avian Guild was made up of living, feeling, creatures that could be captured and forced to reveal the contents of their memories to a nefarious force. It was safer to preserve the sensitive business of a secret order for face-to-face meetings.
"Message acknowledged. What is the password to message the phalanx commander?"
"Can't you let it glide this one time? Just for me?" Misha smiled and wagged her tail at the songbird.
"I still need a password, Mish. Even from you."
"Aww, Fire Hydrants." Misha cussed and looked away, trying to jog her memory.
She always struggled to remember the passwords that the Circle of the Paw had implemented in their dealings with the Avian Guild. The Circle of the Paw's Pedigreed Council had started requiring them from the Avian Guild as a way to prevent imposters or enemies from messaging Gibborim and tracking down their locations by following the birds. These safety regulations were also the reason why a captain could only know the passwords to contact their phalanx commander, the other captains, and their subordinates, but not the entire city's Gibborim. If one captain was captured or turned out to be a spy, it would prevent an enemy from wiping out the entirety of a city's Gibborim.
"Athalia?" Misha sheepishly offered. It was the name of the first Circle of the Paw Gibbor in Philadelphia; a Great Dane who arrived with the city's human founder.
"Password accepted," the robin acknowledged with a smile. "I estimate I'll be able to get the word out before sun up. It's a local route, after all."
"Thank you, Alaric." Misha wagged her tail. With that, the robin took off.
If we can mobilize by tomorrow night, we might have a chance at catching up with Akhi, Misha thought to herself. She pawed at the ground in worry before heading back inside.