Act 5, Scene 2

Harry scurried to the next room. It was the last one down the costume department’s hallway, and he recognized it as the room where he’d lost Kip the first time he’d encountered the strange cat.

Most of the humans had left long ago, aside from two or three making alterations, so Harry figured night must have fallen. It had taken the whole day for him to search the rooms. He wanted to be swift in his search, but he didn’t want to overlook something that might prove important, so he'd forced himself to sniff every single room in its entirety. It had proved a laborious and anxiety-inducing venture.

Tomorrow, he’d search the next floor, only if this last room proved useless in offering clues to Roxanne’s whereabouts. Harry darted into the dark room, his whiskers twitching and his heart pounding.

With his nose to the ground and his eyes downcast, Harry didn’t pay attention to what stood in front of him. He bumped into something that meowed.

“Oh, sorry,” Harry said, lifting his head. A cat smelling like rats stood before him, the odor making him gag, and it took Harry a second to recognize Kip. Without warning, Harry thrust his paws out and pinned the other cat to the floor.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Kip writhed beneath Harry’s large paws. “Relax, Harry! I am here to help!”

Raising an eyebrow, Harry asked, “How did you know my name?”

“I’ve—ack, get off my throat! That’s better. I’ve been keeping an eye on Roxanne’s acquaintances to protect them if necessary.” Kip gasped. “Can you get off me?”

Harry eased his paws, but only slightly. Had Kip been looking for Harry? Perhaps Kip had realized he needed help in finding the secret passageway he'd spoken of the night of the party. Whatever the reason, Harry hoped finding Kip proved to be a step closer to locating Roxanne. Taking a shaky breath, Harry lifted his paws and sat down, curling his tail around himself.

“Good,” Kip wheezed as he sat up.

“How are you going to help?” Harry demanded, impatiently tapping his tail against the floor.

Kip licked his front paw. He glanced at Harry between licks. “I’ve been searching for Orpheus’s secret door for a long time. On my own, I have had no luck. It finally dawned on me that I must recruit help. I figure you can assist me in that endeavor.”

Harry’s fur rose in frustration. “I don’t know who Orpheus is, and I don’t care. What I want to know is if Roxanne is all right and where I can find her.”

“You should be concerned about Orpheus,” Kip meowed, walking around Harry, “for he is Roxanne’s teacher.”

Orpheus! So Roxanne’s teacher had a name! Harry rose to his paws, gawking at the other cat. “You know him? What is he like? Where does he live?”

“Like I said, I am searching for the entrance to his lair,” Kip explained. He kept pacing. “I know he lives in the lowest level of the opera, but I am unsure about the location of his secret entrance. I’ve searched the rafters and the dressing rooms. I’ve sniffed about outside. I’ve even looked under the seats in the theater. That’s where you will be useful.” Kip thrust his nose at Harry. “You can help me search. All these years I’ve gone through the opera house at a somewhat leisurely pace. But now, since Orpheus has a captive, it seems paramount that I find him quickly. Roxanne’s life depends on it.”

“But who is this cat, this Orpheus?” Harry asked, curious to learn about Roxanne’s mysterious teacher. 

“Orpheus has lived here for many years, even before I was born,” Kip explained. “I’ve spoken with him a few times, mostly when he’s wanted me to do him a favor. He’s the smartest cat I know, but also the most dangerous. He knows this opera house better than anyone here, cat or human alike.”

Harry made his way to the door. The urge to find Roxanne made his legs itch with anticipation. “Why don’t you tell me about him while we search?” he suggested.

With a flick of his tail, Kip followed Harry. “What exactly do you want to know?”

“Why do you know about him and other cats don’t?” Harry asked. “Also, why have I never met you before? I know every Opera Cat, and I’ve never seen you.”

“The answers to those questions are intertwined,” Kip said as he quickened his pace, Harry doing the same. “There are several rat catchers in the Shelley Opera House, and I am one of them. There’s one cat per floor. I happen to be the lucky feline who is in charge of the sixth floor and occasionally the area leading to the seventh.”

“There’s a seventh floor?” Harry asked, halting. He had never known an extra floor existed, and he knew the other cats were likewise unaware of it.

“Of course,” Kip replied with a flick of his ears as if the fact of a secret floor seemed mundane. “It’s been sealed for decades. No one uses it. I doubt the humans here know of its existence either.”

Harry decided to let the subject of the seventh floor go, for the moment. He trotted after Kip, suddenly frightened about being alone. Kip’s story about the rat catchers piqued his interest, and he urged Kip to continue.

“Humans brought some of us here many years ago, and when those cats had kittens, they all remained in the opera house,” Kip explained. “Then those cats’ kittens grew up and also had kittens, and they stayed, and so on. I’ve always lived here, in the dark and damp of this building, managing the rat population. The humans have long forgotten us, and so have the cats, but here we will always be. It is our home.”

“You hunt rats day in and day out, then?” Harry asked, trembling at the thought of occupying one’s life with nothing but catching horrid rats.

“Yes.”

“It… it seems like a lonely profession.”

Kip shrugged. They passed several doors, and Harry wondered when Kip would lead them into a room. “It is. But we rat catchers steer clear of both humans and cats for fear of being tossed out. This is the only life we know,” Kip said.

“Do the other rat catchers know about Orpheus?”

“None of them know about Orpheus since I am the only one who hunts the rats near his floor.”

Harry stopped again. A thought occurred to him regarding the lowest level of the opera house that Kip had mentioned. “Does he live on the seventh floor?”

“Yes,” Kip replied with a wink. “However, as I said, the original human entrance to that floor was shut long ago. There’s no way in or out that I know. Hence, we must search for the entrance. It could be on any floor.”

They kept walking, Harry groaning in dismay. Every time he seemed closer to finding Roxanne, an issue cropped up that proved detrimental.

“Orpheus hates the rats as much as anyone else,” Kip continued. “He leaves me extra mice and small birds for the rats I kill. He also provides me with bats now and then when he needs me to keep my snout shut about his various opera house errands. Bat wings make the creatures difficult to eat, but I never refuse a meal.”

Harry’s head swam. Kip’s last few words went in one ear and filtered out the other. He watched his paws as he walked, but they seemed far away, as if they belonged to a different creature. Roxanne’s enigmatic teacher living in the opera house, on a floor unknown to everyone, proved a concept Harry had difficulty accepting.

Another idea rose in Harry’s mind, this one sending a shiver throughout his body. There might be a connection between Orpheus and the spectral feline the Opera Cats believed haunted the opera house. “Does Orpheus speak of the Ghost Cat?” Harry asked, anxious to hear Kip’s answer.

“The Ghost Cat!” Kip meowed. Harry jumped from his companion’s loud response. “The Ghost Cat and Orpheus are the same creature! No cat would ever accept him as he is—he’s too hideous looking—so he had to invent some creative way to get the cats and even the humans to do his bidding.”

“The humans?”

“Of course, but don’t ask me how. I am quite unfamiliar with humans even from a distance, so I wouldn’t know what might be absurd or shocking to you.”

Harry decided to let the topic of humans go. The more intriguing issue, he figured, was Orpheus’s physical appearance. Oddly curious, Harry asked, “You’ve seen Orpheus, then?”

“Only once,” Kip muttered. “It was only a glimpse, thank whatever deity exists for that. He didn’t want me to see him, but I did. He’s a huge cat with a long tail that weaves around like a snake, but that’s not the worst part. The worst part is his face!” Kip shuddered. “I don’t wish to speak of it. I only hope you never have to witness such a terrible visage.”

“Perhaps I already have,” Harry whispered to himself, thinking of blazing yellow eyes. Who else could possess such a terrifying pair of eyes? Thinking of the Ghost Cat flared the anger in his chest, making it difficult to breathe. That cat had taken advantage of poor Roxanne. Had she seen his face? Did she know the danger she was in? He quickened his pace.

Harry’s thoughts returned to the seventh floor. Several things he never knew existed in the Shelley Opera House were becoming known tonight. “What things are on the seventh floor? Or is it empty?” he asked.

“There are several old props and costumes on the seventh floor, as I’ve been told by Orpheus,” Kip explained. “Down there… down there where he lives. Tonight, I hope we can discover how Orpheus enters that floor. That is where you will help me.”

Harry stepped on the stairs leading to the fifth floor. Along with the stairs, Harry sensed they had reached the end of Kip’s stories. “Where do we go from here?” Harry asked, arching his back and stretching each leg.

“I’ll have to ponder where to start,” Kip admitted. “Let’s get out of here, though. I’ve searched this floor before with no luck. Follow me.”

With a nod, Harry let Kip pass and then scurried after him. He hated to leave the floor closest to where Roxanne had to be, but he trusted that Kip had conducted a thorough search of the sixth floor. There must have been many long nights where Kip investigated the many rooms with no success, or why else would he not bother to search the rooms they passed?

As Harry reached the fifth floor after Kip, he pondered his current predicament. He thought he’d be exhausted by now since he’d been searching for Roxanne all day, but after hearing what Kip said about Orpheus, he found his strength had returned.

He suspected a long night awaited him.

#

Kip’s mind raced. In his opinion, the lower levels seemed too obvious for Orpheus's secret entrance. If Orpheus had made a secret entrance, anyway. He had decided to not tell Harry that he had no definitive proof of a secret entrance. It was more of a gut feeling that such a thing existed, and in the past, Kip’s gut feelings regarding Orpheus turned out to be accurate. He tried to think of the location that would serve Orpheus best. Whether an entrance existed for safety reasons or simply to occupy Orpheus's time, where would it be? Perhaps as far from his home as possible? The stage and backstage areas might prove fruitful. The only problem happened to be the humans. With any luck, there wouldn’t be many humans in the opera house tonight.

As he led Harry upstairs, his thoughts turned toward the past, long, long ago. As far back as Kip remembered, he had heard tales of a mysterious cat who roamed the opera house, a spectral entity that would claw anyone’s eyes out who dared look at it. Kip’s mother, Selika, had taken Kip and his siblings into their little basket in the dark corner under a pipe and told them, “If you come across piercing yellow eyes, run fast, as if the devil is after you. Because you just never know.”

The stories had frightened Kip more than rats, more than humans. Rats and humans were physical forces that could be dealt with or avoided, depending on which one a cat faced. Taking care of rats had been his ancestors’ occupation as far back as any cat could remember. Humans never bothered them, for they were unaware of the rat catchers’ presence. But the Ghost Cat was something invisible, unknowable.

During Kip’s internship under a grouchy old cat named Fishbone, Kip heard more stories about the Ghost Cat.

“He steals things from the humans,” Fishbone had told Kip, coughing between every other word. During the last months of Kip's internship, Fishbone had acquired more gray hairs about his muzzle and moved slower. His memory, however, proved sharp as a cat's claw. “But more often, he takes things from the Opera Cats. Those pompous windbags. Think they’re better than us because they live in the light and sing all day. They never ponder that the rats are kept away or never once think about hunting them.”

“But that’s our job,” Kip had said proudly.

Fishbone had laughed, although it sounded more like choking than laughing. “You’re proud of who you are. This life you’ve been born into suits you, I can tell. It takes grit to do what we do, but we stick with it because it’s the only thing we know.” Fishbone coughed so loud it grated Kip’s ears. After his coughing fit, Fishbone said, “I’ve talked with Basil. You know him—you met him when you were assigned to me. He has decided that your internship is over. You are in charge of the sixth and seventh floors.”

“Seventh floor?”

“Seventh floor, yes. The humans blocked it off long ago, but rats still find their way into the opera house from there. It’s your duty to hunt those rats from this day forward.”

Kip had been excited to begin his own rat hunts, but he soon discovered being by himself odd at first. He’d always had someone—Selika, his siblings, or even old Fishbone. Not anymore.

Behind him, a cat sneezed, drawing Kip out of his memories. Kip turned back. Behind him, Harry shook his head, stirring dust. The other cat’s presence had been forgotten for the moment. Briefly, Kip wondered how Harry was able to get around the opera house as well as he did with his limp.

Need to get my head out of the past, Kip thought. Maybe one day he’d tell Harry about how he’d met Orpheus, or maybe not. The first thing to do was to rescue Roxanne. At present, nothing else mattered.