"Diane Duane - Feline Wizards 1 - The Book Of Night With Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duane Diane)

"Yum, yum," Hhuha said, putting the plate down on the floor. "Here you go, puss. Lovely tuna."


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Rhiow looked at the gelid stuff with resignation. Oh, well, she thought, it's food, and I need something
before I go out. And anywayтАФmanners... She reared up and gave Hhuha a good rub around the shins
before starting to eat.
"You're a good kitty," Hhuha said, and turned, yawning, to take something out of the refrigerator.
Rhiow purred with amusement and satisfaction as she ate. The compliment was true enough, but also true
was that, while she had been rearing up to rub against Hhuha's leg, she had seen where the container of
salmon pate had been pushed back behind some drinking containers on the counter beside the ffrihh.
"God, I'm glad it's Sunday," Hhuha said, and shut the refrigerator again, heading for the bedroom. "I
couldn't bear the thought of work after last night."
Rhiow sighed as she finished one last bite and turned away from the dish, reluctant: eating too much now
would make her want a nap, and she had no time for that. "Must be nice to have weekends off," Rhiow
muttered, sitting down to wash. "I wish I did."
The rest of her personal hygiene took only a few minutes more: her ehhif had put a hiouh-box. out on their
small terrace for her, where it was under cover from rain. While using it, Rhiow went off into unfocused
mode briefly and could hear them talking as Hhuha opened the window-coverings and the window.
"Mmngnggh ..." Iaehh's voice. "Did she eat?"
"Uh huh." A pause. "She's out now.... I don't know... I'm still not sure it's a great idea to have her box out
there."
"Oh, come on, Sue. Better there than in the bathroom. You 're the one who was always muttering about
walking in the kitty Utter in the morning. Anyway, she's not going to fall or anything."
"I don't mean that It's encouraging her to get down on that lower roof that worries me."
"Why? It's not like she can get to anywhere else from there. She can roam around and get some fresh air...
and she's been doing it for months now without any trouble. She would have gone missing a long time
back if she could have."
"Well, I still worry."
"Susannnnn ... She's not stupid. It's not like she's going to try to go twenty stories straight down."
Rhiow put her whiskers forward in a slight smile as she finished tidying the box, then got out and shook
her feet fastidiously. Bits of litter scattered in various directions, skittering off the terrace. They can make
water run uphill and fly off to the Moon when they like, she thought, resigned, but they can't make hiouh-
litter that won't stick to your paws. A serious misplacement of priorities...
Rhiow went to the edge of the railed terrace, looked down. Her ehhif's apartment was near the corner of
the building. Its wall fell sheer to the next terrace, thirty feet down, but she had no interest in that. Off to
the left was an easy jump, about three feet, to the concrete parapet of a lower roof of a building diagonally
behind theirs, but Rhiow wasn't going that way either. Her intended path lay sideways, along the brick
wall itself. Some fanciful builder had built into it a pattern of slightly protruding bricks, a stairstep pattern


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repeating above and below. The part of it Rhiow used led rightward down the wall to the building's other
near corner, about fifty feet away; and six feet below that, in the direction of the street, was the raised
parapet of yet another roof, the top of the next building along.
Rhiow slipped through the railings, stepped carefully up onto the first brick, and made her way downward