"Mercedes Lackey - A Better Mousetrap" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

had forepaws modeled after the forepaws of raccoonsтАФoh no. That was not
enough. Patrol cats were telepaths.

SCat had been a patrol catтАФbut although he could understand the thoughts of
humans, he couldn't speak to them. This was a flaw, so far as the Patrol was
concerned, though not an insurmountable flaw. However, when criminals took
over the ship he served on and killed all of those aboard, SCat was the only
survivor and the only witnessтАФunable to call for help or relate what he had
witnessed, he had sought for help from his own kind and found it in SKitty.
When the same criminals learned SCat was still alive and tried to eliminate
him and the crew of the Free Trader ship Brightwing, for good measure, it had
been Dick's research and deductive reasoning that had learned the truth in
time, and with SCat's and SKitty's help he had foiled the plot.

As for SKitty, she was something of an aberration herselfтАФordinary shipscats
were not supposed to be telepathic or fertile; she was both.

As far as Dick could tell, she was telepathic only with himтАФthough, given that
she was all cat, with a cat's puckish sense of humor, she might well choose
not to let him know she could "speak" to others. Everyone on the ship knew she
was fertile, thoughтАФwhen they had first come to the world of the Lacu'un,
she'd already had one litter and was pregnant with another. That first
litterтАФborn and raised in the shipтАФhad shown just what kind of a nightmare two
loose kittens could be within the close confines of a spaceship. Dick had not
been looking forward to telling Captain Singh of the second litter, when
SKitty had solved the problem for them.

The Lacu'un, a race of golden-skinned, vaguely reptilian anthropoids, suffered
from the depredations of a particularly voracious, fast, and apparently
indestructible pest called kreshta. The only way to keep them from taking over
completely was to lock anything edible (and the creature could eat practically
anything) in airtight containers of metal, glass, ceramic, or stone, and build
only in materials the pest couldn't eat. The pests did keep the streets so
clean that they sparkled and there was no such thing as a trash problem, but
those were the only benefits to the plague.

The Lacu'un had just opened their planet to trade from outside, and the
Brightwing was one of several ships that had arrived to represent either
themselves or one of the large Companies. Only Captain Singh had the foresight
to include SKitty in their delegation, however, for only he had bothered to
research the Lacu'un thoroughly enough to learn that they placed great value
on totemic animals and had virtually nothing in the way of domesticated
predators themselves. He reckoned that a tame predator would be very
impressive to them, and he was right.

SKitty had been on her best behavior, charming them all, and taking to this
alien race immediately. The Lacu'teveras, the female co-ruler, had been
particularly charmed, so much so that she had missed the presence of one of
the little pests, which had bitten her. Enraged at this attack on someone she
favored, SKitty had killed the creature.