The Cat Who Saw Red

infobox Book |
name = The Cat Who Saw Red
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = Soft cover
author = Lilian Jackson Braun
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series = Cat Who series
genre = Mystery, Novel
publisher = Jove
release_date = 1986
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 249 pp
isbn = ISBN 0-515-09016-6
preceded_by = The Cat Who Turned on and Off
followed_by = The Cat Who Played Brahms

"The Cat Who Saw Red" is the fourth book in the Cat Who series of mystery novels by Lilian Jackson Braun, published in 1986.

Plot summary

Jim Qwilleran, news reporter for "The Daily Fluxion" and a former crime reporter, is given the assignment of restaurant reviewer (his column is called "Prandial Musings"), after being put on a strict diet. Still, he knows he must do his job, so he goes to Maus Haus to write his first story. Maus Haus is an architecturally peculiar historic building built by one of the Pennimans, a powerful rich family who owns the "Flux"'s rival newspaper "The Morning Rampage", as a center for the arts. It is owned by Robert Maus, an attorney who is an excellent chef, who runs it as a boarding house.

When Qwilleran arrives, he immediately recognizes Joy Wheatley, his old girlfriend from Chicago who ran off to “find herself” when Qwill was only nineteen years old. She found out she had a knack for pottery, and married a potter named Dan Graham. When Qwill discovers there is an apartment that is open, he promptly moves in with his two Siamese cats, Koko and Yum Yum.

It soon becomes obvious that the relationship between Joy and Dan is strained, especially when they discuss Joy’s cat. The cat went missing one day. Joy is deeply troubled by this, but Dan jokes about it. But then, one evening in Qwill's room, Joy mentions divorce. Joy is a far more successful potter than Dan; he is missing one thumb and so can only make roll pots, not as appealing as those spun on a wheel. She would divorce him, but she does not have enough money to pay for the court case. Qwilleran decides to lend her $750, the last of the prize money he won for a series of news articles.

Later that same night Qwilleran hears a scream, and then a car pull out of the garage and drive away. The next day, Dan claimed that Joy has left him, and she'll be back. He also brushes the scream off, as he claims Joy was working on an electric wheel and got her hair caught in a pot. She was saved by Dan when he threw the switch, shutting the wheel off and preventing her from being scalped.

A few days later, one of the other residents of Maus Haus mentions how well Joy threw pots on her manual, not electric, wheel. Qwilleran begins to suspect Joy is dead, but he does not want to believe it. Shortly thereafter another mystery comes to Qwill's attention: Max Sorrel, a resident of Maus House, owns a restaurant called the Golden Lamb Chop which is suffering a spate of anonymous rumors about how the meat is cat, the chef has a terrible disease and other equally damaging tales. This has scared off the customers, leaving the restaurant near bankruptcy. Qwilleran decides to review the Golden Lamp Chop, but before he writes it, he gets a threatening phone call advising him not to write anything about the Golden Lamb Chop. He does so anyway.

On a hunch, Qwilleran asks about bodies dragged up in the river behind Maus Haus, yet not one matches Joy’s description. Qwilleran also learns that the car that drove off after the scream in the night was Max Sorrel’s speeding off to a restaurant of his which was on fire. Dan got a passport, but he claims he is to go to Europe to display some pots. The houseboy says Joy always used the kick wheel. He also learns it was the houseboy who typed “dog” on the typewriter, not Koko.

For a story, he decides to go with Maus and the houseboy to the market to buy fresh foods. But when the morning comes the houseboy is nowhere to be found. Dan claims he received a postcard from Joy in Florida, who asks to have her summer clothes. Qwill contacts the houseboy's girlfriend, who has not seen him since he disappeared. Also, no money had been taken from their joint bank account, and Qwilleran instructs her to inform him if any money goes missing. The houseboy was suspicious of Graham, so Qwill also asks her if he mentioned anything about him. All he said was that “Mr. Graham was going to blow a whole load of pots.” This was because he was heating the kiln too quickly. The houseboy spied on Graham by using a peephole cut in the wall of Qwill’s room, and when Qwill looks through the peephole, he sees Dan copying things out of a ledger.

To get a better look around the pottery, Qwilleran tells Dan he is doing a photo shoot for publication in the "Fluxion", and brings Koko along to pose in some pictures, though he really wants him to sniff around for clues. Koko does show great interest in the trap door to the basement, but Dan says that they shouldn’t go down there because there are rats. But Qwill later learns that Maus is very particular about sanitation, and has an exterminator in regularly. Also, Qwilleran finds the ledger Dan was copying out of, and discovers it was a recipe of glazes used by Joy.

Koko once more types at the typewriter, this time it is “pb,” the chemical symbol for lead. Hixie Rice, a resident of Maus House, broke off her engagement with Graham as she did not want to be with a man cheating on his wife. Then Qwilleran looked through the peephole, and saw Dan burning Joy’s clothing. At the pottery opening, Dan surprised everyone with his “living glaze,” which made up for the poor quality of his pots. Many people said that if his glaze was put on Joy’s pots, than they would be very popular. Earlier, Qwilleran asked a diver friend to look below the boardwalk behind Maus House. He based his guess on an account of Mrs. Marron, the housekeeper, who said one evening she saw someone going down the fire escape with a big bag, which he or she dumped in the river. The diver reported that it was Joy’s pots with the living glaze.

Qwilleran confronted Dan with some of the strange occurrences, and accused him of adding a thousand dollars to the check, but Dan insisted Joy did so. Stymied, Qwilleran started reading a book on pottery that was in his room. He came up with the following conclusions after reading:

* Dan, already envious of his wife’s successes, became very jealous when he learned of her living glazes

* He (and Qwilleran) read that in ancient China, potters burned human bodies to create a powerful red glaze

* Dan uses Joy’s cat, whom he dislikes, as a test, and finds that it works

* Dan prevents any of Joy’s pots from being displayed before the show, so no one will know she invented the living glaze

* Dan murders Joy, and uses her ashes to create more red glazes. He then makes up the post card saying that she was in Florida, and burns her clothing

* So no one will know the living glaze was her idea, he throws her pots with the glaze into the river

* When he learns that the houseboy was becoming suspicious, he invited him over for a drink and put lead oxide, used in glazes, into the houseboy’s drink, poisoning him. But because pots in the kiln were cooling, he had to put the body in the basement. The entrance was located in the clay room, so the smell of ripening clay would disguise any other odors

* Dan got a passport and tickets to France so he could flee the country

Qwilleran discussed this with Robert Maus, but Maus was unwilling to take any immediate action. That evening, Dan came back to Qwill’s apartment to kill him. Koko and Yum Yum had spun a spider web of yarn from a yarn ball throughout the apartment, causing Dan to trip and fall. Qwilleran was alerted, and Dan was arrested. As for the Golden Lamb Chop slander, Charlotte Roop overheard two Heavenly Hash House managers discussing how their attempts to put the restaurant out of business had failed. They had wanted to buy the property where the Golden Lamb Chop was located.