“Fine,” I said, rolling my eyes scooping up the kittens into my hands. They were so small, I could carry them all easily. “But we’re going to talk about this later.”
“Talk about what?”
“Seriously?”
“I haven’t done anything wrong!” Bee protested.
“You’ve escaped the house and the vet clinic multiple times, you’re taking care of strange kittens that come from goodness knows where, and most importantly, you didn’t tell me, a veterinarian, that you had some high risk kittens to take care of.”
“Unlike you, I’ve had kittens before,” Bee told me.
“Unlike you, I’ve got years of animal medical training to help keep kittens alive.”
“Oh, well, since you’ve read about it in a book, that must make you an expert,” Bee replied as we made our way back onto Main Street. I glared at her.
“We’re getting these kittens to the vet clinic, and you’re going to tell me everything you know about them,” I said in my best no-nonsense voice.
“Fine, but I want to continue feeding them.”
“How are you even feeding them at all?” I asked Bee as I fumbled to grab my keys out of my purse and hold onto the kittens at the same time. Eventually I gave up, made sure no one on the street was watching, and used a quick spell to open the door instead.
“Remember that time a couple of years ago when you had an orphaned squirrel, and you completely humiliated me by making me feed it?”
“Oh yeah!” I said. “I had to cast a special spell on you so you’d produce milk, since you’d already been spayed for a while by then.”
Bee had been a street cat early in her life before being taken in by a shelter where I volunteered when I was a vet student. She had been so difficult that they were going to transfer her to a high-kill shelter, but I took pity on Bee and adopted her myself.
“Well you never turned off the spell,” Bee said. “When the squirrel went back into the woods so it could live a life of taunting me in front of the window my milk dried up, but I never lost the ability to produce it.”
I immediately took the kittens into the exam room and grabbed four blank patient vital information sheets, Bee following close behind me like a protective mother. I quickly grabbed a handful of towels and an old cardboard box, along with a heat lamp, and placed the kittens inside the box, with the lamp.
“It was good that you found the heat source behind the restaurant,” I told Bee.
“I told you, I knew what I was doing,” Bee replied, pacing around the box and looking inside.
“I still don’t know why you didn’t tell me what you were doing,” I told her. “I could have helped right away. It must have been a big effort for you to keep those kittens alive.”
“I wasn’t alone,” Bee said. “Buster helped, and there was another cat as well. She would help feed the little ones when I couldn’t get away.”
“I never took you as the mothering type,” I smiled as I picked up a second kitten and lifted her tail, sexing her as female, then gently placing her on the scale and marking down her weight on the form.
Bee sniffed at me, raising her nose. “I most certainly do not care for these kittens. It is simply that in the war against the dogs, we must have as many soldiers as possible. Therefore, I ensure their survival for the army.”
Suddenly, I realized what all this was about and grinned.
“I know why you didn’t tell me! You didn’t want me to think you have emotions, that you can care for other cats.”
“Of course I don’t care for other cats!” Bee argued vehemently, but I could see straight through her. I grinned.
“You care for Buster.” Bee began to nonchalantly lick a paw.
“Buster is ok, for a cat. I don’t care about him though. He’s just another cat, like all the others.”
“All right, sure, Bee,” I told her. “Whatever you say.” I picked up the little female kitten and looked at my form. “I have to give her a name. How about ‘Sparkles’?”
Bee hissed at me. “No. Absolutely not. That’s too close a name to the dog that lives in my house, you’re not calling my daughter that.”
“I thought you didn’t care about the cats. Wouldn’t that extend to their names as well?”
Bee hissed at me in reply. “You think you’re so clever. I don’t care about the cats. But I don’t want them humiliated. Call her something else. Like Butters.”
“Butters it is, then,” I said, writing the name down on the form. Butters was a good name for the little girl; her fur wasn’t exactly yellow, but it was a nice cream color, and the name suited her well.
Fifteen minutes later, the kittens had all been looked over, and I determined that as far as one week old orphaned kittens went, things weren’t that bad. There were two boys and two girls, now named Boo, Bilbo, Butters and Boop. For kittens that Bee “didn’t care about” she sure had already given them matching names.
A minute later, Sophie came into the room. “Ooooh, kittens!” she exclaimed, when suddenly Bee hissed at her threateningly.
“Go away, dog-lover,” Bee said, standing in front of the box of kittens.
“Bee!” I scolded. “It’s Sophie. She can look at the kittens. Sorry,” I said to Sophie apologetically. “Bee’s been taking care of them, but she doesn’t care about them at all, she swears.”
“I can see that,” Sophie laughed. “It’s ok, Bee. I just want to have a look. I won’t touch them,” she promised, and Bee tentatively moved aside to let Sophie have a look. After a couple minutes of aww-ing over how cute the kittens were—Bee standing over to the side preening like a proud mother was not lost on me—we decided to bring the kittens and the heat lamp into the back room of the vet clinic, where Bee could nurse them all day without any other animal interruptions, before taking them back home that night.
“So that explains where Bee’s been sneaking off to,” Sophie said to me when we were in the reception area a few minutes later. I nodded.
“Yeah. She didn’t tell me about them because she didn’t want me to realize that she actually cared about anything other than herself.” Sophie barked out a laugh.
“That does sound like Bee.”
“I have to admit; she did take good care of them though. She found a heated vent to keep them under which was not only warm, but pretty protected from any predators out there. And apparently there was another cat or two involved in the care of the kittens.”
“Where did they come from, anyway?”
“Bee won’t tell me who the mother is, but according to the cat grapevine, which I’ve only just learned is a thing, a local cat got pregnant, but she overheard her owner saying he didn’t want kittens and was going to drown them all when they were born. So she snuck out and gave birth on Main Street, so he’d never find them, and went back home like nothing had happened, leaving the kittens. Buster went out for a while the morning he came to the clinic and found them, so when he got here he told Bee and they made up a reason to get out of the clinic and started taking care of them.”
Sophie shook her head. “That’s insane. I’m so glad they managed to keep all four kittens alive.”
“Me too.” I had to admit, I was actually pretty proud of my little cat. The kittens were in great shape considering what their lives had been like for their short time on this earth so far; Bee had taken really good care of them.
“Did you hear that another tourist was killed?” Sophie asked me, and I forgot that I hadn’t seen her since Jason and I had left the clinic the day before.
“Yeah,” I said. “Actually, I have a whole bunch of stuff to tell you about that.”
16
I caught Sophie up on the events of the day and dealt with my three appointments for the morning. It turned out afterwards I had a four-hour break—a local schoolteacher was coming in with her new puppy at four that afternoon for spaying, and because of the school day she couldn’t make it in earlier.