Chase felt bad about the poking and prodding her little darling was enduring, but Quincy didn’t seem to mind it. In fact, he licked the vet’s hand.
This guy was no ancient fuddy-duddy vet, like the one in Chicago, she thought. The pictures on the pale blue walls were of angelic children and fluffy pets, not clinical diagrams. Her heart rate sped up a little as she twirled a strand of her straight, honey-blonde hair. He couldn’t be much older than her own thirty-two. And not bad looking at all.
After the vet had taken Quincy’s temperature and peeked into his ears and mouth, he lifted the cat onto the scale and frowned.
“Is he healthy?” she asked. “I wanted to get him checked, since we just moved here. I adopted him from a shelter. He was the smallest of the litter. Little stick legs, and that sweet tail—it stuck straight up. Someone had dropped them off on the beach.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe he’s gotten this big. Isn’t he handsome?” She was chattering. Like a ninny. She needed to stop chattering.
“You say he was found on a beach? Lake Calhoun?”
“Oh no, Lake Michigan. I got him when I was living in Chicago.”
When the vet looked at her, she noticed his deep-set, coffee-brown eyes for the first time. They matched the little chocolate labs on his white coat. Except the little dogs couldn’t give her that flutter inside.
“Where do you live now?” he asked.
“Here. Minneapolis. Dinkytown.” There, that wasn’t chattering.
Dr. Ramos straightened and stuck his stethoscope into his pocket. He rubbed his palms together with a papery sound. “He’s a nice-looking shorthair, healthy for now. You need to make some changes, though. I’m afraid Quincy is far too fat for his small frame. Fifteen pounds is more than he should be carrying.”
Okay, the vet wasn’t that good looking. Quincy wasn’t “far too fat.” Was he?
Quincy meowed and batted at Dr. Ramos’s elbow. Chase thought the cat was disagreeing, too.
“We’ll have to put him on a diet,” the vet continued, catching Quincy’s paw and stroking it. “Is he an inside or outside cat?”
“Um, inside.” Mostly inside. Except when he got out. Quincy was a clever escape artist.
“Good.” He whipped out a prescription pad. “Here’s what we’ll need to feed him.”
We?
“See that he doesn’t eat anything else, other than a few treats. Is he used to eating twice a day or once?”
“Well, I leave his food out.”
“Twice a day, to begin with. One-third cup per serving. I’ll write the amount here. We take his bowl up when he’s finished. Treats only once a day. That’s written down, too.”
“But he usually munches all day long. He doesn’t eat that much.”
“He’ll get used to it.”
Definitely not that good looking. Poor Quincy! “He won’t like that.”
Dr. Ramos gave her a stern frown. His eyes were more of a hardwood-brown than coffee. “Do you want a diabetic cat?”
Who did he think he was? Her sixth-grade teacher?
She raised her chin in defiance. “I’ll see what we can do.”
The vet turned to go. “Bring him back in two weeks. I want to see his weight down by at least a pound.”
• • •
Chase pulled her little Ford Fusion into the slot behind the Bar None and carried Quincy up the wooden steps to her second-floor apartment. She set him, in his carrier, on her kitchen counter and returned down the inside staircase to fetch the bags of cat food she’d bought on the way home.
She stopped beside her car and closed her eyes, turning her face up to soak in the late summer warmth. This last week of August, the temperatures were already dropping a bit, but the sun still put out heat. The leaves of the small trees at the edge of the alley parking area riffled in the slight breeze. The trees were green, but the autumn blaze of color would begin soon. A few marshmallow-fluff clouds drifted in the impossibly blue Minnesota sky.
Chase brought the bags in through the back door of the Bar None, where Quincy spent his days, plumped them down on the granite counter, scooped out enough food for tonight, then hurried upstairs. She was expecting her business partner, Anna, and her best friend, Julie, for dinner, and to sample a new recipe Anna was trying out.
After releasing Quincy, she mixed up a salad and put sandwiches together. The women would eat the minimal meal in haste, then start sampling dessert bars.
Anna Larson, Chase’s business partner and so much more, arrived first, tripping lightly up the stairs.
“You amaze me, Anna,” said Chase as Anna hung her brilliant blue sweater on the hook by the door. “My stairs don’t bother you a bit, do they?”
Anna gave a short laugh. She was the age to be Chase’s grandmother, early seventies, yet she ran up the stairs as easily as Chase, or more so. She wore blue jeans, sneakers, and plain T-shirts, but loved topping her outfits off with sweaters in various shades of blue. Today’s was adorned with yellow chrysanthemums.
“I thought we should try these. Pineapple Walnut Dream Bars.” Anna spread a printout on the counter. “I cobbled this recipe together from a couple of others we’ve done in the past.”
Quincy came into the kitchen to greet Anna. He rubbed against her blue jeans until she picked him up and rubbed his round tummy. “Who’s a good boy?” she asked. “Who’s a cuddlekins?”
Quincy purred that, obviously, he was the good boy and the cuddlekins.
Chase picked up his empty ceramic bowl from the floor and rinsed it out, then filled it with precisely one-third of a cup of mixed cat food, half new and half old. The woman at the pet store had told her to mix the two for a few days.
After Anna set him down, he cautiously approached his bowl and sniffed. He gave his mistress a baleful stare with his amber eyes, then picked at the food.
“It’ll be okay, Quince,” said Chase, softly. “You’ll get used to it.”
Was that a doubtful expression she got from him? He let out a howl.
“What’s wrong with Quincy?” Anna snatched him up.
“He’s on a diet. He doesn’t like it.”
“That’s right, you went to the vet today. Shall I give him a treat?”
“Only once a day, the doc said.”
Anna widened her eyes in horror. “Once a day? I give him num nums all day long.”
“That may be our problem.”
Anna grabbed a handful of his usual treats and fed them to the cat. “He’s starving.”
“He’s not starving. We’re supposed to use—” She looked for the new treat box, but she’d left it downstairs. And now she was saying we. “He has special treats now. Dr. Ramos says he’s too fat.”
“Quincy is large-boned. You tell that to this Dr. Ramos.”
Julie, Anna’s granddaughter and Chase’s best friend since childhood, arrived and the three women sat down to their meal.
The dessert trial went well. All three agreed that Pineapple Walnut Dream Bars should be sold at the dessert bar shop co-owned by Chase and Anna.
“But the name is cumbersome,” Chase said. “Besides, we have several called Dream Bars already.”
“How about Hula Bars?” Julie asked. “The pineapple and the coconut taste like something Hawaiian.”
Anna snapped her fingers. “Yes! That’s it. I’ll call them Hula Bars.”
The shop and Chase’s snug apartment above it were located on the fringes of the University of Minnesota, in an area of Minneapolis called Dinkytown. It was a small neighborhood with wide sidewalks and its own distinct, comfy, homey aura. Chase and Anna wouldn’t have thought of locating anywhere else. Not only because of the location, but because the property had been in Anna’s family for three generations, first as a jewelry store, then as a sandwich restaurant, and now as the Bar None.