The man waited until the police were done talking to Mom and me, then he said, “Hello. I’m Jeff. You’re Joyce Reynolds?”
Mom said she was and told him I was Joey.
“The cat got away,” he said. “I chased him for two blocks, but he knows who I am. He won’t be coming back.”
“You wanted to take Fluffy away from me!” I said.
“Joey! Behave yourself,” Mom scolded. “I called Jeff yesterday to ask him about Fluffy. No one is going to hurt your cat.”
“I’m afraid your son is right,” Jeff said. “I would have taken Fluffy away. And I would have killed him.”
Mom didn’t know what to say, but I said, “You see!”
“Let me explain,” Jeff said. “I love cats. My daughter loves cats, too. I’m a bioengineer. I invented cats like Fluffy. The first one was called Puff.’ These cats stay little like kittens for years, then at the end they grow up and live like adult cats for a few years. But when they’re little they learn really, really fast, like ordinary kittens. Only they have years to keep learning. They get really smart.”
Just then the paramedics came out of the garage with something under a sheet that smelled like burned meat. It was Dad. Mom couldn’t look at it. She went inside. I said, “Fluffy never liked Dad. Dad kicked him.”
“In my case, Puff hated a local stray dog,” Jeff said. “It was a nasty mutt. Puff set a trap for it. But he used my daughter for bait. That’s why I have to kill these cats. They don’t love us the way we love them.”
Jeff told me to call if Fluffy came back, but he didn’t think Fluffy ever would. Fluffy would know better.
The firemen looked around the garage after the fire was out. They said they thought the stove must have been on when Dad went in. They also said there was a plastic food dish on the floor by the door that they think must have had gasoline in it.
Fluffy knew about gasoline. He knew where I got it from for my bottle—from the can in the garage we use for the lawn mower. He must have set the dish up to fall when Dad came through the door.
Jeff was right. Fluffy never came back to the house.
That all happened last year. I still hike down the train tracks and back into the woods, and I still build fires out there. Raymond moved away, but Billy and Blacky sometimes join me.
So does Fluffy.
We roast hot dogs and marshmallows, and me and Billy talk about what we want to be when we grow up. Fluffy just enjoys his marshmallows and watches us.
Him and those three cats just like him.