“Hey, dudes and dudettes,” the irrepressible singer caroled. “Now this is what I call a fine gathering!” He looked a little unsteady on his feet, swaying dangerously, his eyes half-lidded. I hoped he wouldn’t come near the edge of the roof, for if he fell off and got squashed he wouldn’t get up again. No nine lives for the Dieber. He caught sight of us and frowned, pointing a finger in our general direction. “Dudes! We have got to stop meeting like this!” He lurched, then pivoted, his arm outstretched, until he was pointing, like a weathervane, at Shanille. He blinked a few times. “Um, so are you a dude or a dudette, dude?”
“I’m a dudette, actually,” said Shanille, whose exuberance had returned at the sight of her great idol.
“I think you’re a babe,” the Dieber announced, then did the most outrageous thing. He scooped Shanille up into his arms and started staggering back to the fire escape. “You’ve been adopted,” he announced to a slightly startled Shanille.
“Oh, that’s fine, Charlie,” she trilled.
“Shanille!” I cried. “Where are you going?”
“Didn’t you hear? I’ve been adopted by Charlie Dieber!”
“But… what about Father Reilly?” I asked, referring to her most recent human.
“He’ll just have to learn to live without me,” she said, and gave us a diva-like wave farewell. “Just like I’ll have to live without cat choir! Goodbye, cruel world! Goodbye!”
The three of us watched, stunned, as Charlie disappeared down the fire escape, this time clutching the former cat choir conductor in his arms.
“I didn’t know Shanille was such a drama queen,” said Dooley.
“It would appear Diego brings out the worst in cats,” I said.
“Charlie should have picked me,” Brutus lamented. “I should have told him about my transition.”
“Oh, stop talking nonsense, Brutus,” I said. “Cats don’t transition. Do they?”
“If it gets me out of the house I share with Harriet I’ll do whatever it takes, Max. Anything is better than having to feel this pain. This searing heartache. Thistristesse.”
Wow. Talk about drama queens.
“It’s the pain of lost love,” Dooley said knowingly, then placed a sympathetic paw on Brutus’s shoulder. “I feel your pain, brother Brutus.”
“Sister,” Brutus announced. “From now on I’m a dudette.”
Chapter 19
Odelia woke up from a loud noise. Since she’d spent half the night dealing with this Dieber knife business, it was a grumpy and decidedly annoyed Odelia Poole who opened first one tentative eye and then the other.
“What’s with the racket?” she muttered, and discovered that the foot of the bed hadn’t been slept on. “And where are my cats?” she added, suddenly thinking it ominous that neither Max nor Diego had come home that night.
Light was seeping through the curtains, and one intrepid sun ray had even had the gall of peeping through a split in the middle, where both curtains met, and was casting its bright and cheery light across Odelia’s face.
“Ugh,” she muttered, recoiling like a particularly timid vampire.
“Help!” a voice suddenly intruded her foggy thoughts. “Help me I’m stuck!”
Now she realized what noise had awakened her. It was Max, and he was in trouble!
“Max, I’m coming,” she croaked. With an extreme effort she swung her feet from beneath the Garfield-motif comforter, inserted them into her pink Hello Kitty slippers, managed to rise from the bed without tottering to the floor, and shuffled out of the room.
“Somebody help me!” Max was yelling. “I know who did it!”
The introduction of this new theme threw her. Stuck, she understood. He must have tried to get in through the pet door and gotten stuck. But he knew who did it? Knew who did what?
She cursed herself for not leaving the kitchen door open last night—she’d been so beat that the moment she let herself into the house she’d staggered up the stairs, dropped into the bed and had been asleep in seconds, without giving a single thought to poor Max.
“I’m coming!” she repeated, picking her way down the narrow stairs. Even under normal circumstances it was a tricky staircase to negotiate, and in her current state of sleep deprivation it was a downright safety hazard. She managed to reach the ground floor unscathed and speed-shuffled into the kitchen, where she was greeted with a piteous sight: Max’s head was inside the house, while the rest of his body was still outside.
“I can’t move,” he said when he caught sight of her. “I’m stuck, Odelia.”
“Oh, poor baby,” she said, kneeling down next to him. “I’ve asked my dad to fix this thing, and this time Chase is going to help him, so from now on you should be fine.”
She placed her hands on his neck, and tried to ease him in.
“I don’t think that’s gonna work,” Max said with a giggle. He’d always been ticklish.
“Just hang in there, baby. I’m going to get you out of this thing.”
She decided to reverse her technique and shove him out instead. So she pushed on his head, but that didn’t work either. He was really and truly stuck. “Huh,” she said, stumped.
She carefully opened the door and stepped out onto the paved deck, Max swinging with the door. Just as she’d surmised, the largest portion of the voluminous cat was sticking out, not unlike the iceberg that had sunk the Titanic. So now all she needed to do was get a firm grip on his body, and dislodge the rest of him.
“Can you breathe out for me?” she asked as she placed her hands on his trunk.
Max blew out a deep breath, she eased her fingers into his fur, and carefully pulled.
Dooley, who’d come walking up, stared at the scene. “This looks like a fun game,” he said. “Can I play, too?”
“This isn’t a game, Dooley,” said Odelia. “Max is stuck.”
“Oh.” He thought about this for a moment. “Why?”
“Because Dad screwed up and made the pet door a size too small.”
“Why did he do that?” asked Dooley.
“Can you stop asking stupid questions and just push my head?” Max burst out.
Dooley quickly trotted over.“Where do I push?”
“My head! Just push on my head while Odelia pulls my butt.”
“Can’t I pull your butt? I have a hunch I’d be great at butt-pulling.”
“Just do it already!”
“Right,” said Dooley dubiously. He clearly wasn’t fully on board with the plan. He did as he was told, though, by placing both paws on Max’s nose and pushing with all his might.
“Not the nose!” Max cried in a nasal tone.
Dooley, who was clearly not a professional cat pusher, adjusted his position and placed his paws on the top of Max’s head instead. The concerted effort of both cat and human finally yielded results, and soon Max popped from the pet door like a cork from a bottle. And as he sat on his haunches, panting slightly, he announced, “Have I got news for you, Odelia. Thank you, by the way, for getting me out of this hellhole.”
“It’s called a pet door, Max,” said Dooley. “Not a hellhole.”
Max gave his friend a dark look, then continued,“Oh, boy, did we have a night.”
“A night to remember,” said Dooley.
“Charlie Dieber tried to kidnap us, before his driver told him we were three males and then he kicked us out of his limo and into a ditch,” he began.
“And then we saw Diego and Harriet on the rooftop of The Hungry Pipe and Brutus had a meltdown,” Dooley added.
Max turned to him.“Are you going to tell the story, or am I?”
“You tell the story,” Dooley said graciously.
“Then we saw Gran talking to Angela Merkel, and Shanille being sad because Diego took her place as cat choir conductor, and—”
“And then Charlie Dieber showed up again and adopted Shanille!” Dooley cried with a laugh. “What a night!” When Max shot him a glare, he added, “Sorry. Please continue.”