“Max! Dooley! Brutus! What are you guys doing here?!” she was saying.
I knew she said this because I saw her lips moving, though the meaning of her words only hit me with a delay of a few seconds, mainly because my first thought when I saw her was that she’d told Diego she was eager to get rid of me—tired of my sad sack stalking ways.
A second head appeared, this one poking out of the driver’s side of the vehicle, and I saw it belonged to Chase Kingsley, the hunky cop Odelia has been dating for a while now.
He, too, had a similar message to convey.“Brutus! Max! Dooley! What the heck?!”
Brutus, I could see, was struggling with the same reservations I was, for he hadn’t forgotten that his human, too, was eager to put him out to pasture and exchange him for the latest model of feline—Diego.
Dooley, in fact, was the only one who didn’t seem affected, as he sunnily announced, “We were looking for Clarice so she can help us get rid of Diego. But now that you guys are here, maybe you can help us out.”
Both Chase and Odelia were silent for a beat, then they simultaneously called out,“In the car! Now!”
Of course Chase could never have understood Dooley, as he wasn’t well-versed in the finer points of the feline language. He must have understood that we weren’t eager to stay out in the street, though, a fact for which I was grateful. Chase might not be a Poole, but by sheer association with the Poole clan he was clearly getting there—slowly but irrevocably.
So we hopped into the pickup and made ourselves comfortable in the backseat.
Chase stepped on the accelerator and soon we were digging our claws into the creased leather to keep from being smushed against the rear. Not that Chase would mind, I ventured, as his pickup is easily as aged and decrepit as Odelia’s.
I could tell from Odelia’s anxious glances back at the three of us that she was eager to have a heart-to-heart. Unfortunately most humans find it strange when other humans talk to felines, so she kept her mouth shut for now. And since neither Brutus nor I were eager to talk to the very humans who were ready to put us out with the trash, silence reigned for a long beat. Until Dooley, who evidently didn’t share our reservations, started singing like a canary.
“We just saw Diego in the back alley, and he told us you guys don’t like us anymore. That you told him you want to get rid of us and replace us with newer models. And that you think Max is a scroungy stalker and you’re sick and tired of his fat ass, and how Marge and Gran and Tex feel the same way about me and Brutus and so does Chase. Was he telling the truth, Odelia? He wasn’t, was he? He was lying through his razor-sharp teeth, wasn’t he?”
Odelia merely offered us a worried glance, but didn’t say a word.
Chase glanced back at us through the rearview mirror, and said,“You know? It almost sounds as if he’s talking to you, babe. I’ve never heard a cat babble as much as that one.”
“Dooley,” said Odelia. “His name is Dooley.”
“I knew that. Hey, Dooley,” he called out. “Talk some more, bud. You crack me up.”
Dooley didn’t need to be told twice. “Well, Diego has been charming Harriet, as usual, and Brutus doesn’t like it, and neither do I. And now we want to get rid of him, just like we did the last time, so we went and tried to find Clarice, who managed to kick Diego out of Hampton Cove before and might be convinced to do it again in exchange for a lifelong supply of Cat Snax. Only we couldn’t find her at her usual haunts and now we’re thinking she might be hanging out at the Writer’s Lodge, curled up on Dan Brown’s lap—or maybe even Stephen King’s or JK Rowling’s—and convincing them to feature her in their next book.”
“Dooley,” I said, finally finding my voice again. “Please shut up. Didn’t you hear what Diego said? Odelia is crazy about him. She won’t like it when we try to get rid of him.”
“Yeah, that stuff’s a secret, Dooley,” Brutus chimed in, defeating the purpose of the secret by blabbing it out to Odelia now.
My human took it all in with a shake of the head and a worried frown marring the smoothness of her brow. I could tell the conversation had rattled her.
“Hey. Now they’re all talking,” said Chase, still completely oblivious and liking it. “What do you think they want? Food? You think they’re hungry?”
“I think they want to tell us something,” said Odelia.
“Yeah—that much I understood. But what?” He glanced back at me. “You know? Wouldn’t it be fun if we could understand what they are saying? I read about some professor who’s developing a machine that would translate cat language into plain English. If he ever manages to get that thing operational I’m going to get me one of those. Talk to my cats.”
I wanted to tell him that he didn’t need to spend good money on some stupid machine. He just needed to talk to Odelia and she could tell him exactly what we were saying.
Soon we were leaving the town center, and for the first time I started to wonder where we were going. We were clearly not homeward bound. And when I saw Odelia’s expression of concern, I suddenly realized exactly where we were going: to the pound!
“You guys!” I hissed. “They’re taking us to the pound! Diego was right!”
“Oh, crap,” said Brutus. “I knew that creep wasn’t lying. We have to escape!”
“Odelia would never take us to the pound,” said Dooley. “Would she?”
“Where else could they be taking us?!” I cried.
We glanced up at the windows, but they were all rolled up. And when I tried the door handle, the stupid thing wouldn’t budge. We’d just have to escape the moment Chase stopped the car!
“We’ll escape into the woods,” Brutus said, already drawing up a plan of campaign. “If she’s still alive, we’ll simply join Clarice and ask her to teach us the ways of surviving in the wild.”
“I’ve never survived in the wild, you guys,” said Dooley. “I don’t know if I can do it.”
“Of course you can,” said Brutus. “It’s just a matter of… adjusting your taste.”
“No more Cat Snax,” I said, feeling even more dejected than before. “And no more of that delicious pat?.”
“Hey,” said Brutus. “Cheer up, Max. If Stephen King and Dan Brown and JK Rowling are really out there, I’m sure they’ll have some great snacks to dispense. Maybe they’ll even adopt us. Give us a life of unparalleled pampering and luxury. Pat? up the wazoo and maybe even a visit to the cat spa from time to time.”
“What’s the cat spa?” asked Dooley.
“It’s a place where cats go to relax,” Brutus explained. “I saw it on TV. They’ve got a playpen and a massage parlor and manicurists and hairstylists—the works. It’ll be fun.”
“But we won’t be together,” Dooley lamented.
“I don’t want to go and live with Dan Brown,” I said miserably. “I mean, I know I said before I wanted to star in a movie with Tom Hanks, but all I really want is to stay home with Odelia. Wake her up in the morning by sticking my nose into her armpit, help her with her articles, hang out in front of the TV and catch an episode ofThe Voice together…”
I was going to develop my theme further, but the car suddenly lurched off the road and came to a full stop in front of a large wooden gate, a man carrying what looked like a weapon of some kind giving us a penetrating scrutiny by sticking his head in the window.
“Hampton Cove PD, buddy,” Chase said, and showed the man his police badge.
The guy waved us through, and Chase took us along a long and winding driveway until a large house loomed up at the end of it, and he parked in the circular driveway, crushed gravel crunching underneath his tires.
“This is it, you guys!” I said. “Let’s make a run for it!”
“I don’t know,” said Brutus, studying the house. “It doesn’t look like a pound.”