“A colony of eggs!” Dooley cried. “On my body! Millions and millions of them!”
“I just can’t with this,” said Harriet, hanging her head. “This is all too much.”
“I talked to Kingman,” said Brutus. “And he told me fleas can grow to be as big as mice—rats even! Can you imagine? Millions of those horrible creatures?”
“We’re dead,” said Dooley. “We’re all dead.”
“We’re not dead, you guys!” I said, trying to stifle my own rising sense of panic. “Fleas don’t grow to be as big as mice. Are you kidding me? If they did don’t you think we would have seen them by now? Don’t you think Odelia would have called an exterminator?”
“It’s just like that movie,” Dooley said. “First they killed Gwyneth, then they went after Rose from Titanic.” He sniffed and turned over on his back, paws bonelessly flopping in the air. “Max,” he bleated. “If I go first, tell Odelia about that time I broke her phone. Tell her I’m sorry. Ask her to forgive me.” He snuffled. “I’ll never break another one of her phones in my life. Cause I’ll be dead! And dead cats don’t break phones!”
“Tell her yourself,” I said. “You’re not going to die, Dooley. None of us are.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Brutus. “Kingman said—”
“Oh, don’t listen to that cat,” I interrupted him. “He talks through his butt.”
This seemed to interest Dooley. “Kingman talks through his butt? I never noticed.”
“It’s an expression,” said Harriet. She’d stopped grooming herself and was now studying her belly—no doubt searching for that million-strong flea colony. “I don’t see them,” she announced. “Oh, wait. What are these little black spots? There were no black spots before.” Her voice was rising sharply. “Are these eggs? Eww! EWW! Get them off! Brutus—get them OFF me!” She was patting her belly anxiously. “Brutus! BRUTUUUUUUUS!”
Brutus, always the gallant suitor, did what he could, rubbing her tummy feverishly. All the while Harriet was screaming up a storm. For a fastidious cat like herself, always looking spic and span and priding herself in her perfect grooming skills, this was nothing short of a tragedy. Imagine Kim Kardashian suddenly breaking out in hives. Only these weren’t hives but some horrible bugs burrowing into our skin! Laying eggs and feasting on our blood!
“There—you missed one. Get them off! GET THEM OFF!”
Dooley watched the scene with hollow eyes. It was obvious he felt that since death was imminent, and the flea invasion inevitable, all this hullabaloo was utterly pointless. His next words confirmed this newly acquired world view. “Just let them eat you alive.”
Harriet, even though in the throes of the biggest personal crisis of her life, still found the time and energy to give him a laser-eyed look that could kill. “No damn CRITTER is going to eat ME alive. I’ve worked too damn HARD on this gorgeous body of mine to allow ANYTHING to feast on me, least of all some LOWLY PARASITE!”
Now that was the spirit. I, for one, was a hundred percent sure Odelia would solve this mess posthaste. That’s what she did. That’s why I’d chosen her as my human. Oh, you may think humans choose us. Well, that’s where you’re wrong. Cats choose their humans, not the other way around. And I’d always prided myself in choosing the right one. She wouldn’t disappoint me now. I was ninety percent sure. Maybe eighty. Definitely seventy.
Just then, Brutus drew me aside, leaving Harriet to a further inspection of every square inch of her fur and Dooley to stare up at the sky, waiting for the end to come.
“Max,” he said, lowering his voice.
“Look,” I said. “Kingman may be a lot of things, but he’s not a critter expert, all right? So don’t you believe a word that cat says. Kingman is what you might call an alarmist.”
He waved an impatient paw. “Screw Kingman,” he said to my surprise. He looked agitated, and for the first time I wondered if his agitation stemmed from something other than the flea infestation. “I need to ask you a question and I need you to listen carefully.”
“Sure. Shoot,” I said.
“Max,” he repeated, and stopped, chewing his lip.
“Uh-huh?”
He cleared his throat. “It’s like this, Max…” He stared at me.
“Yes?” I said encouragingly.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his face with his paw. “Christ, this is hard.”
Now he was starting to worry me. “Just tell me already, will you?”
He fixed me with a stare from between his claws. “Right. Look, you gotta promise me not to tell a soul, okay?”
“I promise.”
He held up his little claw. “Pinkie promise?”
I held up my little claw and hooked it behind his. “Pinkie promise.”
The suspense was killing me. What could be so important? Soon he’d scratch my paw and have me press it against his in a blood oath or something similarly ridiculous.
“I’m having issues, Max,” he finally said.
“Issues?”
“Down there,” he said, pointing at his tail.
“You’ve got tail issues?”
“Not tail issues. Pee-pee issues.”
“You can’t pee? You should see a urologist.”
“I can pee just fine!” he growled. “It’s the other thing that doesn’t work.”
I stared at him. “What other thing?”
He gave me an intense look.
And then I got it. The other thing.
“Oh. Oh!”
“Uh-huh.”
“You mean…”
He nodded seriously. “It just doesn’t work like it used to, Max. And now I don’t know what to do.”
“And I’m supposed to know?”
He gave me a hopeful look. “You’re a smart cat, Max. Everybody knows that. You’ve been around the block once or twice or maybe even three times. Help me out, will you?”
He said it with such a pleading expression on his face that my heart melted. “Fine,” I said finally. “All right. I will help you.” Though for the life of me I had no idea how.
“Harriet is very unhappy,” he continued. “You know she likes it rough, right?”
I pressed my paws to my ears. This I did not need to hear. “Too much information, Brutus,” I said. “Just tell me what’s wrong and maybe we can try and fix it.”
“Well,” he said, frowning, “it used to work just fine, and now it doesn’t.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t?”
He shrugged. “The little bugger refuses to show his face.”
“Maybe it’s Harriet. Maybe you don’t like her the way you used to.”
“Oh, I like Harriet fine. She’s the one for me, Max. No doubt about it.”
I thought about this for a moment. “It could be a physical thing. Do you get your morning, you know, um, your morning stiffness in that general, um, area?”
He smiled proudly. “Hard as a rock, Doc.”
I grimaced. “Please don’t call me ‘Doc.’ I am not a licensed physician.”
I suddenly noticed he’d dropped down on his butt and was sticking out a certain part of his anatomy and glancing at me invitingly.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Aren’t you going to inspect me?”
In Harriet’s words: eww! “No, I am not going to inspect you.”
“But how else are you going to know what’s wrong down there?”
“You know what, Brutus? I think we better leave this to Vena.”
“No!” he cried, then lowered his voice when Harriet and Dooley glanced over. “No can do, Doc. Vena will tell Odelia and Odelia will tell everyone else and Harriet will find out and…” He closed his eyes. “When Harriet finds out my life is officially over, all right?”
“But why? If she loves you—”
He opened his eyes and hissed, “Harriet loves the butch Brutus. The he-cat. Brutus the brute. She doesn’t love the sissy cat who can’t get his machinery to work as it should.”
“I think you’re selling yourself short, Brutus. These are new and exciting times. These days lady cats love a tomcat who shows his feelings—who’s not afraid to open his heart. To lay it all out there for everyone to see. It’s the millennial cat they want. The soft cat. The cat who dares to cry in front of his lady cat. Shed a few tears and admit that we’re all feline.”