37. PURRFECT SPARKLE
1
“Max?”
“Mh?”
“Do you think the earth is round… or flat?”
I opened one lazy eye and instructed it to take in my friend Dooley, who was lying right next to me on the lawn.“Why do you ask?”
“Well, I was talking to Buster last night, and he told me that Fido has become a member of the Flat Earth Society. And now Buster is wondering if his human is off his rocker, or if he’s onto something. And since he knows I’m a specialist, he decided to ask me for advice.”
“You’re a specialist?” I asked, quirking an amused eyebrow.
“Well, everyone knows that I watch the Discovery Channel, Max, which makes me a specialist in pretty much everything. So they all come to me with the tough questions.” He made a face. “Though I have to admit that even with all of that knowledge under my belt, some of these questions still getme stumped, like now with Buster.”
I yawned and stretched out on the smooth lawn. Ever since Chase decided to borrow his father-in-law’s lawnmower from time to time, he kept the lawn manicured to perfection, almost like a golf course. And he wasn’t getting any complaints from me. I like those golf course lawns: smooth like a billiard table, with no excess blades of grass tickling those sensitive body parts.
“So what do you think, Max?” Dooley insisted. “Flat or round?”
“Hasn’t there been a documentary about the Flat Earth Society recently?” I asked, not in the mood for this philosophical stuff. When the sun is tickling my belly, and I’m on the verge of diving headfirst into a relaxing slumber, the kind of slumber that refreshes and makes you feel like a new cat, I try to avoid interruptions that will stand in the way of the perfect napping experience.
“I don’t think so,” said my friend, frowning. “Unless I missed something.” His eyes went wide. “Oh, no, Max! Maybe I missed this all-important documentary! Now I’m suffering from POMO!”
“It’s FOMO, Dooley, not POMO.”
“No, definitely POMO. Pair of missing out.”
“That makes no sense at all.”
“Oh, it does, Max. You see, if you miss out once, it’s fine, but if you miss out twice, it’s bad. So a pair of missing out, see?”
All I saw was that my friend had been misinformed, either by some joker who was pulling his paw, or with good intentions. But since I was too relaxed to bother, I decided not to engage.
Dooley is a gray raggamuffin, by the way, and a good deal smaller than myself. I’m a tabby with fur the color of the setting sun. I call it blorange, a contraction of blond and orange, though there have been folks who don’t always see the distinction and simply call me orange. I’m what you might call a full-bodied cat, on account of the fact that I was born with big bones. Don’t let my sizable appearance fool you, though. I’m generally a sweet-natured feline, not inclined to cause bodily harm to anyone, man or beast, unless they try to cause me harm first, of course, and even then.
“I think the answer is very simple, Dooley.”
“It is?”
“Sure. Tell Buster to start walking in any direction, and just keep on walking. If after a while he falls off the face of the planet, the earth is flat. If he ends up back where he started, it’s round. Easy peasy.”
Dooley thought about this for a moment, which gave me the opportunity to drift off into the refreshing sleep I just mentioned. Unfortunately, just when I was about to plunge headfirst into oblivion, he spoke once more.
“I think that’s brilliant, Max.”
“Of course it is,” I said, deciding not to bother with humility for once.
“I’ll tell him tonight, and he can start his experiment immediately.”
“You do that,” I murmured, the warmth of the sun now having a profoundly soporific effect on me.
For a long moment, things were quiet there in Odelia’s backyard. Odelia Poole is my human, and Chase Kingsley her husband. Together they take good care of us, and in return we take good care of them. The perfect example of you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, though it’s easier for them—and less painful—to scratch my back than it isfor me to scratch theirs.
“Max?” suddenly my friend piped up again.
I released a tired sigh.“Dooley?”
“So I was thinking, maybe we can join Buster on his trip.”
“What trip?” I asked, having long forgotten the topic of our recent conversation.
“Why, his trip around the world, of course. We start off here, and we just keep on walking until we get back where we took off, and that way we’ll have settled once and for all that the earth is round, not flat, like Fido seems to think.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Dooley,” I said, this time not even bothering to open my peepers.
“Oh, and why is that?”
“For one thing, the earth is very, very big, and for another, how are we going to survive, traipsing all around the globe without our daily dose of kibble?”
“We could ask Odelia to prepare us a snack?”
I smiled at my friend’s naivety. He may watch the Discovery Channel on a regular basis, but that doesn’t mean he’s wise to the ways of the world yet.
“Dooley, do you have any idea how long it would take us to travel all around the world?”
“Um… a day? Maybe two?”
“At the rate of speed we travel, it will probably take us a couple of years.”
“Years!”
“Sure. Like I said, the world is a big place, Dooley, and we’re small in comparison.”
“Oh,” he said, his excitement somewhat dampened. But if I thought he’d give up now, I was of course mistaken, as I should have foreseen. Once my friend gets a thought into his tiny nut, it’s very hard to dislodge it, even with the assistance of a monkey wrench. Or a cat wrench, if such a device exists.
“So what if we ask Odelia to come along with us? She has a car, and that way it won’t take us years but maybe just a couple of days, right?”
“Even if Odelia took us along in her car, it would still take us months to travel around the world,” I said. “Also, since a large portion of the earth is covered in oceans, we’d need to swim across those oceans. And I don’t think Odelia will be up for such a challenge.” I knew I wasn’t. Wild horses couldn’t drag me away from the small town I like to call home—or even tame ones.
“So… what if Odelia and Chase built a boat, and we traveled across those oceans by boat?” He shivered at the thought. Cats aren’t entirely fond of traveling in a small metal box that bobs up and down on the waves. We’d recently allowed Odelia and Chase to drag us along on their honeymoon,which they’d chosen to spend on a cruise ship, and we still hadn’t fully recovered from the ordeal.
“Look, Odelia has a job, and so does Chase,” I pointed out. “Their respective bosses aren’t going to allow them to go on some crazy trip trying to prove what everyone already knows to be true anyway.”
“And what’s that?” Dooley asked, interested.
“That the earth is round!”
“Fido doesn’t seem to think so.”
“That’s because Fido is an idiot,” I said, starting to lose my patience.
“So… the earth isn’t flat?” asked Dooley, just to make sure.
“No, it’s not. And now can I please take my nap? Thank you.”
For a while, things were pleasantly quiet. Birds were chirping in the background, crickets were rubbing their wings, and I was about to engage in a kibble-filled dream when Dooley said,“Or we could ask Odelia to charter a plane. If we don’t fly too high, and keep an eye on the ground, we’ll know when we reach the world’s edge, wouldn’t we?”
“There is no edge,” I said.
“I know, and that’s what we need to prove to Fido. So we’ll take him along in our plane so he can see for himself.”
“Honestly? I really don’t care what Fido thinks.”
“But Buster does. He’s really worried about him.”
“Worried in what sense?”
“Well, he’s online all the time, talking to his flat earth friends, and he’s been neglecting his business, except when he’s trying to convince his customers about some of his ideas. They’re already starting to go elsewhere for their haircuts.”