“So what happened to Johnny?” asked Gran.
“Ancient history,” said Scarlett with a careless wave of her hand.
“Too attached to his ethically challenged partner?”
“Too needy,” Scarlett said as she pronged a potato and bit off a tiny piece. “After our second date he was talking wedding plans. So I told him I don’t do marriage, and I don’t do cohabitation, and when he kicked up a fuss I kicked him out.”
“Good riddance,” said Gran.
“Johnny is a nice person,” said Marge. “He just hangs out with the wrong crowd.”
“He is the wrong crowd,” said Gran.
“So what’s going on with Loretta?” asked Charlene.
“I was chatting with her last night,” said Odelia. “She’s in Khemed right now, and things are going great. Bab El Ghat rolled out the red carpet for her and her grandparents and installed them at the palace for the duration of their trip. He wants to make amends, and show them that he’s not like his dad. Also, he’s asked Loretta to advise him on some necessary changes to the archaic nature of certain Khemed customs. Like polygyny, the right of any man to marry multiple wives.”
“Next thing she’ll become the Sheikha,” said Uncle Alec as he savored his cold beer.
“So who’s this Loretta you’re talking about?” asked Ted Trapper.
“She’s the writer of this fantastic book,” said Marge, and handed a copy of The Sheikh’s Passion to the Trappers.
Marcie took it and nodded.“I read this. It’s great. I saw the other day that Hollywood has bought the rights. They’re turning it into a TV series.”
“Oh, I wonder who’ll play Sheikh Bab El Ehr,” said Marge excitedly, “and Loretta’s mother.”
“I don’t care who plays them, as long as they stay true to the book,” said Marcie. “Too often they change the whole story and I hate that.”
“So how are things with Fido?” asked Uncle Alec.
“He’s doing fine. His old customers have all returned,” said Marge, nodding. “So all’s well that ends well.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Gran. “When I went in there yesterday he was telling me this whole story about how the earth is actually hollow, and how strange creatures live under our feet.”
“Oh, dear,” said Marge. “Looks like we’ll have to have another talk with him.”
“And wean him off the YouTube. For good this time.”
“YouTube is overrated,” said Brutus. “Tik Tok is where the action is.”
I laughed.“Are you into Tik Tok now, Brutus?”
“You bet. Harriet and I made our first Tik Tok movie yesterday. Wanna see?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said indulgently, as Harriet fired up the tablet Odelia leaves lying around for us to play with.
Moments later we were all watching a short video of Brutus and Harriet moving to ABBA’s Waterloo and doing a funny little dance.
“Cute,” said Rufus as he yawned, showing us he wasn’t particularly impressed. “But you should see my Tik Tok.”
“You have a Tik Tok?” asked Brutus.
“Of course. Me and Fifi made it together,” he said.
“We love our Tik Tok, don’t we, Rufus?” said Fifi.
“Absolutely. We make a great team.” He instructed Harriet to surf to their channel, which was called Ru-Fi, and soon I had to admit Rufus was right: the short videos they’d posted—or that Marcie had posted for them—were fun. They jumped through hoops, played fetch with Ted, and generallydid the kind of stuff dogs are good at: basically what their humans told them to do.
“I like Harriet’s video better,” Dooley whispered in my ear.
“Me, too,” I whispered back.
“Why don’t we start our own Tik Tok channel, Max? I think it could be a lot of fun.”
“Yeah, why not? Odelia can film us and put everything online. But what could we do that would make people watch?”
“I know,” said Dooley. “We’ll solve mysteries.”
“Solve mysteries in under three minutes? That’s a stretch, Dooley, even for us.”
“Oh, I know, we can dance and shake our tushies, just like Harriet does. People love that stuff.”
I arched my eyebrows. Dancing and shaking my tush is not exactly my thing. Then again, if it made my friend happy, why not?
And to show us how it was done, Dooley now hopped down from the swing, and demonstrated a little dance he’d seen in another Tik Tok video.
We all laughed, and so did the humans, who encouraged Dooley to go on. Then a couple of the humans took out their phones, and soon he was doing a whole show.
“You’re a natural, Dooley,” said Brutus with a wide grin.
“You should have been a dance star,” said Harriet reluctantly. She likes to be the center of attention, and she didn’t appreciate sharing the limelight with Dooley.
“Your turn, Max,” said Odelia, holding up her phone.
“Yeah, Max,” said Gran. “Show us what you got.”
“I don’t ‘got’ anything,” I said. But since they were cheering me on, I had no alternative but to hop down, and strut my stuff.
Soon we were all dancing to the music, and even Rufus and Fifi joined in, and then it was the humans’ turn. And generally a good time was had by all. Even Tex stood shaking and swinging behind his grill, Uncle Alex danced with Charlene, Chase and Odelia demonstrated a few steps of a dance called the tango they’d recently picked up, and Scarlett and Gran showed us they weren’t too old to hitthe dance floor either. But Ted and Marcie beat us alclass="underline" they actually danced a mean foxtrot, and moved like professionals!
“YouTube lessons,” said Ted, panting when the dance was done. “There’s a lot of them, and I mean alot.”
Okay, so YouTube can be used for good or for evil, and isn’t that the case with all technology? The evening wound down, and it was time to go to bed. At least for the humans. For us cats the night had only just begun. And as we walked along the sidewalk in the direction of the park, a feeling of extreme contentment filled me. “It’s nice to have friends, you guys,” I suddenly burst out.
“That’s your near-death experience talking, buddy,” said Brutus.
“What do you mean, near death? I was never near death.”
“Oh, yes, you were. If that diamond had slipped a little further down, it would have torn a hole in your gut the size of a melon.”
“No way!” Dooley cried. “A whole melon?”
“Yep, a melon, and then you wouldn’t be here right now, Max.”
“A melon is pretty big, isn’t it?” said Dooley.
“Guys, please, let’s not talk about gruesome stuff like that,” said Harriet.
“If that diamond had been in there five minutes longer,” Brutus said, undeterred, “it would have turned Max’s insides into mush. Like a blender!”
“No way!” said Dooley. “An actual blender!”
“Yep. Scrambled him up something good.”
Friends. You can’t live with them—but you can sure live without them, right? Though I have to admit I was still glad to have them.
“If that diamond had been in there for only a single minute more, it would have torn a hole in Max’s gut the size of Mount Everest!”
“No way! That’s a big hole, Brutus!”
Ugh. See what I mean?
38. PURRFECT CURE
Prologue
Angel Church had been walking along the road home for what felt like an eternity. She was a little unsteady on her feet after a night out with the girls. She would have driven her car home, but her friends had confiscated her keys. A precaution, since she was clearly a great deal over the limit. And since they, too, had imbibed more alcohol than was probably advisable, they’d taken a cab home. They’d offered to share, but she said she’d walk home—the fresh air would do her good.”
And so now she was gingerly navigating the one-mile distance back to the cozy little apartment where she lived with her mom, located in a leafy suburb of Hampton Cove, her small town. On any other night she probably would have felt a tinge of concern to be walking home alone in the middle of the night, but one of the side effects of replacing one’s blood with alcohol is that all sense of self-preservation goes flying out the window.