“I am trying,” I muttered to Charles through gritted teeth, then turned back to Yo-Yo with my most pleasant expression. “Hey, there, little guy. If you could talk to me, it would be a huge help. Maybe start by telling me what you really think of this guy you’re living with now?”
I hooked a thumb toward Charles and made a goofy face, which resulted in Yo-Yo grabbing hold of my sweater and giving it a firm tug.
“Hey, stop!” I cried, but this only made him tug harder. When I finally managed to wrestle my shirt away from him, it had been stretched beyond repair. I leaped to my feet so he couldn’t destroy any other parts of me before we were through here.
“What did he say?” Charles asked, hope reflecting in his dark eyes.
“He said you’ve got the wrong girl,” I answered. “And that he liked my sweater but still thought it deserved to die a horrible, untimely death.”
Charles deadpanned. “Just like his owners, huh?”
Okay, now I felt bad, but it didn’t change anything about my inability to speak with Yo-Yo. I’d tried. It hadn’t worked. It was time to move on.
“I don’t know what he said or even if he said anything,” I explained, hoping Charles would finally take me at my word. “I guess I can’t talk to dogs.”
“But you can talk to cats?”
I shrugged noncommittally, but he seemed to interpret this as my agreement.
“Great,” he said, shuffling through the items in a junk drawer before extracting a long, black leash. “C’mon, Yo-Yo. We’re going for a walk,” he cried in a slightly higher pitched voice that made me forget my irritation for a moment—but only a moment. “Want to go for a walk?”
“And I’m going back to work,” I said, traipsing toward the door. “Drop me off on your way to wherever it is the two of you are going.”
“Sorry, can’t,” Charles answered while the Yorkie ran furious, barking circles around the apartment to convey his enthusiasm. “We need you to come with us.”
I crossed my arms and eyed them both suspiciously. “Why?”
“Because we’re going to your house to talk to your cat,” Charles explained, grabbing Yo-Yo into his arms and clipping on the leash.
To my house?
Crud. Octo-Cat was definitely not going to like this.
Chapter Three
Less than two miles stretched between Charles’s apartment complex and my rental home, which meant we were in one place almost as soon as we’d left the other.
I opened the door to find Octo-Cat waiting for me with a rapturous look upon his face.
“Finally!” he cried. “I’ve been so thirsty.” His expression quickly changed to outrage, though, when Yo-Yo nosed his way into the house and gave Octo-Cat a big, wet kiss right on the nose.
Charles pulled back on the leash, then lifted the visiting dog into his arms.
Octo-Cat shook with fury as a bead of drool dripped down his face and onto the carpet below. “Why would you do this to me? Haven’t I already been through enough today? First the fly and now a-a-a dog?” he spat out that last word as if it were the foulest curse word he could imagine.
“What’s he saying?” Charles asked with rapt interest.
“He’s mad at me,” I admitted. “And he’s not happy about Yo-Yo being here, either.”
Octo-Cat arched his back and hissed. “You can say that again,” he muttered before jumping onto the kitchen table.
“Just give me a minute here,” I whispered to Charles before joining my irate tabby in the kitchen.
Octo-Cat took a giant leap from the table to the counter, then sat with his tail flicking back and forth wildly. “Unbelievable,” he growled without so much as looking at me.
I knew I was in the wrong here, but I also had no other choice but to comply with Charles’s wishes. If anyone else found out about my special ability to talk to cats, I’d lose my job, be made a laughing stock, and possibly have to move away from the only home I’ve ever known to start life over with a clean reputation.
Hopefully Octo-Cat would understand that my hands were tied once I had the chance to explain a bit more. First, though, I needed to find a way to give Charles what he wanted. Once I did, the threat hanging over my head would be eradicated, and Octo-Cat could go back to being mad at me for the usual reasons.
I grabbed a fresh bottle of Evian and a clean china tea cup from the cupboard. The cup came from the set we’d inherited from his late owner Ethel and was used for the sole purpose of offering Octo-Cat his daily libations. After presenting the fresh water to him, I made quick work disposing of the dead fly.
He took one quick lap from the dish, then trotted off to my bedroom without so much as a thank you.
“You’re welcome!” I called after him with a scowl. Jeez, it felt like no one appreciated me today.
“So what now?” Charles asked, bending down to unleash Yo-Yo.
“No, wait,” I cried, but unfortunately it was too late.
The Yorkie immediately darted into my bedroom, barking manically the whole way. A dreadful hiss-growl-meow hybrid reverberated through the house, and a second later Octo-Cat appeared with his tail poofed out so large that it resembled that of a raccoon.
“I hate you!” he screamed, tearing through the house as the dog gave chase.
“Grab him!” I yelled to Charles, who made a leap for the rambunctious animal and missed.
“Hey, Yo-Yo!” I called, racing back toward the kitchen. “Want a treat?”
The Yorkie immediately turned in his tracks and trotted after me, releasing a joyous series of high-pitched barks. I reached into the fridge and grabbed a slice of lunch meat to offer him as a treat just as Charles managed to re-clip the leash to his collar.
“Well, that was an experience,” he said with a weary chuckle.
“I wouldn’t laugh if I were you,” I told him. “It’s going to take forever for my cat to forgive me now.”
Charles stared at me in confusion.
“If he won’t forgive me, then he also won’t help. Don’t you know anything about cats?” I grumbled, despite the fact that I hadn’t really known anything about them myself until a few months prior.
He looked properly chastised as he hung his head and let out a giant sigh. “Sorry. What should we do?”
“We aren’t going to do anything just yet. You are going to take Yo-Yo outside, and I guess I’ll go offer up my firstborn in a last-ditch attempt to get Octo-Cat to talk to me.”
Charles began to smile but quickly retracted it immediately upon seeing the stone-cold serious expression on my face.
“Uh, okay. C’mon, Yo-Yo,” he said, yanking the little dog toward the door.
“Don’t come in until I tell you it’s okay,” I shouted after them.
“It’s never going to be okay,” Octo-Cat hissed, emerging from wherever it was he’d been hiding. “Why would you do that to me?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to,” I rushed to explain. “He made me.”
Octo-Cat wagged his tail, which had mostly returned to its normal size. “So you sold me out for a pretty face,” he cried. “I thought we were friends! I thought we were family!”
My heart clenched. Normally I didn’t let his dramatics get to me, but this particular reprimand cut deep. This is what I got for confiding my workplace crush in my cat. He was thankfully getting better at telling humans apart and could accurately guess gender about four times out of five now. Of course, when I needed him to identify a murderer, he was hopeless, but when it came to figuring out my crush? Sure, that was no problem.
“I didn’t want to,” I repeated yet again. “He walked in on us FaceTiming earlier and forced me to help him.”
Octo-Cat scoffed. “So he walked in on you. Lie! Seriously, Angela, how hard is that?”
He rarely used my name, and even more rarely my birth name. Oh, yeah, I was in serious trouble now. Someone would most definitely be waking up to vomit in her shoes tomorrow—and, sadly, that somebody was me.