The Vanderbeekers to the Rescue

by Karina Yan Glaser

  Row upon row of cages filled the room, and in each one were animals. There were cages with dozens of puppies scrambling over one another, and there were big dogs barking and jumping at the doors. But even worse were the dogs lying down in the cages, their heads resting on their paws, their sad eyes roving but empty of hope. Hyacinth had the feeling that those dogs had been there for a long, long time.

  After walking through that room, they entered a new room dominated by hisses, meows, and howls. This was the cat room. Again, cages and cages of animals.

  “How many cats are here?” Hyacinth asked.

  Frankie looked at a chart on the wall over Hyacinth’s shoulder. “Three hundred and four,” he said. “And with your five, I guess it’ll be three hundred and nine.”

  Hyacinth swallowed. “How long will it take for them to be adopted?”

  “About five cats are adopted every day,” Frankie said.

  “What happens to the cats that don’t get adopted?” Jessie asked.

  Frankie looked at Jessie; then his eyes skidded over to Hyacinth and Laney. “Well, they—you know.”

  The Vanderbeekers stared back at Frankie, not speaking.

  Frankie tried again. “You know when a pet gets really old and sick? And the veterinarian gives them a shot and they go to sleep forever?”

  “You mean the pets get euthanized,” Hyacinth said flatly. “We had to do that with our old cat when I was four years old.”

  “I know all about that,” Laney said. “Frances’s cat had kidney cancer and got really sick and had to be euthanized.”

  “Exactly,” Frankie said. He looked very relieved that he did not have to explain euthanasia to them. “The cats that don’t get adopted after a while get euthanized.”

  “Even if they’re not sick?” Hyacinth asked him.

  “Even if they’re not sick,” Frankie repeated. “If we can’t find homes for them, it’s the only thing we can do. I wish we could find all of these animals homes, but there’s just too many of them.”

  “At least these kittens are super cute,” Jessie said, but Hyacinth could tell Jessie’s determination to leave the animals was wavering. “Who could say no to them?”

  “All right,” Frankie said, pointing to a small room with an examination table in it. “You can leave them here. The vet will check them, and if they’re healthy they’ll get processed and then made available for adoption.”

  “Cassandra already gave them their shots,” Jessie told him. She pulled the vaccination records from her back pocket and gave them to Frankie.

  “That’s great,” Frankie said. “I’ll do the best I can with these little guys.” He looked at Laney. “Is that the fifth kitten?”

  Laney didn’t respond.

  “Yes,” Jessie answered for her. “Come on, Laney.” She gently unzipped Laney’s jacket, lifted out the warm kitten, and put her into the box. Laney started to cry. Franz howled.

  “Okay, let’s go,” Jessie said abruptly, turning around and grabbing Laney with one hand and the handle of the wagon with the other.

  “I’ll walk you out,” Frankie said.

  Grimly, Jessie marched a sniffling Hyacinth and a sobbing Laney out of the examination room, through the room with the three hundred and four cats, and then to the dog room. A fresh round of barking started up at the sight of Frankie, Jessie, Hyacinth, Laney, and Franz.

  Hyacinth looked at the rows of cages, the hundreds of animals waiting for homes. More tears filled her eyes, and she wiped them with the hem of her jacket.

  “Maybe we’ll find homes for them soon,” Frankie said, trying to cheer the girls up.

  No one replied.

  “It’s not such a bad place,” Frankie continued. “There are lots of great volunteers, and I’ll check on the kittens during my breaks.”

  Suddenly, in the middle of the dog room, Jessie braked, and Hyacinth and Laney bumped into her back. “I can’t do this,” she said. She swiveled and, without looking at her sisters, marched back through the dog room and back through the cat room. Franz bounced along in the wagon and howled at the animals, followed by Laney and Hyacinth, who had to jog to keep up. Jessie went straight back into the examination room, where someone in a lab coat was looking in the box and saying, “Oh, how adorable!” “Sorry,” Jessie said. “We forgot something.” She picked up the box of kittens and put it back in the wagon next to Franz. She pulled the wagon back out of the room. For the fourth time, they rolled past the cats and the dogs, then through the reception area and out the door. Finally, Jessie stopped.

  “What have I done?” she muttered, leaning down to put her hands on her knees and taking deep breaths.

  Hyacinth knew Jessie wasn’t much of a hugger, but she couldn’t help it. She wrapped her arms around her big sister and hugged her with all her might.

  Ten

  Before the home processor’s license debacle, Oliver had been feeling really good about spring vacation. He had planned to help clean up the brownstone for the photo shoot, of course, but mostly he wanted to work on the treehouse with Uncle Arthur.

  The treehouse was a yearlong dream in the making. A platform had been installed many years ago, but it had no walls yet, which made it uninhabitable in the winter. Also, Mama refused to entertain the idea of Oliver sleeping in the treehouse, as she worried he would topple over the edge and break his neck.

  With the help of his friends Angie, Jimmy L, and Herman, he had drawn up the best blueprints in the world. The planned treehouse had multiple levels plus a balcony, spy holes, a full wall of bookshelves, a twisty slide down, a built-in bench with storage underneath (including a false bottom so he could hide junk food), and a garret to be used as a reading nook.

  Uncle Arthur had had to nix many of Oliver’s ideas, including the slide and the garret, but the bookshelves, the built-in bench (with false bottom), and the balcony stayed. They were even going to put in real windows, which Uncle Arthur had purchased for Oliver’s Christmas gift a few months earlier, along with a card that said, “Coming This April: The Treehouse of Your Dreams.” Uncle Arthur had taken three whole days off during Oliver’s spring break to work on it with him. The first day had been a bust, what with the weather, and Oliver worried that two days would not be enough to finish it.

  It had taken them a couple of hours to build two bookcases today, and now that they were done, Oliver sat at the kitchen island, picking at a splinter wedged in his finger. Mama was back from delivering the chocolate sea salt caramel cookies to the library, and the plate of extra cookies on the kitchen counter was mocking him. Despite his promising that he would set the table and load the dishwasher that night, Mama did not let him have even one little cookie. She wanted to save them for dessert, and she handed him a cup of carrots instead.

  Mama was cooking more than usual tonight because they were having Mega Family Dinner Night, meaning the extra leaf of the dinner table had to be inserted into the dining room table to make room for Mr. Jeet, Miss Josie, their grandnephew Orlando, Uncle Arthur, and Auntie Harrigan. Mr. Beiderman had told them he’d be back from his trip by dessert, which Oliver thought was convenient timing.

  Oliver crunched on a carrot while Mama bustled around, tossing spices into the soup pot. He loved watching her in the kitchen; she always seemed to be doing ten things at once. In addition to the soup, rice was steaming in a cooker, and water was boiling for tea in anticipation of Auntie Harrigan’s and Miss Josie’s arrivals. Mama was checking the dinner rolls while humming along with the violin piece Isa was working on down in the basement. When the music stopped, a burst of applause drifted upstairs. Isa’s friend Allegra had stopped by to hang out and was in the basement listening.

  A few minutes later, Mama went upstairs to take a shower, and Isa and Allegra emerged from the basement. They each grabbed a carrot from Oliver’s cup, which he was only too happy to share. He was finishing up his own carrot when the front door of the brownstone banged open. Franz bounded inside and ran straight for his food bowl in case it
had mysteriously gotten filled in his absence.

  “We’re home!” Laney called. “Uncle Arthur, are you here?”

  “I’m here!” replied Uncle Arthur. He was tossing a salad. Laney’s feet pounded on the ground and she launched herself into his arms. “How’s my best girl?” he asked.

  “Guess what we have?” she asked him.

  “Wait! I can explain!” Jessie called from the front door.

  “They were going to euthanize them,” Hyacinth said, entering the kitchen with an armful of library books.

  “Euthanize what?” Uncle Arthur and Allegra said at the same time.

  Isa paled. “Please don’t tell me you—”

  Jessie entered, holding a box.

  “Oh no,” Isa and Oliver moaned.

  Hyacinth held up her books. “We stopped by the library and checked out every single book about cats!”

  “The kittens are back!” Laney declared.

  * * *

  Oliver and Isa were looking at Jessie as if she were a criminal. Even though Jessie knew she shouldn’t get attached to the kittens, she couldn’t stop watching them. They were sleepy from their wagon trip and lay in a pile in the center of the box, their eyes squeezed shut, their chests moving up and down in that sweet kitten breathing rhythm. She balanced the box on her left forearm and against her chest, and she used her right hand to touch the gray kitten’s forehead. It was almost time to feed them. When she looked up to check the kitchen clock, Isa, Uncle Arthur, Allegra, Oliver, and Hyacinth were all staring at her.

  “What?” Jessie said.

  There was a brief silence; then Isa spoke up. “I’ve never seen you be so . . .”

  “Tender?” Oliver suggested.

  “Maternal?” Allegra suggested.

  Jessie frowned. “I like animals.”

  Hyacinth leaned down to pet Franz and hummed, one of her habits when she didn’t believe what someone else was saying.

  Isa pointed to the box. “What happened to the shelter? You know we can’t have more animals here.”

  Hyacinth and Laney piped up, defending Jessie.

  “It was terrible there!” Hyacinth said. “There were hundreds of animals in cages, and they were all barking or mad or sad. The guy working there said that not many get adopted, so they have to kill some of them because there are too many!”

  “I wanted to adopt all of them, not leave the kittens there,” Laney said.

  “It was really depressing,” Jessie added. “It’s almost like animals are sent there to be euthanized. We had no choice.”

  “Well, what are we going to do now?” said Isa. “We’re supposed to get rid of all animal evidence by Thursday morning!”

  “Why Thursday morning?” Uncle Arthur and Allegra asked in unison.

  “Oh, we, um—” Jessie said.

  “See, what happened was—” Isa said.

  “We’re trying to fix—” Oliver said.

  “It wasn’t on purpose,” Hyacinth said.

  “We messed up bigtime,” Laney finished.

  Uncle Arthur’s eyebrows rose. “You know what? Never mind. I need to maintain my innocence when you kids get in trouble with your parents. I’m going to fix a leaky faucet. Let me know when it’s time for dinner.” Uncle Arthur picked up his toolbox and headed into the ground-floor bathroom.

  Allegra looked at Isa. “Can someone tell me what’s going on?”

  Quickly, Isa explained the situation to her friend.

  “I wish you could bring the animals to our place,” Allegra said, “but you know how my parents are.” Allegra’s apartment was like a museum, and whenever Jessie went over there, she was afraid she would bump into a piece of art and be responsible for thousands of dollars’ worth of damage.

  “It’s okay,” Isa told her. “We’re going to ask Mr. Jeet and Miss Josie if Franz, George Washington, and Paganini can stay with them during the inspection. Our backup plan is Mr. Beiderman. But adding five kittens . . . I don’t know.”

  “Mr. Jeet isn’t feeling so good,” Laney reported. “Miss Josie said he’s tired.”

  “I don’t think we should bring the animals there,” Hyacinth said. “It’s too much for them.”

  “Hyacinth, will you ask Mr. Beiderman if he can take the animals on Thursday during the inspection?” Isa asked.

  Hyacinth nodded.

  “And we need to find out who left these kittens,” Oliver said. “How can we do that?”

  “It’s Mr. West,” Laney proclaimed. “He doesn’t like us.”

  Hyacinth shook her head. “I don’t think Mr. West would do that. He already took away Mama’s license. Why would he bother leaving kittens?”

  Oliver’s eyes widened. “But maybe he saw that we rescheduled the appointment and he wants to sabotage us!”

  Isa and Jessie were skeptical.

  “Maybe it’s not someone who hates us,” Isa mused. “Maybe it’s some stranger who didn’t want to keep kittens around and left them at some random person’s door. In any case, we need to find homes for these kitties, pronto. They need to be out of here before the inspection.”

  “Aww,” said Hyacinth, Laney, and Jessie.

  Isa glared at Jessie. “Really? You too?”

  “What?” Jessie said. “They’re growing on me.”

  Allegra snapped her fingers. “Listen up, people. I’ll come over tomorrow morning and we can make adoption flyers for the kittens. You can post them around the neighborhood.”

  “That would be awesome!” Isa said. “You are the best artist.”

  “Can you draw the kittens on the flyers?” Laney asked.

  “Girl, kittens are my specialty,” Allegra said.

  “But not the tuxedo cat, because I want to keep that one,” Laney added.

  “Don’t listen to her,” Jessie said. “After you’re done, we can go to the library and make copies and put them up around the neighborhood.”

  “Did you hear that?” Laney announced to the kittens. “Allegra is going to draw you!”

  “I’ve gotta go,” Allegra said, grabbing her bag. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Stay for dinner,” Isa said.

  “I wish,” Allegra told her. “Mom and Dad have the night off and want to have dinner with me.” Allegra’s parents were both pediatricians, and most of the time one or both of them were working or on call. She slipped out the door with a wave.

  The kittens were awake and tumbling all over one another. Jessie let them out of the box, and George Washington observed them from a high bookshelf, his tail swishing in displeasure. Franz and Paganini, however, were elated at the visitors. They lay in the middle of the mayhem, content to have the kittens scurrying over them.

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Mama’s voice drifted down. “Let’s organize! We’ve got dinner guests arriving in thirty minutes!”

  Before Jessie or Isa could stop her, Laney ran up the stairs to meet Mama. “We got five new kittens today!”

  Mama froze. “What did you say?”

  Jessie stood up and smiled her best smile. “Don’t worry, Mama. We’ve got everything under control.”

  * * *

  Hyacinth could tell that Mama didn’t know what to say, because she kept opening her mouth but no words were coming out.

  “We tried to bring them to the shelter,” Jessie told her, “but all the homeless animals were so sad, we couldn’t leave them!”

  “We’ll find homes for them this week, we promise,” Hyacinth said. “Allegra is making flyers!”

  In the end, Mama succumbed to the little felines. The kittens, understanding that their fates were in Mama’s hands, put on a show for her. They nuzzled her ankles, batted at the laces of her sneakers, and purred when she stroked their foreheads.

  “You have to find homes for them,” Mama finally said. “Before the photo shoot.”

  “Yes, of course,” the kids chorused.

  “No trying to convince me that we need more pets in this house,” Mama warned them. “We
’re not adopting any of them.”

  “Right, yes,” they responded.

  Mama shook her head. “It’s never boring being your mom.”

  The Vanderbeeker kids puffed up with pride, and Mama couldn’t help smiling at them. “Come on, let’s get dinner on the table.”

  Eleven

  Oliver was pulling out extra folding chairs from the closet when the doorbell rang. Franz howled his way to the door, and Laney shrieked with happiness after she let in Auntie Harrigan, who swooped in, gave out hugs and lemon drops, and exclaimed over the kittens.

  Papa came home from work a few moments later, froze when he saw the box of kittens, then breathed a sigh of relief when everyone assured him this was a temporary thing.

  “So that means I can stop calculating the cost of providing food and veterinary care to an additional five animals?” he said.

  “Yes,” they replied.

  Hyacinth ran upstairs to help Miss Josie and Mr. Jeet down the two flights to the ground floor. Mr. Jeet leaned heavily on Orlando, his grandnephew. Orlando was the same age as the twins, and he was strong from playing nearly every sport there was. He could probably have carried Mr. Jeet if necessary. After the kittens were sufficiently admired, Mama called everyone to the table, and Oliver breathed a sigh of relief. The carrots hadn’t done a thing to assuage his hunger.

  Oliver made his way to the dining room, where Papa was struggling to put in the extra table leaf. He helped push in the opposite sides of the table to nestle the extra piece in, and the twins pulled out the utensil drawer and sorted forks, spoons, and knives. Laney grabbed the napkins and laid them on the table, and Hyacinth set out trivets for the hot food.

  “Oh, Orlando!” Mama said, catching sight of him. “I’m so glad you’re here. I got you a pair of sneakers.” She rummaged in the closet and came out with an impossibly huge box. “See if these fit you.”