Like Cats and Dogs

by Kate McMurray

  “Okay.”

  “Unless you want to adopt him.”

  Caleb couldn’t help but think of his old dog Jimmy, the one Kara had gotten in the divorce. His new place in Brooklyn Heights was still a bit underfurnished and sterile, and a dog would certainly liven things up. On the other hand, he put in long hours here at the clinic. A dog like this would need a lot of attention.

  “I mean,” said Rachel, “this is the kind of dog you get when you’re on the rebound from a bad breakup. Just saying.”

  Caleb looked at her.

  “Sorry. Olivia told me you just got divorced.”

  “I did. And you’re probably right. He seems like a good dog. But I don’t know if I’m ready to take on a dog just yet. I just moved to Brooklyn. I haven’t even finished furnishing my apartment yet.”

  “It was a bad breakup, wasn’t it?”

  “She left me for a younger guy and ran off to California after abruptly closing the clinic we owned together without consulting me, so yeah, it was pretty bad.”

  Rachel’s eyes went wide. “Well, geez. That’s shitty.”

  Caleb barked out a laugh. “To understate things.”

  “But, see, this dog may be just what you need.” Rachel and Hank both looked at him with big puppy dog eyes.

  “Okay, tell you what. Let’s board him here for a few days and advertise that he’s looking for a good home. If no one adopts him by, say, Friday, then I’ll take him home. Okay?”

  Rachel grinned. “I think you just got yourself a good doggo.” She reached down and pet Hank’s head. Hank licked her face. She laughed.

  “We’ll see.”

  Chapter 5

  Lauren trotted down the stairs from her apartment and walked out onto Whitman Street. It was a lovely spring day, the sky deep blue with wispy clouds, a gentle breeze rolling down the street. Lauren closed her eyes and savored it for a few minutes. Days like this were precious and rare—some years, New York seemed to skip right over spring entirely, going from winter jacket weather to unbearably hot in the blink of an eye—and she wanted to experience some of it before she had to spend the rest of the day inside.

  Whitman Street was a wide east–west boulevard that made a straight line from the East River all the way to the Queens border, where the street changed names and became a service road off the highway leading into Long Island. Lauren had read somewhere that the family who owned the estate that had once taken up most of the land in the neighborhood had a matriarch who was a big reader, and a lot of the little side streets off Whitman bore the names of nineteenth-century American writers: Hawthorne, Cooper, Poe, Twain. Many of the businesses that lined Whitman Street played on its namesake, from the bars and restaurants who got their names from Whitman poems to the clothing boutique up the street called Song of Myself to the bodega on the corner called Walt’s Groceries.

  Lauren had come to Manhattan for college and then lived there for a few years in a tiny closet-sized apartment until she’d gotten the job at the Cat Café and moved. Manhattan had its charms but didn’t have the same connection to its history that Brooklyn had. Rumor had it Walt Whitman had lived in a house just a few blocks from the Cat Café for a few years. That house was long gone and had been recently replaced by a sleek, modern high-rise apartment building, but Lauren liked to think he’d walked along this street before it was named for him, that she walked in his literal footsteps.

  Of course, all this Whitman memorabilia was a sign of peak gentrification in this part of Brooklyn. This had been a sketchy neighborhood in the ’80s and ’90s. Monique had grown up in Brooklyn and said when she’d been a kid, she wasn’t supposed to walk alone around this neighborhood because there was so much gang activity. Now this pocket of Brooklyn, sandwiched between Downtown and the rest of the borough, was full of old brownstones and cute tree-lined streets with little mom-and-pop shops and cafés and restaurants. Many of the families like Monique’s, who had been in Brooklyn for generations, couldn’t afford it.

  Lauren could only afford rent here because Diane had cut her a deal, letting her have one of the one-bedroom apartments in the building above the café, rented for a fraction of the average rent in the neighborhood. Diane often didn’t seem especially interested in turning a profit so much as helping out people she liked, which seemed like a bad business strategy, even while it benefited Lauren directly.

  On the other hand, the café had been turning record-breaking profits in the weeks since the coffee shop across the street had closed. Who knew there was so much money to be made by people grabbing coffee on their way to work? Or that so many Brooklyn residents preferred to buy their coffee instead of making it at home?

  With a sigh, Lauren walked into the café.

  Monique and Victor were behind the counter, dealing with the coffee line. Lauren waved at them and walked through to the cat area, where Paige was petting little Chloe, who purred so loud Lauren could hear her across the room. Sadie trotted into the room behind Lauren.

  “Hey,” said Paige. “Olivia called ten minutes ago to say they got the shipment of the food you wanted. But they’re really busy and she has appointments back-to-back until this afternoon, so if you want it sooner, you have to go over there.”

  Sure, walk over and run right into Caleb, of course. Evan had argued that Lauren should apologize, and, okay, maybe she had overreacted. Caleb had been super rude, but Lauren could be the better person.

  On the other hand, it was possible Caleb wasn’t even working today.

  Still, Lauren had just gotten here. “Can you go?”

  “I’m interviewing help for the adoption party. My first appointment is in, like, three minutes.”

  Lauren glanced back at the counter, where Victor and Monique were busy helping customers. Lauren reasoned she could wait until the afternoon, although the clinic might stay busy, and the food supply was already low.

  She sighed. “Fine, I’ll be right back.”

  She walked next door, hoping Rachel or Olivia would be at the front desk, but alas, it was Caleb.

  “Hello,” he said when she walked in. He looked startled. “It’s you.”

  Lauren took a deep breath, willing herself not to get angry, but man, he riled her up. “Uh, hi. Olivia said you guys got the food I ordered. I’m here to pick it up.”

  “Why not have it delivered straight to you?”

  “It’s a special order prescription thing. One of the cats at the café is allergic to poultry, so we’re giving all the cats food that has no poultry products in it. That’s a surprising challenge.”

  Caleb nodded. “You’re modifying the diet of all the cats for the sake of one cat?”

  “It can’t hurt any of them.”

  “I guess not. Seems expensive, though.”

  “Why don’t you let that be my concern and go fetch the case of food?”

  It came out more patronizing than she intended, and Caleb raised an eyebrow at her before he stood. “I’ll go ask Olivia where it is.”

  He returned a moment later and then stuck his head in the doorway. “It’s in the storage room. You can come on back to fetch it.”

  “Can you help carry it?”

  “I have an appointment any minute now.”

  “We’ll get this over with faster if we carry it together.”

  “I’m a veterinarian, not a pack mule.”

  “You this friendly with everyone?”

  “I’m very nice to my patients. And usually, they don’t talk back to me.”

  “Please?”

  He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Fine. Follow me.”

  Lauren huffed and followed Caleb to the storage room, where two twenty-pound bags of the cat food she ordered sat.

  “All right. Come on, cat lady. We’ve got forty pounds of food to get next door.”

  She wasn’t normally like this. She liked ev
eryone, generally. She believed in being nice to people, in having empathy for everyone. But something about Caleb just rubbed her the wrong way.

  “How’s that little calico?” he asked as he stepped toward the bags. “What was her name?”

  “Sunday. And she’s fine. I guess the stone passed, because she’s basically back to normal now.”

  “Make sure you have plenty of water out next to this expensive food. Stones happen more often when cats are dehydrated.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Caleb picked up a large bag of cat food and handed it to her. “You take this one. I’ll grab the other.”

  Olivia breezed by them. “Hey, Lauren. Coming to get the cat food?”

  “Yes. Thanks for ordering it.”

  “No problem. There’s a form at the front I need you to sign, so stop there on your way out, please.”

  “I will. Thank you.”

  “You’re nice to my boss,” Caleb said after Olivia was out of earshot.

  “She is friendly and respects me, unlike some other people I know.”

  “Hmm.”

  Lauren carried the bag of cat food to the waiting room, dropped it on a chair, and signed the form for Olivia. They exchanged pleasantries while Caleb stood impatiently at the door with the other bag, shifting his weight back and forth between his feet.

  “Is it wrong to say that I’m kind of enjoying watching him squirm?” Lauren whispered to Olivia.

  Olivia laughed. “Seems a little mean, but it’s only twenty pounds of cat food.”

  “Can we go?” Caleb called out. “This isn’t exactly a bag of feathers.”

  “You know,” said Lauren, “at my last job, whenever we needed to move something large, my boss would ask one of the male employees to do it. Ladies never did heavy lifting.”

  “Seems pretty sexist if you ask me.”

  Lauren laughed.

  “Sometime this week, cat lady. I’ve got patients.”

  Lauren scooped up the bag and headed toward the door.

  ***

  Caleb hadn’t seen the cat room on his previous trip to the Cat Café, but he walked through it now, following Lauren to the back room where she kept supplies. It was a lot. The design was kind of retro, the colors bright and a bit garish. It read more kindergarten classroom than place for cats to live, but what did he know? And there were at least a dozen cats lounging around the room, hanging out with the six or so customers Caleb counted in a glance.

  “Your vacuum must get a workout,” he said, observing the cats draped on the arms of the sofa on one side of the room.

  “Yeah, we have to vacuum at least twice a day, usually just before we open and right after we close. Sometimes more.”

  The plump cat who hung out near the counter—Sadie, if he recalled correctly—followed them into the back room and eyed Caleb as he deposited the sack of cat food into the bin on the shelf Lauren indicated. Lauren slid the top of the bin into place and secured it.

  “The plastic keeps curious cats out. You’d think nothing could jump up to a shelf this high, but some of these cats have springs for legs.”

  “Sure.”

  “Come on, Sadie. You don’t need to hang out in the supply room.”

  Sadie let out a squeaky meow of protest but followed Lauren out of the room. As did Caleb.

  Lauren paused to speak with a couple of people who were sitting at a table. Caleb wondered if he should just leave. That felt rude, but it wasn’t like he and Lauren were on great terms anyway.

  He approached her slowly and cleared his throat, not wanting to interrupt her conversation. She turned toward him and met his gaze but didn’t say anything. Her expression said, Oh, are you still here? Which, great. He felt so grateful to be appreciated.

  He sighed and said, “You’re welcome.”

  “Right. Thanks.”

  “Patients.” He pointed to the wall that separated the café from the vet clinic.

  “Of course. See you, Caleb.”

  He nodded, clearly dismissed, but paused at the doorway to try to figure out the puzzle of this particular establishment. Lauren spoke with a strawberry blond who smiled a lot and gestured toward her companion, a skinny guy with dark hair and tattoos. A diverse range of customers sat at tables or on sofas, chatting and petting the cats as if this were a totally normal thing to do. And maybe it was, but in their own houses. Why didn’t these people just get cats? If the great number of patients at the vet clinic were anything to go by, this neighborhood was pretty pet friendly.

  Caleb spared a thought for Hank the dog. He suspected Rachel was not really going out of her way to advertise that the dog was up for adoption, so he’d still be at the clinic at Caleb’s deadline. Caleb wasn’t really sure he wanted a dog in his apartment, although hadn’t he just reasoned to himself that if people really wanted cats, they should just adopt cats?

  Caleb shook his head and left the café.

  Chapter 6

  Monique frowned at Sadie, who was napping on the counter. The customers were gone for the day, but Monique said, “This seems unsanitary.”

  Lauren laughed. She walked over and picked all fifteen pounds of Sadie up. She got a squeaky little meow of protest, but Sadie turned around a few times and went back to sleep when Lauren placed her in the cat bed in the corner.

  “One of these days, the health department is going to shut this whole thing down,” Monique said, shaking her head.

  “I mean, technically, as long as the cats are separated from where we prepare and serve food, we’re okay. Or that’s what the fancy lawyer Diane hired said when she opened this place. I made an exception for Sadie, but if she gets into the food, we’ll force her to hang out with the other cats during business hours.” Lauren knelt and pet Sadie’s head. Sadie’s huge purr rolled out in response. “You’re a good girl, aren’t you, Sadie?”

  Monique laughed softly. Of all the baristas at the Cat Café, Monique was the one Lauren trusted the most. She’d been working at the café almost since the beginning, and Lauren wanted to promote her as soon as she could find enough money in the budget to pay for her raise.

  Monique was a tall, gorgeous black woman, with dark skin and an amazing collection of wigs. Lauren thought of her as Brooklyn personified: She’d been born and raised in the Caribbean part of Flatbush—her parents were Haitian immigrants—and she had the hard-consonant cadence of a Brooklyn accent. She spoke five languages—English, Spanish, French, Creole, and some Arabic—which came in handy with customers. She was smart and punctual, a model employee, probably overqualified to be a barista, and Lauren valued her ease with customers.

  After she finished cleaning the counter, Monique slung her bag over her shoulder and said, “I’m out. Hot date tonight.”

  “Have fun!”

  So Lauren was alone, closing down the café for the night when she got a text from Mitch, her old friend who ran a volunteer group that trapped and spayed or neutered feral cats in Brooklyn.

  I’ve got a box of kittens. Can I bring them to you?

  The Cat Café was close to capacity. Lauren had managed to adopt out a couple of cats that week to café patrons who had fallen in love but taking on any more at this stage would make things complicated.

  Sadie walked over and tapped the back of Lauren’s leg with her paw. It was like she was trying to say, “Hey, dummy, take the kittens. You know you want to.”

  “All right, all right,” Lauren said.

  Sure. Bring them to the café.

  Lauren sat near the counter and read a book while she waited. Mitch showed up a half hour later with a cardboard box in his hands. As Lauren let him in, she could hear little mews coming from the box.

  “Oh, these guys are tiny,” she said as she took the box from Mitch.

  Mitch looked around, probably taking in that the lights over the counter
and in the cat room had been turned off. “Did you have plans tonight? You were closing up, weren’t you? I’m such an asshole. I didn’t mean to just barge in. You want me to bring these to the clinic?”

  “No, no, this is fine.” She put the box down on the table she’d just been sitting at. “These look very young.” There were five kittens in the box who looked to be two or three weeks old. Not newborns, but still tiny and a little awkward. “They still need their mom.”

  “Well, mom took off. These guys were abandoned. Plus, we were thinking it might be better to rescue these babies before they became feral. Find good homes for them.”

  “I’m not sure kittens this young can live without a mom.”

  Mitch frowned. He did a little shuffle with his feet, almost bashful. “I’ve rescued cats this young who did okay. They need a little extra care, but they should be good to be adopted in a few weeks.”

  Sadie was alternately smelling Mitch’s shoes and looking up at the table. She hopped up on the chair and sniffed suspiciously. When one of the kittens mewed, Sadie looked startled.

  “I don’t know about this,” Lauren said. “They’ll have to be hand-fed, probably. I don’t know if we have the resources for that here. I’ve read about kittens this young but haven’t raised any on my own.”

  Mitch furrowed his brow. He was tall and broad, the sort of man who seemed to take up a lot of space, but he and Lauren had been friends long enough that she knew he was friendly, not at all threatening, as his size implied. Lauren didn’t know exactly how old he was, but she guessed mid-forties, with light brown hair that was thinning on top. Lauren suspected he had a bit of a crush on her, but she just didn’t see him that way.

  But now he was frowning down at the box of kittens.

  “I can ask next door for some bottles and…milk? Kitten formula? I don’t even know.” Lauren reached into the box and let one of the kittens nuzzle her hand. They each moved around with jerky kitten movements. “Can you tell if they are healthy?”

  “I mean, I think so? I’m not a vet.”