by K. J. Emrick
"No," he muttered. "Not a good dog thing. Butch is bad dog."
Twist looked up at me where I sat in the branches, and winked.
"What are you doing?" I called down to her, still wondering if I should jump on Butch's head just in case…
She shushed me with a little hissing whisper. Then she turned back to Butch. "Now, what do you say to Smudge?"
The dog shook his head briskly, his jowls flapping. He didn't want to.
"Come on," Twist prompted. "What do we say?"
Whining, the dog sort of looked up at me. "Sorry. Butch bad dog."
"Oh yeah, you are."
"Smudge!" Twist scolded me. "You're not a bad dog, Butch. You're a good dog. You just get…excited sometimes."
"Squeaky toy," Butch lamented with a bob of his head.
"Right." She came closer to the dog, no fear at all. "Didn't Smudge promise you a new one?"
That seemed to make Butch brighten. His ears perked up a little. "New toy?"
She purred at him. "That's the spirit. We'll get you a new toy. A nice rubber bone to chew on. Hmm? How does that sound? Sound good? Yes it does. Yes it does. Who's a good dog? Who's a good dog?"
Butch got more and more animated with every word Twist said in that sing-song voice, jumping up on his feet and bouncing and letting his tongue loll out of his mouth.
"Okay, go home now, Butch. Go home. Good dog," she said as Butch turned in a few circles and then bounded away, back the direction he'd chased me from. "Good dog!"
I looked down at her in amazement. Did that really just happen?
She turns her crystal blue eyes on me, a look of complete innocence in them. "What?"
"Are you insane?" I ask her. "That dog is a killer."
"Not every dog is bad, you know."
I can't believe she just said that. "Yes, they are."
"Not all of them."
"Yes," I repeat, "they are."
She shakes her head at me, like she thinks there's a lot I don't know. But then she smiles at me with her eyes and I couldn’t care less what I don't know. I know she loves me. That's enough.
"You know," she says, "you could come down from that tree now."
"Oh. Right." I stand up, balancing on the branch, ready to jump down, but then I stop. My tail twitches mischievously. "Wait. What's in it for me?"
"A job," she answers.
"Um. Not what I had in mind."
"Someone needs your help Smudge." She starts pacing, and just from the way she moves I can tell this is serious. "I have a job for you to do."
"Okay," I say, still holding out, "but I don't think that's going to be enough to get me out of this nice, comfortable tree." The branch under my feet sways in a sudden wind and I snick my claws in to hold on. I actually wouldn't mind getting out of here right now, but there's something else I want, too.
She laughs at my antics, the sound of a soft sigh. "Fine. If you come down, there might be a kiss in it for you."
Good enough for me.
***
"I'm not sure about this."
"But you're going to do it," Twistypaws says to me with that little smile in her shimmering blue eyes. "Right?"
I really should say no. I don't, but it isn't because I don't want to. "I'll do it. Only because it's you asking."
She nuzzles her nose against the side of my neck. "Thanks, Smudge."
It's already worth it. Almost.
"I don't like mice," I tell her, for the fifth time.
"And mice don't like you," she answers, for the fifth time. "Jocko's not a mouse. He's a guinea pig."
"Same thing."
"Smudge!"
We're heading down the sidewalk in one of the nicer areas of Misty Hollow. It's a street right off Main Street, not far from the Town Hall. Nice houses painted white and brown with carefully manicured lawns and a few shade trees planted along picket fences. Nice area. Darcy and I live just a little outside of the town center where it's more private. I prefer that, but I can see how people would like this, too.
"I don't understand what kind of help a guinea pig could need," I point out. A big, black bird soars by overhead. Corvin the crow, out looking for food or shiny things, no doubt. As long as he stays away from me. I'm going to have my hands full today as it is with a rat, er, guinea pig. "I mean, they live in a cage, right?"
She flicked me with her tail. "It's not Jocko who needs your help. He thinks the little girl in the house is in trouble."
"That doesn't exactly tell me a lot," I grumble.
We stop now in front of a house that looks pretty much like all the other ones on the street. One story, detached garage, a chimney of red bricks sticking up over the roof on the back side. There's no pet door in the front entrance, and the windows are all closed up tight as the days got cooler heading toward winter. I usually like winter as there’s more time to sleep.
Winter. That reminds me of how Darcy's new boyfriend Jon has invaded our house. I bristle when I think of how he calls her his “Sweet Baby.” He thinks he's being cute. I scowl just thinking about it. Who is he to rename Darcy? Or take my side of the bed or use the food out of our refrigerator or…
"Smudge, you okay?" Twist asks me.
I turn away a little, embarrassed that my feelings towards the new man in Darcy's life had been so obvious. "Uh, yeah. I was just wondering how we're supposed to get in."
She studies me for a moment longer, obviously not convinced that was all I was thinking about, but then walks across the lawn with a flick of her ear. "Follow me."
I've told Twist about the great Jon Tinker, of course, so she knows what I'm dealing with. I haven't told her how much I'd like to claw the man's ankles. I don't want her to think any less of me. Maybe I just need to deal with it and accept he's going to be part of our lives now.
Well. One problem at a time.
Twist leads us around to a small fenced-in back yard. The grass back here hasn't gotten the attention that the front yard has. It was up to our bellies already and the weeds were starting to take over. A push mower stood off to one side, abandoned and forgotten. The people who live here obviously didn't have time to keep up with their chores.
Twist calls to me from the back steps. They're those fiberglass ones made to look like poured concrete. A gap between where they sit and the wall of the house allows her to slip behind them, into the hollow cavity under the steps, and when I follow her I find a small, rectangular cellar window that has been carelessly left open from the inside. Without a cat's eye view, no one would even know it's here.
"Sneaky," I tell her.
She crosses her front paws and locks her eyes on mine. "I'm a sneaky girl."
Then she jumps through the window, her tail flicking across my face. Not for the first time, she fills my senses. She's the kind of cat a guy would follow anywhere.
This is a low basement space that she's led us into, carpeted and furnished like a spare room. Twist finds the stairs at the other end and up we go into the main part of the house. I hang back, wary and alert. "What about the people who live here?" I ask in a whisper.
"Just Jocko's owner. A little girl named Heidi. She lives with her mother but the mother is at work during the day. Heidi's in school. It's just us."
"Oh." Obviously, Twist has done her homework on this. I'm kind of proud of her. I couldn't have done better myself.
Down the hall are the bedrooms. Twist leads us to the one on the left. It's tiny, as human bedrooms go, with walls painted purple and pink. Glow-in-the-dark stars are stuck on the ceiling. The single bed has a princess themed comforter piled in a heap on it. Teddy bears and other stuffed animals crowded around the pillow. Definitely a little girl's room.
On a dresser near the bed sits a long cage, squares of white wire forming a rectangular cube on a green plastic tray. A blue igloo looking thing sits in a corner of the cage. Next to the cage is a framed photo of a little girl holding a pair of fluffy, squirming guinea pigs. The girl is young, wearing brown hair in pigtails
, her face pretty but chubby, with freckles across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.
As me and Twist jump up onto the bed, I can see that inside the igloo is a brown, furry mound of hair. We wait for the space of a few heartbeats, but the resident of the igloo doesn't come out.
"Jocko?" Twist meows softly.
"Gah!" the guinea pig cries out, jumping and making his igloo home bounce sideways. Its voice is high-pitched and warbly. "Who is it? Who's there?"
The little critter's butt was sticking out of the entryway to his home, plump cheeks shaking and twitching. The tang of feces and urine stung my nose and made me sneeze. That's one of the big differences between cats and rodents. Cats keep their boxes clean. Or we do our business outdoors and bury it. A rodent is content to live where it messes.
I know. Disgusting, right?
"Jocko," Twist says soothingly. "It's me. It's Twistypaws. I came back with help. Just like a promised."
"Oh! Twistypaws. You're here. Are you here? Where are you? I can't see you!"
Jocko was talking at such a rapid speed, so full of nervous energy, that my head was starting to hurt just standing there listening to him. "Maybe if you turned around," I suggest, "you could see her better."
"Aaaaah!" he screeched, jumping around again, this way and that way, up and down and up again, the igloo jouncing with him. "Who is that? Who's here? Twistypaws! Where are you?"
Finally, the igloo tipped over onto its side. That's when Jocko spun around to find us watching him. "Oh! Twistypaws! Thank my lucky pellets you're here! Who's this? Who is that! Who is he?"
"Well, this is fun," I remarked.
Twist growled at me with narrowed eyes before looking back up at Jocko. He was pressed against the side of his cage now, one eye staring out at us. "Jocko," she said in that same calm voice as before. "This is Smudge. He's my friend. He's here to help you."
"Help me? Help me? How? How can he help me? He can't help me! He's a cat! How can he help me?"
"I could eat you," I mumbled.
Twist hissed at me, but I thought it was funny.
"I need your help!" Jocko shouted now, apparently forgetting that not five seconds ago he told me I couldn't help because I was a cat. "You gotta help my human. Help Heidi! Help her, please please please!"
I looked at Twist. She nodded from me to Jocko. I sighed. If it hadn't been her asking me to do this…
"So, Jocko," I said with more enthusiasm than I felt, "what exactly is the problem? What help does Heidi need?"
"Someone's going to steal her!"
Steal her? Okay, I have to admit that got my attention.
"Steal her away from me," Jocko whined. "Please oh please oh please help her!"
"Whoa, slow down there, mouse boy," I said to him, ignoring the nasty look that Twist gave me. "How could anyone steal her? Why would anyone steal her?"
"They did it once already!" he insisted, jumping up and down in place, his little ears twitching fitfully. "They stole Balleratina! Stole her right from this room!"
"What's a…bawling Tina?"
"Balleratina! She was my friend!" Jocko's voice rose an octave. "She was the other guinea pig who lived here. Right here, in this cage! With me! She lived here with me, and now she's gone!"
***
I tried to explain to Jocko that sometimes pets get taken away, for a lot of reasons. People can be pretty careless when it comes to an unwanted pet. They're here one day, gone the next. But that wasn't what happened, according to him. According to him, Heidi and her mother had both spent days searching the house for Balleratina, and Heidi had cried herself to sleep for a week straight. I had to admit, that didn't sound like your normal pet disappearance.
Then Jocko told me that other things were gone from the house, too. Some of Heidi's favorite toys. Pictures. Ellie the stuffed elephant. All gone. "Gone gone gone!" Jocko had wept.
It sounded like a real mystery to me.
What was worse, Jocko had the burning fear that whoever was stealing things from Heidi's home was going to come back and steal Heidi. We tried to calm him down, but he was so sure that even I started to believe it.
And then I thought it through, and I really did believe it. Heidi's pet. Heidi's toys. Heidi's favorite pictures. Whoever was stealing from the home, they were taking everything that was Heidi's. Why shouldn't Heidi be next on the list?
So. Let's assume the fluffy mouse is telling the truth. I need to find out who is doing this before a little girl gets kidnapped.
Yes, that's right. The cat is going to save the day. Well. With a little help.
Back at my house, I find Darcy in the kitchen, bowls and utensils spread out across the counter, water boiling in a pot on the stove. What is she doing? She hardly ever cooks. She looks nervous, too.
Jumping up onto the counter next to her, I find myself sitting in the middle of a cook book. Interesting. I stare at Darcy, waiting for her to give me her full attention.
“Smudge you’re making me even more nervous," she said instead, absently waving at me as she stirs one of the pots. "Shoo.”
Shoo? Seriously? I will not shoo. I need her help, and I'm not going anywhere until she at least looks at me so that I can make her follow me over to Heidi's house and somehow get her to understand what—
The phone rang and Darcy jumped to go answer it. Oh, sure. The phone gets her attention, but I don't?
"Saved by the bell, eh Smudge?" She picks up the receiver and says hello, and I flick my tail in annoyance when I hear what she says next. "Jon, so help me, if you’re backing out of this dinner I may have to disown you.”
The great Jon Tinker himself. She keeps talking to him and I finally get the picture. She and Mister Wonderful have a date. I'm not going to get Darcy's help tonight.
I'm on my own.
Jumping down off the counter, I shake my head sadly. This boyfriend of hers is beginning to seriously cut into our relationship.
I slip out into the late afternoon sunlight, wondering if I'll ever be able to accept Jon Tinker being in Darcy's life. I suppose. Maybe. For Darcy's sake. I mean, she'd do the same for me.
***
"So, just you and me?" Twist asked me.
I'd found her again sitting outside of Heidi's house, across the street behind a tree. Pretty good cover. Of course I found her easily enough, so she wasn't exactly hidden. Then again, whoever was doing this to Jocko and his family was most likely a human being, a person, and people generally ignore cats. If they do see us, they don't pay us any attention. What can a cat do, right?
Plenty. That's what.
"Yes, just us two." I tried to sound cheerful about it. "So. What did I miss?"
"Not much," she told me. "The mother came home with Heidi while you were gone. Wouldn't let Heidi out of her sight. Held her hand the whole way in and kept looking around like she was expecting a rabid dog to jump out and attack them. She's very protective of her daughter."
"I think she has every right to be."
I told Twistypaws what I had figured out, about how it was only Heidi's things being taken and what that might mean for Heidi. We were sitting very close while I talked to her, trying to be very quiet, and it became harder and harder to get through my story because her nose would touch mine and then our tails would slide across each other and suddenly we were nuzzling each other and she was purring in that way that always drove me crazy…
"Stop that," I say to her, with no real desire for her to stop anything.
"What's the matter?" she says teasingly. "Can't do two things at once?"
"Try me."
I kind of surprise myself with my boldness. It wasn't all that long ago that Twist wouldn't give me the time of day around town. It took a while for her to warm up to me. Saving her owner from a scam that would have stolen his house out from under the two of them really helped, and the rest was all effort and hard work. Just like with any relationship.
Kind of like Darcy trying to cook a meal for Jon Tinker when she usually just or
ders take out.
Okay, fine, I get the point. Twist gave me a chance, so I should give Jon a chance. Whatever.
My point is, now that Twist has warmed up to me, I enjoy having that heat in my life.
She rubs her face along mine one last time—the cat equivalent of a kiss—and then steps back from me. Just a little. I have the greatest urge to bite her neck and roll around like kittens, but now isn't the time. Probably. Maybe? I guess I wouldn't know until I tried, right?
Just as that thought is gaining momentum I hear Twistypaws gasp. "What?" I say, a guilty twitch running down my spine. "I wasn't…"
"Shh," she hisses. "Look!"
I do, and what I see is a dark shadow slinking around the back of the house. A man. A large man, with hands the size of, well, me. I can't see anything else about him other than how big the bottom of his feet are.
Did I mention this guy is big?
"He's going around back!" Twist nearly shouts, forgetting that we were supposed to be hiding. "Is he going to break in? Steal Heidi?" The way she asks that makes it clear that even she hadn't really believed Jocko. Not until now.
I suppose the guy could be a pizza delivery man or one of those people who go around staring at those electronic boxes on the outside of a house. I mean, anything is possible, right? But I really doubt this guy is delivering pizza.
"Okay, here's the plan," I start to tell Twistypaws.
She doesn't wait to hear it. Off across the street she runs, heading straight for Heidi's house.
Just one of the reasons I love her, I guess.
I bolt after her just as quick as I can, but she still disappears around the back before I get to her, trailing after the hulking shadow we had seen moving between the garage and the house. Concern for her makes me pour on more speed and as I come around the corner I nearly ram head first into her back legs. I dig my feet in and tumble sideways, sailing past her in an uncontrolled slide in the grass.