CATastrophe
Animal Instincts, Book 2
Chloe Kendrick
Copyright © 2014
Published by: Rascal Hearts
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Book Cover By: Rosy E. Fisher
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 1
“Mr. Fitzpatrick, there’s a cat following me.”
Granted I loved my job, but part of the downfall of running a business that talks to animals is that you have to deal with people who, how should I say it? – aren’t dealing with reality. I was afraid I had another one of those customers on the line at the moment.
“Exactly how does a cat follow you?” I asked. It was a slow morning, and I could use some amusement. In the first few weeks after I’d solved the Scotties mystery, I had received more calls than I could handle. However, as the weeks passed, the calls had slowed down and now I was reduced to actually listening to some of the odd people who decided they needed to communicate with an animal. Next I’d be inviting Jehovah’s Witnesses in to chat.
“I don’t know. That’s what I want you to find out. I just know that wherever I go there this cat is.” The man’s voice was clear and not in the least bit peculiar, but his statements were odd.
I tried not to smirk, but I was very glad that this was a phone conversation rather than a face-to-face meeting. My expressions would have lost me a client. “So how do you know that it’s the same cat? What does it look like?”
“It’s an orange and white tabby. It’s a bit overweight, and its tail is rather long. I noticed it for the first time about a week ago near my home.”
“And since then?”
“I’ve seen it probably ten times since then. I saw it near my work, outside a restaurant I was entering, and a few other places.”
I rolled my eyes. This was getting too far-fetched even for me. “Exactly how do you think that a cat gets from one place to another. It’s not like it can drive.” For a moment, I got lost in my own memories, trying to remember the name of that cat from Saturday Night Live that could drive.
When I came out of my thoughts, he’d gone on without me. “It’s not a major harm since he’s outside, but I don’t want him in the house with me.”
“Are you sure it’s a him?” I asked, wondering how close this cat had been to him. Determining a cat’s gender is not the easiest thing to do, even if you’re holding the cat.
“No,” he said with an exasperated tone of voice. I decided to dial back my amusement somewhat. This could be a paying client. “I just assumed that it’s a him.”
I decided to let that statement go without further questions. “Any identifying marks on the cat? Scars, collars, bells?”
The man cleared his throat. “The cat doesn’t wear a collar. It was one of the first things I noticed about him. It’s harder to identify a cat with no collar.”
“Fine, so what exactly are you looking for here? You mentioned identifying the cat. Do you want this to stop or would you like me to talk to the cat and find out what is going on here?” I had my best client manners on now, since he at least seemed rational.
“I want you to follow me for a few days and prove what I’m talking about. When I’ve mentioned it to others, they act like I’m crazy. I’m not. There’s a cat that’s following me, and I want to understand why.”
So that’s why the following day I was sitting on the corner of Adams and Superior in downtown Toledo, waiting for a cat. Just to make me look like a real PI, I took a copy of the Toledo Blade to hide behind. I figured that since I was tailing a cat, I wouldn’t have to work as hard on not being spotted.
I wasn’t cut out to be a private investigator, and while I’d solved a few crimes through my business, I wasn’t officially licensed. However, a few times, I had observed enough about a pet to recognize abuse or other factors that needed to be reported to the police. I tried to keep my interactions with the police to a minimum for many reasons, and not wanting to be fined for operating without a PI license was just one of the minor reasons.
The client, whose name was James Miller, was running errands today. He was hard to miss. He was built like a pipe-cleaner, tall with a narrow chest and long arms and legs. Though I know I shouldn’t talk about fashion, he did nothing to wear clothes that flattered him. He wore long, baggy clothes that seemed only to accentuate his length. His black hair was uncovered, and I could easily follow him on foot.
He’d kindly provided me with a list of errands and the approximate amount of time at each location. Besides that, he’d offered me very little information about himself. I had an address for billing purposes, but he hadn’t shared any reasons why he might be concerned about a cat following him or even why he’d noticed the cat.
The list of errands helped. I might be considered a man who talks to pets, but I was not the best PI in the world. I saw no reason to waste energy following his every footstep when I could just as easily ask him where he was going.
I sat there for 20 minutes and nothing happened. No cats, no dogs. There were a few birds that flew through the crowded streets of downtown, but I was pretty sure that Miller could tell the difference between a cat and a bird. I was being paid for my time, so I didn’t much care about the situation.
I followed him for the next three hours, waiting outside of whatever business he visited. At each location, I saw nothing of a cat. I also didn’t see signs of anyone following him. I took a variety of photos, showing him without any tail whatsoever – except for me.
I did notice a few feral cats at some of the locations. I snapped some shots of them as best as I could, but feral cats aren’t known for being cooperative. I saw a variety of grays and browns, but none of the orange tabbies that he suggested he’d seen. I felt sorry for the cats who had been left out here to fend for themselves. People are not the nicest creatures on our planet.
I thought that maybe some of the charities that capture, treat and release these cats might be of help, if I didn’t spot this cat today. I wasn’t sure how to find a particular cat based only on a vague description if the cat didn’t have any identifying marks and no collar. The lack of collar was concerning, given that at any given moment a cat could run away, especially if left out on the street alone or without immediate companionship. I was assuming that no human was following Miller, because that would have been much more noticeable than an orange tabby. So without an owner, the cat was on its own.
By 3pm, two things were obvious. The first was that I wasn’t cut out to tail people. I lost Miller twice on the roadways, and I only found him because I knew where he was going. The second was that no cat had as much as turned around to look at Miller today. Given that I’d absolutely no luck with it, I decided to call this client tonight to see what was up. While I didn’t mind making a full day’s wages doing nothing, I also didn’t want to be known for taking clients’ money under false pretenses.
Miller wasn’t home when I originally called, so I left a message telling me about my lack of success and asked him to call me back. In the meantime, I tried to come up with some logical next steps for finding a cat in a haystack.
I knew a downtown business that worked to improve the lives of fer
al cats. I’d gone to a fundraiser at one point for the organization when I was trying to promote my business. I hadn’t picked up any new clients, but I’d learned quite a bit about the feral cat problem in Toledo.
The United States has over 70 million feral cats, mostly from strays or abandoned cats. Of course, with the abandoned cats, their previous owners were not responsible enough to spay or neuter them. This means that one cat quickly becomes a family and soon after that a problem. These cats aren’t used to humans, so their reactions are the typical fight or flight reactions. In most cases, they’ll run away, but some will stay and fight, especially if kittens are involved.
Wild About Cats, the Toledo business, uses a capture-neuter-release approach, which does pretty much what the name suggests. Rather than try to retrain a cat to like people, they allow the cat to return to its life, but without the ability to reproduce. The population is controlled, but never eradicated with this method.
I decided to pay them a visit, rather than call. I had some odd questions, and I felt like I’d be taken more seriously in person than over the phone. Even though I don’t take a lot of time on my appearance, I thought I was clean and respectable this morning.
The nameplate in front of the secretary read “Betty Brown.” She looked familiar as though I might have seen her before, perhaps at the fundraiser. She was on the phone with three different calls at the same time, and I just stood there and marveled at her ability to juggle the phone in this manner.
When she’d finished those calls, she turned her attention to me. “What can I help you with today?” she said with a broad smile that appeared to be totally insincere.
“I’d like to talk to someone about feral cats.” I tried to give her a better smile in return, but I wasn’t sure if I succeeded.
“Can you be a bit more specific? Our entire operation is about feral cats,” she queried, putting her thumb and forefinger together to show me how much more specific I needed to be. I gathered it was a lot more specific than I’d been.
“Certainly. I’m looking for a very specific feral cat. I’m wondering if you’ve caught and released any orange tabbies lately. It may belong to someone I know,” I added, stretching the truth only slightly.
“That will be our records department.” Betty Brown hesitated, picked up the phone, and dialed a few numbers. She waited and then told someone that I was interested in finding out about orange tabbies.
The man who came out of the back of the offices was nothing like I had expected. I’d honestly expected another woman of a certain age with time on her hands now that her children had left. The man who came out of the back offices was nothing like that. He was younger than I was with a crisp dress shirt that pulled at the seams. He was brawny and his arms hung out from his body, curved away slightly as if they’d grown too large to fall down at his sides.
He stuck out a hand and gave me a firm handshake. “My name is Ben Brown. Nice to meet you.”
I was willing to bet that this was Betty’s son, perhaps a child who had come home from college and not been able to find a job. What better way to pad the resume than to volunteer time and work with your mother.
I shook his hand. “Great to meet you.”
“You’re looking for records about an orange tabby who may have been captured and released? We’ve got a few. If you come back with me, I’ll show you the records we have.” He motioned to me, and I followed him back to the door where he’d come from. The office inside the doorway was pleasant in that generic office way. Metal desks, uncomfortable chairs, and a neutral wall color.
He motioned me to a seat beside his desk, and I sat down. He started clicking on his computer and within a few seconds, he’d turned his screen towards me. “Do any of these look like the cat you’re interested in?”
To be honest, much as I like cats, they all looked alike. Orange cats. I tried to look like I knew what I was doing, but I hadn’t a clue. Miller had indicated that the tail was very long, but none of these photos included the tail. So I had no way of telling which one was the cat that my client thought was following him. This idea had definitely been better in the conception than the execution.
“The photos are a bit small,” I said truthfully. “Could you print these out, and I can take a closer look at them later?”
The man nodded. “I can even make the photos slightly larger when they print,” he offered helpfully.
The pages slid out of the laser printer, and he rolled over to the printer, still in his chair. “Here you are,” he said, handing over the papers. “What exactly are you looking for here?”
I cleared my throat to give me a chance to think. Maybe I hadn’t done my homework before coming here, but that was nothing that a few well-placed lies couldn’t fix. “My client is looking for a particular orange tabby. He’s attached to that cat, and he’s hoping to locate it. He thought he saw it following him downtown. I thought that you might have some information on the cat.”
The man rolled his eyes. “Let me get this straight. He’s looking for a housecat and thought about coming here. The cats here are typically second and third-generation street cats. There’s nothing nice about them. You can tell a lost cat quickly, because most of them are more than willing to get fed and patted. I’d be willing to bet that every cat I printed out for you is genuinely feral.”
I gave him a small smile. “You know how cat owners are. They hold out for even the smallest hope that they can find their lost cat.” I thought of my own cat, The Duchess, who I’d found as a stray, but she had been a princess at her previous owner’s home, and she never let me forget it. There was no question that she was used to the good life. She’d gladly taken up residence at my home without the slightest inclination of ever leaving again.
“Secondly, cats don’t follow people. They’d lose interest too quickly.”
This was the articulation of what I had been thinking. Dogs would run after an owner. Cats would expect the owner to come running to them instead. “Can you think of any reason why a cat would follow along behind a person if they weren’t following him?”
The man laughed this time. “Only if he had a dead mouse or catnip in his pocket. I don’t suppose that happened, did it?”
Honestly, I didn’t know, but it certainly gave me another lead to follow. If the man was truly being followed by a cat, it was because the cat wanted something that the man had on his person. I thanked the man and left with my photo gallery of cats. I had some leads now, and I was going to make use of today to run them down.
James Miller was due for a haircut around 1pm, and I decided to head him off at the pass. I stopped by the salon he’d written down, but he’d already finished and gone on to his next errand, which was a laundromat.
The laundromat was a self-service selection of washer and dryers that looked like they’d been new in the 1950s, though I did notice that the prices had been maintained even if the equipment had not. James was there in his baggie clothing, sitting and reading a magazine while he waited.
I cursed my luck. While I didn’t have a lot to go on at the moment, I’d hoped to sniff some of his clothes to see if there had been any lure in his clothing that would have attracted cats. Most pets either have to be trained to walk along with someone or the human has something they want. As the man from Wild About Cats had pointed out, training a cat to walk with someone is nearly impossible. The most likely source for following would be the smell of something that the cat would want.
However, the problem that I ran up against here, besides the fact that all my potential evidence was in the spin cycle, was why would only one cat want to follow him if that were truly the case? Wouldn’t tens or even hundreds of cats smell and want catnip or any other treat that might have been smeared on Miller? The odds of one particular cat following him were slim to none.
Of course, I was neglecting the most obvious choice which was that he was just bat-shit crazy. However, standing there, doing his laundry, he looked quite sane. Or what I ima
gine sane to look like. I wasn’t a good judge of what normal people looked like.
My own family hadn’t left me with many role models in terms of normal. My sister had disappeared from our home, our city, and our lives one day years ago, and the impact that it had on our family was permanent. There had been a statewide search for my sister, Susan, and all the publicity that a search like that entails.
They’d never found her, and the effect on my family had twisted each of us in our own way. My mother never left her house except on the more dire conditions. To her the outside world is to be feared and avoided at all costs. My father drank himself to an early death, and my remaining brother left home, never looking back. As for me, I found ways to make myself less visible in public.
I don’t dress stylishly or even well. I keep my grass tallish, and I allow my house to look a little worn down. Susan had been the type of beauty who had immediately attracted the attention of everyone, a fact that I felt made her an easy target for kidnappers. I vowed that would never happen to me. I would never be the center of attention. I wanted to be the opposite of Susan to keep me safe and protected. It worked for the most part, but with my new profession of talking to animals, I had to put myself out there.
So I could understand a man who didn’t bother to care what he looked like or how good it made him look to others. I had to wonder how others perceived me. I had begun to think more about that after meeting Detective Sheila Green, who had worked with me, and sometimes against me, in a previous case. She’d flirted with me, at one point telling me that I’d be cute if I cleaned myself up more. It had made me wonder if my camouflage was effective or if it made me stand out more against others.
The last time I’d worked with the police, I’d ended up in a situation where my hair, which I kept unfashionably long, had been cut. Now I was sporting what could pass for a regular hairstyle, but given the circumstances, Green never commented on its effect on my appearance.
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