Rise of ZomBert

by Kara LaReau

  Even though I had to get some cat books, I don’t need an excuse to go to the library. I like being around all the books, even the big display they have at the front featuring Stuart Yumm’s autobiography (Yumm Luck) and his book of business advice (Yumm Sense) and a cookbook by his daughter, Yolanda (Yumm in Your Tumm). I like the way library books smell: old and a little musty. And I really like the librarian in the children’s room, Ms. Michiko. She knows just about everything about everything. And she always wears interesting earrings in the shapes of books or shoes or animals. That day she was actually wearing cat earrings. I took that as a sign.

  “Cats were considered sacred in some ancient societies,” Ms. Michiko informed us after I told her what I needed. “In Egypt, some cats were mummified after death, just like humans.”

  “Mummified?” Danny said. “Cool!”

  “The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that when a cat died, its human family would often shave their eyebrows in mourning,” Ms. Michiko added.

  I nodded. I was glad I didn’t live in an ancient society. I’d look pretty weird without eyebrows.

  She walked us over to the shelves filled with animal books. “Most of the cat books are out on loan right now. But it looks like we have three available.”

  Those three turned out to be The Kids Book of Kitties, Fearless Felines, and The Cat Book. The first one was too babyish, and the second one was just pictures of cats playing the piano or riding on dogs. So we had to settle for The Cat Book.

  Bert was still under my bed when we got home.

  “It looks like he drank some water,” Danny noted, inspecting the bowl as I set up Bert’s litter box in my closet.

  “Well, hopefully he’ll eat some of this food,” I said. “If not, I just wasted all the money in my microscope fund.”

  For months, I’d been saving for a real, laboratory-grade microscope I saw in the latest KidScience! catalog. It had glass optics and dual LED illumination and everything, and it came with slides and forceps and test tubes, and even a petri dish, perfect for all the diseases I was hoping to cure. Unfortunately, it turned out cat food was expensive, especially the good kind that had actual meat in it.

  I scooped the contents of a can of YummCo Organic Kitty Superfood onto a dish and gently pushed it under the bed. It didn’t smell very good, but maybe that’s because I wasn’t a cat. Bert looked down at the dish, then looked back at me and Danny.

  “Bon appétit,” I said.

  Danny took out his phone and started filming.

  “Cut it out,” I said.

  “What?” Danny asked. “A mutant cat is just what my movie needs.”

  “We should give him some privacy,” I suggested. My parents were always trying to film me when I ate, and I didn’t like it one bit.

  “Well, what do you want to do now?” Danny asked, putting his phone away. “We could go to the woods and do some more filming for Gone Ghoul, or hang out at my house.”

  “I think I’m just going to stay here and read,” I said. “And hang out with Bert.”

  “Okay,” Danny said. He pulled a stack of books and comics out of his backpack and flopped down on the purple beanbag. When you’re really good friends like me and Danny, each person is cool with whatever the other one wants to do, even if it means not really doing anything.

  While Danny read The Filmmaker’s Eye and Making Monster Movies, I spent the afternoon reading The Cat Book. It was actually pretty interesting; among other things, I learned that cats have a layer of cells behind their retinas that help them see at night, and that they have better hearing than dogs.

  I paid special attention to the chapter on cat health. Healthy cats are supposed to have bright eyes and shiny fur; Bert’s eyes were definitely bright, but the fur he did have was pretty . . . mangy. Was he sick?

  I looked under the bed; Bert was still there, and so was his YummCo Organic Kitty Superfood. He hadn’t eaten a bite.

  “Come on, cat,” I said. “You must be starving.”

  “Maybe you need to take a bite, to show him how good it is,” Danny said.

  I pulled the plate out from under the bed. The food didn’t look pink anymore; it was grayish and lumpy. And it didn’t smell any better.

  “No way,” I said. “Eating cat food is where I draw the line.”

  Instead, I pretended to eat it. I raised the plate to my mouth and smacked my lips.

  “Mmmmm, YummCo Organic Kitty Superfood,” I said. “It’s YummCo-yum-yum-yum!”

  Bert just stared at me.

  “‘YummCo-yum-yum-yum’?” Danny raised an eyebrow. “You sound like the commercial.”

  “Ha-ha,” I said.

  “Mellie! Dinner!” my father called.

  “I should go anyway,” Danny said, checking his phone. “My mom just texted to remind me that Sunday is pizza night, and I don’t want to miss it.”

  Danny and his mom ordered takeout just about every other day, and on the days they didn’t, they ate leftovers. Whenever I asked my parents if we could get takeout, my mom always said, “No one wants to see us blog about takeout,” and my dad said, “What? You don’t like my cooking?”

  That night, my dad made salmon with some kind of mustard and a bunch of herbs on top. I still had the aroma of that smelly cat food stuck in my nose, so I wasn’t very hungry. Dad also made peas and this thing where he blends garlic and cauliflower and beans together and it tastes just like mashed potatoes, so I ate that. Thankfully, it even tasted good cold, which is what it was after my mother finished photographing it.

  “So, what did you and Danny do today?” my father asked.

  “Not much,” I said, shoveling in a big forkful of garlic-cauliflower-beans so I wouldn’t have to answer any more questions. I was anxious to get back upstairs to The Cat Book and to Bert.

  “Did you do any filming for Danny’s new movie?” my mom asked.

  But before I could respond, Emmett and Ezra started a contest to see who could fit the most peas in his mouth, which ended with both of them laughing and dribbling peas everywhere. I had to admit, it was pretty adorable.

  “Oh, this will make a perfect blog post!” my mother exclaimed as my father captured the whole thing on video. “We can call it ‘Peas, Love, and Understanding’!”

  “Open your mouth wider, Emmett,” my father said. “Look at Daddy, Ezra! Say peas!”

  “Peas! Peas!” Ezra yelled, clapping his hands.

  As soon as they started in with their production, I could feel myself fading into the background, as usual. They were too distracted to notice when I excused myself and went back upstairs.

  Before I knew it, it was bedtime, and I had finished The Cat Book. I put my pajamas on and brushed my teeth and called down “good night” to my parents, who were busy editing the peas video. Then I checked the plate of cat food one more time. Bert still hadn’t eaten any of it. I pulled the basket out from under my bed to get a better look at him.

  At first I thought he’d changed color, because he looked white . . . and fluffy. Then I saw all the animal heads around him.

  “Aaa —!” I screamed, clamping a hand over my mouth so my parents wouldn’t hear me.

  Then I realized they weren’t real animal heads. They were the heads of all of my stuffed animals, which he had bitten off. Bert still had one in his mouth, the head of a little stuffed chick.

  “Mr. Peepers!” I cried. I managed to get the chick’s head out of Bert’s mouth and found the remains of the body. It was a good thing I knew how to sew.

  “Mroooow.”

  “You’re obviously hungry,” I said. “Why won’t you eat?”

  “Mroooow.”

  “Are you sick?” I asked. The Cat Book said that cats can have all sorts of health problems if they don’t get enough regular protein.

  Then I had an idea. I brought the plate of cat food downstairs; I didn’t even have to sneak it, since my parents were too preoccupied to notice. I scraped it into the trash and got some leftover salmon out of the
fridge. I wiped off most of the mustard and herbs and put it on the plate.

  “Okay,” I said, sliding it under the bed. “If you won’t eat this, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  Bert opened his mouth a little and made a sniffing sound. I wondered if he was using his vomeronasal organ, which The Cat Book said was on the roof of a cat’s mouth and helped process smells. Finally, he gave the salmon a tiny nibble.

  “Mroooooooooooow.”

  And then Bert actually pushed the plate away with his paw.

  “Ugh!” I threw up my hands. “I give up!”

  “Mroooow. Mroooow. Mroooow.”

  Bert pulled himself out from under the bed. Slowly, he went to my bedroom window. He leaned against the glass.

  “You want out?” I said. “But I thought we were just starting to get to know each other. Do you really want to go already?”

  He didn’t even look at me; he just kept leaning.

  “Okay,” I said, sighing. I barely opened the window when Bert pushed his skinny body through it and disappeared into the darkness. I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye.

  He’d never had a name before, when he was free, before he was brought to the lab. There, they’d called him Y-91, but that was just the name of his cage. The girl called him Bert. He wasn’t sure about the name, but the girl seemed like someone he could trust. She smelled like dirt and grass and a little like eggs, which was probably something she ate that day. He liked eggs, and the birds they came from.

  He was in the woods, down by the river, where he could sense all sorts of delicious creatures lived. It was dark now, which was just the way he liked it when he hunted. But he was still so weak. He couldn’t run the way he used to, so he just stayed very, very still. Something would cross his path soon, he hoped.

  And then he heard a burbling from the water, followed by a rustling of leaves. It drew closer, and he could smell it, green and boggy, like the pond it came from. He could hear its heart beating and its low croaking as it situated itself on a log, and the thwack of its tongue as it began feasting on some flies. He could see it there, small and slimy, its eyes bulging and blinking and unaware of the predator, however weakened, in its midst.

  Soon, he would taste it. Oh, how he missed that first crunch, which was always the sweetest. The head, in particular, had always been his favorite.

  When I woke up the next morning, the first thing I saw was the stack of cat food cans I’d bought, and the plate with Bert’s dinner on it, still uneaten. And I saw what he’d done to Mr. Peepers and all my other beloved, now-headless toys.

  I really liked taking care of Bert, bathing him and buying him good food and giving him a warm place to sleep, and reading up on cats. I thought Bert liked me, the way he’d leaned against me and purred. I thought we might have been on our way to becoming friends. So when he’d run out so quickly the night before, I was sad.

  But that morning, I was angry. What a waste of my time, I thought. Not to mention my money. I’d spent everything in my piggy bank on that food and the litter and the litter box, when I could have kept saving for that awesome microscope. And maybe it wasn’t Bert’s fault that I’d lost the receipt from the pet store, but I wouldn’t have needed the receipt if he’d been less picky about his meals. He was an ungrateful cat, I decided, as I finished the last bite of the once-warm French toast my dad made for breakfast (which my mom filmed with the twins wearing berets and singing “Frère Jacques”). If I was going to have a pet, it would have to appreciate me.

  If I could find the pet store receipt, I was going to go back and get myself a goldfish. That was my final thought as I walked out the back door on my way to school. That’s when I saw the frog.

  At least, I was pretty sure it was a frog. It was green and slimy, and it had webbed feet. But it didn’t have a frog’s head. In fact, it didn’t have any head at all.

  “Gaaaah!” I said, taking a step back. This was definitely not a stuffed animal. It was the real thing.

  “Mroooow.”

  Bert was sitting under the rhododendron bush in the back corner of the yard. He was looking right at me, and he was licking his chops.

  “Did you leave this for me?” I asked. I looked closer at the frog body. If I want to be a scientist, I should get used to looking at actual blood and guts, I thought.

  “Mroooow.” He licked his chops again. I wondered if he was still savoring that frog’s head. Yuck. So much for me getting used to it.

  “Well, we can’t let anyone see this,” I said. I found one of the twins’ pail-and-shovel sets behind the garage. I dug a hole by the flower bed. Using the shovel (and definitely not my fingers), I scooped the headless frog into the bucket, then dumped it into the hole and covered it up.

  “Mroooow?” Bert trotted up to me as I washed off the pail and shovel with the garden hose. He rubbed up against my leg. And then he looked up at me, like he was waiting for something.

  I patted him on the head. “Oooookay,” I said. “See you later.”

  “Gross!” Danny said, when I told him about the frog as we rode our bikes to school. “Can I film it?”

  “Too late. I buried it — because it was gross,” I informed him. And because I didn’t want anyone else in my family walking out the door and stepping on it. Just the idea of stepping on a headless frog made me shudder. But Danny was fascinated.

  “Maybe that’s why Bert wasn’t eating. Maybe he’s used to hunting his own food,” Danny said.

  “I remember reading something about that in The Cat Book,” I said. “Cats are obligate carnivores, it said. They’re meant to hunt and eat other animals.”

  I stopped pedaling.

  “What?” Danny asked, pulling over next to me.

  “I just remembered something else,” I said. I took The Cat Book out of my backpack. I’d planned to read it at lunchtime. (Every day at lunch, Danny and I sit together in the cafeteria and read. We call it the Reading and Eating Club. So far, we are the only two members, but we remain hopeful.)

  I leafed through the book until I found the page. I’d read The Cat Book so quickly the day before, I’d barely skimmed the sidebar called “Wacky Cat Behaviors.” “It says some cats leave their kills on their owner’s doorsteps. When they share like that, it’s a sign they consider you family,” I said.

  “So Bert thinks you’re his family?” Danny said.

  “I guess so,” I said. I put the book back and we both started pedaling again. In a weird way, it was nice to feel like I belonged in someone’s family, even if they were a totally different species.

  Then I remembered how Bert had looked up at me before I’d left that morning, like he was waiting for something. I felt bad that I didn’t think to thank him.

  “Why would he eat the head, though?” I asked.

  “Maybe the head is like a delicacy to cats,” Danny said. “I watched this show called Extraordinary Eats with my mom, and the host made something called sweetbreads. Do you know what sweetbreads are?”

  “Um . . . I’m hoping it’s bread,” I said.

  “Nope, and it’s not sweet, either,” Danny said. “It’s the organs or glands of a calf or a lamb.”

  I made a sound like I was throwing up. “Organs or glands of a calf or a lamb?” I said. I couldn’t seem to get that definition out of my head. It was gross, and it almost kind of rhymed, which made it funny. And gross and funny is my favorite combination. For the rest of our ride to school, I kept repeating it.

  “Organs or glands of a calf or a lamb. Organs or glands of a calf or a lamb.”

  “Cut it out!” Danny said. But he thought it was gross and funny, too. And pretty soon he was repeating it with me.

  “Organs or glands of a calf or a lamb. ORGANS OR GLANDS OF A CALF OR A LAMB!”

  The more we said it, and the louder we said it, the funnier it seemed to us. Until we ran into Carl Weems.

  “Get a load of the Weirdo Twins,” he said to the rest of the fourth grade, who were all lined up outsi
de. And then Carl Weems laughed, and everyone else laughed, too. Because everyone in the fourth grade was scared of Carl Weems, except for me and Danny. Carl Weems was mean and not very smart, in my opinion. And he was definitely not funny, especially when he made fun of other kids, which was just about all the time. He called me “Gore-eyes” because of my glasses, and he called Danny “Girly Hurley” just because his hair is a little long and his voice is kind of high. And then, after Danny and I went as conjoined twins for Halloween last fall (a costume that won us first place at the annual YummCo Foods – sponsored Halloween Monster Mash), he started calling us the Weirdo Twins. I hated that being smart or different somehow meant we were weird, and I hated that being a girl was supposed to be an insult. We called Carl our “archnemesis,” which is the worst kind of villain in comic books.

  Carl Weems was in the same class as me and Danny, but he sat in the back. Danny and I sat in the front. We like to sit close to the teacher and the board so we don’t miss anything. And of course, Danny and I like to sit together. I was glad our teacher, Mr. James, let us sit wherever we wanted, and not alphabetically, like most of the other teachers I’d had. And unlike the other teachers, he didn’t make us sing along to the YummCo jingle, which played on the intercom each morning right after the Pledge of Allegiance.

  That day, during our science lesson, Mr. James wrote the word organism on the board. Science is my favorite subject, especially this year, because we were studying living things. Last month, Mr. James brought in a box of earthworms and passed it around so we could all touch them. It was awesome.

  “We talked a little bit about organisms on Friday,” Mr. James said. “Remind me — what is an organism?”

  Danny and I were the only ones to raise our hands, which made Carl cough and say “Geeks!” under his breath. I shot him a dirty look while Mr. James called on Danny.