by Nic Saint
But I wasn’t, and anyway, cats do have nine lives, as everyone knows, so the explosion would have claimed only the one life, leaving me with eight more to regale my friends with the story of my exploits. And regale them I had. Wherever I went, cats wanted me to tell the story of how a cat had saved the day—and a couple of humans in the process.
“I’m telling you, Odelia,” said Chase as he took the barbecue tongs from Tex and gave the doctor a gentle nudge in the direction of the bowl of sunset punch. Bourbon, vermouth, ginger beer, lemon and sugar. Even Tex couldn’t mess that up. “Those cats of yours are something else. I still can’t believe Max would throw himself on a bomb! Or maybe he thought it was a fat pigeon?”
“No, I think he actually thought it was a bomb,” said Odelia, placing a bowl of apple and poppy seed coleslaw on the table. “And that he was actually saving Uncle Alec’s life.”
“And I for one am mighty grateful,” said Uncle Alec, holding up a bottle of Corona in a toast to me. I would have held up my bottle but for one thing I don’t drink beer and for another I was too busy sampling all the delicious foodstuffs Odelia had set out for us.
“I think it’s amazing,” said Chase. “Simply amazing. Did you give him some extra-crunchy kibble as a reward?”
“I gave him some extra-tasty chicken,” said Odelia, throwing another juicy sliver in my direction. I deftly managed to snatch it from the air and gobble it down. Score!
“So how did you find out Philippe Goldsmith was the one you wanted?” asked Marge.
“Odelia called me in the middle of the night. Said she had a hunch Philippe might be the one,” said Chase. “So I got on my computer and found he’d once burned down the school lab in some experiment gone wrong—the police report mentioned some type of home-made explosive he used that time. And only a few weeks before Burt’s murder a garden shed blew up not far from the Goldsmith family estate. Luckily no one was hurt but police found traces of nitroglycerin at the scene, and a neighbor said a young man fitting Philippe’s description had been seen hauling ingredients and equipment into the shed. He’d been experimenting for a while, trying to perfect the mixture he’d use on his grandfather.”
“Why wasn’t he arrested?”
“The Goldsmiths are a well-respected bunch, and the investigation was dropped.”
“Someone paid the right person the right amount of money,” said Tex.
“No amount of money will save him now,” said Odelia. “This time he was caught in the act.”
“Didn’t you search his room after his grandfather was murdered?” asked Marge.
“We did. But since the explosion had happened in the next room it was only logical we found traces of nitro.”
“Where did he keep his stash of explosives?” asked Tex.
“Hotel kitchen fridge,” said Uncle Alec. “He’d told one of the servers his grandfather liked his beer cold, and had tipped the kid handsomely for the favor. He never had a clue.”
“Clever.”
“He was. Until someone saw right through him.” He directed a look of admiration at Odelia.
“I think Max deserves all the credit,” said Odelia. She couldn’t tell Chase it was me who warned her about Philippe. It was her, though, who warned her uncle, and by the time Philippe arrived, police were at the scene, keeping a close eye on the amateur bomber.
“All’s well that ends well,” said Tex, and took a sip from the fruit punch and winced.
“So when can we get rid of these collars?” asked Harriet, addressing the topic that interested her far more than humans trying to murder other humans.
“Right now,” said Odelia, and proceeded to remove all of our collars!
“Burn them,” said Brutus soberly, checking himself for fleas.
“Are they gone?” asked Dooley. “Are you sure they’re gone?”
Odelia gave him a brief inspection. “All gone,” she said. “Not a single one left.”
“Oh, joy!” Brutus said, and did a little impromptu wiggle of his tush.
I took the butch cat aside. “How about your… issue?” I asked.
He gave me a wink. “What issue?”
I guess those pills Vena had dispensed had done the trick, for the moment he said it, Harriet sashayed over, and the two of them wasted no time stalking off into a laurel bush.
I hopped up onto the porch swing, turned around a few times, and took a seat next to Dooley. “I’m so glad those fleas are gone, Max,” Dooley said, looking extremely relieved.
“Yeah, and I’m glad the Most Interesting Men in the World are gone, too, and they took their Most Interesting Cats along with them.”
“Aren’t you sad Shadow left?”
Shadow had been adopted by the Goldsmith family, and would live with Burt’s second cousin twice removed, who was a genuine cat person. Tracy had promised Shadow a part in future beer commercials if she wanted. But the cat had decided to retire from the world of advertising. Acting in ads simply wouldn’t be the same without Burt. Tracy, meanwhile, had also left, which made Uncle Alec a little sad. She’d promised to return, though, and maybe she would.
“It’s fine,” I said.
“But you liked Shadow,” said Dooley. “She could have been your girlfriend.”
“I doubt it.”
“You’ll always have #nitrogate, though.”
I shrugged. I liked Shadow, I really did, but not in an amorous capacity. I guess the right cat for me is out there somewhere, and one day we’ll meet. Maybe. I’m not holding out hope, though. Cats aren’t like humans. We don’t mate for life. We’re more like George Clooney before he met Amal, or Leonardo DiCaprio before he meets the next hot young model. We like to play the field. Keep our options open, if you know what I mean. We’re cats, for crying out loud. Not Ward or June Cleaver.
“What about you, Dooley?”
“What about me?”
“Still nervous about the baby thing?”
He blinked. “Why? Should I be nervous? Do you think Odelia lied to us? Max—is she going to kick us out?!” His voice was rising precipitously. “Tell me the truth! Is this the end?!”
Oh, boy. I should have kept my mouth shut. “No, it’s not the end, Dooley. For one thing, as long as Gran stays at Odelia’s, there won’t be no babies.”
Dooley glanced at Gran, who was stuffing her face with potato salad, as if she was the great white hope. Then he frowned. “I don’t get it. What does Gran have to do with babies?”
“No young couple likes to be hassled by a live-in know-it-all granny cramping their style and sticking her nose in. No way Chase is moving in as long as Gran is in the house.”
“I knew it,” said Dooley. “I knew my human would save me. She’s doing this for us, isn’t she? She’s trying to keep those babies from muscling us out of the house.”
“No, she’s not. She’s pissed at Tex and Marge and trying to get back at them for not supporting her claim to Goldsmith fame and fortune. She’ll move back out at some point.”
“When?!” he cried.
I shrugged. “When she feels Tex has suffered enough.”
We both directed a curious look at Tex, who was humming a pleasant tune, looking pleased as the punch he was serving. “Tex doesn’t look like he’s suffering, Max,” Dooley said.
“Tex has never been happier. He’s finally managed to achieve the one thing he’s always wanted: kick his mother-in-law out of the house. Tex is living the dream right now.”
“Which means… Gran will live with Odelia forever! This is good!”
I transferred my gaze to Chase, who looked decidedly unhappy. Which just goes to show that one man’s dream is another man’s nightmare. Frankly I didn’t care either way. Chase moving in or Chase moving out. Gran moving out or Gran moving in. Babies or no babies. I knew that Odelia would always have my back and so would the rest of the Pooles and the Lips. They’d saved me from an exploding beer bottle and I’d done the same for them. In other words, it was all good.
&nbs
p; And as I watched my humans tuck in and be merry, I placed a paw around Dooley’s shoulder. “Relax, buddy. Babies or no babies, we’ll always be Odelia’s pets. And who knows? If a pack of wild babies should happen to pop up one day all it would mean is more humans to buy tasty bits of kibble for us, right? And more humans to cuddle us and spoil us rotten.”
He eyed me with surprise. “You really think so, Max?”
“I know so. You know what I heard? That babies love cats. Absolutely adore us.”
He thought about this. Hard. I could tell from the whirring sound his brain made. Then something clicked and he nodded solemnly. “All right, Max. I’m ready to have a baby.”
THE END
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You’re probably wondering about the identity of 'Patient Zero,' the cat who started the Great 2018 Flea Disaster. In Purrfectly Flealess, a 15.000 word short story, our fearsome foursome go in search of this First Fleabag. The answer to the mystery will shock them to their very whiskers... Read on for a three-chapter excerpt.
Excerpt from Purrfectly Flealess (The Mysteries of Max Short)
Chapter One
We were out in the backyard of Odelia’s house, undergoing what at first glance to any observer would have appeared an extremely humiliating procedure: Odelia had put a large washtub on the lawn, had filled it with warm soapy water, and was meticulously dragging a comb through the water and through my fur in an effort to catch those last, hard-to-reach fleas that might still linger on my precious bod. Meanwhile Marge was doing the same with Harriet, and Grandma Muffin with Dooley. Brutus, the fourth cat in our small menagerie, was doing his business in the bushes, waiting for his turn.
“And? Did you find any?” I asked, getting a little antsy.
As a general rule I hate getting wet. Odelia had assured me this washing time business was for the greater good, though, so I had agreed to go with it. Just this once.
“So far so good,” she said as she carefully inspected the comb.
“Why isn’t Brutus getting waterboarded?” I asked. “It’s not fair. We’re all getting waterboarded and he’s getting away scot-free. I think Chase should waterboard his cat.”
“It’s not waterboarding,” Odelia explained. “It’s just a gentle grooming session.”
“Whatever,” I grumbled, as I watched Dooley patiently undergoing similar treatment.
“I like it,” my friend said. “As long as it gets rid of these fleas I’m all for it.”
“I agree,” said Harriet, who now sported a dab of foam on the top of her head. “Anything to get rid of these hairy little monsters is all right by me.”
“Hairy?” asked Dooley, his eyes widening. “Nobody said anything about hairy.”
“Oh, yes,” said Harriet. “Fleas are big, hairy monsters, Dooley. As hairy as they come.”
Dooley gulped. “Get them off me, Grandma. Please get them off me!”
“Hold your horses,” Grandma grunted as she squinted at the comb. She then held it up for her daughter’s inspection. “Do you see anything on there, Marge? Those little suckers are so small I can’t be sure.”
Marge studiously ignored her mother, though, and continued combing Harriet as if Grandma hadn’t spoken. Ever since the old woman had decided to leave Hampton Cove to go and live with her newly acquired grandson, Grandma Muffin was dead to Marge.
Undeterred, Grandma waved the comb in Marge’s face. “Is that a flea or a piece of lint? I can’t tell.”
Marge finally took a closer look at the comb, a dark frown on her face. “Unless it’s an imaginary flea, like your imaginary pregnancy, there’s nothing there.”
“Suit yourself,” Grandma grumbled, and went back to dragging the comb through Dooley’s gray mane. She was using ample amounts of soap, and Dooley was now starting to resemble a drowned rat, hunted look in his eyes and all. “I’ll have you know that that was a great opportunity, Marge, and if you’d have been in my shoes you’d have gone for it, too.”
Marge turned on her mother. “No, I wouldn’t. I would never leave my family to go and live with a bunch of strangers just to get my hands on a little bit of money.”
“It wasn’t a little bit of money,” said Gran. “it was a lot. A big ol’ bundle of cash.”
“Even so. You don’t leave your family just because you happen to strike it rich.”
“I would have brought you in on the deal eventually,” said Gran.
Marge planted a fist on her hip. “And how would you have done that?”
Gran shrugged. “I would have hired you as my maid or something, and Tex as the chauffeur. That way you could have lived in a little room over the garage. Shared the wealth.”
Marge pressed her lips together and made a strangled sound at the back of her throat. Living above the garage and working as her own mother’s maid didn’t seem to appeal to her all that much.
“Dad is a doctor, not a chauffeur, Gran,” Odelia pointed out. “And Mom is a librarian, not a maid.”
“Who cares? The Goldsmiths got money to burn. He wouldn’t have had to do any chauffeuring. Just pretend to go through the motions. Maybe wash a limo from time to time. Wear one of them snazzy peaked caps. Just saying. This family missed a great opportunity.”
“We didn’t miss anything,” said Marge. “All we missed was you going off and showing your true colors.”
Brutus had returned from his business in the bushes, and was stalking across the lawn with the air of a cat whose bowel movements have just proved a source of great enjoyment. If he’d been a human male he’d have carried a newspaper under his arm, folded to the sports section. When he caught sight of the flea party in progress on the lawn, the smile of contentment faded and he started backtracking in the direction of the bushes again.
Marge’s eagle eyes had spotted the big, black cat, though. “Oh, Brutus, there you are. Come over here a minute, will you? We need to check you for fleas.”
“I ain’t got no fleas,” he said promptly. “No, ma’am. I’m officially flea-free.”
Marge smiled indulgently. “Be that as it may, you still need checking out. Now come over here and I’ll give you your checkup.”
“Does that mean you’re done with me?” asked Harriet with a note of disappointment in her voice. Harriet likes being pampered and groomed. The more pampering the better.
“Yup. All done,” said Marge.
“Oh,” said Harriet, and reluctantly relinquished her spot to her beau Brutus.
“You know?” said Dooley as he directed a fishy look at a floating flea. “I’m not so sure this is an entirely humane way to treat these animals, Max.”
“What animals?” I asked as Odelia lifted my tail and checked my rear end.
“Well, we’re all God’s creatures, Max, so maybe all this poisoning and waterboarding and generally slaughtering these poor fleas isn’t the way to go is what I mean to say.”
We all stared at the cat. Even Grandma momentarily paused her combing efforts. “You’re nuts,” was her opinion. “I’ve got a nut for a cat.”
Odelia, however, seemed prepared to give Dooley the benefit of the doubt. “I thought you didn’t like fleas, Dooley? You couldn’t wait to get rid of them?”
“Oh, I do. Hate the little parasites, I mean. And I do want to get rid of them. But maybe we should go about this the humane way. Treat them with kindness. Humanely.”
“Whatever,” said Harriet with a flick of her tail as she licked those last few droplets of water from her shiny white fur. “As long as they’re gone, it’s fine by me.” She then gave me a censorious look. “So have you found your Patient Zero yet, Max?”
I looked up, distracted by Odelia dragging her comb across my sensitive belly. “Huh?”
“Patient Zero,” Harriet repeated impatiently. “I thought you and Dooley were trying to track down the cat who got us into this mess and deal with him or her properly?
”
“Yeah,” I said vaguely. “We’re, um, working on it.”
“Well, work faster,” she said. “I don’t want to go through this ordeal again.”
“Are you really tracking down Patient Zero, Max?” asked Marge.
“Sure, sure,” I said. Actually I’d totally forgotten about this elusive Patient Zero. Like Harriet said, as long as the fleas were gone, who cared about Patient Zero, let alone patients one or two or three or whatever? “We’re looking into it, aren’t we, Dooley?”
But Dooley was still thinking about the fate of those poor fleas. “I mean, if the Humane Society cares so much about horses and the way they’re treated in all those Hollywood movies, shouldn’t they look into fleas, too? We’re all God’s creatures, right?”
Brutus emitted a groan. “Fleas aren’t creatures, Dooley. Fleas are a pest. And pests should be terminated. End of discussion.”
“Fleas deserve our consideration, Brutus,” said Dooley with a pained look as he watched a flea float lifelessly in the tub. “Have you ever stopped to consider that this flea right here has a mother and a father who care about him or her? And brothers and sisters?”
“Lots and lots of brothers and sisters,” said Odelia with a slight grin. “Millions of them. Probably billions or even trillions.”
“We still owe it to them to treat them with kindness and respect,” Dooley insisted.
Odelia held up her comb. “This is being kind, Dooley. This is being respectful.”
“Kind and respectful,” Gran scoffed. “They’re not being kind when they suck your blood, are they? So why should we be kind to them?”
“Kill ‘em all is what I say,” said Brutus, with a decisive motion of his paw. “Carpet bomb the suckers to oblivion.”
“Speaking of carpets, did you take the vacuum bags out to the trash?” asked Marge. “They’re probably full of eggs, larvae and pupae. Best to get rid of them immediately.”