by Nic Saint
“So Charlene,” said Gran, dragging up a chair and moving closer to our Mayor. “About that building permit.”
“Oh, no!” said Uncle Alec, looking up from the dissection of his sausage.
“I’m not talking to you,” said Gran. “Charlene, honey, I understand that we can’t build high—for whatever esthetical and practical reasons—but how about we build low?”
“What do you mean?” asked the Mayor suspiciously.
“How about we build a couple of stories underground? And then we rent them out?”
“Ma!” Marge cried. “Will you please stop already? We just don’t want tenants.”
“You don’t want money, that’s what you’re saying. You hate money.”
“We don’t want apartments. We just want a nice single-family home, just the way it always was, and we don’t want to deal with tenants. Is that so hard to understand?”
“Okay, so you don’t like money. Why didn’t you say so from the start?”
“We did say so from the start.”
“Look, if you really want tenants, Vesta,” said Scarlett, “I have an old garage that I don’t use, since I don’t have a car anymore. If you want you can turn it into a studio.”
“No, thank you,” said Gran with a look of distaste. “Who wants to deal with having to rent the place out? Making sure the whole thing is up to code, collecting rent… Ugh.”
“I thought you did?”
“I don’t—I was doing this for my family! So they could deal with that stuff. Not me.”
Suddenly two familiar people popped through the hedge. They were Ted and Marcie Trapper. “Oh, there’s our sweethearts,” said Marcie. “I thought they’d gone missing. Brutus and Harriet, you’re in the wrong backyard again, sweeties.”
“I’ve got a ball here with your name on it, Brutus,” Ted added, holding up a red ball.
“Put away your damn ball, Ted,” said Gran. “My cats are exactly where they’re supposed to be: home.”
“But I thought they wanted to come and live with us from now on,” said Marcie, looking confused.
“Well, they changed their minds. Now get lost.”
Ted was still fiddling with his ball, and looked like a lost puppy. “But…”
“Go on—shoo!”
“Ma! Be nice to our neighbors,” said Marge. Then she got up and went over to have a chat with Ted and Marcie, and explain to them that circumstances had changed and that the Pooles would be keeping Brutus and Harriet after all. She was also kind enough to invite the Trappers to stay and have a bite to eat, which they gratefully accepted.
“So you did it again, did you, Max?” said Harriet.
“Amazing,” said Brutus, “to think that you did it without us.”
“Well, it was hard, I don’t mind telling you,” I said. “But we managed—barely.”
“And now we’re back, Maxie baby,” said Brutus, giving me a reassuring pat on the back. “So any little problem you got, just bring it to papa Brutus, and I’ll give you the benefit of my experience.”
“Gee, thanks, Brutus. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” And you know what? I actually meant it, too. Brutus might be something of a minor bully sometimes, and Harriet a busybody, but they’re also my dear friends, and I’d missed them.
“So what’s going to happen to the sex maniac now?” asked Dooley.
“What sex maniac?” asked Brutus. “What else did we miss?”
“A sex maniac kept following us around, and threatened to post a video on his YouTube channel,” Dooley explained. “Of Odelia talking to us. But Scarlett talked him out of it. She threatened to go to his mother and tell her what he was up to. And the sex maniac was so afraid that his mom would find out that he deleted all of his videos.”
“His sex videos?”
“His videos of Odelia talking to me and Max,” said Dooley. “Though there could have been sex videos in there, too, of course,” he said with a questioning look in my direction.
“No sex videos,” I said curtly.
“No sex videos,” Dooley said. “I felt pity for him, though, because his sex maniac buddy is dead now, so he’s going to have to find himself another sex maniac buddy.”
“I’m sure he’ll manage, Dooley,” I said.
“Are you really?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t get it,” said Brutus.
“Me, neither,” said Harriet.
“What’s all this about a sex maniac?”
I heaved a deep sigh. “Okay, so here is what happened,” I said, and settled in to explain to Brutus and Harriet everything that had transpired in the days they spent going to the dogs.
“So you see?” said Dooley, who’d taken turns with me telling the story, “we need to find Frank Beaver a new buddy, or else he’ll be in trouble.” He turned to me. “You still haven’t explained to me what a sex maniac is, though, Max.”
“Well, Dooley,” I began, but stopped when Brutus placed a paw on my shoulder.
“Please let me, Max,” he said. “It’s the least I can do.” He cleared his throat. “Now, Dooley, a sex maniac is a person who’s addicted to sex—that much is obvious, right?”
“Duh,” said Dooley, excited that finally he was about to discover the big secret.
“And we all know what sex is, don’t we?”
“We do?” he asked.
Brutus blinked. “Sex is when two people… get together to make babies.”
“Okay,” said Dooley, nodding seriously.
“So when a man meets a woman, and they like each other—I mean, when they feel that spark—”
“What spark?” asked my friend, taking this all in.
“Well… the spark, you know. When they kiss.”
“They kiss? And then they feel a spark? You mean like an electric spark?”
“Well… yes.”
“Okay, so they kiss, and there’s a spark, and then what?”
“Well, that’s what humans call sex.”
“They do?!”
“Absolutely.”
“So… a kiss, a spark and…”
Brutus swallowed. “Okay, so a man kisses a woman he likes, or a woman kisses a man she likes, or a man kisses a man or a woman kisses a woman, as the case may be, or let’s just say they kiss each other and they feel that spark… then before long, and only if they both agree, the stork comes flying over, and…. Well, I think you can guess the rest.”
“Babies!”
“Babies.”
“And so a sex maniac…”
Brutus was starting to look a little desperate. I had the impression he regretted having taken on this task. “Well, so a sex maniac is a person who just keeps kissing person after person after person after person, one after the other, but…”
“No spark?”
“No spark.”
“So no stork?”
“No stork.”
“So… no babies?”
“Exactly! You got it, Dooley.”
“Poor sex maniacs. They must be really desperate.”
“It’s not a lot of fun being a sex maniac,” Brutus agreed.
Suddenly Dooley’s eyes turned to Scarlett and he frowned. “So… do you think Scarlett is a sex maniac?”
“Um…” said Brutus, and gave me a look of mild despair.
“Sometimes, Dooley,” I told my friend, “a woman has to kiss a lot of frogs before she finds the one frog that she knows she likes. And when I say frog, I mean person, of course. That’s just how it is. We don’t call such a person a sex maniac. We call them—”
“Discerning,” Gran chimed in with a grin.
“Why do I have the feeling you’re talking about me?” asked Scarlett.
“Just your imagination, darling,” said Gran, and took a bite from her sausage.
“So how many ‘frogs’ does Scarlett have to kiss before she finds the one?” asked Dooley.
“A lot,” I said. “Like, a whole lot.”
“It’s going to take her a long time.”
“Yeah, sometimes it does take a long time, but Scarlett isn’t giving up hope that one day she will find the right person. The person she’s going to experience that spark with.”
“Scarlett, please don’t give up!” Dooley now yelled. “The right frog is out there!”
“What is he saying?” asked Scarlett.
“Nothing,” said Gran. “He’s just hungry.”
“Hungry for frogs!” Dooley yelled.
“Cats,” said Gran with a shrug. “You know what they’re like. Always wanting to eat.”
“You know, one day I would like to be able to talk to them,” said Scarlett. “I have a feeling they’d be able to tell me a lot of interesting things.”
“Keep dreaming, babe. That’ll never happen.”
“I know, but it would be nice.”
“Kiss more frogs!” Dooley said. “A frog a day keeps the doctor away!”
Suddenly Scarlett frowned. “Did someone just mention… frogs?”
Gran blinked, Odelia uttered a startled cry, and Marge said “Eep!”
“Hey,” said Dooley. “I think Scarlett just understood what I said.”
“You know, Dooley,” I said, studying Gran’s friend with unabashed curiosity, “I think she just did.”
“Why am I suddenly thinking about kissing frogs?” Scarlett asked. “So weird.”
THE END
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Excerpt from Purrfect Cruise (The Mysteries of Max 35)
Chapter One
The ship was huge. In fact it was huger than huge. It was ginormous. Of course I’d seen ships like this before… on TV, but never with my own eyes as I was doing now.
“This ship is really big, Max,” said Dooley, indicating we were on the same page as far as the ship’s size was concerned.
“I know,” I said, still gaping up at the monstrosity.
“Are you sure it’s not going to sink? It looks very heavy to me.”
“I’m… pretty sure,” I said, though now that my friend mentioned it, I had to confess I couldn’t for the life of me imagine how a monstrosity like this could possibly stay afloat. Or stay upright, for that matter. There were so many floors to the thing I couldn’t count them all, and the Queen of the Seas looked more like some gigantic hotel than a boat.
“I don’t know if this is such a good idea, Max,” said Dooley, shaking his head as we took stock of our home for the next ten days. “Maybe Harriet and Brutus were right when they decided not to come on this trip.”
“Harriet and Brutus didn’t decide not to come, Dooley,” I reminded him. “They weren’t invited.”
“Oh. But why?”
“Because dragging two cats around on a cruise ship is more than plenty, thank you very much,” Odelia said as she crouched down next to us. “Why? Are you missing your friends already?”
“No,” I said quickly. “No, it’s not that. It’s just that…”
“Are you sure this boat won’t sink, Odelia?” asked Dooley. “Boats do sink, you know.”
Odelia smiled and patted my friend on the head. “Pretty sure, Dooley. It’s been traveling along the same route for the past fifteen years, and hasn’t sunk yet.”
“Okay,” said my friend, but looked nor sounded convinced. “So how does it stay afloat? A boat this big should be at the bottom of the ocean, not floating on top of it.”
“It’s been built by some of the brightest engineers and shipbuilders on the planet,” said our human. “So rest assured, it won’t sink. Now are you ready to go aboard?”
We both gulped profusely, then nodded reluctantly.
“Great. Then let’s go.”
And she picked up Dooley and carried him off.
“Hey!” I said. “What about me?!”
But the moment I’d spoken these words, two strong arms picked me up and soon I was being carried aboard, too. The strong arms belonged to Odelia’s husband Chase Kingsley, and since the man is basically built like a tank, I soon relaxed in his arms and allowed him to carry me aboard the vessel.
We were in Bridgeport, Barbados, where the Queen of the Seas was about to set sail on a ten-day cruise that would take us along all the hotspots of the Caribbean. Odelia and Chase, having been married a couple of weeks before, still hadn’t been able to enjoy their honeymoon, and so their families had decided to do something to rectify this gross oversight, and had arranged for this cruise. Some insurance money had come in after the accidental demolition of Odelia’s parents’ house, and Odelia’s boss had also chipped in, as had her uncle Alec Lip, and even Alec’s girlfriend, Mayor Charlene Butterwick. All in all they’d done a wonderful thing for the newlyweds, and Odelia and Chase were still blown away by this singular kindness.
We’d flown from New York to Barbados, and now here we were, boarding one of the most luxurious cruise ships in the world, to spend the next ten days on the water.
The trip would take us from Bridgeport, Barbados to Kingstown, St. Vincent, then on to St. George’s, Grenada and Willemstad, Curacao, into Kralendijk, Bonaire, and Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Aruba, Trinidad and back to Bridgeport for our flight home.
The ship itself was even more impressive than I’d imagined standing ashore: once we got past the ticket person, and had entered the ship proper, we were hit by a tornado of sights and sounds: people were everywhere, and so was the music blasting from hidden speakers. A shopping mall had been set up in the belly of the beast, with plenty of boutiques, and as I glanced up I saw floor after floor of ship rising up around us—as if we were at the bottom of a canyon. For a moment I felt seriously overwhelmed. So I held onto my human with all my might, which may or may not have involved the use of my claws, for suddenly Chase uttered a soft strangled cry and muttered, “Claws, Max.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, and retracted my claws and tried to relax.
“Let’s find our cabin first,” Odelia suggested.
“Good idea,” Chase grunted as he carefully set me down on the ship’s metal floor. Odelia offered Dooley the same courtesy, and we both vowed to stay close to our humans. If we ever got lost I wasn’t sure what we’d do. Look for the Lost and Found department, presumably?
“This looks just like one big giant hotel,” Odelia said, marveling at our surroundings.
“A hotel and a shopping mall,” Chase said as we looked in on some of the shops.
“I can’t wait to see the pool,” said Odelia happily as she checked out a bathing suit and Chase eyed a cowboy hat with some interest.
The honeymooners shared a sweet kiss. I looked away, of course, as I always do out of respect for their privacy. But Dooley, who didn’t have the same qualms, eyed the kissing couple with breathless anticipation. “They’re making babies, Max,” he said in hushed tones.
“Shh—they can hear you,” I said.
Our humans had finally been able to resist the allure of the colorful shops, and we arrived at the bank of elevators destined to whisk us away to the upper floors. Soon we arrived at our designated level and the doors zoomed open, spilling us and several other giddy tourists into the section of the ship that would be our new home for the next ten days.
“I hope they have plenty of kibble,” said Dooley.
“And I hope they have a soft couch to sleep on,” I added.
“I wonder if they have a gym,” Chase grunted.
“And I hope they have that bathing suit in my size,” Odelia said.
We found our cabin without fail, and after Chase had let us in with the key card he’d received, it proved as spacious and nice as the pictures on the cruise line website had promised, and much to my relief it contained a very nice couch, which immediately I took possession of, as did Dooley. It was soft yet firm and deep enough so I could fit whichever way I cho
se to stretch out on it. I’m a large cat, you see, and I need my space.
After the ordeal of traveling to Barbados by plane, then taxi, and after having gone through the experience of our arrival and undergoing the noise of the crowd, the peace and quiet of the cabin was like a balm to my harried soul, and I expelled a sigh of relief.
Odelia and Chase were too busy checking out the cabin and uttering cries of delight to take much notice of us, and after they’d inspected the bedroom, the bathroom and the balcony they both collapsed on the bed in a flutter of giggles and for the next five minutes spent more time kissing and hugging and generally doing what newlyweds do.
“They’re making babies, Max!” Dooley repeated his earlier statement. “It’s happening!”
“I doubt that very much, Dooley,” I said, having closed my eyes and assuming my favorite sphinx position.
“No, but it’s true. People on honeymoon always make babies. It’s what they do!”
I hated to contradict him, for this time he just might be right. People on honeymoon do frequently engage in baby-making activities, and even though Odelia and Chase were fully dressed, and all they were doing was sharing a couple of loving kisses, who was to say they wouldn’t progress into some more heavy petting or necking later on?
I just hoped they’d be discreet about it and not wake me up.
“Let’s go on deck,” suddenly Chase suggested.
“Yeah, we can’t miss the boat taking off,” Odelia said.
They both hopped off the bed with the kind of alacrity I was only able to muster up when fresh kibble was being poured into my bowl.
“Are you guys coming?” asked our human. “The ship is sailing, which is a big deal.”
“Party time,” Chase said, rubbing his hands with glee.
“No, I think I’ll stay here,” I said.
“Me, too,” said Dooley.
Odelia frowned. “You’re not going to stay in this cabin the whole trip, are you?”
“Maybe not the whole trip,” I said. Only about ninety-nine percent of the trip.
“Suit yourself,” she said with a shrug. “Let’s go, Chase. We don’t want to miss this.”