Catalyst

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “Excuse me?” Finally, Surita looked up and saw Pipsqueak. “What is that?”

  “It’s my new kitten.”

  “It’s a chipmunk.”

  “She doesn’t look anything like a chipmunk.” Zoe was offended on Pipsqueak’s behalf. Meanwhile, the kitten was wobbling her way across the table, around salt and pepper shakers shaped like elephants, a stack of unopened mail, and a ping-pong paddle, toward Surita’s cereal bowl. She looked so determined that Zoe didn’t try to stop her. She deserved her prize.

  “Hamster? Gerbil? Meadow vole?”

  “She’s not a rodent. She’s my cat.” Mine! Zoe loved the sound of that. I have my very own kitten! Best birthday present ever. Or day-before-birthday.

  “Rodents make good pets. I’ve heard rats are very smart.” Surita picked up her cereal bowl just as Pipsqueak reached it. She held it two feet above the table.

  Pipsqueak mewed indignantly.

  “She likes milk,” Zoe said apologetically.

  “She can’t have mine,” Surita said. “I’m allergic to baby rats.” She was eyeing Pipsqueak as if she expected the kitten to turn rabid, leap off the table, and sink her tiny teeth into her jugular.

  “Wow, I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like kittens.” Zoe went to the cabinet and took out a bowl. She knew where Harrison’s family kept them and knew his parents wouldn’t mind. She’d spent so much time at Harrison’s house that it felt like an extension of her own. She poured milk into the bowl and set it in front of Pipsqueak. “Don’t worry, Pipsqueak—I think you’re adorable and amazing. It doesn’t matter what some kitten haters think.”

  Pipsqueak splashed the milk delightedly, then stuck her face in and began lapping loudly. She seemed so happy with her second bowl of the morning that Zoe felt as if she’d done something heroic. I did do something, she thought. I saved a kitten.

  Softly, Zoe stroked between her ears, and Pipsqueak paused her drinking to lean against Zoe’s hand and nuzzle her fingers before she returned to her milk.

  “Disliking kittens is a sign that I’m an evil mastermind who will someday take over the world,” Surita said. “I also hate puppies, rainbows, and unicorns. Especially pink, fluffy ones.”

  Zoe pointed to Surita’s magazine. “But fluffy Bigfeet are fine?”

  “Bigfoots,” Surita corrected.

  “Pretty sure it should be Bigfeet. Foot, feet. Goose, geese.”

  “But their species name—oh, never mind. Yes, Harrison is upstairs and awake. He claims to have camped out last night, but he’s inside now. On his computer, of course. I don’t think he ever sleeps. He could be part robot. You know he alphabetizes his bookshelf regularly for fun? His parents periodically move books around when he’s not looking so that he can have the joy of re-alphabetizing them.”

  “He doesn’t always alphabetize them. Sometimes he sorts by color. Or theme.”

  “Inexplicably weird.” Surita waved the magazine in the air, gesturing vaguely in the direction of Harrison’s room. “See, the magazine doesn’t lie. Unexplained mysteries, such as my cousin’s personality, are all around us.”

  Pipsqueak, her face wet with milk, gazed up at Zoe. “Mew!”

  It felt as if she were saying “thank you.” Or “I love you.” Focused on Zoe, the kitten ignored Surita entirely.

  Zoe scooped her up, deposited the empty bowl in the sink with the other unwashed dishes “left to soak” (which probably meant it was Harrison’s turn for that chore), and then trotted upstairs around the stacks of books destined to be returned to a shelf.

  She found Harrison in his room. “I get to keep the kitten,” she announced, “and your cousin doesn’t understand pluralization.”

  Intent on his computer, Harrison didn’t move. “Level eighteen.”

  “How was camping?”

  “Great. Ate six s’mores.”

  He looked as if he’d slept outside. Actually, he looked as if he’d slept in a bird’s nest. His hair was sticking up at all angles. His sleeping bag had been dumped on his bed, balled up next to the pillow with a heap of blankets and his comforter.

  “Did you hear what I said about the kitten? I named her Pipsqueak, and my parents said I could keep her!”

  “Wow! Really?” He stopped playing momentarily to gawk at her and Pipsqueak. “That’s awesome! What made them change their minds?”

  “I think they think saying yes to the kitten will make up for Alex going to Europe.”

  “Does it?” Harrison asked.

  She considered it for a moment, smiling down fondly at Pipsqueak, who snuggled against her, kneading her tiny claws into Zoe’s shirt. “Well, no. But I’m not going to tell them that.”

  “When my grandmother died, mine thought a new video game would cheer me up.” Scowling at the monitor as if this were its fault, he went back to playing. Zoe knew better than to ask whether it had worked. Obviously it hadn’t. And just as obviously, that didn’t stop Harrison from playing. Or from missing his grandma.

  Zoe sat on the edge of his bed, watching his game. Pipsqueak crawled out of her arms and began sniffing at Harrison’s pillow. Glancing over, Harrison said, “Guess they’re going to make friends.”

  “Who’s making friends?” Zoe asked.

  Suddenly Harrison’s pillow moved. Or, more accurately, the large dog, which had been hidden by the mound of blankets and sleeping bag, shifted.

  Pipsqueak squawked.

  The dog’s head shot up, and his tongue lolled out.

  Letting out a mew, Pipsqueak barreled off the bed and onto the carpet. She rolled about a foot, scrambled until her tiny paws were underneath her, and then bolted across the room.

  “Pipsqueak!” Zoe cried. She lunged for the kitten.

  Harrison’s dog was a Labrador retriever. He was large, friendly, and not very bright, and he loved beyond all else to fetch. Especially to fetch furry moving things that looked a bit like tan, black, and orange tennis balls.

  “No!” Zoe shrieked. “Stop!”

  “Fibonacci!” Harrison cried. He lunged for his dog.

  Pipsqueak bounded to a bookcase and proceeded to leap up to the third shelf. She fluffed out her fur, posed sideways, as if that would make her look intimidatingly big, and hissed. It was a kind of musical hiss, changing notes in between spewing out tiny bits of spittle.

  Harrison and Zoe jumped onto the dog, pulling him away from the bookshelf and shoving him out the door. They slammed the door shut behind him and leaned against it, panting. Exiled to the hallway, Fibonacci whined and scratched at the door.

  On the shelf, Pipsqueak quit hissing and began licking the fur on her back. Zoe felt as if her heart was beating faster than after a race. “Guess this wasn’t the best idea.”

  “Sorry,” Harrison said. “I didn’t think he’d try to chase a kitten. Fibonacci is actually scared of full-grown cats. Cowered behind the couch for hours when the neighbor’s cat hissed at him through the screen door.”

  “I’m the one who promised to keep her safe.” Her first test as a pet owner, and she’d nearly failed! She should have checked the bed. “It’s my fault.” Next time, she’d be more careful. Pipsqueak is depending on me. “Sorry, Pipsqueak.”

  “My dog, my fault,” Harrison said. “But maybe you should keep her at home until she’s a little bigger?”

  “Good idea,” Zoe said.

  Pipsqueak meowed, as if in agreement.

   Chapter 3

  ON MONDAY MORNING, ZOE WOKE next to a full-grown cat.

  Sitting up in bed, she stared at the cat, blinked, rubbed her eyes, and stared some more. She began to feel the kind of nervous, sweaty-hands feeling she had when she was on the verge of making a mistake, like just before she dropped an entire bowl of pasta on the floor.

  The cat looked exactly like a grown-up version of Pipsqueak. Same orange, black, and tan fur in the same pattern. Same pink nose. Same whiskers and eyebrow whiskers. Less kitten fluff and a more grown-cat face. But otherwise . . .

  “
P-p-pipsqueak? Is that you?”

  The cat nuzzled against Zoe. “Mew?”

  It’s her! Her meow was a little deeper, a little fuller, but at its core, it was the same sweet, chirplike mew. But how could her kitten have become a cat overnight?

  Oblivious to Zoe’s distress, Pipsqueak lifted one leg and began to lick between her toes. She gnawed carefully and methodically at each claw as Zoe continued to gawk at her.

  Don’t panic, Zoe told herself. Maybe with some breeds, this was how fast they grew. Or Zoe could have overfed her. Or fed her the wrong foods?

  Zoe picked up her phone, snapped a photo, and then texted Harrison. While she waited for him to reply, she checked online. “It says here that domestic cats take one year to grow from kitten to cat,” she told Pipsqueak. Her voice shook.

  Maybe I’m still asleep and this is a dream, she thought.

  Maybe I hit my head and lost my memory for a year. Or fell into a coma and am just waking up a year later . . . Zoe took a deep breath and told herself firmly to calm down. She was overreacting. There had to be a rational explanation for this.

  “I think . . . I think something’s wrong. Not you. You aren’t wrong. But something could be wrong with you.” She swallowed a lump in her throat. She didn’t want anything to be wrong with Pipsqueak.

  Pausing her bath, Pipsqueak rubbed against Zoe again.

  Zoe stroked the cat’s neck. Her fur felt the same. Just as soft as it was before. Pipsqueak began to purr.

  Zoe’s phone binged. Harrison. “Photoshop?”

  Seriously, Harrison?

  She wanted to text him back a rude emoji. Her phone didn’t have any. She texted a turtle and a thinking-face emoji instead.

  He texted back: “Reptile head?”

  “Slow brain,” she corrected. “Idiot.”

  He sent her a bunny.

  “Be serious,” she typed. There had to be an explanation. Maybe a medical one. “Could cat be sick?” Weren’t there diseases that caused rapid growth? Please don’t be sick. Even after just two days, Zoe already loved her—the softness of her fur, the special mew when she saw Zoe that seemed to be just for her, the twitch of her no-longer-tiny nose when she sniffed anything new. Zoe loved the way Pipsqueak climbed onto her bed in the middle of the night to sleep next to her head and how she’d nuzzle her by headbutting her and rubbing those furry cheeks against her face.

  Harrison didn’t reply for a while, and Zoe watched Pipsqueak settle back down and resume her cleaning routine, moving from chewing her toes to licking her tail. Hair stuck together in the wake of her tongue as she covered every inch. She didn’t look sick, and she wasn’t acting sick. She was just . . . larger than yesterday.

  Much larger.

  Maybe this is normal? Or not normal, but . . . not bad? Maybe she’d be okay, so long as Zoe got her help. If Pipsqueak were sick, there could be a medicine for her to take. This might not be panic-worthy.

  At last the phone binged again. “Too much growth hormone? Happens in humans. Also really bad SF movies. Like Attack of the Killer Giant Kitten.”

  She looked up “too much growth hormone.” It had to do with the pituitary gland, she read, which produced hormones. A certain kind of tumor in the pituitary gland could cause excessive growth. “Going to vet. Want to come?” Zoe typed. “Also, not real movie.”

  He texted back, “Yes.” And “Should be.”

  She’d known he’d say yes. He could never turn down a chance to find answers to an unanswered question. She also knew he was trying to cheer her up, but it wasn’t working. What if Pipsqueak had a tumor that had caused this?

  To Pipsqueak she said, “Stay. I’ll be right back.”

  She hurried to the bathroom, showered in record time, and came back to her room wrapped in a towel.

  Pipsqueak wasn’t there.

  “Uh-oh.” She’d told Mom she would keep the kitten out from underfoot. She shouldn’t be roaming outside Zoe’s bedroom. Especially if this is Attack of the Killer Giant Kitten, she thought, and then pushed the ridiculous notion aside, tossed on some mostly clean clothes, and hurried out to hunt for Pipsqueak.

  She checked the bedrooms—all empty. Her parents and Alex were awake, of course, since they were all annoying early birds and all had work today. Dad would have already left. Peering into Alex’s room, she imagined it stripped of his posters, his books, his toys. Of course he wouldn’t take all of it. Just a couple of suitcases at most. He’ll leave behind whatever he outgrew. His Voltron lions. His Transformers. His high school baseball trophies . . .

  Me.

  Backing out of his room, she headed downstairs. She heard her brother’s voice from the kitchen.

  “Alex, have you seen Pipsqueak?” she asked as she rounded the corner and saw her mother lifting her beloved Christmas cactus, a droopy plant that was supposed to bloom once a year but never did. Alex was holding a trash bag open under it with one hand and brandishing a plastic fork like a weapon with the other.

  “Happy actual birthday, Zoe!” Alex said cheerfully.

  “What—” she began to ask.

  Using the fork, Alex flicked a brown mass out of the dirt around the cactus and caught it in the trash bag. Mom glared at Zoe. “You need to teach your kitten to use a litter box,” she said, her voice clipped. “Not my plants.”

  Oh no, Zoe thought. “I’m sorry. I—” Please don’t make me give her away! Not now. Not when there might be something wrong with her—

  “This is your warning. After this, I don’t want to see a single hair of that kitten’s tail where it doesn’t belong, much less a pile of poop in my favorite plant.”

  Alex peered into the trash bag. “I don’t understand how one little kitten could produce so much poop. It’s like the poop miracle. Or anti-miracle.”

  “Sorry,” Zoe said weakly. I’ll make sure she stays out of Mom’s way. As soon as I find her again . . . She glanced around the kitchen, looking for Pipsqueak. She hoped the cat wasn’t pooping somewhere else.

  “Sorry. I’ll get her out of the house. I need to take her to the vet anyway. To have her checked out. Because I want to make sure she’s healthy. She’s, uh, a growing cat.”

  “If you can’t take care of her yourself, you can’t keep her,” Mom said. “That was the deal, young lady. You’re twelve today. You’re old enough to be responsible.”

  Any thought she had that she might tell her parents about Pipsqueak’s quick growth vanished. She didn’t want to give them any excuse to take Pipsqueak away. She looked at the Christmas cactus. Any additional excuse, she amended.

  I can take care of her myself. She’s mine, and I can do this.

  “Can, um, one of you give me a ride to the vet?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew the answer. Her parents both had work, and Alex would be off at his summer job, an internship with the local newspaper. Mostly fetching coffee. “Sorry. Never mind. My cat. My responsibility.”

  “I’ll be in and out today,” Mom said. “I have some meetings at the mayor’s office. Go to Surita if you need anything. She’s in charge when your father and I aren’t home. Do you have any library programs this afternoon?”

  Zoe had dodged being sent to camp by promising to attend as many free programs at the library as possible. Mom and Dad had said she could have a relaxing summer if she didn’t let her brain rot. “Not today.”

  “Good. Then use today to take care of your new pet.”

  Zoe backed out of the kitchen. “Absolutely!”

  Resuming her search, she found Pipsqueak sprawled in a patch of sunlight on one of the living room windowsills. She’d knocked over two picture frames to make room. Zoe picked them up, checked to make sure they weren’t broken, and then studied Pipsqueak. The cat stretched across the sill, filling it entirely and clearly not feeling the slightest bit guilty. Seeing Zoe, Pipsqueak began to purr, but Zoe felt a mix of worry and fear. Maybe there’s a simple explanation. Maybe she’s fine, just fast-growing.

  Or maybe something
is terribly wrong with her.

  * * *

  It wasn’t hard to look up a local vet and make an appointment for that morning. It was harder to figure out how to get there. Her parents and Alex weren’t options. Harrison’s parents were off at work. That left Surita. Mom did say to ask Surita if I needed anything.

  “It’s not like we can just walk there,” Zoe said to Pipsqueak. “It’s too far for that.”

  After texting Harrison the plan, she found a box that seemed the right size for a full-grown cat, cushioned the bottom of it with a towel, and poked plenty of air holes in the top.

  She wondered how to get the cat into a box. Finished with napping, Pipsqueak was happily careening around Zoe’s bedroom: from the windowsill to her desk to the bed to the dresser and back to the windowsill.

  While Zoe looked up “cats in boxes” on her phone, Pipsqueak jumped off the windowsill and into the box. She curled up inside, kneading the cardboard with her claws.

  “Okay, that was easy,” Zoe said.

  “Mew!” Pipsqueak said, giving Zoe her you’re-my-hero look, which made Zoe’s heart melt.

  She glanced back at her phone and saw there were more than two hundred million hits on “cats in boxes.” Smiling despite all her worry, she took a photo of Pipsqueak in her box, closed the lid, and carried her over to Harrison’s house.

  When she got there, Harrison was attempting to bribe his cousin to drive them. So far, he’d offered to do her chores for two days. Harrison’s parents believed in chores for everyone, including (and sometimes especially, depending on how messy they were) guests. They’d even given chores to Zoe. “Family helps family” was their motto, and the Acharyas were loose in their definition of family.

  “I’m fine being your babysitter,” Surita was saying. “But I’m not your taxi driver.”

  Zoe set the box with Pipsqueak in it down on the kitchen table. The box shifted as Pipsqueak moved around.

  Surita stopped talking to Harrison, raised her eyebrows, and asked, “What’s in the box?” She answered herself: “Pain.”

  Zoe and Harrison exchanged glances. Harrison shrugged.