The Case of Twisted Kitty

by John R. Erickson

  Anyway, I left Pete and went streaking around the north side of the yard. At this point, my plan had taken shape and had fallen into two stages. During Stage One, I would accelerate to an incredible speed, somewhere between Turbo Three and Turbo Four. (No dog can hit Turbo Five in snowy conditions.) This would lead me directly into Stage Two: intercepting Sally May’s car as she passed in front of the house. Then, during Stage Three, I would assume the Escort Position and lead her toward the county road.

  Did I say it was a two-stage plan? Let’s correct that. It was a three-stage plan.

  Okay, Stage One went off without a hitch. I roared around the north side of the house, bending trees and melting snow in the blast of my jet engines, and you’ll be proud to know that my timing was nothing less than perfect. I reached the front of the house just in time to leap into the middle of the road and assume the Escort Formation.

  Stages One and Two had been accomplished. I was now ready to enter the crucial Third Stage, the actual business of . . .

  HONK!

  . . . giving Sally May and her children an official escort over roads that were icy and dangerous. I began trotting down the middle of the road. As you can see, success in Stages One and Two would mean . . .

  HONK! HONK!

  . . . would mean nothing if . . . did you hear a horn honking? Maybe not. Where was I? Oh yes. Success in the so forth would mean nothing if I failed to complete the difficult maneuvers involved in Stage Three.

  HONK! HONK!

  And the Stage Three maneuvers were very difficult. Think about it. First, I had to trot down the middle of a road that was . . .

  HONNNNNKKK!

  . . . slick and treacherous and covered with slick, treacherous ice. Second, while trotting down the treacherous icy road, I had to perform very complex calculations that would produce the Safe Speed Ratio.

  “Get out of the road!”

  To arrive at the SSR, we measure the speed of the vehicle, multiply it times the Slickness Factor of the ice, divide that by the number of tires on the vehicle (four), and multiply all of that times the gravitational force of the moon.

  Pretty amazing, huh? You bet. I mean, a lot of people think we dogs just blunder into things . . .

  “Idiot! Move!”

  . . . and never give a thought to what we’re doing, but that is far from the truth. Very often, we find ourselves solving massive equations of numbers that involve Heavy Duty Mathematics and . . .

  Huh?

  She was speeding up . . . Sally May, that is. She was speeding up and closing the gap between us. Not only that, but it even appeared that she was trying to . . . well, pass me on the left side.

  That was odd. See, the whole idea of this maneuver was to prevent her from driving too fast on the slick road. So what was the deal? Why was she trying to pass me on the left?

  HONNNNKKKK!

  And why was she blowing her horn? Okay, maybe she didn’t understand the basic concept of the fundamental so forth, but don’t forget that it was pretty derned complicated. Even I had trouble working out all the math on this deal.

  But I couldn’t allow her to speed up and pass me. That would have ruined everything, so I had no choice but to alter my course and shift my Escort Position several feet to the left, putting myself once again in the path of her . . .

  “Get out of the way!”

  . . . automobile. Maybe you think this was easy, but it wasn’t. Far from it. See, in order to make the necessary corrections, I not only had to drift to the left and maintain the Safe Speed Ratio, but I had to do it while throwing glances over my shoulder. That was a toughie, one of the most difficult tasks of my whole career.

  As you can imagine, it caused terrible cricks to form in the neckelary region of my neck. Did it hurt? You bet it did. Terrible pain, but I’m no quitter. I moved myself into the path of her . . .

  “Okay, buddy!”

  HUH?

  My goodness, all of a sudden she stomped on the gas, jerked the wheel to the right, and came roaring up the road. Yipes, unless I was badly mistaken, now she was trying to pass me on the right side of the road!

  Sally May, wait! No! It’s not safe! If you’re not careful, you’ll . . .

  Crunch, thud. Uh-oh.

  See? I had tried to warn her. I had done my very best to give her a safe escort all the way to the mailbox at the county road, but then she . . .

  How can I say this without sounding too . . . uh . . . judgmental? Maybe she just never understood the basic purpose of the Special Escort Duty. Maybe she got impatient. Maybe we’ll never know exactly what possessed her to jerk the wheel and go ripping over to the right side of the road, spraying snow on me with both rear tires.

  We just don’t know why she did it, but it led to a tragic situation. The car went into a skid, don’t you see, and plunged into a snowdrift in the ditch. She spun her tires and tried to plow her way through the deep snow, but the car came to a stop.

  She was stuck in the ditch.

  Sigh.

  Well, I had done my best. I had tried to warn her about the dangers of driving too fast on slick roads. I had used my very body as a bacon to lead her down the middle of the road, and yet . . .

  A beacon. I had used my body as a beacon.

  A great silence fell over the ranch. There wasn’t a sound in the car. Gee, maybe they were injured and . . . well, you know me. When My People are in danger, I rally to the cause. They needed a loyal dog to rescue them and pull them out of their snowbound car!

  I went plunging through the snow and raced to the scene of the accident. I was getting worried and worrieder. Maybe they were hurt. Maybe I would have to do Jaws of Life, tear off the door with my bare teeth and pull everyone out of the . . .

  The door flew open and out stepped . . . yipes! I had supposed the woman who stepped out of the car would be Sally May, but then I wasn’t so sure. I mean, this woman came boiling out the door and she . . . she didn’t look much like the Sally May I had known for so many years.

  Her face was bright red, an angry shade of red, and her eyes seemed to be glowing with some kind of . . . well, fire, you might say. And her nostrils were flared out, almost as though . . .

  You know, I got the impression that she was mad about something, and we’re talking about seriously mad . . . volcanically mad . . . dangerously mad. But what could have made her so . . .

  Okay, it came to me in a flash. She was disgusted with herself for getting the car stuck in the snow. That made sense. I mean, I would be the last dog in the world to say a critical word about the Lady of the House, but let’s be honest. If she had followed her Special Escort Service down the middle of the road, she would be on her way to town right now. Instead, she had gotten . . . well, careless, let us say, and now her car was stuck in the ditch.

  And, yes, the poor lady was blaming herself. She was angry and frustrated, consumed with feelings of guilt, furious that she hadn’t followed my lead.

  Poor Sally May! Suddenly my heart went out to her. Would I just stand there while she punished herself and blamed herself and suffered the agonies of self-criticism? No sir. A lot of your ordinary dogs would have walked away and left her alone, but I’ve never been that kind of dog. This was one of those dark moments when a woman really needed a loyal dog to, you know, share her pain and guilt.

  In a flash, I switched all circuits over to a little program we call “I’m Here To Help,” and made my way through to the snow to her . . .

  HUH?

  She was slouching toward me like a . . . well, like some kind of monster woman with fangs and claws. And her eyes . . . gulp . . . there was something really strange about her eyes, and I mean, we’re talking about flashes of lightning and volcanic eruptions.

  I stopped in my tracks and studied her face more closely. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and my tail froze in the Neutral Pos
ition. Her upper lip curled, exposing . . . yipes, long sharp fangs.

  And then her voice broke the terrible silence. She said, “Idiot dog! Look what you’ve done! If I ever get my hands on you . . .”

  HUH?

  Never mind the rest. Just skip it.

  Chapter Five: Monster Woman Invades the Ranch

  Don’t expect me to reveal the rest of the story. It was much too terrifying for the little children. You know about me and the kids. I don’t mind giving ’em a little thrill now and then, but I don’t believe in exposing them to the really dark and scary parts of my work.

  No kidding. The children probably think they can handle the scary stuff, but they just don’t know.

  What kinds of scary stuff are we talking about? Well, here’s an example. Let’s say that a dog is out on patrol and gets called to the scene of a routine traffic mishap—a lady has skidded on an icy road and her car has gotten stuck in the ditch.

  No big deal, right? The dog goes to answer the call, help the lady in distress, the usual stuff that dogs are expected to do in times of trouble, only he doesn’t find a normal lady in the car. What comes flying out of the car is an Enormous Monster Woman with flaming eyes and terrible claws and . . . and sharp fangs.

  And you know what she does? With her terrible claws poised above her head and her vampire teeth dripping the blood of her last victim, she chases the dog through the snow!

  See what I mean? That’s the kind of terrifying scary stuff that I can’t share with the kids. If they knew the truth about my job, the awful things I see in the course of an average day, it might cause them to have nightmares. And that’s why we can’t risk . . .

  Wait a second, hold everything. Unless I’m badly mistaken, I just . . . okay, it slipped out. I didn’t intend to reveal the rest of the story about Monster Woman, but somehow . . .

  So now you know the Awful Truth that you weren’t supposed to know. Maybe you think I’m making this up, that it never happened. Ha. I wish. No, it’s true, every last word of it.

  How did Monster Woman manage to steal Sally May’s car without my knowing about it? Where did she come from? At this point in the investigation, we didn’t have any answers. All we knew was that sometime between 9:03 in the morning and 9:12 in the morning, Sally May’s car was stolen by a crazy woman who ran the car into a snow bank and then chased the Head of Ranch Security over two acres of frozen pasture land.

  It was one of the scariest events in my whole career. Why, if she’d ever caught me, there’s no telling what might have happened, but we had every reason to suppose that she might have EATEN a dog if she ever caught one.

  You’ll be glad to know that I managed to escape. How? Well, she stepped in a hole and fell down in the snow, and that gave me just enough time to highball it out of there. I hit Full Turbos and headed straight to the machine shed, didn’t slow down or relax until I was hidden away in the darkest, backest corner.

  There, crouched beneath one of Sally May’s reject-chairs, I waited and listened. I could hear the rumble of an angry voice in the distance, then . . . a deep throbbing silence.

  Whew! Boy, that had been a close call. I slithered my way out from under the chair and crept over to the big sliding doors, which had been left open just wide enough for a dog to squirt himself through. I peered out the door and looked in all directions. I heard footsteps coming. I was about to dart back inside and take cover when I saw . . .

  Whew! It was only Pete, not Monster Woman. I stepped outside on trembling legs and took a deep quivering gulp of fresh air. Pete came toward me, rubbing his way down the side of the shed.

  “My goodness, Hankie, what happened?”

  “Pete, you won’t believe this.” I told him the whole story, every last chilling detail. He listened with eyes that grew wider and more astonished by the second.

  “Oh, mercy me. Monster Woman!” He gasped, placing a paw over his heart. “I’m amazed that you survived, Hankie.”

  “Yeah, well, it never hurts to be a great athlete and to be in top physical condition. But where did she come from, Pete? How did she manage to steal Sally May’s car?”

  Pete rolled his eyes around and curled his tail around his haunches. “Well, Hankie, I saw the whole thing.”

  “You did?”

  “Mmm hmmm. We cats are very observant, you know.”

  “Okay, let’s get on with the debriefing, and be brief. I need facts, details.”

  “Well, let me think. When you ran around the north side of the house, Sally May was driving up the hill in front of the house.”

  “Yes, yes? Something happened in front of the house? Hurry, Pete, I’m beginning to see a pattern here.”

  “Well, when Sally May drove in front of the house, this . . . this huge woman-like creature swooped down from a tree and . . .”

  “Whoa, stop right there.” I began pacing, as I often do when my mind is chasing clues. “You said ‘huge,’ Pete. How huge?”

  “Oh . . . seven feet tall, maybe eight feet tall.”

  “That checks out. Okay, you called her a ‘woman- like creature.’ Is it possible that this phantom you saw was actually . . . Monster Woman?”

  Pete gasped. “You know, Hankie, I never would have thought of that, but . . . yes. Maybe that’s who she was.” He turned away from me and made a snorting noise. “Monster Woman.”

  I stopped pacing and studied the cat. “Were you just laughing about something?”

  “Me? Laughing? Oh no, Hankie. I’m sure you’ll agree that this is no . . . snort guff honk . . . laughing matter.”

  “It certainly isn’t. On this ranch, the sudden appearance of monsters is serious business.” I resumed my pacing. “It’s all fitting together, Pete. Don’t you get it? Monster Woman was hiding in the tree. Sally May drove past the tree and Monster Woman swooped down and hijacked the car. That’s how it happened. Pete, I’ve just blown this case wide open.”

  “Oh my. Hankie, I’m so impressed.”

  “It had me stumped there for a minute or two, but when you supplied the details about her jumping out of the tree . . . well, that pretty well wrapped things up.” I marched over to him and gave him a pat on the back. “Thanks, Pete. You see what happens when we work together as a team?”

  At that point, something strange came over the cat. He burst out with some kind of loud sputtering sound and darted away from me. At first I thought he was . . . well, laughing, but that made no sense. Why would he be laughing when our investigative team had just exposed a dangerous female monster on the ranch?

  He wouldn’t. I mean, Pete was no genius, but he wasn’t dumb enough to laugh about that. All at once I was filled with concern. Maybe the little guy had choked or something. Back in the old days, when we were fighting like dogs and cats, I wouldn’t have cared if he choked. In fact, I would have considered it a privilege to choke him myself, but now that he had helped me solve a difficult case . . . well, it was a different deal entirely.

  I rushed after him. “Hey, Pete, what’s the problem? You’re not choking, are you?”

  Again, he made that sputtering sound. “Not choking, Hankie. Tee hee! Just coughing.”

  “Oh, good. For a second there . . . but I never heard anyone make a coughing sound like ‘tee hee.’”

  “Cold air. It constricts the . . . tee hee . . . throat passages.”

  “Oh. Well, that makes sense. Maybe you’d better lie down. That’s a nasty cough.”

  “Thanks, Hankie. Tee hee! I think I’ll do that. Teeee heeeee!”

  Pete staggered away, coughing and sputtering. “Get some sleep and drink plenty of liquor. Liquids. Oh, and be on the lookout for Monster Woman. She might be hanging around for a while. Don’t let her bite you on the neck.”

  Pete went into another spasm of coughing and snorting and made his way down to the yard. The poor little guy! I only wished there was s
omething I could do to ease his suffering, but . . . well, I wasn’t a doctor.

  Pretty sad, huh? You bet.

  At that very moment, as I was feeling sadness and concern about Pete’s illness, Drover came up beside me and sat down. “Gosh, what’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s very ill, Drover. I think he might be coming down with distemper.”

  “You mean he’s mad?”

  “Mad? Why would you say that?”

  “Well, you said something about his temper and I thought you made him mad.”

  I heaved a deep sigh. “Drover, please try to pay attention. I said distemper. Dis-temper. Distemper is like pneumonia in cats.”

  “Oh. Then why don’t they just call it pneumonia?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe distemper is easier to spell than pneumonia. Did you realize that pneumonia starts with p?”

  “Gosh, you mean they wet the bed?”

  “What?”

  “You said that when cats get pneumonia, they wet the bed.”

  I stared into the emptiness of his eyes. “I did not say that. I said, the word ‘pneumonia’ begins with the letter p.”

  “I’ll be derned. So it’s really ‘pew-monia’?”

  “No, it’s really ‘NEW-monia.’ The p is silent.”

  “Yeah, it’ll sneak up on you.”

  “Exactly. It’s very confusing, and that’s why we call it distemper instead of pneumonia. But the point is that Pete is a very sick cat.”

  “I’ll be derned. I thought he was laughing his head off.”

  “He was not laughing his head off, Drover. He was seized by a terrible fit of coughing.”

  “Then how come he was saying ‘tee hee’?”

  My eyeballs rolled up inside my head. “Because, Drover, distemper often produces a distinctive symptom called Tee Hee Coughing. You have your Hacking Coughs, your Crouping Coughs, and your Tee Hee Coughs, and the Tee Hee Coughs are the very worst kind.”

  “I’ll be derned. I never knew coughing could be so complicated.”