Randa Bea took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Miranda’s an only child. Not interested in sports. Very different from your son. But the same in not wanting to talk about it.”
“I hear she’s amazing at the weight-guessing attraction,” said Mom.
Randa Bea nodded. “The way it’s usually set up—with three-pound margins on either side, meaning a six-pound window altogether—means a trained person has a high success rate. But Miranda hits the exact number so often that I let her say within one pound in her spiel.”
“How does she do it?”
“Meaning is it on the up and up?”
“I wouldn’t want to put it quite that way,” Mom said.
Randa Bea smiled. “Carny history is full of attractions that weren’t on the up and up, but Sunshine Amusements isn’t like that. Miranda’s uncanny, simple as that. Like an iceberg a lot of the time, mostly below the surface.”
“Sounds like a very interesting person,” Mom said.
“Thanks,” said Randa Bea. “What I worry about—”
Whatever Randa Bea was worried about I missed completely. Why? Because one of our guests came into the dining room, a newspaper under his arm. It was Mr. Ware. He glanced around, a quick, sharp-eyed movement, those sharp eyes partly hidden under the shaggy white eyebrows, and spotted us at the table in the corner. Mr. Ware stopped dead. Then, fast and silent, he backed out of the dining room and disappeared. But not before I noticed he had a small scratch on one cheek.
I had half a mind to follow Mr. Ware, check out what he was up to. The other half of my mind was still hoping for maple-smoked sausages. While those two halves were fighting it out, Harmony came hurrying in.
“Mom? Dr. Tess is here. She stopped in to see Queenie on the way to work.”
I DIDN’T FEEL TOO GOOD. FOR A WHILE I’d been feeling better, but now I wasn’t.
Once we’d had a very old guest at the inn. He didn’t say much, mostly liked to sit in the shade by the shuffleboard court and watch people play, which actually didn’t happen often, shuffleboard proving to be not very popular. From the top shelf of the armoire in the Big Room I have a good view of the shuffleboard court. I happened to see the old guest get off his chair one morning and shuffle off, if that’s how to put it. He ended up getting lost and Deputy Sheriff Carstairs didn’t find him until nightfall. “Some old people get confused,” Mom told Harmony and Bro. “It’s very sad.”
And now it seemed like a confused old person—in this case a woman, possibly named Edna, whom I suppose I’d met but paid no attention to—had entered my life. That didn’t make me sad. I felt annoyed. For one thing, she seemed to think I loved the closeness of dirty laundry. For another, she kept calling me Princess. I knew Princess, of course, an also-ran in the beauty department. Anyone who could get us mixed up had to be very confused indeed.
“Princess?”
Here she was again.
“I’ve brought you some of that Fancy Bite kibble! Your favorite.” She set a small metal kibble bowl by me on the floor.
First, I did not care for that bowl at all. It just so happens that my kibble bowl matches my cream saucer, white china with a gold border, of a type I believe is called Sèvres, the saucer and bowl the last remaining pieces from a set that had been in Mom’s family for a long time. And now, this cheap, dented, crummy piece of tin? Please.
Second, the kibble itself smelled disgusting. I turned up my nose.
The old lady stood nearby wringing her hands.
“You’re behaving so strangely,” she said.
Oh? Me? I really had had enough of this old lady. I checked my surroundings, found I was no longer in the laundry room, although I had no memory of leaving it. Now I seemed to be in a small musty den with a lot of woven stuff around—on the couch and the chair, hanging on the walls, much of it frayed. I knew who was responsible for the fraying, was suddenly in the mood to do some fraying of my own. As for the room itself, it was just like the tin bowl. I hated it.
Time to make tracks, Queenie. I rose. Or at least started to. But my legs didn’t seem to have it in them. How odd! I settled back down on the floor, a wooden floor with the odor of Princess sunk deep in the boards.
“Oh, dear,” said the old woman. “How about I pick you up and we have a nice little cuddle?”
Excuse me? Did I hiss, or perhaps show my teeth? Well, wouldn’t you? Whether I had or not, the old lady burst into tears and left this dreary room, closing the door behind her.
I looked out the window. Nighttime. One small lamp shone in the far corner, leaving most of the room in shadows. Fine with me. I would have preferred darkness to this room. First choice, of course, was my own place, the Blackberry Hill Inn. The window—the only one in the room—was open, but there was a screen. A closed, unbroken window was impossible. Closed screens were usually impossible as well, although not always. Sometimes they had a little hole in them, a little hole that could be made bigger. I rose.
Or at least started to.
What was wrong with me? Was I thirsty? Yes. I noticed—how had I missed this?—a water bowl placed close to the kibble bowl. Here’s something basic about me and my kind. We do not like the water bowl and the kibble bowl to be close together. How could this old lady, Princess’s companion after all, not know this? Did it have to do with the old lady’s confusion? Or some failure on Princess’s part?
Probably both. Often, in this life, there’s plenty of blame to spread around.
Meanwhile I was thirsty. Problem one was the bowls being too close together. Problem two was that the water bowl didn’t match the kibble bowl. Yes, it was metal and crummy and dented, but the metal of the kibble bowl was a dull silvery color, the metal of the water bowl more coppery. I like my bowls to match. Is that too much to ask?
Problem three: I couldn’t get up.
There are several kinds of sleep, at least for me, dozing being one of them. Dozing is nice if you want to be in two worlds at once, the world of dreams and the world of every day. At the same time, you’re getting some rest, although not as much as when you’re deep in the world of dreams. But I had the idea that being completely absent from the everyday world might not be completely … I don’t want to say safe, because I’m not easily scared—oh, how I hate that expression fraidy-cat! Whoever thought it up doesn’t know us at all!
But I’ll say safe anyway. It was safer to stay at least a little in the everyday world. So I dozed.
And as I dozed, the house changed around me, settling down for the night. The inn’s a big house and the night changes are many and go on for a long time. This seemed more like a small house. There were one or two creaks from somewhere, the sound of a toilet flushing, water flowing in the pipes, pat pat of bare feet on the floor, slow-moving feet of someone not very heavy or strong. Then came a soft human groan, muffled sounds of bedding being adjusted, the click of a light switch.
And a sigh.
Time passed. In the dreamworld I hunted mice, down in the old cellar. In the everyday world I was thirsty. More time passed. I found myself sipping from the crummy water bowl.
But in which world? Dream or everyday?
I took another sip. Dream water would taste perfect. Water from a second-rate bowl would still taste second-rate, no matter how thirsty you were. This water tasted second-rate. I was in the everyday world, an everyday world lit by a single weak lamp in the corner, its light dirty yellow, and everything it touched a bit dirty yellow, too. I glanced down at my gold-tipped tail, to see if it was now dirty yellow—and got a terrible shock. A shock I hadn’t come close to dealing with before I realized I was not alone.
Not alone, because there was movement outside the open window. It was very dark out there, some shadows still, some on the move. Then came a metallic snip-snip-snipping sound, and a big square section of the screen folded in on itself and fell silently into the room.
Some creatures are quick in neither body nor mind. I’ll leave you to come up with an obvious example. Other cre
atures are quick in one but not the other. And then there are the quick in both body and mind types, such as myself. Right now, my mind knew at once: Now is your chance to escape! Leap through the opening in the screen and race through the night, all the way home!
But my body was not itself. I couldn’t get up. I wasn’t feeling too good.
Meanwhile, just outside, one of the shadows emerged from all the others and became a man. This man—a man I knew—climbed through the hole in the screen. An unusual man: He could be young or old. Tonight, he was young. He came toward me making hardly any sound, his movements almost as silent as those of me and my kind. A large sort of gym bag hung over one of his shoulders.
“Well well,” he said softly. “You seem to have landed on your feet.” He bent toward me. “Come on. I’m taking you somewhere nice.”
I did not want to go anywhere with this man. He leaned down and down, a smile spreading across his face. I did not like that face or that smile. I did not like his breath, sickening breath that reminded me of cotton candy. From somewhere deep inside, I found my last little bit of strength, just enough to take a swipe at that smiling face.
“Ow!” he cried—rather loudly, I thought—then reeled back, the smile gone now, and felt his face. Ah, some blood, not a lot, but enough to make a gratifying sight. He went still, listening with his full attention. The house was silent.
“Ow,” he said again, but now in a whisper. He dabbed his face once or twice. “Now why would you want to do a thing like that? I value our friendship, even if you don’t.” He held out his hands. “Now come.”
Come with him? That was not going to happen. If he came the slightest bit closer, I’d—
But he did not come closer. Instead his eyes narrowed slightly, eyes that had turned dirty yellow in this strangely lit room, and he spoke, or rather made a sound. “Meow.”
A perfect meow. It touched me, way down deep, in a way I can’t explain. All I could do was sit still and allow him to pick me up.
“There you go, my beautiful thing,” he whispered.
His dirty-yellow eyes gazed into mine. I gazed back. I hardly noticed the appearance of a needle-like thing, hardly felt its sting.
Darkness, darkness, and I didn’t feel too good. All was black, but I knew it was daytime. Day smells different from night.
A car door opened, not far away. A woman got out. A woman’s footsteps are different from a man’s. She took a few steps. Then someone farther away said, “Dr. Tess?”
That someone was Harmony! Oh, how happy I was to hear her voice. Harmony, my Harmony.
“Had to buy four new tires,” Dr. Tess said. I knew her, of course, perhaps not my favorite human, but far far up the scale from my … my kidnapper. Which is what he was. “Just crazy that someone would do a thing like that,” Dr. Tess went on. “But I thought I’d drop by on the way in, see how Queenie’s doing.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Harmony.
Dr. Tess’s footsteps moved toward Harmony. Then both sets of footsteps moved … moved away? In the exact wrong direction from me?
But I’m here! Queenie’s here! Harmony! My Harmony!
A door closed. I knew the sound of that door closing very well, had heard it so many times. It was the front door of the Blackberry Hill Inn. I was home.
And not home. From around the side of the house came other footsteps, a man’s. They crunched across the gravel parking lot, crunch crunch. A car door opened. The space I was in sagged down a bit. The car door closed. The engine fired. I sensed movement. And put it all together. I was in the trunk of a car and we were driving away from my home.
From in front came the faint smell of cotton candy.
HELLO THERE, ARTHUR,” SAID DR. TESS. We were in the kitchen at the inn—me, Mom, Harmony, and Bro. Plus our golden-eyed guest, now lying on a blanket near the table. I knew Dr. Tess, of course, but only from visits to her office. Now here she was visiting us. Had I stepped on a thorn again and didn’t even know it? I checked my paws, not by licking them or anything like that, but sort of just with my mind. Wow! Just with my mind! I was getting better every day.
But what was the point? Where was I going with this?
Um.
Um.
Oh, right. My paws felt just fine. So what was Dr. Tess doing at my place?
“Hmm,” said Dr. Tess, looking at me more closely. I looked at her more closely, but couldn’t keep it up. “Didn’t we put you on a diet last visit? Have you been sticking to it?”
“That’s on me,” Mom said. “I promise to be more vigilant.”
“But Mom,” said Bro. “So what if he’s a little on the husky side? He won the Frisbee contest, didn’t he?”
“What?” said Dr. Tess.
Bro told Dr. Tess the whole story of the Frisbee contest. He missed a few details, such as the bacon grease part, but just the same it was thrilling to hear.
“Wow!” said Dr. Tess, giving me a quick head scratch, an absolutely expert head scratch. “Amazing,” she said.
“Yes indeed,” said Mom.
Dr. Tess shot her a quick glance. Why? I had no idea. Mom gazed into the distance.
“How about this, Bro?” Dr. Tess said. “Let’s try to stick to the diet and maybe he’ll perform even better.”
Bro thought about it. “Okay,” he said.
Dr. Tess smiled. “And now let’s see the patient.”
She walked over to the blanket, which was when I knew for sure I wasn’t the patient. Were things going my way these days? This was how to live.
Dr. Tess eyed the patient. “Hmm,” she said. “Hmm. And what’s Queenie been up to?”
“She had a big day yesterday as well,” Mom said.
“Oh?” said Dr. Tess. “Let me guess. She won the cat beauty contest.”
“Hey!” said Bro. “How did you guess that?”
Dr. Tess smiled at him. “Like all guesswork, I suppose. I stood on the facts I had and made a mental leap.”
Mom and Harmony laughed, so something funny must have happened. Bro and I seemed to have missed it. We’re real good buddies, me and Bro. The best.
“But since the fair,” Mom said, “she’s been out of sorts.”
“How?” said Dr. Tess.
“Listless,” said Mom.
“And purring a lot,” Harmony said. “She’s not a purrer, so what does it mean?”
“Is she eating?”
“She tasted the kibble and didn’t seem to like it.”
“Drinking?”
“Maybe a little. The level in her water bowl went down but I didn’t actually see her drinking.”
“So it could have been Arthur?”
What was this? All eyes were suddenly on me? What had I done?
“I’ve never seen him drink from Queenie’s bowl,” said Bro.
Me? Drinking from Queenie’s bowl? Never! Well, once. I didn’t even want to think about that incident. Over in a flash, but afterward! My nose! She’d come out of nowhere, possibly flying down from the top of the fridge, and caught me a good one. The sting lasted for days and days. In short, it had been a long time since I’d gone anywhere near Queenie’s bowl. I was innocent! I looked up at everyone with the most innocent eyes I could muster.
“Looks guilty to me,” Harmony said.
“I’m afraid so,” said Dr. Tess. “Maybe Queenie picked up some bug at the fair. Let’s start by taking her temperature. Anything from one hundred point four to one-oh-two point five is good, but Queenie is always one-oh-one on the nose.”
She opened her bag, took out some sort of gizmo. “This goes—very gently, of course—in her ear until it beeps. Queenie tolerates it very well, as I recall. Mind holding her for me, Harmony? Firmly but not roughly is the way to go. Careful she doesn’t scratch you.”
Harmony bent down and lifted our guest into her arms, where she curled up and purred some more.
“Well well,” said Dr. Tess. “She’s making it easy today.” Dr. Tess stroked the patient under her neck, at the s
ame time slowly sticking one end of the gizmo in the patient’s ear. “Now we wait for the beep.”
While we waited, Dr. Tess gave the patient a careful look, from the tips of her ears to the tip of her tail.
“That gold tip is just incredible,” she said. “The icing on the cake.”
“That’s exactly what I thought the first time I saw her,” said Mom.
“The color is so … so vibrant,” Dr. Tess said. “I’ve never—”
Beep beep beep.
Dr. Tess slid the gizmo out of the patient’s ear and checked its little screen. “One-oh-two point four. A normal reading, although on the high side for Queenie.” She turned to the patient. “Anything bothering you under that glorious coat?” Dr. Tess stroked the patient’s back, down to her tail, her fingers sort of exploring all the way—back, legs, tail, the golden tip.
“It feels a little …” Dr. Tess went silent. With her fingernails she sort of picked a bit at the tail, the way Bro sometimes picks at me when he’s checking for ticks. “So odd,” she said, and then she raised her hand. Between her finger and her thumb, she held a tiny gold flake.
“What’s that?” said Harmony.
Dr. Tess looked at Harmony, a look maybe not of the friendliest kind. “Gold paint,” she said.
“Paint?” said Harmony, Bro, and Mom, all at the same time.
“Spray paint, most likely,” Dr. Tess said. “Some people think it’s amusing or cool to spray paint a cat. Or … or maybe to enhance some feature that’s already there. Perhaps the temptation of a beauty contest was a bit more than—”
Harmony interrupted. For a moment she looked just like Mom—in fact, even more so, if that makes any sense. “What are you saying?”
“I think I know what Dr. Tess is saying.” Mom looked Dr. Tess in the eye. “No one here would ever do such a thing.”
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