Dr. Tess met Mom’s gaze, at least for a bit. “I’m not suggesting that.”
“Huh?” said Bro. “I think you—”
Mom held up her hand.
Dr. Tess held up both of hers. “If I did, I’m sorry.”
Mom nodded, a nod that means we’re moving on.
“But whoever did it,” Dr. Tess said, “is no friend to cats. Is there any vegetable oil? And a bowl of warm, soapy water?”
Soon Dr. Tess went to work on the patient’s tail with vegetable oil and warm, soapy water. After not very long at all the famous golden tip was gone, leaving the tail snowy white from beginning to end. What was going on? I had no idea.
“She’s an imposter!” Harmony said.
“What does that mean?” said Bro.
“This isn’t Queenie,” Harmony said.
They looked at each other. Sometimes I get the feeling that Harmony and Bro can speak to each other silently—which happens all the time among me and my kind, by the way.
“It’s Princess?” said Bro.
Harmony nodded.
Ah.
THINGS BEGAN HAPPENING FAST, AND that can be a problem when it comes to remembering them later. So I may be leaving out some of those fast-happening things, even important ones. But what can you do?
I’m pretty sure of the first thing, namely Dr. Tess saying, “You’re absolutely right, Bro! Princess is one of my patients.” Then came a lot of talk about how she’d sensed something was off from the start, and how Princess’s temperature always ran on the high side of normal, and how Princess’s temperament was “more outgoing” than Queenie’s. Which was one way of putting it.
“But,” Dr. Tess said, “I don’t get it. What’s going on? How did you kids come home with the wrong cat?”
“A wrong cat disguised as the right one,” said Mom.
They all went silent, gazing down at Princess, curled up on the blanket, eyes closed to tiny slits. That tiny slit expression was a Queenie look, and one of her most annoying, and the two of them were pretty identical to the eye—except for the gold-tipped tail issue, which I didn’t understand at all—but I don’t go by the eye, at least not right off the bat. What do I go by? The nose, of course! And their scents, Queenie’s and Princess’s, were different. Very hard to explain how, but if you had my nose, you’d have known right from the start—just like me—that the cat we brought home was not Queenie.
“Why would anyone do a thing like that?” Dr. Tess said.
“I don’t know,” said Mom.
“But,” said Harmony, “if Princess is your patient, then you know where she lives.”
“She belongs to Edna Fricker, over in Stockville.” Dr. Tess got busy with her phone. “Forty-nine Indian Ridge Road—that’s just after the bridge. I’ll call her right now.”
“Um,” Bro said.
“He’s right,” said Harmony.
About what? Had Bro even said anything? I was confused, and Dr. Tess looked confused as well. On Mom’s face was a more complicated look, maybe a bit confused, but there was also love in it.
“It’s better,” Harmony said, “if we just go over there and knock on the door.”
“Are you saying you suspect Edna?” Dr. Tess said. “But of what? Switching the cats? But why? She adores Princess.”
There was a silence. Everyone—including Princess, which was very strange—turned to Mom.
“Let’s go knock on her door,” Mom said.
We went outside and Dr. Tess placed Princess in the very back space of Mom’s car. At first I got the idea that Dr. Tess was going with us, but then a call came in about a sick horse and she headed for her office instead. Harmony and Bro had a discussion about who was riding shotgun, solved as usual with rock-paper-scissors, a game that was incomprehensible to me, but not to Harmony, who always won, and we all jumped in. Including me, on the back seat with Bro. Mom glanced at me in the rearview mirror.
“What’s Arthur doing?” she said.
“Looks like he wants to come,” said Bro.
Mom’s eyes stayed on me for another moment or two. “At least we know we’ve got the right Arthur.” She turned the key.
The right Arthur? Was there a wrong Arthur? What would he be like? I thought about that for a bit and got nowhere.
Mom likes to drive with the windows open. Even in winter, she doesn’t quite close her window completely. One more reason to love Mom. Is it because she loves smelling all the smells whizzing by, just like me? Maybe not: I’ve actually never seen her stick her nose out the window, the way I was doing now.
And oh, what smells! Here are just some: squirrel, rabbit, pizza, suntan lotion, fox, those little yellow flowers, cigarette smoke, human sweat, pee—pee, pee, and more pee, many many kinds—corn, apples, burnt rubber, more flowers, the red ones, more pizza, rat, mouse, stinky sneakers, and pee. Pee pee pee, and then we were parking in front of a small house with many hanging plants on the porch.
Mom gazed at the house. “Let’s leave Princess in the car for the time being,” she said.
“As a bargaining chip?” said Harmony.
“Too soon to put it that way,” Mom said.
We got out of the car, walked up the steps of the porch, with Bro in the lead, kind of striding. An interesting sight, but I had no time to think about it. Bro knocked on the door.
“We’re just knocking,” Mom said. “Not breaking it down.”
I heard footsteps in the house, from somewhere in back.
“Maybe no one’s home,” Bro said.
What can I tell you about human hearing that won’t hurt your feelings? I’ll keep my opinion to myself.
Bro knocked again.
From inside the house came the voice of an old lady, a voice I recognized. It was Edna. Voices stay with me for some reason.
“Just a minute,” she said.
The door opened. There was Edna, maybe smaller than I remembered. Her glance swept over us, settled on Harmony. “Harmony?” she said.
“Where is Queenie?” Harmony said.
Edna put her hand to her chest. “Oh, no. Don’t tell me she’s missing, too?”
“What are you talking about?” Mom said.
Edna looked up at Mom and blinked. “Princess ran away,” she said. “I’ve been searching and searching. She’s nowhere to be found.”
“Ran away when?” said Mom.
“Sometime during the night. She—she broke out through a screen. That’s so unlike her. She just hasn’t been the same since—”
Harmony interrupted. “Do you mean last night?”
“Yes,” said Edna. “I can’t tell you exactly when. I was asleep. I was so exhausted, what with worrying about—”
“Last night?” Bro said, his voice rising. “That’s not possible.”
Uh-oh. Was Edna some sort of problem for us? I moved in a little closer in case Bro wanted me to … to bite Edna, for example. I’m not much of a biter, but if biting was what Bro wanted, I’d do my best.
“Oh, dear,” said Edna, stepping back and starting to tremble.
Mom raised her hand. “I think we’ve gotten ourselves a little sideways.”
What did she mean by that? To bite or not to bite? That was the question.
“Edna, is it?” Mom said. Edna nodded. “I’m Yvette Reddy, mom of these two.”
“I’ve already put that together, thank you,” said Edna.
“Well, nice to meet you, even under these odd circumstances,” Mom went on. “Would you mind winding things back to when this all began? Say, after the photo session at the fair?”
Edna shrugged. “Pamela Vance, the nice lady from the cat magazine, went to get the cats from the photographer and brought them over to us. I took Princess home. She was very sleepy and also a bit unsettled. The truth is she hardly ever leaves the house. So her restlessness was no surprise, the excitement of the day and all. I’ve got a very tall armoire that she’s always completely ignored, and suddenly now all she wanted to do was climb right u
p to the tip-top. I put a stop to that, of course—”
“Why?” said Bro.
“How?” said Harmony.
Edna leaned back a bit, like she’d been caught in a strong wind.
“Never mind all that,” Mom said. “Continue with your story.”
“After the … the incident at the armoire, I noticed that she was gnawing at her tail. That was a first, and very upsetting, so—”
“Was there anything unusual about her tail?” Mom said.
“Why, no.”
“The color was normal?”
“The color? Princess’s color—snowy white. But it was upsetting to see her so unnerved, which was why I took her down to her comfort place—that’s the laundry room—and left her there for a while, hoping she’d take a nap and wake up more like herself.”
“And did she?” Mom said.
“Not really,” said Edna. “So later I brought her up to the den and offered her a nice big bowl of Fancy Bite kibble. She adores Fancy Bite kibble but now she turned up her nose at it. I sat with her, just knitting quietly, passing the time as we usually do, and her eyes finally closed. When I got up in the morning, she … she was gone.”
“Did you search the house?” Mom said.
“Certainly,” said Edna. “Although it was easy to see what had happened—the window in the den was open on account of it being summer, but the screen was closed. Would you believe she’d torn out a whole big section of the screen and escaped? I never dreamed she was capable of something like that.”
“Did you search outside the house?” Mom said.
“For over an hour,” said Edna. “I also called animal control but they haven’t picked up any strays last week. By now she’s had lots of time to—”
Bro cupped his hands to his mouth. “Queenie!” he shouted. “Queenie!”
Edna backed up another step. “I—I don’t understand. What’s going on?”
“Come this way,” Mom said. She headed for the car. All of us followed. Me last, just in case Edna decided to make a run for it. Did she think she could outrun an athlete such as myself? Good luck with that.
And maybe Edna got the picture, because she made no attempt to flee. Mom took out her key fob, pressed a button. The rear hatch of the car popped open. Mom gestured for Edna to take a look inside.
Edna took a look inside. “Princess? Princess!”
Princess rose up, came forward, stepped into Edna’s arms, where she curled up, purring.
“Oh, Princess, my Princess!” Edna’s eyes got all watery. “You found her?”
“Sort of,” said Mom.
“But why didn’t you tell me right away?”
“She doesn’t get it, Mom,” Harmony said.
“What don’t I get?” said Edna. “And please don’t talk about me in the third person.”
Mom gave her a little nod that meant okay. “We’ve had Princess the whole time since the fair,” she said. “And you had Queenie.”
“But … but that’s impossible. I’d know my Princess anywhere—and that’s without their tails being so different. Why, anyone could tell them apart.”
“Maybe you’d know Princess anywhere—” Mom began.
“And maybe she wouldn’t,” said Harmony.
“For sure,” Bro said.
“Kids!” said Mom. “But, Edna,” she went on, “someone spray-painted the tips of their tails to mislead us.”
Edna peered down at Princess’s tail. “That’s her normal tail!”
“It was gold-tipped when we brought her home,” Mom said. “A kind of gold that got washed away by vegetable oil and warm, soapy water.”
Edna’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. “I had Queenie the whole time?”
Mom nodded. “And Queenie’s quite capable of escaping through various windows and screens. Please show us where she got out.”
We headed around to the back of Edna’s house, everyone walking except Princess, very relaxed in Edna’s arms. Why did cats get carried all the time when everyone else had to get by on their own power? Every now and then you hear a human say, “Life isn’t fair.” Now, at last, I got it! This roll I was on looked like it was never going to end.
“Here’s the window,” Edna said. “You can see how the screen is torn.”
“Wow!” said Bro.
“How did she take out a chunk that big?” Harmony said.
Mom gazed at the opening and said nothing. Then we started wandering around Edna’s small backyard, fenced in on two sides, with woods at the back.
“Do you think she headed home?” Harmony said.
“Probably,” said Mom. “But it’s a long way. Maybe we can pick up her trail.” She turned to me. “Arthur? Do you smell Queenie?”
“Find Queenie,” Bro said.
“Come on, Arthur,” said Harmony. “Please.”
Find Queenie? Was that what they wanted me to do? For a moment I thought: What would life be like at the Blackberry Hill Inn with no Queenie? My own life, for example? But it was a short moment. If Mom, Harmony, and Bro all wanted me to find Queenie, then that’s how it was going to be. And in fact her scent—not just much different from Princess’s but also much stronger—was here in Edna’s backyard. I roamed around in a little circle, picked up Queenie’s scent trail, and followed it onto a narrow dirt path that led into the woods. I also picked up some human scent—specifically male human scent—that I knew, but was that the assignment? No. Therefore I forgot about it immediately. I really am a good good boy.
And right away everyone—except Edna and Princess, waiting behind—was saying the same thing.
“He’s onto something! Good boy, Arthur!”
And lots more of that. So nice. Meanwhile Queenie’s scent track stuck right to the dirt trail, making my job easy peasy. We followed it through the woods to a gravel road.
I stopped, sniffed around, made a circle and then a bigger one. Queenie’s scent got mixed into a strong car exhaust smell and vanished. The exhaust smell led toward a curve in the gravel road. I followed it for a while, but sniffed not a single whiff of Queenie. I did pick up a very faint hint of cotton candy, kind of wrapped in a thick package of car exhaust, if you get what I mean.
A cloud came and covered the sun. My tail drooped down onto the road. We stood around.
“Maybe she got home already,” Harmony said.
“Let’s go see,” Mom said.
Bro gave me a pat on the way back to the car. My tail rose. Had I somehow done a fine job without even knowing it? That was my takeaway.
We went home.
“Queenie! Queenie! Queenie!”
But there was no Queenie. I parked myself in the front hall, kept my eyes on the top of the grandfather clock, waiting for her to appear. I’m a pretty hard worker, maybe a fact about me that’s not widely known.
Meanwhile, at the front desk, Mom was on the phone.
“Randa Bea?” she said. “Something’s come up you should know about.” And she started in on a long, complicated story involving Queenie, Princess, the cat beauty contest, Edna, gold paint, and lots of other stuff that sounded familiar. Now, hearing it so clearly from Mom, I knew one thing for sure: She was brilliant. It was finally all clear to me, too! And then not.
On the other end, I could hear Randa Bea. “Oh my god! I just don’t understand this at all. I’d better call Pamela Vance.”
Mom hung up. She gazed into the distance for a while, her eyes dark and troubled. Despite how worn out I was, what with the Frisbee contest and then all this searching around for Queenie, I rose, went around the front desk, and leaned against her leg.
She looked down at me. “Something’s going on, Arthur. But what?”
Good question. I was still turning it over in my mind when the phone buzzed.
“Yvette?” said Randa Bea on the other end. “I spoke to Pamela. She’s just as shocked as I am. All she knows is that she gave the two cats to Cuthbert, who took them behind the photo curtain and handed them out when he was
done.”
“Did you tell her Cuthbert’s gone missing?”
“I did. She was shocked by that, too.”
WHEN WAS I GOING TO START FEELING right? Would I ever feel right again? What a horrid thought! I’d felt right all my life, so right that I didn’t even know I was feeling right. I just assumed that was what being Queenie felt like. Was I still even Queenie if I went on feeling like this, so bad? And if I wasn’t Queenie, who was I?
I curled up. For a while I’d been on the move. This was in the trunk of a car. It hadn’t taken me long to figure that out. Then the trunk had popped open and I’d sprung—
But no. Before I could actually get started—me! Who had never even had to think of getting started!—a black cloud was thrown over me, and strong hands wrapped me up tight in the black cloud and carried me away. I struggled inside the cloud—not a cloud, I soon realized, but some sort of blanket, as I could tell from the woolly smell and the scratchy feel—and tried to claw and bite.
That brought an angry grunt from whoever had me, and then I felt another of those sharp pokes. I became part of the black cloud and stayed in the cloud for a long time. Finally the cloud turned wispy and vanished. My eyes opened, and I found myself where I am now.
How to describe this place? Is it a closet? Maybe. It has shelves, although with nothing on them, and the kind of louvered door you sometimes see on closets, where light comes slanting in through the slats. Mom’s a big believer in louvered doors, especially for the closets where the guest room bedding gets stored. I’m also a big believer in them. Back at the inn, if I happen to find one of those doors open, I almost always slip in for a little lie down. Once someone passing by closed the door, trapping me inside. Later that day a search started up. “Queenie! Queenie! Where are you?”
All I had to do was meow, but I took my sweet time. It was nice to have everyone searching for me. Goes without saying, really.
Was anyone searching for me now? I listened my very hardest. Silence, as far as my ears could hear. But were my ears at their best? Probably not. My head was all fuzzy inside. I climbed up to the top shelf in the closet and lay down. Perhaps I was too tired to reach the top shelf but I did manage to reach one of the shelves. My eyes closed.
Bark vs. Snark Page 11
