Pet Whisperer...er...rrr

by Carolyn McCray; Ben Hopkin

  Pet Whisperer…er…rrrrr

  by

  Carolyn McCray

  Ben Hopkin

  Praise for Pet Whisperer…er…rrrr

  “What an absolutely delightful pet comedy! Wyatt is a riot trying to figure out what the animals are saying! If you want a breezy, feel-good read, Pet Whisperer...er...rrrr is it! I can’t wait until the next installment!”

  Amber Scott

  Author

  Irish Moon

  “I am such a sucker for animals, and this book just reeled me! Great, great fun. It is one of those books you just want to read over and over again!”

  Kelli McCracken

  Author

  What the Heart Wants

  “A hoot. That’s what I call this book. Laugh out loud, snort kind of book. All that fun, and then McCray and Hopkin bring it home with a really touching ending. Can’t wait for more from Wyatt and his ‘pack.’ ”

  Elena Gray

  Author

  Full Body Contact

  "The Pet Whisper ...Er ...RRR" is much more than just an incredibly hilarious book about exotic animals and their eccentric humans…Tears streamed down my face during an especially poignant hospital bedside scene.

  Ms. McCray has a way of pulling you into her books and not letting go until the final word.

  I recommend this five-star story to anyone that enjoys humor with heart. If you love animals, you need this book.”

  Charlotte Abel

  Author

  Enchantment

  Start Reading

  About the Authors

  Other Works by Carolyn McCray

  Contact Information

  Copyright Information

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  Wyatt Stampley leapt up onto the coffee table, fleeing for his life. Well, at least fleeing for the life of his ankle. His attacker growled at the base of the table, all teeth and menace.

  Granted, his opponent only weighed four pounds. Granted, his opponent stood only six inches tall. Granted, his opponent was a teacup breed. That did nothing to take away from the snarling, gnashing set of teeth ready to taste Wyatt’s flesh. He knew his opponent’s true nature. He faced not a dog, but a land shark.

  A thirty-one-year-old man should not have to be hiding on top of a coffee table from a dog. Okay, a thirty-one-year-old man shouldn’t have to hide from anything on top of a coffee table, but certainly not a dog. But yet, here he was, searching for an escape route from the jaws of the devil beast.

  “Yeah, um, Uncle Bodhi?” he called out, but no answer came. “Could you, like, save my life?”

  “Just a moment,” the muffled response came from the kitchen. “I’m getting my ice pack.”

  Ice pack? There were, like, a dozen of them in there. Bodhi’s trip to the kitchen should have been a grab and go. What could possibly be taking Bodhi so long? The apartment was what leasing ads called “cozy.” It might as well have been a studio with a couple of walk-in closets that some overambitious real estate agent had decided to label bedrooms. There was barely room to turn around, much less travel from end to end. Bodhi could have come to Wyatt’s rescue in a heartbeat.

  The Chihuahua, though, the Chihuahua was pleased that Bodhi was distracted. That gave Diablo more than enough time to hatch his evil, evil plan. Never was a Chihuahua more aptly named. If Wyatt squinted, Diablo’s perky ears almost looked like horns.

  “I’m telling you, he’s getting ready to lunge!” Wyatt yelled, hoping to hurry his uncle along. “He’s tightening those haunches!”

  Oh, to weigh so little and have such power. The coffee table wouldn’t be safe for long. Not with that glint in Diablo’s eyes. Wyatt had seen it before. And had the scars to prove it. He feinted to the side, hoping to catch the ravening beast off his guard. Diablo was not fooled for even a millisecond.

  “Those rippling muscles!” Wyatt informed his uncle as Diablo’s growling hit a crescendo. Wyatt changed his audience to the uncaring universe. “This isn’t happening!”

  Diablo jumped, hitting the coffee table chest high. His long nails dug into the faux wood surface, trying to pull himself onto the table. Wyatt scrambled back from the fury of the beast. Luckily gravity kicked in, sending Diablo back to the floor. But Wyatt knew that anger like that only grew when thwarted.

  Bodhi shuffled into the room. His shoulder-length hair was half in and half out of a loose ponytail. The guy’s hair used to be salt-and-pepper, but now was more like salt, hold the pepper. Worse, a defrosting ice pack plastered one side of his once-grand mane to his head.

  “Oh, let him have his fun,” Bodhi mumbled.

  “Fun?” Wyatt asked, incredulous. “Fun?”

  But Bodhi winced as he sat down in his well-worn recliner, placing the new ice pack over his eyes. “He’s just a little Chihuahua.”

  Okay, Bodhi might be having a bad migraine, but deeming Diablo as anything but a demon’s spawn was akin to heresy. Still, Wyatt kept his voice down. “For the last two months, I’ve slept with one eye open. The Visine alone is costing more than I make.”

  Diablo barked.

  “It does so,” Wyatt said, glaring into those beady little eyes.

  Well, clearly that was the wrong thing to do, as Diablo ran along the edge of the table trying to snag the hemmed edges of Wyatt’s frayed jeans. Was there no depth to which this dog would not sink? Dashing across the table, Wyatt tried to find a safe haven, but the Chihuahua was relentless.

  “Bodhi, you know that I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.” Dang it! Diablo had Wyatt by his very fashionable hem. Wyatt tried to pull his leg back, but the Chihuahua clamped down harder as he was lifted from the ground.

  Oh no, you don’t, Wyatt thought. He was not about to help Diablo scale the table. Wyatt shook his leg, but that only made his opponent growl all the more. Forget teacup Chihuahua, this was a teacup Pit Bull.

  “Um, Bodhi, I don’t think this pet-communicator apprenticeship is the gig I was hoping for.” Wyatt shook even harder, finally dislodging Diablo’s death grip and a good chunk of Wyatt’s hem. The little dog landed on his feet, though, clearly ready for round two. “I mean, Bodhi, you promised me chicks.”

  His uncle’s lips turned up in a faint smile. “And I delivered them right to you.”

  “Not baby chickens!” Wyatt argued. “I was talking about chicks—babes, dolls. Whatever your generation called them.”

  “We called them women, and we didn’t use tricks to get to know them,” Bodhi said, sighing as he readjusted the ice pack over his eyes.

  “Yeah, well,” Wyatt stated as he tried to think of a really awesome to say. When that failed, he moved on. “I just don’t think I’m cut out for this pet-whispering thing.”

  “That’s not what you said after your mother finally kicked you out of the house.”

  Kicked? Kicked? For a moment, Wyatt scrambled for a comeback. Bodhi had not just said that. If it had not been for Diablo making another run at his hem, Wyatt might have just stood there slack-jawed while he absorbed the shock. As it turned out, Wyatt needed to dance on the tabletop to keep those vicious fangs from finding their purchase again.

  “I will have you know, there was no kicking!” Wyatt countered. “I walked. I strode out of there.” Balancing on the edge of the table, he continued. “A man’s gotta take a stand. I drew a line in the sand, and she crossed it.”

  Bodhi moved the ice pack from his eyes and glanced at Wyatt. “Over the laundry?”

  “She wants me to be more ambitious,” Wyatt said, puffing out his chest until he almost tipped over and had to rush to the other side of the coffee table to avoid Diablo’s lightning-fast counterstrike.

  “ ‘Get a
job. Get a career,’ ” Wyatt repeated in his mother’s lecturing tone, but Bodhi shifted in his seat, letting out a low moan, so Wyatt rushed on, “If that’s what she wanted me to do, then she needed to let me decide if I preferred silky smooth fabric softener or those crappy anti-static dryer sheets.”

  Covering his eyes again with the ice pack, Bodhi sank deeper into his chair. “The poor woman was late to work waiting for the rinse cycle every morning.”

  “What was she so worried about?” Wyatt admonished. “She’s the branch manager. They can’t get started without her. She’s got the key.”

  “Yes, I believe that was the problem.”

  “Hey!” Wyatt exclaimed to his uncle, but then stopped his soft-shoe routine abruptly. Where was the dog? Wyatt peered over the table. Diablo had vanished. No growling. No barking. No gnashing. This had to be a trap. One that Wyatt was not about to fall into. Staying in the “green zone” of the coffee table, Wyatt turned his attention back to the argument.

  “Bodhi, whose side are you on, anyway?”

  His uncle sighed deeply, rubbing his temples. “I’m on the side of you going to the Perfectly Pets event for me.”

  “You mean ‘speed-whispering?’ ” Wyatt snorted. “And wait a minute. Going for you? What happened to going with you?”

  “This migraine isn’t letting go,” his uncle said.

  “Perfect! We can both take the day off!”

  This was the best idea his uncle had come up with since … well, since forever. Now, if he could just find Diablo and send him back through the gate of hell he came through ...

  “We can’t miss this event,” Bodhi explained. “It’s where I get 80 percent of my clients for the year.”

  Wyatt got down on his hands and knees, attempting to peer under the table as he tried to talk his uncle out of the worst idea since … well, since forever.

  “All the more reason for me not to go! They are never going to—”

  Like a flash of canine lightning, Diablo flew out from behind the couch, snapping all the way. Wyatt flung himself backward, nearly knocking himself out on the lamp and scrambling to keep himself on the table. Once he was done shrieking, Wyatt tried to make his uncle understand what an immensely awful idea this was. This whole multitasking thing was not really working that well for him.

  “Just smell that breath! Brimstone, I tell ya!” Wyatt said, pointing at Diablo’s set of finely pointed teeth. “And that’s just your pet. Then there are all the birds, with their cries and fluttering. And the cats! The claws. They just don’t like me.”

  “I can’t imagine why …” Bodhi responded.

  Oh, Wyatt wasn’t going to let that slide. The next thing he knew, Bodhi would be asking him to get a haircut, just like his mom. But his uncle spoke over Wyatt’s stammered protests. “Do this one thing for me, and I will let you quit.”

  “Let me?” Wyatt asked. Oh, now Bodhi really was sounding like his mother. And if he walked away from the woman who cooked him racecar-shaped pancakes every morning, he could walk away from Bodhi so fast his head would spin. Let me? “I will have you know that—”

  “And,” Bodhi emphasized, “I will forgive that little ‘loan’ you took from my wallet.”

  Wyatt stopped his frantic efforts to keep his jeans unmolested. Possibly for the first time in his life, Wyatt was speechless. Bodhi wasn’t supposed to have known about that. The card game last night really should have turned out a whole heck of a lot differently than it did. I mean, how could he not win a game named five-card stud?

  “I swear that I was going to replace—”

  Bodhi removed the ice pack and locked eyes with Wyatt. “Go to the Perfectly Pets event for your poor old uncle?”

  Dang his elders! They knew exactly which strings to pull. Wyatt couldn’t let his uncle down. Not after he’d taken him in. Not after he was willing to forget that unapproved loan.

  “Yeah. Sure. Whatever,” Wyatt conceded with an audible sigh.

  Bodhi nodded, and then rose with a creak. Wyatt watched as his uncle shuffled off into his bedroom. But wait. Hold on a second.

  “Um …” Wyatt said when he realized that Bodhi was not taking Diablo with him. “Bodhi? Throw me a bone here?” Wyatt scooted back to the middle of the table. “I mean, literally, a bone, so I can feed it to Diablo. ”

  But Bodhi’s only response was the sound of the bedroom door clicking closed.

  “Oh, dear God …” Wyatt said as Diablo’s lips curled up into a devious smile, his tongue lolling out, and tail wagging. Whenever Diablo looked happy, that was the time Wyatt really needed to worry.

  “No!” Wyatt screamed as Diablo lunged forward, clearing the side of the table, his nails clattering on the wood. What else could Wyatt do but jump onto the couch?

  But Diablo could clearly smell Wyatt’s fear, and set off in hot pursuit.

  As Wyatt launched for the recliner, he realized that this was going to be a very long day.

  * * * * *

  CHAPTER 2

  The hotel looked as though it had been built back in the fifties, when everything seemed designed to be quickly turned into a bomb shelter. Boxy, squat, and solid, it mocked Wyatt and everything he stood for.

  Worse, someone must have decided to give the place a freshening up. Unfortunately, they choose to do so during the seventies. The wallpaper was a swirling of peach and mint green that made Wyatt feel just a titch dizzy. He half expected a mirror ball to be at the center of the ballroom.

  While dabbing yet another wound on his arm, courtesy of the devil dog, Wyatt nearly ran straight into the registration table. The bite wound stung, but it was nothing that Neosporin couldn’t take care of. He hoped.

  The edge of a banner smacked him in the face.

  “Perfectly Pets Presents: Find the Right Pet Communicator for You!”

  Yeah, right.

  Did these people really believe that someone could read pets’ minds? Wyatt loved his uncle and everything, but come on. Looking out over the crowd taking their seats Wyatt’s fears were confirmed. Three-ring circuses were less chaotic. The barking, hissing, and squawking. And that was just from the people.

  A lady with long, blonde hair sat next to her Afghan Hound, all matchy-matchy. Not just their clothes, either. People talked about pets looking like their owners, but these two were so close that it took Wyatt a second to figure out which was which. Wait. The one with the pink barrette was the chick, right? Like the dating scene was hard enough.

  Then, there was the guy who looked like an ex-fighter sitting next to a Bulldog. Wyatt was sure that he was being punked. He wasn’t even going to comment on the naked Sphinx cat with his bald owner.

  Yet the contestants for best-in-the-freak-show weren’t the clients. They were the other “communicators.” One wide-eyed woman held up a mirror and growled at herself. There was an older, gray-haired man wearing camouflage shorts, flip-flops, and well, nothing else. Except for the large gold ankh necklace. Nothing inspired confidence like a bare chest in the middle of winter. And Wyatt was fairly certain that the guy with a bundle of smoking weeds in his fist, waving them back and forth, was not in compliance with the fire code.

  And everywhere, animals.

  Dogs, cats, and birds were to be expected, but species were there that Wyatt had a hard time identifying. What’s more, he was relatively confident that they didn’t ... couldn’t ... or shouldn’t occur spontaneously in the natural world. There was a pygmy hedgehog, three potbellied pigs, and what looked like a cat-sized gerbil.

  “Excuse us,” a voice came from behind.

  Wyatt sidestepped just in time as an enormous iguana on a leash, led by a preppy guy in an Izod shirt and topsiders, walked past. At least the guy’s clothes matched the décor of the hall.

  An older woman, gray bun tight upon her head, crossed the room toward him. Wyatt bit his tongue before he accidentally called her Mrs. Guthry, his junior high school librarian. Now, that woman could have stood up to Diablo. Especially if he had a late b
ook.

  But the woman before him, while very prim, with her glasses dangling from a beaded necklace, did not have the look of world conquest as Mrs. Guthry had. A shiver went down Wyatt’s back just remembering when he returned a book with the corner of the cover ripped. Attila the Hun had warmer receptions. Much warmer.

  “Where in the world is Mr. Stampley?” the Mrs. Guthry lookalike asked her assistant.

  “That would be me,” Wyatt answered. He stepped forward, making sure no reptiles were in his way first. As she turned to him, Wyatt read her name tag. “Mrs. Crumpet, Organizer.”

  He held his hand out, but instead of taking it, Mrs. Crumpet’s eyes studied him up and down. Dang. She did have a bit of Mrs. Guthry in her, after all. Wyatt repressed a shudder while tugging his sleeve down. The fewer battle scars she saw, the better.

  “You are definitively not Mr. Bodhi Stampley.”

  “Got me there,” Wyatt answered with his iconic win-’em-over smile. He made quite the show of bringing his thumbs to his chest. “But I am the pet whisperer extraordinaire that you are looking for.” He thumped his thumbs against his chest for good measure. There was no substitute for good marketing.

  Mrs. Crumpet looked down at the myriad of nicks and cuts on his hand. Darn him and his sense of flair. He dropped his hands and amped up his smile.

  It did not seem to matter to this woman, though. “But Bodhi has been a headliner at this event for over a decade—”

  “Just point me in the direction of the ladies,” Wyatt reassured her. “And I’ll take it from there.”

  The organizer’s lips pinched together in what Wyatt could only assume was relief that he was taking his uncle’s place. They then relaxed into a thin smile.

  “Yes, let’s let you do that,” she said then turned to her assistant. “Please escort Mr. The-World-Renowned-Stampley to table thirteen, Scout and Ashley, would you?”