The Genius Factor: How to Capture an Invisible Cat

by Paul Tobin

  “Where’s the cat?” I yelled to Bosper, who was running alongside me in my sporadic circles. “I can’t see anything in this ridiculous costume!”

  “Everywhere!” Bosper said. It was not an answer I wanted to hear. Or one that I understood.

  “No!” I said. “I mean, where’s the cat?”

  “Everywhere here comes cats!” Bosper said.

  “Huh?” I said. “Cats? As in plural? As in more than one?” I stopped. I looked around. I adjusted my goggles and my costume so that I could see better. And there was a cat, a regular normal-size cat, strolling toward me across the parking lot. And another one. And there were several over by the grocery store. And there was another one that—

  “Bosper smells three hundred and eleven cats.” He paused, then excitedly added, “Three hundred and eleven is a prime number!”

  I said, “Oh, good, math dog. I’m so happy I’m being stalked by a prime number of cats.” I reached for my phone, which was supposed to be in my back pocket. The only problem was that mouse costumes don’t have back pockets, meaning I’d dropped my phone somewhere in the parking lot. This was bad. I wanted to complain to Nate. Nobody had said anything about hundreds of cats. Still, they shouldn’t be much trouble. I mean, just cats, right?

  But. There were a lot of them.

  I was watching them coming closer, ever closer, stalking me. All types and colors of cats, many of them with little jingling collars. Hundreds of tiny little bells ringing out. Hundreds of predators.

  The boys with their skateboards were watching them. One of the boys skated away, rolling out onto the sidewalk and then disappearing into the distance.

  He was gone.

  I envied him.

  The cats were coming closer.

  “It’s … just cats, right, Bosper?” I was looking to the terrier for some solace, hoping he would be better at it than Nate usually was.

  “Bosper and the girl are in big trouble!” Bosper said. His tail was wagging. So much for solace.

  “Should we run?” I asked the dog. Before I met Nate I considered myself very capable of taking care of myself. Now, I was dressed in a mouse costume and asking a terrier for advice. So there’s that.

  “Cats are good at hunting!” Bosper said. I think he meant that running was useless. His tail was still wagging.

  I said, “Maybe you should start barking again?”

  “Oh!” he said. “Bosper can?” There went his tail again.

  “Yes, please.”

  Bosper began barking at the high pitch that terriers are so good at, as if they’re tiny little opera singers hitting those high notes. The cats, as one (although, again, there were three hundred and eleven of them), stopped where they were. They considered the barks. Dogs, of course, are their natural enemies. And, lo and behold, here was a dog.

  But …

  I could see that in their tiny little feline heads they were doing some math. And, while I doubted there were any animals on earth better at math than Bosper, the cats were certainly smart enough to calculate that one dog is not equal in value (or in a fight) to three hundred and eleven cats.

  So …

  The cats started moving forward again. Padding closer and closer to me.

  “I can see you!” I told the cats. Why were they stalking? Did they think they were sneaking up on me? And where was my phone? Maybe I could call Nate and yell at him and then he would find a solution to this new problem. Maybe there wasn’t a solution. Either way, I could yell at him.

  It was at that moment that Bosper attacked the cats.

  Now, I guess it was because I was panicked, but I’d forgotten that Bosper was more than just a terrier who could speak and was good at math. He was a terrier who could speak, and was excellent at math, and he was Nate’s dog.

  That meant something.

  He ran for the cats, and they moved out of the way, or at least they thought they moved out of the way. But Bosper was using the sonic leash, holding it in his mouth and flipping it around like a whip, using the sheer power of sound like a battering ram. I remembered Nate saying the sonic leash was similar to a force field, and also similar to a whip, which are two entirely different things. But one thing that the sonic leash definitely was, was effective. As Bosper neared the cats, they began flying up into the air as if launched by small explosions. In case you were wondering what it sounds like when three hundred and eleven cats are flung up into the air, I can’t tell you. Sorry. It was too loud to hear anything.

  I was still searching for my phone, and Bosper was still hurling cats into the air (his tail wagging so fast that it was nearly invisible) when the incense burner was suddenly crushed. It just … smashed down on itself.

  Weird.

  What could have done that?

  Oh.

  “Aha,” I whispered. And then, “Oh, great.”

  I adjusted my goggles and found out I was right.

  The answer was, of course, that a giant invisible cat had stepped on it.

  “Phone!” I yelled. “Bosper! We need to find my phone! Right now! Proton is here! We need to tell Nate!”

  “Find the phone!” Bosper yelled. “Good dog!”

  I ran across the parking lot, constantly tripping, dodging cats, cursing myself for having lost the phone. I was also worried that I would spend the final moments of my life stumbling around a parking lot wearing a mouse costume, which is not how I want to be remembered.

  “Who’s a good boy?” Bosper yelled.

  “Did you find my phone?” I yelled back. He was standing thirty feet away, wagging his tail, standing over my phone.

  I said, “Yes! You are a good boy!” I went racing toward him.

  “Girl has pretty smell!” the dog said. “Easy to find! Oranges!”

  I said, “Oranges? Whatever, I’m just glad you—”

  It was at that moment that the cats began to fall on me from the sky. Because what goes up must come down when the wielder of your sonic leash is distracted. The cats fell like rain. Or more like snow, because they were sticking to me, accumulating on me, covering me with a thick coat of angry cats.

  It was neither convenient nor fashionable.

  “Squeak,” I squeaked. I didn’t mean to. I was panicked. And I wasn’t alone. The boys with their skateboards were yelling in surprise and confusion and several other emotions that boys have when cats are falling onto them. Two of the boys skated right into each other and fell down, and a wave of cats drifted over them. Luckily, they were able to break free of the feline horde and run away, largely because they were not encumbered by a mouse costume, like some people I could mention.

  The boys were gone.

  The cats were still falling from the air.

  Bosper barked out, “Cat coming after you!”

  “I know the cats are coming after me!” I said. “They’re on me!” And they were on me, and they were scratching and biting and clawing and tearing at me, but I was semi-luckily in a mouse costume, and all they were doing was shredding it to pieces, so I was safe until I figured out how to deal with them. I hoped. I wasn’t quite yet sure how to deal with them.

  “Big cat is what Bosper means!” the terrier said. “Big cat is behind you!”

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding!” My tombstone was going to read like a comedy routine. “Where is he?”

  “Behind you!” Bosper said, which was no good at all, because I was once more running around in circles. Useless circles, I might add, because I had no idea where anything was. My goggles had twisted sideways, and there was a mouse costume over the goggles. And a layer of cats over the costume. I was in dire need of very specialized windshield wipers.

  “Left! Right! Behind! Above!” Bosper was calling out Proton’s position.

  “Above?” I asked. What did he mean with above?

  “Pouncing!” Bosper yelled.

  I ducked and covered. Not my finest moment. Not at all the greatest defense against a pouncing giant cat.

  I waited for impa
ct. The normal-size cats were going about their business of shredding my costume. I could hear Nate yelling at me through my phone. It was on the ground near me. I was still waiting for impact. A normal-size cat’s paw came through my costume, just near my cheek. I reached up and tore the cat away. Tossed it aside. I was still waiting for impact. Just how long does it take a giant cat to pounce?

  “He’s got him!” I heard Nate say through my phone. I was still huddled on the pavement. Adjusting my goggles, I risked a peek. I looked in front of me. No giant cat. I looked behind me. Not there either. I looked to the left and to the right. I couldn’t see Proton anywhere.

  I looked up.

  Well, there he was. No more than a foot above my head. His paws were stretched down toward me, reaching, clawing, struggling to grab me, but he was caught in midair by … something.

  “Bosper?”

  The terrier was standing at attention, head thrust forward, staring intently at Proton.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “Bad cat!” Bosper said. He did not look my way. He did not take his eyes off Proton. And he spoke through gritted teeth.

  “Pick up the phone!” I heard Nate say. His voice was coming from my phone. I grabbed it up from the parking lot and asked, “What’s happening?”

  Nate said, “Bosper caught Proton with the sonic leash. Proton won’t be able to move.”

  I said, “That’s great!”

  Still on the phone, Nate said, “Unfortunately, it takes concentration to use the sonic leash, and Bosper won’t be able to hold him for very long.”

  I said, “That’s not great!”

  “According to my calculations, we have roughly three hours before Bosper is too exhausted to keep Proton trapped.”

  Bosper, again without looking away from the giant cat that was caught in midair, said, “Three hours, forty-two minutes, twelve seconds, and then Bosper won’t be a good boy anymore!”

  “Let’s go, Delphine!” Nate said. He’d hung up his phone and was running toward me across the parking lot. The normal-size cats were scattering away from him, running as fast as they could, all three hundred and eleven of them barreling off into the distance.

  I said, “How did you do that?”

  “Oh, I have anti-cat perfume. I wear it sometimes. Cats are creepy.”

  “They are not,” I said. Then I thought about it and said, “Yes they are!” When you’ve been attacked by three hundred and eleven (three hundred and twelve, actually) cats while wearing a mouse costume, it changes one’s perspective.

  Nate pointed his cell phone at me and suddenly I was no longer wearing a mouse costume. I was just a sweaty girl in my normal clothes, standing in the middle of a parking lot, underneath a giant cat, reevaluating my life.

  “How’d you do that?” I asked Nate.

  “Costume disintegration ray. It was the fastest way to handle it. We have to hurry, because we still need to scan the other molecules and then create the shrinking visibility formula before Bosper’s too exhausted to hold Proton anymore.”

  “Couldn’t we just get that string theory net of yours ready? Put it beneath Proton and have Bosper drop him in?” Nate had taken my hand and we were running across the parking lot, leaving Bosper and Proton behind.

  “Not advisable to use the net,” Nate said. “I think the cats broke it.”

  “Broke it? How? Didn’t you say it would take the power of a hundred thousand suns to break it?”

  “Well, yes. Something like that. But when the cats were attacking you, I used the net to grab up a bunch of them.”

  I said, “I was wondering what you were doing.” I was actually wondering more than that, but I thought best to leave it unsaid, as I’d been wondering if he was doing anything when the cats were attacking me. Anything at all. Except watching and laughing.

  I said, “So, the net broke? How?”

  “I had it calibrated for a giant cat. The smaller cats upset my calculations.”

  “They upset mine, too.” We’d reached Nate’s car. He slid behind the driver’s seat and closed the door.

  “Get in!” he said. “Hurry! The sooner we get this done, the better for Bosper!”

  Right. The poor dog. I ran around to the other side of the car and leaped inside. As Nate and I sped away, I looked back to Proton, hanging in midair, spitting and hissing. And there was Bosper, below him, standing at attention.

  “We’ll be back soon,” I whispered.

  I wondered what else could go wrong.

  So here’s what else could go wrong.

  Jaime Huffman was still in Plove Park when Nate and I returned. We’d parked the car on the street, raced across the park, and found Jaime. But he wasn’t where he should have been. I mean, he was exactly where he was (walking across the park, looking pleased, and carrying an empty goldfish bowl), but according to Nate’s tracking device the molecule we needed to scan was all the way across the park, at Black Stream.

  We almost ran right past Jaime.

  “Huh?” I said, pulling up short. I’d been focused on the grove of trees where the stream runs through.

  “Oh, hi!” Jaime said. “What’s up, Delphine?” Nate was looking at his scanner. Then up to Jaime. Back down to his scanner. He shook it a couple of times, like he was trying to fix some problem with the technology, which is something I guess even geniuses do.

  “We’re trying to save the city from a giant cat,” I told Jaime.

  He said, “Oh, cool.” Jaime has long hair and wears button shirts with jeans. And he’s tall. Almost six feet. I was mostly talking to his chest.

  “So, what are you doing?” I asked. Nate was being no help at all. He just kept looking at the scanner on his phone, then over across the park toward the stream and the grove of trees. Then he would look over (and up) to Jaime, and restart the whole process, usually tapping on his phone’s display screen at some point.

  Jaime said, “Oh. I was setting Reginald free.” He held up his goldfish bowl.

  I said, “Reginald?”

  Nate whispered, “Oh. Dang it.”

  Jaime said, “Reginald is my goldfish. Well, he was my goldfish. But I set him free.”

  “You … set him free?” I asked.

  “Sure. It was weird. This morning, there were these two guys, and they knocked on my door and wanted to talk about goldfish.” I nodded, as if two men knocking on a door and wanting to talk about goldfish is an everyday occurrence in my world. It isn’t, but I wanted to keep Jaime talking. And explaining.

  He said, “They came into my house and we had a good talk. They even made me tea. It was delicious.” At this point, Nate made a strange grunt, but I frowned at him. We didn’t want any interruptions. The quicker Jaime explained what he was talking about, the better.

  Jaime said, “The men said they’d heard I had a goldfish, somehow. They said it was cruel to keep a wild creature in a small bowl, and that I should set him free.” He paused, looked around and gestured to the park, then said, “It made perfect sense, so … here I am.”

  Nate whispered, “The molecule was on the goldfish. This is bad.”

  Jaime said, “I mean, can you imagine being trapped in something like this?” He held up the fishbowl. It wasn’t very big.

  I said, “It would be like being trapped in a mouse costume.”

  Jaime said, “Uh, yeah.” He clearly wasn’t convinced.

  Nate said, “So you set your goldfish free in the stream?”

  Jaime said, “Sure did.”

  Nate said, “That’s … not really a goldfish’s natural habitat. But, er, I’m sure he’s fine. Anyway, Delphine and I really need to go!” He took my hand. Jaime raised an eyebrow.

  As Nate and I raced off, Jaime called out, “Hey! Are you two dating?”

  We were running too fast to give him the obvious answer.

  Dating?

  Pfff.

  “He has to be around here!” Nate said. We were walking up and down the stream, exactly where the scanner
said the goldfish should be. But, no, nothing.

  “I still don’t know why you put the molecule on a goldfish,” I said. I was moving clumps of grass away from the stream’s edge, looking behind rocks, looking everywhere.

  Nate said, “I put the molecule on a goldfish because it was a not-so-smart thing to do. Remember, I’m supposed to do three dumb things every Friday the thirteenth!”

  “Either your definition of not-so-smart is different from mine, or else you’re not good at counting to three. Just today, I’ve uncovered evidence of you doing, like, seventy scrillion ridiculous things.”

  “Scrillion is not a number.”

  “Should be. Where do goldfish hide? Why isn’t it here?”

  “I’m not sure! Neat!”

  “What’s neat?” I was sifting through the soil at the bottom of the stream, pushing my hand into the sand and rocks and lifting them up. I was fairly certain that goldfish do not burrow, but I’m no expert in the matter. I was, however, an expert in having wet shoes, wet socks, and wet feet.

  “It’s neat not knowing things,” Nate said. “It’s like an adventure.”

  “We’re fighting a giant cat and you’re still looking for more adventure?”

  “Adventures are like numbers,” Nate said. “There’s always a bigger one.”

  “Fantastic. But, mathematically speaking, there’s only one Delphine Cooper, and I don’t want her to be subtracted.”

  “Ooo,” Nate said. “Awesome math reference.”

  “Thanks. I try to be entertaining. So, did it sound to you like Jaime had a visit from the Red Death Tea Society?”

  “The goldfish men? You caught that, too? It was definitely them.”

  “Why would they convince Jaime to set his goldfish free?”

  “Because of Frankenstein,” Nate said.

  “No idea what you’re talking about.”

  “It was a book where—”

  “I know what Frankenstein is, Nate. I just don’t know why you brought him up. Unless—don’t tell me you made a Frankenstein monster, did you?” I tried to picture Nate as a mad scientist creating monsters in a laboratory, cackling maniacally while lightning slashed across the skies. It was uncomfortably easy to do.