The Genius Factor: How to Capture an Invisible Cat

by Paul Tobin

  But that’s where I was.

  Slowly, taking deep and drawn-out breaths with each squeaking of the mechanism, I managed to swivel the spotlight so that it was shining on the big front window of the car dealership.

  “Rrr-rowr?” Proton said. His interest was certainly focused. I could feel heat emanating from him. I could feel the shifting of his muscles, the latent power waiting to be unleashed. He turned his head and one of his whiskers slapped against me. It stung, but I didn’t make a sound. Proton focused his gaze on me. His eyes seemed as big as coconuts. His mouth opened. His teeth were so big. They seemed endless. The wind was ruffling the orange and white fur along the sides of his body. It was making a soft ssssss-ing noise. The cat’s mouth kept opening, opening, and the muscles all along his neck and body were rippling with the slightest movement and I could smell something burning from the street below and Proton’s mouth kept opening, opening, wider and wider, only a yard from my face, and those teeth were as big as daggers, and Proton’s mouth kept opening, opening, wider and wider until …

  … he yawned.

  And then he slid down off the edge of the building in that almost snakelike manner of cats, and he landed on the street below. Ignoring everything else, he padded toward the lights I’d trained on the big front window of the car dealership. There was a door to one side. He squeezed through, shattering the door frame. Now inside the building, he moved to the window, yawned again, and curled up to sleep.

  “Yes!” I said. My plan had worked!

  “He’s … sleeping?” Nate said. I was landing next to him, courtesy of my incredible mastership of the rocket belt, meaning that I fell on my butt.

  “Of course,” I said as Nate helped me back on my feet. “Cats are really lazy. They sleep for, like, a hundred hours a day. Give them a warm window and it’s always naptime.”

  “Nice work,” Nate said. “And I’m glad you’re okay.” He reached out and hugged me. I began to relax. Everything was going to be all right.

  I said, “So far so good. Now we need to get to work on that formula. By the time Proton wakes up we need to—hey.” I looked over at Proton, who was still curled up in the window.

  I asked, “Is he getting bigger?” The cat definitely looked bigger. I didn’t think it was my imagination this time. He looked as big as an elephant. An exceptionally big elephant.

  “Uh-oh,” Nate said.

  “Uh-oh?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I wanted an answer.

  “Red Death Tea Society,” Nate muttered. He scribbled a few calculations on his palm, looked down at them, and then closed his hand in an angry fist.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Nate said, “Well, Proton’s going to get bigger.”

  “Interesting,” I said. I was trying to remain calm. Remaining calm is key to surviving a crisis. A giant cat that’s going to become an even giant-er cat is, in my opinion, considered to be a crisis.

  I asked, “How big?”

  “Uh,” Nate said.

  “Nate, whenever you hesitate, you do it because you’re afraid to tell me something, so all you’re really doing is making me even more nervous. So … how … big … is … Proton … going … to … get?”

  “There’s not actually a limit,” Nate said.

  I said, “That is bad news.” I was still trying very hard to remain calm.

  “I suppose it is,” Nate said, but he had a gleam in his eye. “The thing is, well, you know how atoms have a closely packed central nucleus contained in a cloud of negatively charged electrons?”

  “Nope.”

  “Oh. Well, they do. And those electrons are bound to the nucleus by an electromagnetic force.”

  “That’s really great. Entirely superb. But right now, I, Delphine Cooper, have a densely packed central core of terror that a giant cat is going to become even bigger, so get to the point.”

  “Well, Proton is not only attracting other atoms, gathering them from our surroundings and using them to build his mass, but he’s also expanding the atoms from within, with the electromagnetic force escalating its sphere of influence, allowing the electrons a wider expanse of motion while still keeping them in check under the authority of the nucleus.”

  “Talk English or I punch you.” I wasn’t kidding.

  Nate said, “Well, what I mean is, as far as how big Proton might grow, the sky’s the limit. Or, no, actually he could grow far bigger than that. Way beyond the sky.”

  “Piffle!”

  “I know!” Nate said. He was gritting his teeth. Stomping about. “My experiment has been sabotaged! Maculte removed all the restrictions I had in place! This is now the wrong kind of chaos! I’m so mad! What’s the point of all this?”

  “Good question,” I said. I didn’t tell him how I felt the question should be posed not only to the Red Death Tea Society to explain why it was interfering with the giant cat experiment, but to Nate for deciding to create a giant cat in the first place.

  I turned from Nate and looked to Proton. The cat was twice the size it had been before. It was much bigger than an elephant. It was as big as … a whale, I guess? I’ve never actually seen a whale sleeping in a car dealership, so it was hard to compare sizes. What I did know was that the display window was starting to crack with the pressure of Proton’s ever-increasing size. Tiny fissures were appearing in the glass, and the window was making a constant noise that was a cross between a soft shriek and a high whine.

  We needed to do something. But what could we do? I looked around, hoping for inspiration. There were police on the scene and a news crew and lots of bystanders, and a helicopter was hovering up in the sky, and the car alarms were still going off. Also, a burrito truck had decided to set up shop and sell burritos to the gathering crowd, so the smell of burritos was everywhere, mixing with the gasoline and the smoke from one of the cars that Proton had smashed and that was, a little bit, on fire.

  “Oh,” Nate said. I glared at him. He didn’t notice. He was looking at his cell phone.

  “Oh,” he said again, looking up to me. “I know the formula. I figured out the code.”

  “You figured it out? What is it?” I slightly shrieked this.

  “The code? Well, first, I replaced all the letters with Roman numerals. Then I assigned values based on the second-to-last digit of their square roots, and combined that with a color-based system of—”

  “Not the code, Nate! The formula! Can you make the formula? What ingredients do we need? Let’s get them! Now!”

  “It’s peanut butter,” Nate said.

  “We need peanut butter? Okay! What else?”

  “That’s all we need. The secret formula is peanut butter.”

  “Piffle,” I said, staring him in the eyes.

  “We’re going to need a lot of peanut butter,” Nate said. “Like, SO much peanut butter. We’ll need to spread it on Proton in order to reverse his giant growth.”

  I heaved a big sigh. I took off my goggles, wiped sweat from my eyes, and then put my goggles back in place. I glared at Nate. I wondered how obvious it was that I was glaring when I was wearing the goggles.

  “Nate,” I said, “are you telling me that you purposefully, at one time, set events in motion that would necessitate spreading peanut butter all over a giant cat?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s … that’s really dumb. That’s the dumbest thing ever.”

  “Thank you,” Nate said. “I was really rolling that day.” His voice had nothing but pride.

  The dummy.

  At first, the grocery store manager didn’t want us to buy all the peanut butter. Nate and I both had shopping carts and were hurriedly filling them with any and all sorts of peanut butter (Nate said that it didn’t matter if it was chunky or creamy or what brand it was), and I also put a bag of doggie treats in the cart because I knew Bosper felt bad about taking a poo and letting Proton escape. We’d driven to the grocery store at speeds I won’t ever reveal and we’d jumped out of the car while Betsy was s
till moving (she said she’d take care of parking herself) and then it was the carts and all the peanut butter (and all the strange looks from the other shoppers) and then the manager came up and stopped us.

  “What are you kids doing?” he said.

  “Saving the city from a giant cat,” I told him. What else would we be doing with two shopping carts full of peanut butter?

  “With peanut butter?” he said. He did not sound convinced.

  “It’s a secret formula,” I argued. He wasn’t listening to me. He was taking the cart out of my hands and beginning to walk away with it, beckoning for us to follow.

  He said, “If you kids help put everything back on the shelves, this won’t have to become a matter for the police.”

  “No time for that,” Nate said. He was using his take-charge voice. The manager only smiled in reply, a sneering sort of smile, barely paying attention, and then his eyes went wide. His mouth gaped open. He stood up straighter. His hands came off the cart, which wheeled a couple of squeaky feet forward on its own, and then came to a stop.

  The manager looked at what Nate was holding up and said, “Is that … I mean, do you … could that be … ?”

  “Yes,” Nate said. “It’s a gold elephant card.” He was holding out that credit card of his again.

  “Oh,” the manager said. “G-gold eleph-pha-phant.”

  “Yes,” Nate said. “And we’re in a hurry.”

  “Would you like help at the checkout?” the manager asked, lunging forward and grabbing the handle of the shopping cart in the manner of a circus performer grabbing the flying trapeze, almost knocking over an old lady as he twisted the cart around and began running toward the checkout lanes.

  I hurried after him, apologizing to the old lady and picking up the jars of peanut butter that were falling from the speeding cart.

  Remember how I was saying that we drove really fast to the grocery store, so fast that I won’t even admit to how fast we were going?

  Good.

  Well, we drove even faster on the way back to the car dealership. Which made it even odder that there were three black cars following us the whole way.

  They turned off a block before we parked.

  I didn’t mention it to Nate.

  There were other things to worry about.

  As it turned out, I was going to have to quit referring to Proton as a giant cat. “Giant” simply didn’t cut it anymore. He’d grown. A lot. We were definitely in the range of “super-gigantic.” Colossal. And, most fitting of all: MONSTROUS.

  This was now a monster movie.

  Piffle.

  Nate and I were standing next to Betsy, and her rear doors were open, and jars of peanut butter were spilling out all over the street. We’d parked next to the car dealership, and Proton had woken up and was standing in the street.

  And he was at least thirty feet tall.

  I said, “I … I don’t think we have enough peanut butter.”

  “We have enough. We don’t need to cover Proton entirely. Where did the spatulas go?” Nate and I, in addition to the peanut butter and the doggie treats, had purchased two spatulas after asking the grocery store manager what he would use to spread peanut butter on a giant cat. He’d thought for a moment (giving no indication that he believed the question was odd) and said he’d either use spatulas or a spray gun, if there was any such thing as a spray gun that shot peanut butter. Nate had told the manager there wasn’t anything like a spray gun that shot peanut butter, although, if I knew Nate and the gleam in his eye, there certainly would be one in the future. Anyway, we ended up with spatulas.

  “How should we do this?” I asked Nate. The thing about super-gigantic colossal monster cats is that they rarely sit still long enough to have peanut butter spread on them.

  Nate said, “You use the rocket belt and I’ll have Bosper use the reverse setting on the sonic leash to levitate me. He can also use it to levitate the peanut butter up to us, keeping a steady supply.”

  “Good!” I said. It was a simple plan. One that could work. “Where’s Bosper?”

  “Right here,” Nate said, gesturing behind him.

  He was wrong. There was no Bosper behind him. There was only a sidewalk, some debris from one of the spotlights, shattered glass from the car dealership’s display window, and other things of decidedly non-terrier nature. There was also a monumental pile of empty peanut butter jars.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Right here,” Nate said, gesturing again to the same spot, but keeping his eyes on Proton, who was sharpening his claws on the side of a building, nearly tearing an entire wall off the four-story Dupree department store.

  “No, he’s not,” I told Nate. “I don’t see him anywhere.”

  “Sure he is,” Nate said, only then turning to look. He stopped cold. He looked at the empty peanut butter jars and the complete absence of a terrier, and then he let out a long sigh. His shoulders dropped.

  “How could I have not thought this through?” he said.

  “That’s the very question I’ve been asking myself all day. But what do you mean this time?”

  “Bosper loves peanut butter!”

  “What?” I asked. I mean, I understood what he’d said. Bosper loves peanut butter. The concept was easy to grasp. Lots of people love peanut butter. Why shouldn’t a dog love peanut butter? What I didn’t understand was what Nate meant. After all, so what if Bosper loved …

  Oh.

  I said, “Are you saying that your dog stole all the peanut butter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Meaning the peanut butter that we were going to use to save the entire city of Polt from a rampaging monster cat?”

  “Yes. That peanut butter.”

  “Piffle.” I was back to wanting to punch Nate in the arm, although I suppose in this case it should’ve been Bosper who I was punching in the arm. And, yes, I know that dogs don’t have arms.

  “Find your dog,” I ordered Nate.

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” he said, bringing out his phone. “I’ve got his DNA signature entered into my phone, so I can beam a series of coded requests to a receiver in Sir William’s brain. Remember my robot gull? He’s linked to a shadow satellite that I have operating at a non-geostationary orbit at an altitude of twelve thousand one hundred and thirty-seven miles. The satellite includes global positioning hardware that will scan a system of base parameters for a matching DNA signature and then …”

  “Look!” I said, pointing inside the car dealership. “There’s a whole bunch of floating peanut butter!”

  “Or,” Nate said, frowning at his cell phone, “we could just look for a big clump of floating peanut butter. I mean, it’s not nearly as scientific, but—”

  “C’mon!” I yelled, grabbing his hand and running into the car dealership, where a huge glomp of peanut butter was suspended in midair over a partially crushed car. I looked behind it, and there was Bosper, smacking and slurping and chewing on peanut butter, using the sonic leash to hover the rest of it (a dense cloud of peanut butter nearly the size of a refrigerator) above his head, in a ready-to-be-devoured position.

  “Bosper is not eating the peanut butter,” the terrier said. His tail was wagging, which is the human equivalent of crossing your fingers and hoping your obvious lie will be believed.

  “Yes, you are,” I told Bosper. “And we need it to save the city!”

  “Bosper likes big joy of buttered peanuts!” the terrier pleaded.

  “We could have bought you some later!” I said. “Don’t you remember that we’re saving the city? Is this the way to prove you’re man’s best friend? Don’t you want to be a good dog?” I narrowed my eyes at this last bit. My hands were on my hips. Bosper shrank a bit, and I could tell he felt really bad by the way he partially lost control of the sonic leash, meaning that the giant wad of peanut butter sank lower in the air and partially squished over my head.

  “Piffle!”

  “The dog is sorry!” Bosper said as Nat
e pulled me free of the peanut butter, with the terrier running around my feet and apologizing again and again while I wondered (for the third time in my life; don’t ask) what kind of shampoo is best for getting peanut butter out of my hair.

  “Don’t you want to help stop a cat?” I yelled at Bosper, who stopped so suddenly that he upended onto his peanut butter–covered face.

  “Ah,” he said, with realization and determination coming into his expression. His finer instincts were taking hold.

  “Let’s have victory over cats!” the dog said, running out the broken doorway of the car dealership with a giant lump of peanut butter floating after him like it was an odd but loyal balloon, and with Nate and me chasing after him, holding our spatulas.

  chapter

  11

  So it was, minutes later, that I was using a rocket belt to zoom around a giant cat, spreading peanut butter all over its fur with a spatula. Bosper was using the sonic leash to provide me with more peanut butter whenever my supply was low, and I would use the spatula to spread the peanut butter (flying at high speeds and leaving a long trail of the tasty paste along Proton’s back or sides, or all over his ears, which he hated), and then—holding the spatula in my mouth—I’d have to massage the peanut butter into his skin, so that it wouldn’t just be all over his fur, where it wouldn’t do us any good.

  Nate, meanwhile, was doing much the same, though he was propelled through the air by means of the sonic leash as Bosper stood on the hood of a police car bellowing improvised cheers about defeating cats.

  “Is it working?” I yelled out to Nate as we passed each other, with him spreading peanut butter on Proton’s rear legs and me on the cat’s tail. I seriously couldn’t tell if we were doing any good. Had the cat shrunk at all? I mean, the difference between a cat that’s one foot tall and a cat that’s five feet tall is really easy to notice, but the difference between a cat that’s fifty feet tall and one that’s forty-five feet tall isn’t so easy to spot, especially if that cat might be getting irritated with how you’re flying all around him, and might be ready to attack at any moment, but luckily so far, Nate and I were—