Louis, Molly & the Woodchuck

by Michael Arnold

  Chapter 7

  The Charlotte Humane Animal Shelter still had a job to do. They had to run a business as they did before all the hoopla occurred. Since Kelly joined in on the search and did a little bit of everything, there wasn’t any possible way she could run the front desk and search for Molly, which was now her top priority, at the same time. Almost everyone who started at the animal shelter started out at the front desk, learning the register. Huel was an exception. He learned fast and he learned well.

  Kelly pulled him from the back, where he was a part of the cleaning crew. Huel, an older man with big square-rimmed glasses, was in the middle of cleaning a kitten, when Kelly rushed in, huffing and puffing, and leaned on the grooming chair.

  “Either you gone stop and take a breath or you gone fall out on this floor.”

  “I know, Mr. Huel. I’m sorry, but we have a big emergency.” Kelly paused to take a breath.

  “How big is big emergency? Don’t you see I got work to do? And I want to be done in time to eat dinner with my wife.”

  “I know and you will. We have a long time before dinner, Mr. Huel. It’s still morning.”

  “I said that because I would like you to keep that in mind just in case you want to pile on extra work.”

  “I understand, Mr. Huel, and I won’t do anything of the sort,” Kelly replied with a smile. “We have a serious situation going on here. One of the new cats, one that was in the process of being adopted, jumped right out of my hands and took off running somewhere. We are looking for her. We’ve got to find her so we can finish the adoption process. We have never had this happen before. I am sure you are aware of that.”

  “And how does that involve me, Kelly?”

  “I need you to run the register until we find Molly, that’s all. Can you do that for me, please?”

  Kelly had calmed down and the breath that Huel told her to take, she took. “Yea, I don’t mind going to the register, no problem, but what am I going to do with little bitty kitty here.”

  “Dry her off as best you can than put her back in her cage and come on up to the register,” Kelly said and made her way back to the front lobby.

  “Sorry, kitty, she’s the boss. I am going to dry you off than off to the front I go. But it’s been good while it lasted. Hopefully we will see each other later, hey?” Mr. Huel asked as if he was expecting an answer from the kitten.

  “I will be glad to be back in my cage. You people around here mistake me for a kitten as if saying I was having the short cat syndrome, like I do is something bad!” the cat said after he was dried and placed back in his cage.

  “Where can she be? She has legs but she isn’t smart enough to open up the door and walk out of here, is she?” Edna asked.

  “No, but I know she has to be pretty smart if she knew to get in the kennel and jump away from it and out the door. That’s a smart cat,” Kelly replied.

  “She’s here, I know she’s here somewhere. We just have to be as smart as she is. If we were all cats and we wanted to get out of here, but all we could do is walk on four legs, what would we do?” one of the young man in the search asked.

  “We would hide,” the girl with the pointy nose answered.

  “That’s right and if we hide, where would we hide?”

  “I thought this was a place where we help pets, not a school where we answer questions. I want my experience to be less about school and more about the pets, Kenny!” Mr. Huel blurted out.

  “I’m just trying to come up with some sort of way where we could find her.”

  “Kenny’s right. We have to have some sort of educated thought on where Molly may be. All of the places where we looked, she wasn’t there.”

  Mr. Huel was looking at the computer on the desk when he heard a movement coming from underneath it. It was a vague movement but it was a movement. He heard it clearly but the search for Molly had left his mind oblivious of the noise. He became engrossed in the computer and the basketball game, he was playing on it.

  Molly was struggling to keep the bag of her medicine from making noise just as much as she was straining physically to keep her pulse rate down. She was too long and big for the shelf on which she laid inside the desk.

  The search crew looked behind the four decorative plants that occupied the front lobby while Edna found an open office room.

  “I know you’re in here somewhere. Where else can a hairy feline like you be? I have some work for you to do. You’re going to catch that rat for me. You think you been living like some sort of feline queen here? Well, not anymore. I have a collar and a chain that will look good right around your fat little neck, cat. I’ve done many dogs in with the collar and chain deal, but it works. It keeps you meaningless animals under subjection. You will be under my rule, Molly. Well, Molly, your name will be changed by me and your new name will be doomed if you don’t do as I well please!”

  “Excuse me, Edna?” Kelly said, walking into the office unexpectedly.

  “Oh yes, what is it, Kelly?” Edna asked, turning her body from the front of the room to the entrance in the back of her.

  “Is there someone in here with you? I thought I heard another voice or maybe it’s just my imagination,” Kelly said.

  “Our imagination has a way of playing tricks on us. Unless that smart cat can talk, I am the only one in here.”

  “Sorry, did you find anything close to Molly in here, Edna?”

  “No, I haven’t. I don’t know where the cat went but she is here somewhere. I will bet my life on it,” Edna replied.

  Molly tried hard to stay on the shelf but the harder she tried, the more the pain induced her not to stay on it. “I might as well give up. Once I open this door I am caught. But I don’t want to go with her. She doesn’t seem nice,” Molly said to herself.

  Then when she was about to open the door and reveal herself to Huel and give up her attempt to freedom, she heard: “Hi. Welcome to Charlotte Humane Animal Shelter.”

  To Molly’s ears it sounded like someone was saying, “there is a whole box of wheat crackers in your cage and once we are done bathing you they are all yours and you can have them whenever you are good and ready for them.” The thought was tremendously good just as the sound of the ring from the opening of the entrance into the Charlotte Humane Animal Shelter was. She had a little time, maybe a lot less than a little, before that front door would pause then slowly close again.

  I want to get out of here. I don’t want to be around any humans anymore. They are mean and they kill us animals behind that gray door, Molly thought. The bag with her medicine, which she allowed to fall out of her mouth, made a click sound inside the door on the concrete floor. Even as engrossed as he was in his computer game, Huel couldn’t ignore the noise he heard under the register’s desk.

  “I’m sorry, sir, for all of us being out here like this, but we have a cat that ran off and it’s lost here, somewhere here in the lobby, and we are trying to locate her,” Kelly explained to the customer.

  What in God’s name was that? Huel thought.

  “It’s not a problem. My son and I came in to adopt. He wants a dog and since they are out of school, I thought this would be a perfect time to take him to find himself a dog.”

  “I’m not sure now, Dad, I think I want the cat that is running around loose out here,” the kid said.

  “Sorry, kid, that’s my cat,” Edna interposed. “There are plenty more where my cat came from.”

  The father and child looked at Edna in utter surprise. They both stood with poker faces.

  More noise came from underneath the desk. Suspicious, Huel was finally ready to satisfy his curiosity. He opened the small door. His mouth dropped open first, then a yell came out of it. “Oh, goberly-moo, it’s that cat!” He jumped back, away from the desk.

  Kelly and her search team ran toward the desk. Edna just held her gaze at that desk.

  “There it is! It is running for the door. Go, cat, go!” the little boy shoute
d encouragingly.

  Edna gave the boy a huge scowl.

  Just as the door was about to close, Molly ran through it as fast as she could like a marathon runner. Edna was right behind her. She squatted down and reached for the opening of the door, when it closed on her arm. She yelled, yanked on her arm until it was out of the door then she collapsed on the floor. Her thick neck snapped back and then forward as her head bounced upon landing on the floor, igniting new pain.

  “Are you okay?”

  Edna didn’t know which search party member said those words, but for whomever it was, Edna had a response – a hard response. “Don’t worry about me, gee-wiz. Just get that cat. That’s my cat, you numb skull!”

  Edna was on her feet. She opened the door and looked out.

  Molly, who was several feet away from Edna, shot a glance at the facility.

  You animals make me sick. I wish I could rid the world of you all. First, it was the mangy mutt, Louis, then it was that rat, then you, Molly the cat. I will find the three of you if it is the last thing I do in my life!

  Molly turned from Edna and the Charlotte Humane Animal Shelter. She picked up her bag of medicine with her mouth and began running again. She was going somewhere. She didn’t have any particular destination, but it would never be the Charlotte Humane Animal Shelter. She was truly grateful that she had been able to escape that prison.

  Molly turned several more times; looking back at the facility once she got to the other side of the street.

  I think I made the right decision. They didn’t want me and that woman with the ugly dog neck brace wasn’t going to treat me nice. She didn’t look friendly at all, Molly thought. Or she would have treated me nice until she thought I was bad and ugly to her then she would have taken me back to that horrible place. And if not that place, then she would take me to another one. It wouldn’t matter because I am sure all of them have gray doors somewhere.

  Molly was still homesick and the thought of being away from the shelter gave her joy, but the thought of being out in the world instead of being in someone’s home scared her.

  “I’m not an outside cat. Someone will get me out here, won’t they?” Words that were just thoughts at first were now words that ended up coming out of Molly’s small triangle-shaped mouth as her belief system.

  The cars – the few that were on the road – paid little to no attention to Molly. No matter, she still chose to be fearful, but she didn’t choose to be stupid. In order to go on living, she had to get off the roads and travel amongst the trees, woods, and fields.

  Where Molly was, there wasn’t any of that – nothing but a road coming and going. She thought it would be safe to be on the side of the road where the traffic was coming toward her, rather than against her.

  If one of these humans decided to kill me, at least I could see them coming and I’d have a better chance of escaping, she thought. As the walks got longer and the seconds became minutes, Molly’s body began to speak. It spoke of weakness and hunger.

  I should just rest first then find food somewhere. I will find food, won’t I?

  If she expected an answer there wasn’t one. However, what she didn’t expect was that the two-way road came to a four-way stop. Molly was sure that up to that point the drivers who had passed her, saw her and questioned themselves concerning what was in her mouth, and why she was walking as if she was a person and knew exactly where she was going.

  “I can’t stop here. I have to keep going. I am too, too scared to sleep out here.”

  Her instincts gearing her every step, she ran across the street she thought was going straight then making a left or right turn. Suddenly, that road didn’t turn into a four way stop, but into a dead end. “Where do I go now? What do I do?” She sat down.

  Edna could have readjusted herself and adapted to the fall and the embarrassment just as she did when Dr. Andy told her it would be a mandatory adjustment for her to wear her neck brace in order for her neck to function as it had been before the incident with Louis and the woodchuck.

  “I’m leaving right this minute!” She made that clear when Kelly asked if she would like to adopt another pet.

  “I have other things I must attend to, Kelly. This whole cat and mouse thing is more than I can handle.”

  “Cat and mouse thing? I’m sorry; I don’t think I quite understand what you mean by that.”

  Edna rolled her eyes in disgust. “Cat and mouse, you know how the cat chases the mouse and most of the time the cat never seems to get that pesky mouse? I am the cat and I will get that pesky mouse one way or the other. You mark my word!”

  Kelly’s thoughts about Edna hadn’t changed. In fact, Kelly was now more convinced than ever that Edna was not an animal lover. Her latest action proved her point.

  After everything had come back to normal and Kelly had some down time, she walked out the door, the door through which Molly stormed out. She walked out onto the pavement and picked up a piece of Molly’s hair, a piece that had not been blown away yet.

  I like this cat, I wonder what was going through her mind when she jumped past the kennel, then hide and ran away with her medicine? That is a very smart pet. They know just as much or probably more than humans do.

  She laughed to herself while holding back those tears when picturing Molly laying in her arms and cuddling against her chest. She loved wheat crackers. I hope she is able to get her wheat crackers wherever she is.

  Kelly ended her grieving as best she could while customers were coming in and while she thought there was something wrong with Edna. She didn’t want the customers to think anything less than Edna being sane. Yet, for Kelly, Edna wasn’t all there….

  Edna was so angry and frustrated she decided that putting up another sign of her lost dog would make things worse and she didn’t want worse, she wanted better.

  “My neck hurts!” she yelled. “I would do just about anything to get my hands on the three of them. If I only had a clue of where one of the three might be, I would feel a lot cheerier than I do right now.”

  “Oh well, they will come up soon and when the three of them do, I will be right there waiting for them!”

  The woodchuck didn’t make the hole leading to the burrows large enough for Louis to fit in it, but large enough for him to see inside the hole and into the two burrows he had created. Louis wasn’t just pleased; he was impressed with the woodchuck’s ability to create a storage facility for their food.

  “I want to say something about what I’m seeing, Woodchuck. I am going to be as perfectly honest as I can. So, I do not want any hard feelings after the fact, okay?”

  “Oh, man, pick on a woodchuck today. Whatever, Louis!”

  “Oh, now honesty isn’t a good thing since it involves you. Is that what I’m sensing, Woodchuck?” Louis asked, yelling down into the hole.

  “Nope, not at all, Louis. Whatever you have to say, I’m all ears. Say what’s on your little furry mind, please.”

  “Okay, I will. What I see down there, in that hole, is something unbelievably great, Woodchuck.”

  Woodchuck dropped the grass and berries he held in his hand to fill in the last hole and turned his body toward Louis. “Is this some type of joke or something? I get it. You’re trying to butter me up, so you can get me to go on another stealing maraud with you. Are you? Don’t lie. Remember, honesty is the best policy,” the woodchuck said, sucking the grape juice from his two front teeth.

  “What is a maraud? I never heard that term before. Are you making something up, Woodchuck?” Louis asked.

  “No! Why would I? I tell you to be honest and yet I’m telling you a lie. A maraud is a raid, invasion, take what we want from humans and leave them with nothing, or if you prefer, marauding is what we did to the two on that truck. Anyway, that’s what it means, Louis.”

  “Cool, but no if I was going to lie about something, it wouldn’t be about you. I think this is great, Woodchuck. A place to store food, I couldn’t have thought of
anything like this,” Louis said.

  “Yeah, you could, Louis. If you were a woodchuck, you could. It’s nothing out of the ordinary. This is what we do.” The woodchuck turned back and began filling the hole again.

  “Don’t take your work for granted, Woodchuck. No matter if it is something that woodchucks do. But what all woodchucks can’t do is what you did for me. You helped me escape from my terrible home and to me this storage facility is something that is not just what you do, Woodchuck, but it’s what you’ve done for me.”

  The woodchuck climbed up out of the hole. He stood on the rock where he could be almost as tall as Louis. He looked him up in the face. “Thanks, Louis. I…, I…, I just want to thank you for your kind words. They…, I mean, Louis, I have to say it. I know you don’t like it when I say this but…” The woodchuck’s sniffles gave Louis an indication that not only aggravated him but got under his skin.

  “Why must you go on sniffling and crying every time, Woodchuck? Why?”

  “Sniffling and crying are two different things, Louis. When have you seen me cry? I will answer it for you. Never. So what makes you think I was actually going to cry this time? I’m going to finish my work in the hole. I will be back up once I’m done.”

  Louis laughed, watching the woodchuck go back into the hole.

  While the woodchuck was finishing up his newly created storage facility, Louis thought that taking a walk back to the area where their invasion took place would be a good idea. He didn’t come out of the woods, he just peeked out. Then what he saw on one of the walls, as bold as neon lights: Food thieves stay clear, just floored him. Then, on the bottom half of the poster it had a picture of what was supposed to be him and the woodchuck. The woodchuck looked more like a rat sporting a scarf around his neck.

  “Humans get it wrong so many times, yet we are the bad ones, because all we want is a little food, and because they won’t give it to us freely, then we are wrong for taking it,” Louis groaned, watching the people as they walked by. They noticed the post and looked out for Louis and the woodchuck by holding their food bags close to them.

  As bad as I hate to see humans act like this, I know there has to be a home somewhere for me. There has to be some kind people somewhere in this world. Someone who doesn’t mind giving a portion of their sandwich to a dog, or a slice of their pizza up, or if you are the woodchuck, give a couple of grapes away without feeling as though you lost something. I know you are out there. Out of all of you that I see, I believe you are out there, and I will find you.

  Unexpectedly and out of the blue, Edna’s home phone began to ring. She wanted to lie perfectly still and rest her neck, but her phone would not stop ringing because she didn’t have an answering machine.

  I reckon if I don’t get up now, then whoever is bothering me, will keep on bothering me until I answer, Edna thought.

  It took her a while to get up since whenever she was getting up from a nap or a sleep she sat on her bed or couch for a couple of minutes before moving.

  “Would you hold on? Give a woman time to get up. Although I look twenty-five, I don’t move like I use to,” Edna yelled, walking to her kitchen to pick up her cordless phone. Wearing her long, flowery, cotton nightgown and her matching, green man-slippers, Edna strode to the kitchen. “Okay, I’m here now. What do you want?” Edna spoke forcefully.

  “Is that anyway to talk to an old friend and cousin, Edna?” The voice was a man’s voice but it was calm and relaxed.

  “Randall Filming? How did you get my number?”

  “I’m fine, too, thank you! Anyway I got your number from Dr. Andy when I asked if he had seen you and he told me to call you and find out how you were.”

  “And he gave my number out? If he wasn’t tending to my neck, I would tell him a thing or two.” Edna shook her head in annoyance, but she didn’t hang up like she wanted. She stayed on the line. “After our last little deal that didn’t work to my liking, you ran off and I was left doing community services. And the entire community was filled with nasty, smelly dogs, so this better be good, Randall, or you better be hanging up that phone right this second.”

  “Oh it’s good alright. I think you will like this one pretty well, Edna. But I would prefer to talk about it in person rather than on the phone, if that’s alright with you?”

  The pause signified that Edna wasn’t too interested.

  She thought that trusting Randall again wasn’t something she wanted to do. Whatever bright ideas he had for the two of them wasn’t something that would make her feel any better. But, right when she was about to decline, something changed her mind. It was something which Randall made clear while she was trying to guess what he was up to.

  “You can make a lot of money doing this and it involves animals-cats and dogs.”

  Those words not only brought Edna out of her house but forty minutes later she was in front of Randall’s house still dressed in her nightgown and her man shoes. When he opened the door to let Edna in, he was walking on crutches with a leg in a cast. She peered awkwardly at Randall.

  “Don’t look like you’re happy to see me or even judgmental.” He stretched a hand toward the living room. “Come on in,” he added, following Edna and taking a seat in the chair facing the sofa, where Edna plopped down heavily. “For a woman who hates dogs, I find it stupid and rather funny to see you in a dog neck brace,” Randall said.

  “I am too. This is all he had and I couldn’t go without anything. Dr. Andy said my neck had to be fixed and the only way was with a neck brace.”

  “What happen?” Randall asked.

  “First you then me.”

  “I asked you first. Come on; tell me what are you ashamed of?” Randall asked.

  “I’m not ashamed of anything, Randall. For your information, what I’m about to tell you is classified and classified information means no information to the public, okay?”

  “I see you still haven’t changed any, Edna. You still the same ole Edna that I am sure that filthy dog, Louis, loves.”

  “I see you have changed a lot, Cousin Randall. You’re losing all your hair at the top and manage to grow a hump in your back since three years ago when you gave me that disgusting dog.”

  “He wasn’t disgusting when I gave it to you,” Randall said, propping his leg up on the coffee table.

  “You are wrong. I thought I would get some use out of him just like I thought I would get some use out of you when we started the Peanut Gallery. But all I got out of you was a scam that left me holding the bag. Now this better be good. If it’s not, whatever is wrong with that leg of yours, Randall, I am going to do it to your entire body,” Edna said with a straight face.

  “Now wait a second, Edna. There’s no need for that. The two dogs I had weren’t happy with the three meals I was giving them. They wanted more and when I wouldn’t give them more, they pushed me down the steps two weeks ago. I had to leave my beautiful apartment because I couldn’t get up and down the stairs. So please, show me a little sympathy, would you?” Randall asked.

  “You get on with the show and tell me about this plan of yours, Randall, and I might consider it,” Edna said.

  “Follow me and I will tell you all about my plan for the both of us.”

  They walked to the kitchen; well, Randall hobbled to the kitchen. There was a laptop on the table. On the screen were several images of dogs and cats in a cage and at the bottom of the ad it said, “Sell your dog to me, as many and as many times as you want and get paid for it! Why give your dogs or cats away for free, so they can kill it and you get absolutely nothing, when you sell it to us and we have them for our chop-sue wong?”

  Edna didn’t say a word. She re-read what was in caption under the picture. “And what am I suppose to do, Randall?”

  “I thought since you can get around a lot better than I can, you could get the dogs and cats from that dog and cat place.”

  “That dog and cat place isn’t called a dog and cat place, it’s called
an animal shelter, Randall,” Edna replied.