Ник Сайнт - Purrfectly Hidden. Purrfect Kill. Purrfect Boy Toy

‘Trust me, I’ve been picking away like nobody’s business, but the only thing that’s worn down by now is my claws. This old wall is a lot tougher than it looks.”

“I’m hungry, Brutus, and I’m getting a cramp. Literally a pain in the neck.”

“I know, sweet peach. Just hang in there. At some point someone will come and they’ll get you out of your horrible predicament in a snap.”

She was silent for a moment. She hated to be exposed to ridicule. If there was one thing she feared more than anything else in life, it was to be the object of mirth, to be laughed at, to be the laughingstock of the town’s cat population. And laugh they would.

“I could get Max and Dooley,” said Brutus. “If you tell them not to tell anyone, they’ll do it, right?”

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” she said softly.

“But they’re our friends. And Dooley adores you.”

“I know he does. And it’s not his loyalty that worries me. It’s the fact that he’s not smart enough to keep his big trap shut. He can’t help it. He’ll promise me not to tell a soul, and the next moment we’ll be down in the park for cat choir and he’ll be shooting his mouth off. Not because he means bad, but just because that’s how he is.”

“What about Max? Do you think he’ll blab?”

“Oh, no, he won’t. Max is true to his word, and smart enough not to talk.”

“We could always tell Dooley a story.”

“What story?”

“We could tell him… you’ve been exploring. That you decided to explore what’s behind these walls, and now you need help getting your big discovery out of there.”

“Could work,” she admitted. “Dooley is probably dumb enough to believe it, too.”

“I don’t think Dooley is necessarily dumb,” said Brutus. “I just think he’s… naive.”

“Well, whatever he is, he can’t be allowed to blab about this. He just can’t.”

Brutus nodded, even though Harriet wasn’t in a position to see it. “You know, I’m the latest addition to the team, right?”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“But I want to tell you how much I’ve come to appreciate you, and Max and Dooley, too,” he said, suddenly feeling maudlin. He glanced around the basement, which looked dark and dank and, with Harriet being stuck in the wall, a little scary, too.

“I know, Brutus. And I also know that you and Max didn’t get along at first, but that you’ve become fast friends, and I can’t even begin to tell you how happy that makes me.”

“It does?” he asked, smiling. “That’s great.”

“Yes, and I also understand you’re suddenly feeling talkative and philosophical and ruminating on life and all of that, but right now I need you to focus, all right, wookie? And I need you to get me out of here, for even though we can try to tell Dooley that I’m an urban explorer, I’m not sure the story will stick, so if you can get me out of here before anyone shows up, that would make me love you even more than I already do.”

“Okay, great,” he said, getting up. “I’ll give it another shot.”

And as he took a firm hold on her shoulders and pulled, while she wriggled to try and get her head dislodged, in a corner of the basement sat an entire family of mice watching the scene and snickering freely. They consisted of Molly and Rupert and nearly all of their four-hundred-strong offspring. Molly had felt this was a sight they’d never seen before and she was right. It rarely happened, at least outside Tom and Jerry cartoons, that a cat was bested by a mouse, and she felt this had an educational value that was hard to overstate. And as they all chuckled and snickered at Brutus’s attempts to free his lady love, all Molly could think was that she would give a million bucks if she had a phone right now and could film the whole thing and throw it up on YouTube.

She was pretty sure it would set the cause of cats against mice back about a millennium, or even more, and give mice the world over fresh hope in their eternal battle against their age-old nemesis. It might also deal a significant psychological blow to cats everywhere, and make them think twice about trying to attack mice in their lair.

But mice don’t carry smartphones, and it’s hard for them to create a YouTube account, so for now she’d have to suffice with her four hundred kids prodding each other in the midriff and rolling on the floor laughing and generally having a grand old time.

Chapter 18

The lights in the kitchen had been turned on, and from the noise inside and the sound of voices it was clear that our humans had finally returned home from work.

So Dooley and I jumped down from the swing and stood in front of the kitchen door and applied our front paws to it, scratching until someone inside heard us and decided to open the door. When finally they did and Marge appeared, Dooley said, “I could have gone in through the pet flap and told Marge to open the door, couldn’t I, Max?”

“That’s right, you could have,” I agreed. And it just goes to show how famished we both were that a simple idea like that hadn’t even occurred to either of us.

We both moved in the direction of our bowls and moments later we were tucking in. You may wonder why cats need a double set of bowls, over there in Marge’s house and at Odelia’s, but then my answer would be, of course we need double bowls. The same way humans like to go out to restaurants or the diner or a snack bar or order Chinese, we like to source our food from as many places as felinely possible. And can you blame us?

“Could you tell Odelia to open the sliding glass door, Marge?” I asked.

“Oh, honey, I don’t know when she’ll be home. She’s on a case, and you know what she’s like. She might be gone all night. Can’t you go through the pet flap?”

“No,” I said, though I wasn’t prepared to elaborate.

“Max doesn’t fit through the pet flap,” said Dooley, who doesn’t mind elaborating on my behalf, even though I hadn’t even signed him a power of attorney or anything.

“You can’t fit through the pet flap?” asked Marge with a frown. “Let’s see. Try to go through now, Max. Yes, just give it a go… Oh, dear.”

Following her instructions, I’d gotten stuck again, of course, much to my embarrassment. Marge made short shrift of my predicament by shoving me through, and then she opened the door for me again so I could return indoors.

She studied me for a moment with a critical eye. “Did Odelia put you on that diet she mentioned?”

“Um…” I said, stalling for time.

“She forgot,” said Dooley. “After Vena told us about the diet you guys all went vegetarian, and then you all turned carnivore again, and the diet thing fell off the radar.”

Marge smiled. “Good summary, Dooley. I see the whole picture now.”

“Thanks, Marge,” said Dooley, pleased as punch.

“And about that diet, I think you need to go on it again, Max. If you don’t even fit through the pet door…”

“Isn’t it possible that the pet flap shrank?” I said. “Heat expands wood, but cold makes it contract, right? So isn’t it possible that even though I lost weight that the pet door simply shrank in size?”

“I doubt it,” said Marge. “The pet flap is made of plastic, and plastic doesn’t expand or contract as much as wood does. No, I’m afraid there’s only one solution for you, Max. Lose weight, or otherwise spend your nights outside, and return inside in the morning.”

I shivered at the quaint notion. “Spend my nights outside? But the nights are getting colder, Marge. And you know what I think about the cold. I don’t like it.”

“So slim down a little, and fit right through that door again.” She crouched down next to me. “See, Max, that pet flap is your weight control tool. As long as you fit through there, your weight is fine. When you don’t fit anymore, it’s time to slim down. See how easy it is? Fit? Fine. Don’t fit? Time to go on a diet.”