Ник Сайнт: Purrfect Cut

Dooley and I looked up in surprise, to discover that Harriet had joined us. She must have jumped up onto the bed while we were chatting, and was now gazing upon the peaceful scene with a strange little smile on her furry face.

“Love?” I said. “Um, I don’t think so. I think she’s counting the pores on his nose. And judging from the time it’s taking her there are a lot of them.”

“Or the stubble on his cheeks,” said Dooley. “The man has a lot of stubble.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Lots of stubble and lots of pores so plenty to look at.”

“Oh, you silly, silly boys,” said Harriet good-naturedly. “Can’t you see Odelia is in love and is simply drinking in the sheer beauty of her beloved?”

I studied the scene with this new information in mind. “Nope,” I said finally. “I don’t see it.”

“That’s because you’ve never been in love,” said Harriet curtly.

“Oh, I’ve been in love,” I said. “I’ve been in love plenty of times. But even then I didn’t stare at the face of my beloved like some doofus.”

“Odelia is not a doofus,” said Harriet. “She’s a woman in love, and that’s what a woman in love looks like when faced with the object of her affection.”

I studied Odelia more closely. Her lips were curved in a tiny smile, her half-lidded eyes sparkled, and a blush mantled her cheeks. All in all she looked a little dopey. As if she needed to go poo-poo and didn’t want to wake up Chase.

“I think she needs to go wee-wee and she’s afraid to wake him,” said Dooley, proving that we were kindred spirits.

Harriet rolled her eyes in that expressive way only she can pull off.

“Ugh. You guys are so dumb,” she said.

“It’s obvious,” said Dooley. “And I can’t believe you can’t see it.”

“Apart from the fact that I think she needs to go poo-poo and not wee-wee, Dooley is right,” I said. “This is obviously a woman who is silently praying for her boyfriend to finally wake up so she can make a run for the bathroom.”

“I’m telling you it’s love! How can you confuse love with having to go wee-wee or poo-poo!” Odelia uttered a little sigh, and the three of us looked up. “See?” said Harriet triumphantly. “Only a person in love can produce such a delightful little sigh.”

“It’s the sigh of a woman who needs to go pee-pee and knows she can’t go,” said Dooley, sticking to his guns.

Suddenly a deep, rumbling voice echoed through the room. “When are those darned cats going to shut up?” The voice was Chase’s and obviously, in spite of our best efforts, we hadn’t been as quiet and respectful as we’d hoped.

“Finally,” I said. “He’s awake. Now Odelia can stop counting his pores and his stubble and go to the bathroom.”

“A bowl of kibble says they’re going to snuggle,” said Harriet. “Because snuggling is what humans in love always do.”

“You’re on,” I said. “A bowl of kibble says she’s going to take this opportunity to make a run for the bathroom.”

But we were both disappointed, and the bet would have to remain a toss-up. For at that exact moment the front doorbell jangled, and both Odelia and Chase uttered a groan of annoyance and made to get up and start their day.

Unfortunately Chase did this with a little less tact and care than Odelia, and the upshot was that his sudden movements bumped Harriet from the bed and onto the carpeted floor, then also sent Dooley flying. The only one still in position was me, and I carefully watched Odelia as she swung her feet to the floor. “A bowl of kibble says Chase will go downstairs to open the door and Odelia is going to race to the bathroom,” I said, still wanting to win my bet.

Three pairs of cat’s eyes watched carefully as two humans stuck their feet into their respective slippers—a pair of Hello Kitty slippers for Odelia and boring old brown ones for Chase—and got up. They both moved out of the room, but before reaching the door Chase took a sharp left turn and muttered, “Can you get that, babe? I need to take a wee.” And before she had the chance to respond, he’d closed the bathroom door behind him and that was that.

Talk about a shock twist! Which just goes to show that human behavior is very hard to predict indeed.

“All bets are off,” said Dooley, sounding disappointed.

“And we still don’t know why Odelia was staring at Chase’s face for the best part of an hour,” I added, equally disappointed.

“Love!” Harriet cried as she padded to the door. “I keep telling you. Love!”

“Yeah, right,” I said. Only a female feline could come up with a dumb theory like that. Dooley and I exchanged a knowing glance. We were in agreement: Harriet was crazy. And we didn’t even need to bet kibble over that. It was a fact, borne out by long association with the white-haired Persian.

And since we were all up now we decided to follow in Odelia’s footsteps and see who this early morning visitor could be. Even before we’d set paw on the first step of the stairs, I recognized the voice of Odelia’s uncle Alec, Hampton Cove’s police chief and generally a harbinger of bad news.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “This can’t be good.”

We hurried down the stairs, all questions regarding human behavior wiped from our minds. And as we arrived in the living room, the first words I heard were, “He was dead when we got there. Dead as a dodo.”

I heaved a deep sigh. I may not know why humans like to stare at one another in the early morning, but here’s one thing I do know: humans simply can’t seem to stop murdering each other. The good thing, of course, is that this unseemly habit provides a steady flow of income for the fine upstanding men and women employed by the Hampton Cove Police Department. And Odelia.

I probably should have mentioned this before, but Odelia is by way of being a local sleuthhound. Officially she’s a reporter for the Hampton Cove Gazette , but her natural curiosity and keen intelligence have turned her into something of a local amateur detective. And that’s where the four of us come in. As cats we have access to all those places that are usually off-limits even to your intrepid reporter-slash-sleuth. Places only cats can sneak into unseen and unheard, and pick up those precious tidbits of information that are not designed for snooping eyes and ears. Plus, we get to talk to all the other cats that freely roam our town, along with its resident animal population, wild or domesticated, large or small. And it provides us what a pretty accurate picture of what goes on in our town at all times, which we then dutifully convey to Odelia, and which has helped her solve numerous crimes so far.

I know they say cats are selfish and solitary creatures, and if a human wants to choose a partner from the animal kingdom they should pick a dog. Well, that’s where they would be wrong. Dogs, because of their natural tendency to shoot their mouths off and trip over their own clumsy feet, are the worst sidekick imaginable. If you really want to get the job done, you should pick a cat. Discreet, silent as the night, and naturally nosy, we are the perfect amateur sleuth’s assistant, and that isn’t merely my humble opinion. It’s a fact.

“So who’s dead?” asked Odelia, stifling a yawn.

Uncle Alec, a ruddy-faced man with russet sideburns and only a few token hairs left on top of his head, cocked an eyebrow. “Have you ever heard of Leonidas Flake?”

Odelia frowned. “The fashion designer?”

Uncle Alec nodded. “That’s the one.”

“He died?”

“He died,” the portly police chief confirmed. “And what’s more, we know exactly who did it.”

“Who?”

“Gabriel Crier. His partner of thirty years. We found him with the bloody knife in his hands, bent over the corpse of his dead lover.”