Ник Сайнт: Purrfect Cut

And she was so lost in thought that she didn’t even notice that she’d taken a wrong turn and had gone off the path. She only perceived something wasn’t right when she was riding downhill, unable to stop her progress. The next moment she was crashing into a ditch. When she dropped out of her chair and splashed into the water, she screamed, but to no avail. She’d told Helga she wanted to be alone, and of course Leo’s security people didn’t care what happened to the new owner, since they were all about to be laid off anyway.

Soon she was sinking, and discovered this was no ditch but a pond. And before long the water closed over her head, and she was drowning!

Chapter 25

We’d been wandering around the petting zoo for a while, absolutely lost, I don’t mind confessing. The problem with being locked up and then escaping by the skin of your teeth is that you’re so pumped up on adrenaline that you don’t know which way is up or down. We were so elated to be out of our temporary prison that we’d simply been trucking along, without really looking which way we were going. And we were still pottering about the zoo when suddenly loud voices greeted us. They sounded awfully familiar.

“No, I’m telling you, Max would never be seen dead in a pigsty,” a female voice said.

“And I’m telling you that Max loves all creatures great and small, so this petting zoo is exactly where we’ll find him and Dooley.”

“Hey, isn’t that Harriet?” asked Dooley.

“And Brutus!”

We made for the voices, and when we emerged from a bush found ourselves gazing at a wondrous scene: Harriet and Brutus, sitting next to a very sizable pig!

The pig was munching on something located in a trough, while Harriet and Brutus were arguing back and forth about the strategy they needed to employ to find me and Dooley.

“You guys!” I cried as we burst onto the peculiar scene. “You found us!”

“Max! Dooley!” yelled Harriet, and streaked forward and actually pushed her wet nose into my neck, overjoyed to see me. Displaying affection has never been Harriet’s strong suit and it surprised me to see so much of it now.

“Hey, Dooley, old buddy,” said Brutus with a grin.

“How did you find us?” asked Dooley.

“Well, you found us,” said Brutus, making a good point, “so you tell me.”

“Can you guys take this meeting elsewhere?” suddenly spoke the pig in a deep rumbling voice. “You’re interrupting a perfectly good meal.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Pig,” said Dooley. “I apologize for the intrusion.”

“Yeah, it’s okay,” said the pig. “Just don’t do it again, will you?”

“Of course,” I said.

We moved away from the pigpen and soon found ourselves wandering near a small duck pond. “So what happened?” asked Harriet.

“Oh, we’ve been hanging out all day in a chicken coop,” said Dooley.

“See?!” said Brutus, giving Harriet a light shove. “What did I tell you?”

“The chicken had fled the scene, you see. Her name was Samson,” Dooley continued the narrative. “But then we got tired of eating chicken feed, and so we went in search of something tastier and that’s when we met Pussy.”

In a few words, Dooley and I told the tale of meeting Pussy, attending the conference from the confines of Leo’s secret control room, and being locked up and threatened with death by lethal claw by Leonora Flake, Chris Cross and the very scary Tank. Harriet and Brutus were hanging on our every word.

“So they were going to kill you?” asked Harriet. “Actually kill you dead?”

“Yeah, and bury us in a very deep grave,” said Dooley.

“Gruesome,” said Brutus, duly impressed by our harrowing adventure.

“These are not very nice people,” said Dooley. “And Leo’s mother is the worst of the bunch.”

“Is she behind the whole thing?” asked Brutus.

“You mean did she kill her son?” I said. “That wouldn’t surprise me.”

“If she can kill a cat, she can kill a human,” said Dooley with iron logic.

“She’s mean,” I agreed. “Capable of just about anything.”

Just then, we heard screams and shouts coming from the other side of the pond, and to my surprise it was the same woman we’d been verbally filleting, and who seemed to have landed herself in hot water herself now. Though I should probably say cold water, for as a rule duck ponds are not hot tubs.

“It’s Mrs. Flake,” I said as we hurried over to where the screams seemed to be coming from. And just as we reached the spot, the woman was going under for the third time, and the only thing that remained were bubbles reaching the surface. Then all was quiet as the watery grave closed above her head…

“We have to save her!” said Harriet.

“Yeah, but how?” I said. Cats, to their detriment, are not equipped with the type of accessories that allow for a waterlogged existence: webbed toes and gills and such. Even if we braved all and jumped into the water, what good would it do? We’d probably perish ourselves, and end up at the bottom.

Then Dooley suddenly started yelling his head off. “Heeeeelp!” he screamed. “Heeeeeeelp us!”

I felt bad for the kid. Obviously the day’s many brushes with danger and peril had gotten to him, and now he’d lost what little sanity he had left.

Soon, though, a cow waddled up to take a closer look.

“What’s going on?” she asked in her customary amiable way.

“Somebody’s drowning!” Dooley said. “You have to help her!”

“Ooh, that’s a job for Francis,” she said, then displaced a wad of grass from one cheek to the other and hollered, “Francis! We’ve got a jumper!”

Francis the donkey came toddling up, and directed a curious look at the pond. “No can do,” he said after a moment’s deliberation. “Too deep for me, I’m afraid. But maybe Streaker can handle it. Streaker! Come here a minute, will ya?”

Streaker the horse came cantering up. “Yes? Yes?” she said, eager for any fate. It was obvious that here was a horse dying to get some serious action.

“Jumper,” said Francis, indicating the pond with his hoof.

“Ooh, wee!” said Streaker happily, and jumped headfirst into the pond!

Moments later she returned grabbing the old lady between her large teeth, then proceeded to drag her onto the shore!

“Way to go, Streaker,” said Brutus with admiration.

“Now we need to do CPR,” said Dooley, happy that his plan was working but still not fully satisfied with the outcome.

“CPR?” asked Streaker eagerly. “What is CPR? Can I do it? Please?”

“Thump her chest and then put your lips on hers,” said Brutus, “and blow.”

“Thump, lips and blow,” said Streaker excitedly. “I can do it.”

“Let me handle this, fellas,” said the pig, who’d joined the festivities. “I have the build for this kind of thing.” And so she heaved herself down on the woman’s chest for a moment, then put her lips to Leonora’s and blew hard.

“Nothing doing,” she said after a moment. “Looks dead to me.”

“Well, don’t you just stand there!” Francis told two sheep who’d come shambling up. “You perform heart massage while Empress does her thing.”

The pig, whose name appeared to be Empress, gave a curt nod of agreement, and soon the sheep showed a side of themselves I’d rarely seen in the Discovery Channel’s nature movies: they gently put their front hooves on the woman’s chest and started performing heart massage while Empress kept blowing into the woman’s mouth.

“Let me do it!” said Streaker. “I can do it! Let me do it!”

“Shush,” said Francis, who seemed to be the donkey in charge. “Empress is a natural. She’ll pull this off—just you wait and see.”