Блейз Клемент - Even Cat Sitters Get The Blues

For some reason, that made me vaguely angry, which was stupid, because Tom’s personal life wasn’t any of my business, and I was actually glad that he had a girlfriend after being alone for so long. But I was still sulky at the change in him.

I said, “Oh, excuse me,” and beat a fast retreat, knowing all the time that Tom would feel bad at the way I acted, but not able to do anything about that, either. I didn’t even hang Billy Elliot’s leash in the hall closet before I left, just left it sloppily looped over the arm of a chair.

The nasty truth was that I was jealous. Not like a woman jealous that another woman is with a man she wants, but jealous that Tom had found the strength to let his old love go and be happy with somebody new. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to do that, and I was afraid I would self-destruct if I didn’t—and soon.

TWO

An hour later, the sky was beginning to go lemon as I led a miniature beagle from her driveway to the sidewalk. Funny how I remember the moment so well, as if that were the real beginning of all the awfulness to come. It wasn’t, of course, but it seemed so at the time.

A flurry of fish crows flew overhead, and the beagle and I both looked up to watch their flight. Either by accident or design, I was never sure which, a miniature English bulldog careened around the hedge by the driveway and almost collided with the beagle. The bulldog was white, with a brown hand-sized mark on his back, another covering his right eye, and a wrinkled, squashed face so ugly it was adorable. The two miniature dogs lunged toward each other like long-lost cousins, with lots of tail-wagging and butt-sniffing and leash-tangling.

At the other end of the bulldog’s leash was a tall woman whose back and shoulders were so erect and squared that the open smile she gave me was a little surprising. By the time we’d got the dogs separated and they were at our feet panting and grinning—and drooling, in the bulldog’s case—the woman and I were as friendly as the dogs, except without the tail-wagging and butt-sniffing.

I guessed her about five years older than me, which would make her around thirty-seven, with the long-boned, athletic, Katharine-Hepburn-type beauty that always makes me feel short and dumpy. She was wearing jeans and a hooded gray sweatshirt that hid her hair, but I had the impression the hair was dark, like her eyes. I noticed she wore the same kind of Keds I wore, the washable kind you can get at Sears for twenty bucks. The only unusual thing about her was that she had a nervous way of looking over her shoulder, and her dark eyes tended to dart from side to side as she talked, as if she were checking to see if somebody lurked behind the thick foliage lining the street.

In one of those husky voices that make every word sound full of portent, she said, “I guess the cooler weather has made Ziggy friskier. He’s usually not so aggressive.”

“Your dog’s name is Ziggy?”

She laughed. “Ziggy Stardust, actually. I’m a big David Bowie fan.”

“That’s the second time I’ve heard about a pet named Ziggy.”

Her smile flashed again. “Another dog?”

“No, an iguana.”

“Really? How interesting. But you’ve just heard about him? You haven’t seen him?”

“Not yet. I’m on my way there now.”

“Okay, that’s good. Well, see you later then.”

She jerked on the bulldog’s leash and ran off in the direction she’d come. Halfway down the block, she stooped and picked the bulldog up and broke into a hard run. At the end of the block, she turned the corner and disappeared, and in a minute or two I saw a dark sedan drive from the direction she’d gone.

The beagle and I continued our walk, but I felt uneasy. One of the cardinal rules of professional pet sitting is not to carry gossip from one client to another. I don’t tell one cat owner that somebody else’s cat vomited up decapitated lizard on a guest’s shoes. I don’t tell when somebody’s valuable stud dog failed in his studly duties when presented with a voluptuous bitch in heat. I keep all those things to myself, both because it’s confidential information and because I’m not the kind of person who runs around telling everything I know.

But I had a nagging feeling that I had just betrayed a confidence in telling the woman that I was going to see an iguana named Ziggy. I also had a nagging feeling that she had been ever so deliberately mining me for information, and that I’d given her what she wanted. Even worse, in retrospect I was beginning to think our encounter hadn’t been an accident at all but that she’d been waiting for me to come out. I wished I’d kept my mouth shut about the coincidence of two pets named Ziggy. I felt as if I had given away an important secret.

That was such a nutty, paranoid idea, I took it as evidence that I had lost some ground in the move toward complete sanity.

Still, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t plotting against you.

After I left the beagle’s house, I started retracing my way south, calling on cats. No matter what kind of pet it is, I always do a fast check to make sure they haven’t had any embarrassing accidents or done anything naughty to get attention, then I spend about thirty minutes concentrating on them as the unique individuals they are. I feed them, exercise them, groom them, and do whatever else they need to feel special. Pets are like people; their need to feel important is as great as their need for food and water. Before I leave, I turn on their favorite TV station. When I tell them goodbye, they always look happier than they did when I arrived. That may not seem like a great accomplishment to a lot of people, but I like knowing I’ve made somebody happier, even if the somebody has four legs.

The exception was Muddy Cramer, who never seemed happy no matter what I did. Muddy’s full name was Mud Fence, because when he was found huddled in the Cramers’ backyard, Mark Cramer had declared him ugly as one. Muddy was a two- or three-year-old mixed breed shorthair whose tailless rump indicated an ancestor in the Manx family. He had a dull orange and black tortoiseshell coat, one of his ears had been partially chewed off, and his left eye squinted like a Caribbean pirate’s.

Instead of showing gratitude for being rescued from the wild, Muddy seemed hell-bent to test his humans’ loyalty. He sprayed the curtains, upchucked on the carpet, and clawed the furniture. The Cramers loved him anyway, which proves that love is not only blind, it also can’t smell. I always carried my quart bottle of Anti-Icky-Poo spray to Muddy’s house to neutralize the urine odors, but it was an uphill battle.

I left Muddy’s house feeling sad for both Muddy and his humans—and thinking there is nothing in the world that smells worse than male cat pee. The sky had darkened, and the rain clouds that had seemed hours away were moving in fast. Nuts. I still had several pets to call on, and if there was anything I didn’t need today, it was to get caught on my bike in a cold rain.

Home was just a couple of miles away, so I headed that way to get the Bronco, but I was too late. In seconds, driving rain was slamming me hard, and passing cars were ever so slightly hydroplaning on the oil-slick asphalt. Terrific. I was not only soaked, I could be hit by a flying car.

One of the sucky things about life is that your problems always begin with choices you make. Even worse, you usually know a bad choice when you make it, but you barrel on with it anyway. I had one of those moments when I came to a bricked driveway and saw a small guardhouse set well back from the street. We don’t have many private guardhouses on Siesta Key, so I knew this one was there to preserve the seclusion of somebody who was either very wealthy or very famous or both. I didn’t know the owner of that place. I didn’t know the guard working in the guardhouse, and private guardhouses aren’t known for being refuges for people caught in rainstorms. I knew all that. Nevertheless, I pedaled toward it. With luck, there would be a guard who would let me come inside and wait out the storm. If not, I thought I could at least huddle under its roof overhang until the rain stopped.