Molly Fitz - The Cat Caper (Pet Whisperer P.I. Book 5)

“I don’t see any black,” I said, doing my best to read Nan’s teeny tiny handwriting on the bright poster board but coming up short. “What have we been able to rule out?”

“Nothing yet,” she announced with a frown. She spun the black marker between her fingers, and I could tell she desperately wanted to use it for something.

“Chin up,” Charles said, gracing us both with a mega-watt albeit super-fake smile. “We’re making progress. Even if it feels slow.”

“Oh, let’s make a list of all the places we’ve checked,” Nan shouted with glee and began to push herself up off the floor.

I placed a hand on her shoulder and shook my head. “You already gave that to me this morning with your note. Remember?”

“Yes, but it’s not on the poster board with all the other case info yet,” she moaned.

“Hang tight. I’ll go get it for you.” I decided to just go with whatever Nan wanted in this case. At least she was getting us organized. All I’d done so far was go in circles around the forest, making myself both dizzy and frustrated in the process. I was also down one jar of peanut butter.

After retrieving the note from the kitchen, I read Nan the list of places she’d checked last night. She chose a green marker to note the places we’d already explored. Finally, the poster board began to look a little fuller, although I suppose that wasn’t exactly a good thing. It meant we were running out of options.

“We’ll find him,” Charles assured everyone for what felt like the hundredth time that morning, and while I appreciated his optimism, I also kind of wished he’d just keep quiet already.

“Did you ask the neighbors?” he asked us.

Nan clucked her tongue. “Of course we asked the neighbors. That was the first thing we did yesterday afternoon.”

“Well, what about—?” Charles began, but was cut off by the unexpected buzz of our electronic cat door lifting open in the nearby foyer.

Could it really be? Had he come home all on his own?

“Octo-Cat!” I cried, pushing myself to my feet and stumbling as fast as I could toward the door. His cat door had been programmed to open whenever it sensed the little chip on his collar, which meant it could only be Octo-Cat trotting through the door now. I began to cry softly as tears of relief pricked at my eyes.

Maybe he had just stayed out too late, or perhaps he’d strayed too far and then had a hard time finding home again. Oh, he had some major explaining to do, that kitty boy of mine.

I thrust a hand on my hip as I took the last few steps toward the door, ready to go full-on angry pet parent on his furry behind.

I turned the corner, and sure enough, the first thing I saw was that familiar striped tail of his. It seemed puffier than usual, which meant that he was also upset and scared.

Next I spotted a pair of fat gray haunches, which definitely did not match my brown tabby’s fur. That’s when I realized it wasn’t Octo-Cat making his triumphant return. No. Instead, we had an imposter.

But how? How could it have possibly gotten inside without the special collar that interfaced with the pet door?

I was still puzzling over this when the creature turned around and stared at me from deep, masked eyes. A raccoon!

In one hand, he held Octo-Cat’s broken collar and in the other an empty can of Fancy Feast. Where had this intruder come from, and why did he have my cat’s things?

“You have some serious explaining to do!” I shouted, realizing too late that my anger may cause him to flee. Despite my anger and fear in that moment, this raccoon was our best lead. I had to play it nice, even though I wanted to keep screaming until I got the answers I craved.

The raccoon wasn’t afraid of me in the slightest. He held tight to both items and then stood on his hind legs, tilting his head to the side as he studied me. “Did you just talk?” he asked with a quizzical expression.

A brief moment of silence passed between us. I could feel Nan and Charles at my back, but neither said anything as the three of us stared the trespasser down.

Suddenly, our raccoon visitor burst out laughing a high-pitched, squeaky giggle that immediately grated on my nerves. “Aww, you can talk! That’s so cute!”

I hated to think what might have happened next had Nan and Charles not each grabbed one of my arms and held me back. It would have been a very low moment, indeed, if I’d gotten into a fight with a raccoon—especially since I was pretty sure that I would have lost.

Chapter Nine

I rounded on the beady-eyed intruder. Perhaps I should have been afraid of rabies or some other random infection, but in that moment I was just too angry to care about anything other than finding some answers. “Why do you have my cat’s collar?” I demanded, unwilling to back down.

The raccoon bared his teeth, then took far longer than I would have liked in deciding whether he wanted to talk to me or to bite me.

“Octavius Maxwell Ricardo Edmund Frederick Fulton is his own animal,” he said at last, enunciating each word carefully. “He can’t be owned by you or anyone else.”

Whatever answer I’d expected, it had most definitely not been this. “You kn-n-now him?” I stuttered, dropping to my knees so that I could look the animal in the eye.

He laughed nervously, all his bluster having disappeared in an instant. “Know him? No! I wish I knew him! Even to be standing in his home right now is such a tremendous honor. I can’t even begin to—”

“You broke in,” I snapped at him in frustration. “There’s no honor in that.”

The raccoon hung his head and wept. I couldn’t tell whether his tears were fake, but this ring-tailed bandit definitely gave both Nan and Octo-Cat a run for their money in the drama department. No matter what I did or where I went, I was always surrounded by thespians.

“Enough blubbering,” I blurted out, more than ready to get on with it. “Tell me who you are and why you’re here. Are you some kind of weird Octo-Cat fanboy?”

“He prefers his full name, I’ll have you know,” the raccoon actually had the audacity to correct me. “And I’m not just some random fanboy.” He shook his head adamantly, then bared his teeth again in a creepy smile that sent me stumbling backward to put a bit of distance between us. “I’m his biggest fan. Numero uno, baby!”

There weren’t many moments in my life when I’d done an actual facepalm. This, however, was one of them. “I didn’t know house cats could have fans,” I admitted, still in utter disbelief.

The raccoon shot forward and positioned his face mere inches from mine as he cried, “He’s not just any house cat, lady! He is the ultimate in animal sophistication.”

Okay, it was probably time to move the discussion to finding out whether he had any leads as to where Octo-Cat had gone, but I desperately needed to know how my cat had landed himself such an enthusiastic follower. “Why do you like him so much? How did your, um, fandom get started?”

The raccoon stood higher on his haunches and swept his hand in front of his face theatrically. “It all started one dark and starry night. I was going about my business as usual, spying on some humans, raiding some trash cans, you know, the works. When lo and behold, I found something new and shiny. It caught my eye right away. Not just because it looked valuable, but because the smell… Wow, what an aroma!”

He scooped the empty Fancy Feast can he’d brought in with him up from the floor and held it out to me. “It was the most succulent delicacy I’d ever tasted in all my life, and then to find that each day there was more! Wow, I was the luckiest trash panda in all of Blueberry Bay.”

I had to fight hard not to explode with laughter. “Did you just call yourself a tra—you know what? Never mind. Go on.”