A Paw-sible Theory

“There are two means of refuge from the misery of life – music and cats.”

––Albert Schweitzer

CHAPTER SEVEN: A Sleepless Night

Ethan’s restlessness had kept me up all night. Still awake at three o’clock Sunday morning, I could barely keep my eyes open when Ethan rolled out of bed and powered on the computer.

I crept up behind him and perched on the back of the desk chair. The pictures on the screen looked like the machines I had seen in Alyx’s room and I assumed he was looking up information that further explained what Dr. Casey had said about his mother’s condition.

Ethan read aloud, “The wires attached to the scalp act like an antenna recording the brain’s electrical activity at different frequencies, called alpha, beta, theta and delta activity.”

That was all my brain could process, so I jumped off the chair onto the floor. I stopped listening, but Ethan continued reading. When he finally shut down the computer, I curled up with Misty who had been sleeping blissfully at the foot of the bed.

I didn’t fall asleep right away as I thought I would. I couldn’t stop thinking about the day’s events. Foremost in my mind was who had tried to kill Alyx––and why?

I usually slept on Alyx’s bed, so I was slightly disoriented when I opened my eyes and didn’t see her there. Ethan was already up and, as was the routine when he lived at home, I jumped on the bathroom vanity for a drink of fresh water from the faucet before he stepped into the shower.

I missed Ethan when he moved out, but I would have missed Misty and Alyx just as much if he hadn’t changed his mind about taking me along. Alyx had reluctantly agreed that he could take me with him when he moved out, but he a hard time finding a place that allowed pets. Actually, he told me in private that he’d found several places that allowed small pets; but he just couldn’t bring himself to take me away from Alyx, let alone Misty––a small gray cat with blue eyes and a quirky personality.

Alyx had found Misty at a garage sale on one of her endless searches for unique items she planned to sell in the store later. I was elated when Alyx brought her home. I had often heard Ethan express his desire for a dog, and I was glad Alyx had always talked him out of it, telling him it wouldn’t be good for the animal to be indoors alone all day since she and Ethan were both frequently out of the house. I figured I could have gotten along with a dog if I had to, but I definitely preferred the company of my own kind.

It was time for breakfast and I meandered to the food bowl in the kitchen where Misty was waiting for me. It seemed odd not to see Pooky sitting nearby. She always waited until everyone else had eaten before she approached the food bowl, her behavior that of a guest, careful not to overstep her bounds.

Misty and I had long been aware of Pooky’s presence outside, waiting for Alyx to get the paper in the morning, and then again in the evening when she came home from the store. She was dirty and emaciated, her eyes––one green, and one gold––were glazed and unfocused, and what was left of her fur, matted, the few guard hairs around her neck sticking straight out. All in all, she looked pitiful. As Misty said, she looked like road-kill, and walked like a queen.

Pooky flourished under Alyx’s care. Her black fur had grown long and glossy, her tail full and majestic and her eyes, still two different colors, once again bright.

The thing that bothered me most about Pooky was the fact that she liked to cuddle. I felt some pressure there because I just wasn’t the type for all that mushy stuff and I thought she might make me look too aloof. Of course, my humans knew I cared for them. After all, didn’t I share some of the stray lizards I caught on the screened porch with them? Didn’t I, now and then, allow them the privilege of holding me for a minute or two? And didn’t I reward them with uncensored purring? Still, I was fully cognizant of the fact that humans liked their cats to cuddle with them and Pooky had that role down pat.

There was no peace those first few months when Pooky came to live with us. Always called on to referee, I hated all that tail whipping, hissing, and spitting that went on with the two girls. They acted as if they were going to kill each other but never really did any damage; it was mostly noise and posturing. Unfortunately, things hadn’t changed all that much, they still antagonized each other.

To my knowledge, no one had noticed that Pooky was missing, and obviously they weren’t going to notice that morning either. They probably thought she was just hiding somewhere. Cats did that––hid in places humans never suspected, and then reappeared out of nowhere, their hideaway remaining a secret. The craziest and most dangerous place that I can think of where one of us hid was when Misty decided to take a nap in the washing machine.

I didn’t see her jump in when Alyx left the laundry room to answer the phone, but I was there when she returned to finish loading the washer. Misty flew out and stomped away, clearly perturbed at being disturbed from her nap.

Dressed in the change of clothes his mother had suggested he leave in the closet just in case, Ethan was looking at the collection of his pottery displayed on the upper kitchen cabinets, near the ceiling. I thought that he was probably trying to figure out where the one that had been used as a weapon might have been.

I followed him back to the living room and out to the screened porch some called a lanai, which had originally been just a covered porch. Here was another of his larger pots, this time used in a corner display with plants and antique water cans––one of which, complete with paint spatters that Alyx had found in her parents’ garage and was at least one hundred years old.

“How do you figure it, Murfy? Where did Mom have that pot? It could have been anywhere in the house; you know how she likes to move things around. Someone could have just grabbed the pot and waited for the right time to hit her with it.”

Since nothing much ever escapes a cat’s notice, I had a pretty good idea about the pot’s most recent location, no matter how many times it might have been moved. Nevertheless, I made a mental note to ask the other felines about it.

I padded back to the kitchen; Ethan followed and, thinking aloud, he came to the same conclusion I had, that someone could have come into the kitchen from three different areas––guestroom, hallway, or dining room.

“If they came in from the guestroom or the hallway, Mom would have seen them, which means they must have come up behind her from the dining room, the question being, how did they get in without Mom hearing them, and with all the doors locked––that is, if they were locked? And why would someone want to hurt her?”

Those were all good questions that I hoped Detective Smarts was investigating.