Purrfectly Deadly

Chapter 4

While Odelia and Chase were otherwise engaged, Dooley and I hadn’t given up on our mission to talk to George, JPG’s First Cat, as the others apparently called him. We followed the ancient feline into an enormous kitchen, all gleaming surfaces and expansive kitchen block, and watched him waddle up to a nice row of bowls, all lined up against the window like soldiers on parade. There was a bowl for each cat in Johnny’s menagerie, and they were jumbo-sized and filled to the brim. Whatever his faults, the man certainly knew how to take care of his felines. Eagerly, we approached the bowls. It wasn’t kibble, like we got at home. It was something much better. Something squishy and tender. Something that smelled a lot like…

“Pâté!” Dooley cried enthusiastically. “I love John Paul George!”

I felt a strong urge to dig in and take what wasn’t necessarily mine, but Odelia had raised me better than that. I would have liked to say the same thing about Dooley, but unfortunately I was wrong. The moment I turned my back, I heard distinct gobbling sounds, and when I looked back at my partner, I saw he was eagerly digging into a bowl that wasn’t his. According to the name printed on the bowl in gold lettering, it belonged to Princess.

“Dooley!” I hissed.

“Wha?” he mumbled between two bites.

“You can’t do that!”

“Oh, God, this is so good,” he muttered, and simply kept on eating.

Shaking my head at so much foolishness, I trotted over to the far end of the long line of bowls, and joined George, who’d plunked down in front of his own bowl, and was feasting on his own portion with leisurely licks of his pink tongue. As the resident Methuselah, George was easily twice my size, and I’m not a small cat myself. His own bowl, aptly labeled ‘George,’ was also bigger than the others, and the one closest to the fridge. It was obvious that George was the primus inter pares in this small feline community.

I cleared my throat to announce my arrival. George looked up lazily, gave me a quick scrutiny, then dug his face into his bowl again and gobbled on.

“Hi, there,” I said, as chipper as I could muster. It’s hard to be cheerful when everyone is eating pâté and you’re the only one left out, due to some personal moral code that I was now seriously starting to question.

This time he looked up long enough to utter a few words. He sounded like The Godfather, speaking as if he had cotton balls in his mouth. “And who are you then, brother?”

“The name is Max. I’m with Odelia Poole? She’s the one who found…”

He shook his head, his chins quivering. “Sad state of affairs. Very sad.”

“So you heard?”

“I did more than that. I actually saw how he died.”

Bingo! “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said.

“Thanks.” He heaved a rattling sigh and plunked down on his haunches. “It’s a sad day for all of us here at Xanadu.”

“Xanadu?”

“That’s how Johnny called this place. He was a big Olivia Newton-John fan. And Gene Kelly, of course.”

The reference completely went over my head, but then I wasn’t as old as George, of course. “So what happened? How did he die?” I asked.

“Too much happy juice,” he said, producing a tiny burp.

“Happy juice?”

“Oh, did he love the stuff. Took it all the time. I think it’s safe to say he couldn’t live without it, much to Jasper’s chagrin. He hated the stuff.”

“So too much happy juice, huh?”

“Yeah. It’s like catnip to us cats, but for humans, and, unlike catnip, it’s odorless. I should know. I once took a sniff of the stuff. No smell at all.”

My mind flashed back to the vials. Of course. Happy juice. It must be the stuff that was in those vials. Some kind of drug, apparently.

“What a meal,” sighed Dooley, sauntering over, still licking his lips.

I took one look at Princess’s bowl and saw that Dooley had eaten the lot. Uh-oh. If Princess discovered her bowl empty, there would be hell to pay.

“So you think Johnny drank too much happy juice and that’s how he died?” I asked, the exact order of events still a little fuzzy.

George nodded. “Like I said, I saw the whole thing. He was taking a breather after doing the horizontal mambo with one of those young hounds.”

I wondered why a human would dance the mambo with a dog, but then stranger things have happened, so I let it slide. “And then what happened?”

“Well, the whippersnapper decided to go to bed and Johnny said he’d join him in just a minute. And that’s when he took another one of his happy juice potions. He needed those to keep up with the young ‘uns, see?” The recollection seemed to affect the big cat powerfully, for suddenly his whiskers started trembling violently. “He knocked back that juice, standing at the edge of the pool, and looking as happy as I’d ever seen him.”

“Hence the name ‘happy juice,’” I supplied.

“Exactly. But then, suddenly, he gasped and clutched for his heart.”

“And then what happened?” asked Dooley, his own eyes also widening.

George shrugged. “He stiffened and pitched over into the pool.”

“That must have been a real shock,” said Dooley, hanging on the big cat’s every word.

“You can bet your whiskers it was. And I would have gone in after him, but I can’t swim. And I hate water. So I started screaming for help, but no one ever came. And that’s when I knew Johnny was a goner.”

“He drank his final happy juice,” Dooley supplied, quite unnecessarily.

George sighed. “Yes, he certainly did.”

“What about the boyfriend?” I asked. “Was he there when it happened?”

I already knew the answer to that one, of course, but it never hurt to double-check with an actual eyewitness.

“No, Jasper left in a huff after he made a fuss about the happy juice. And about those young hounds Johnny insisted on having over night after night.”

I could definitely relate. I didn’t like young hounds either, or any kind of hounds, for that matter. Dumb mutts. What surprised me was that I hadn’t seen a trace of these young hounds anywhere. Looked like they’d all fled.

“Though Jasper hating those young hounds was pretty ironic,” said George. “Seeing as that’s how he and Johnny met in the first place.”

“Because of the hounds?” I asked, confused.

“Well, he was one of them, wasn’t he?”

This surprised me. A dog turning into a human was a feat I’d never seen performed. But then there are many things in this world that are beyond my comprehension. Live and learn. “He was a young hound himself once?”

“He sure was. One of the first. He was Johnny’s first favorite, the one he asked to stay the night, and the night after that, and then the next night. And finally he never left, did he? Only Johnny had an insatiable appetite.”

“For… hounds?” I asked.

“Sure. Jasper never had a chance of scratching that itch all by himself. Johnny needed more, and he needed different, and he needed it every single night. It drove Jasper up the wall. They fought about it all the time.”

“About the happy juice and those… hounds,” I said, just to be sure.

“Us cats rooted for Jasper, of course.”

“Of course,” I said, though how a cat could root for a dog was beyond me.

“But he never had a chance. He wanted Johnny all for himself, you see. Had visions of the two of them growing old together. But Johnny didn’t do old. He wanted to stay young forever, and sharing his bed with those young studs every night made him feel young. That and the happy juice, of course.”

“Young… studs,” I said uncertainly. How we’d gone from dogs to horses I didn’t know, but I was determined not to show my confusion.

“And of course Johnny was a star. You can’t tie down a star.”

Or a stud, apparently, though it’s been known to happen.

“Johnny was larger than life, and nobody was going to have him all to themselves, not even me,” he said with a sad look in his eyes as he silently surveyed the long row of bowls.

I got his drift, of course. Poor cat. He’d come all the way from England to America, only to have to share his human and his home with at least a dozen strays, a couple of hounds and a few studs, too. An entire menagerie, in fact.

“What’s going to happen now?” I asked, gesturing at the bowls.

“Life goes on, partner. Someone will take care of us. Probably Jasper.”

That figured. The dog-turned-human would take care of his cat friends. And probably kick out the hounds and studs. Almost like a Disney movie.

“You think Jasper will inherit?”

“I hope so,” said George, now trying to lick his butt but finally giving up. His large belly was in the way, and he was not as limber as he used to be.

“Well, at least you’ll always have Jasper,” I said.

“Yeah, Jasper is a sweetheart,” said George. “We’re in good hands.”

At this, he gave up on the struggle to lick his butt, plunked down on the floor and promptly dozed off. It happens, especially to cats of a certain age.

Dooley and I exchanged a glance, and before I could help it, I was staring wistfully at George’s jumbo-sized bowl. What I would give for a helping of that delicious pâté. Just the smell was enough to make my mouth water.

“Take a nibble, Max,” Dooley said. “There’s plenty more where that came from. Didn’t you hear the cat? They’re in good hands with this Jasper.”

“I am kinda peckish,” I admitted. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and after all this tripping around and interviewing cats, I could do with a bit of food.

“Well, then?” he asked. “What are you waiting for? Dig in!”

I’m not proud of what happened next. I caved. I checked left and right, like a regular bandit, and finally dug in. I was smart about it, though. Instead of cleaning out a single bowl, like Dooley had done, I simply sampled some food from all the bowls, twelve in a row, so no one would even notice. And when I’d finally reached the last one, I’d eaten my fill and was in cat heaven.

“Oh, God. This stuff is simply divine,” I gushed.

“Isn’t it?” asked Dooley with a grin.

“Best food I’ve ever tasted. Pity Odelia is not an aging pop star.”

“If she was, we’d have to share with a dozen other cats,” said Dooley.

He had a point. Now already we were having trouble with Brutus, the new cat in town. I couldn’t imagine having to share my food and home with a dozen more like him. Or a bunch of dogs and horses, for that matter.

No, perhaps things were the way they should be. But next time when Odelia went grocery shopping, I think I’ll still ask her to buy a bit of pâté.