Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs

7

At five fifteen the next morning, I stepped through my french doors like a sleepwalker. It had been almost two o’clock when Maureen left, so I’d slept an extra hour and got up fuzzy brained and blurry.

While my metal shutters scrolled down over the doors, I stood at the porch railing and breathed in the clean salty air. The sky was paler than it usually is when I begin my day, with no fading stars in sight, and faint hints of impending pink at the edge of the horizon. The sea was still asleep, dark and glossy and faintly sighing. A few early-rising gulls ambled at the shoreline, and an occasional hesitant cheeping sound came from the trees, but all the other shorebirds and songbirds were still snoozing. Lucky them.

Yawning, I slogged down the stairs to the carport, where my Bronco was parked between Michael’s clean sensible sedan and Paco’s dented truck. Paco’s Harley was gone.

When I got in the Bronco, a great blue heron sleeping on the hood gave me a snarky look, then spread its wide wings and flapped away. I gave him a snarky look back. He should have been grateful for the extra hour I’d given him. Same thing with the parakeets who exploded in hysterical frenzy from the oaks and pines as I drove down the winding lane toward Midnight Pass Road. I usually try not to wake them, but I felt so grouchy that I didn’t even slow down.

I definitely don’t do well on less than six hours’ sleep.

Morning and afternoon, my first call is always to run with Billy Elliot, a rescued Greyhound whose human is Tom Hale. Some retired Greyhounds are like some retired humans—they’d rather stretch out on the couch than walk around the block, and they wouldn’t run if you begged them. Billy Elliot, however, is like one of those wiry old guys who were track stars in college and still get up every morning and jog two or three miles before breakfast. He has to run or he gets nervous and twitchy, and he wants his runs to be hard and full out. If he had his way, he wouldn’t wear a collar and he wouldn’t have a blond woman attached to the leash trying to keep up with him. He’s polite about it, but I know he considers me a necessary nuisance. I feel that way about some people too, so I don’t take offense.

Tom would have been happy to run with Billy himself, but Tom’s life had taken a nosedive a few years before when he was ambling down an aisle in a home improvement store and a display of wooden doors fell on him and crushed his spine. He’s still a top-notch CPA, and he and I trade services. I go to his place twice a day and run with Billy Elliot, and Tom does my tax returns and handles anything connected to money for me.

Tom and Billy Elliot live in the Sea Breeze condos on the Gulf side of the key. As soon as I used my key and unlocked his door, I smelled fresh coffee. Tom was up and waiting for me in the living room. Tom has big round black eyes and a mop of short black curls. In his striped cotton robe and wire-rimmed round glasses, he looked like a grown-up Harry Potter.

As Billy Elliot bounded to me for his morning smooch, Tom said, “Is something wrong?”

That’s the problem with being the kind of person with a schedule so consistent that people could set their clocks by me. Be an hour late, and people notice.

Avoiding his eyes, I said, “I overslept. Forgot to set my alarm.” My head felt like mice had crawled in and built a furry nest, and my tongue tasted like birdcage carpet.

“Huh.” Somehow he managed to sound like he didn’t believe me but wouldn’t press me for the truth. That made me feel vaguely guilty because Tom only pries when he thinks I need a friend.

I clipped the leash to Billy’s collar and hustled him out the door without saying anything else. On the way to the elevator, Billy Elliot ecstatically whipped his long tail side to side while I clumped along like a malfunctioning robot. Downstairs, we whisked through the lobby and out to the parking lot.

Cars park in an oval around the perimeter of the lot, and there’s a shrubby area in the center. Between the cars and the green stuff, an oval drive makes a perfect racing track for Billy Elliot. As soon as he’d lifted his leg on several bushes and provided poop for me to collect, he tore off around the track while I ran desperately behind him. Since we were running later than usual, a few other dogs and their humans were on the track too, most of them walking sedately. We passed them all. As we did, Billy Elliot turned his head and grinned hugely at each one.

When we’d made three rounds of the track and I felt little hairline cracks opening in my skull, Billy Elliot allowed me to pull him to a brisk walk back to the lobby.

Upstairs, Tom was still in the living room. He said, “Want some coffee?”

My dead brain made a feeble beep. It needed caffeine bad. But if I had coffee, Tom was bound to quiz me about being late, and even on my best days I’m no match for Tom’s quick mind.

While I tried to decide, he said, “Looks like it’s going to be a nice day. But we could use some rain.”

I said, “Could we talk about this later? I’m sort of stupid right now.”

Tom studied me as if I were a tax form. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m just not up to talking about anything deep.”

“The weather isn’t all that deep, Dixie. Not as a topic of discussion, anyway. Now it can get deep as a reality. You take a twenty-eight-foot tidal surge, now that’s deep.”

He just can’t help himself.

I stooped and unsnapped Billy Elliott’s leash.

Tom said, “You don’t look like you slept last night.”

“Had a surprise visit from an old friend and we yakked too late. You know how you lose track of time like that.”

I tried to make it sound like two goofy women having a good time gassing about old times, not like two women planning to deliver a million dollars in ransom for a kidnapped husband.

He gave me an understanding look. I hate understanding looks.

He said, “You don’t have to tell me what it is, but you’re stressed about something.”

Like I said, Tom is sharp.

Looking at his kind eyes caused the memory of Jaz and the young men who’d come in Big Bubba’s house looking for her to come crashing back, along with my promise to stop at Hetty’s house that morning to see if Jaz had showed up. Maureen had driven them clean out of my head, but now they were back.

I went to Tom’s kitchen, poured myself a mug of coffee, and went back to the living room.

I said, “Some hood types came in a house where I was taking care of a parrot yesterday, and Lieutenant Guidry thinks they may be part of a gang that killed a guy night before last. Evidently it was a robbery that ended up a homicide.”

“Are you afraid they’re after you?”

“I’m afraid they’re after a girl I met yesterday morning at the vet’s. She was there with a hurt rabbit when I went to pick up Big Bubba. That’s the parrot. Congo African Grey, talks a blue streak. When the boys came in, they said they were there for Jaz. That’s the girl’s name. The man with her called her Rosemary, but she said her name was Jaz. Hetty Soames hired her to work part-time, so now I’m concerned about Hetty. She’s raising a new pup for Southeastern.”

Tom raised his coffee mug to his lips and took a long drink, his eyes glued to mine the entire time. When he lowered the mug, he didn’t look as fresh as he’d looked when I first arrived. I have that effect on people sometimes.

He said, “You think the guys will go to the woman’s house looking for the girl?”

“Hetty gave Jaz her address, and if Jaz is part of a gang, she might tell the boys and they’ll go there to burglarize the place.”

Tom nodded his head very slowly, sort of like a metronome ticking off beats.

He said, “I knew a girl called Jaz one time. Short for Jasmine.”

That made sense. The girl looked like she might be named Jasmine. For sure she looked a lot more like a Jasmine than a Rosemary.

Tom said, “This all happened in the last twenty-four hours?”

“Less, really. The sheriff’s department has put extra patrols in the neighborhood and I’m going to stop by Hetty’s this morning after I see to Big Bubba. Hetty lives alone, and I’m uneasy about the whole thing.”

He blinked up at me. “Does it change anything?”

“Does what change anything?”

“Being uneasy. Does it change anything?”

“I guess not.”

“Then how about letting the sheriff’s department take care of their job and letting Hetty take care of herself, and letting what’s her name, Jasmine, do whatever she does.”

I drained the last of my coffee. “You mean like mind my own business?”

“Something like that.”

“I try to do that, Tom, I really do. I don’t go around carrying a sign that says, ‘Tell me your problems,’ but somehow everybody who has one ends up on my doorstep.”

Saying doorstep made me think of Maureen and what I’d promised to do that night. I hurried to the kitchen and put my mug in the dishwasher, then told Tom and Billy Elliot goodbye.

I said, “Thanks for listening to me, Tom. And you’re right. I’m putting it out of my mind right now.”

I doubted that he believed me, but at least he didn’t know about Maureen. If I’d told Tom about our plan to stuff a million dollars in a duff el bag and give it to kidnappers, he’d have given me the lecture of a lifetime, even worse than Michael’s would be if he found out about it. Michael would be incensed that I was throwing away my good sense, Tom would be incensed at the idea of throwing away a million dollars.

The rest of the morning went smoothly, and I managed to shave off a few minutes of each visit. Big Bubba would be my last pet call of the morning, but before I went to his house I stopped at Max King’s to give an antibiotic to his cat, Ruthie. That was my sole purpose, to give Ruthie a pill. I’d done it for the last two mornings and would continue until all the pills were gone. Even though I charged my usual fee for about five minutes of work, Max thought it was worth every penny.

A retired air force colonel, Max was originally from the Bahamas, and still had a hint of island music to his voice. He looked a bit like Sidney Poitier and had a smile that made people want to give him whatever he wanted even before he asked. What he wanted was his wife back. He had become so depressed after she died that his two daughters had decided he needed a kitten, and had made a special trip to Florida to take him to the Cat Depot. Max hated cats, but his daughters had talked him into going with them anyway. The Cat Depot rescues abandoned cats, and Max had lost his heart to Ruthie.

Scottish Folds are medium-sized cats with soft chirpy voices and a curious tendency to sit in Buddha positions or flatten themselves on the floor like little bear rugs. They’re all born with straight ears, but when they’re about three weeks old their ear tips fold forward. A few kittens stay straight eared, but whether their ears are folded or not, they are incredibly sweet cats. Insisting that a Scottish Fold do something it doesn’t want to do is guaranteed to make anybody feel like a vicious ogre.

Ruthie was about a year old now, and she’d developed a nasty urinary tract infection. The vet had prescribed amoxicillin every twenty-four hours. Easy for the vet to say. Ruthie was mellow and affectionate, but she was still a cat, and trying to get a cat to swallow a pill can cause strong men to break down and weep.

Hide a pill in a cat’s food, and the cat will daintily pick up every crumb and leave the pill. Force a pill into a cat’s mouth and hold its jaws closed so it has to swallow, and it will shift the pill to its cheek and spit it out as soon as you take your hand away. Try to strong-arm a cat by swaddling it in a towel and poking a pill down its throat, and it will spit at you while it spits out the pill.

Max was a man of keen intellect, strong character, and the commanding presence of a man accustomed to having people jump when he gave an order. But when he’d tried to give Ruthie her pill, he’d ended up with a broken lamp, a scratched arm, several wet tablets that Ruthie had spit out, and a note of desperation in his voice when he called me for help.

When I rang his bell, he opened the door with Ruthie in one arm. Even in the uniform of a Florida retiree—shorts, knit shirt, and flip-flops—Max still managed to look like somebody who should be saluted. He gave me his best Sidney Poitier smile and said, “I knew it was about time for you to come, so I thought I’d make sure she didn’t hide.”

I would have spent all morning searching for Ruthie just to hear Max speak in that warm molasses voice. That man could stand in a supermarket aisle and read his shopping list out loud, and every woman in the store would offer to cook his dinner.

Feeling very white cracker, I followed him to the living room, where I sat down in one of Max’s big comfy chairs. The prescription bottle of amoxicillin was on a table beside the chair. Max gently deposited Ruthie in my lap, shook out an amoxicillin tablet that he laid on the table, recapped the bottle, and took a chair opposite me. He moved with the respectful care of a medical student in a surgical theater.

Ruthie looked up at me with the wide round eyes that give Scottish Folds such innocent expressions. Speaking softly to her, I maneuvered her into an upright position with my right hand supporting her chest and my left hand cupping the back of her head. Her hind feet were on my lap. Very gently, with my fingers under one side of her jaw and my thumb under the other, I lifted her from the head so her hind feet momentarily left my lap. She immediately went limp. At the same time, I reached for the pill with my right hand and pushed it into her open mouth—too far down to spit out. Then I lowered her so her hind feet were once again in contact with my lap. After she swallowed a couple of times, I lowered her front feet too. She gave me a look of sweet forgiveness and hopped to the floor.

Mother cats use that same back-of-the-neck lift when they move their kittens because it makes the kittens momentarily immobile. A grown cat shouldn’t be handled that way more than a second or two, and very large cats probably shouldn’t be lifted that way at all. But when there’s a need to get medication down a cat, it’s a better method than fighting with them.

As Ruthie leaped into Max’s lap for his masculine stroking, I got to my feet.

I said, “I’ll let myself out. See you tomorrow.”

Max was too preoccupied with telling Ruthie what a good girl she was to do more than give me a nod. Tough young men are pushovers when it comes to pretty girls. Tough old men are pushovers when it comes to their pets.