The Cat Who Talked Turkey

PROLOGUE

In Moose County, 400 miles north of everywhere, everyone likes Jim Qwilleran. Not only because he’s a rich bachelor who likes to give his money away. Not only because he writes a lively column for the local newspaper. Not only because he dares to be different. (He lives alone, in a barn, with two cats.) True, he cuts a commanding figure: tall, well built, middle-aged, and adorned with a luxuriant moustache that is admired by men and adored by women. But the good folk of Moose County like Qwilleran because he listens!

As a journalist, he is trained to listen, and he never leaves home without a tape recorder in his pocket. Then, too, a sobering crisis in midlife has given him a sympathetic understanding reflected in his brooding gaze and his knack for saying the right thing.

According to his driver’s license, he is James Mackintosh Qwilleran, spelled with a Qw. To his friends he is “Qwill.” To everyone else he is “Mr. Q.”

Since relocating in Moose County, where the early settlers had been Scots, Qwilleran became aware of his Scottish heritage. (His mother had been a Mackintosh.) He wore a kilt on occasion, warmed to the sound of bagpipes, and quoted Robert Burns: “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley.” And he would explain, “It means the plans go haywire.”

One particular summer his own plans were ambitious. Besides writing the twice-weekly “Qwill Pen” column for the Moose County Something, giving readings at public libraries of the new book he had just published, and starting to write another book . . . besides all these personal interests, he would help plan the Pickax City Sesquicentennial for the following year, take an interest in the new bookstore being built in Pickax—and more!

Then everything went haywire.