The Cat Who Went Up the Creek

chapter five

On Tuesday morning, Qwilleran gave the Siamese a fine breakfast, some intelligent conversation and ten minutes of sport with the old necktie. Even so, they regarded him reproachfully, huddled in a compact bundle of fur, fluffed up to show disapproval.

“I’m sorry, you guys,” he said. “I’m doing the best I can. As soon as the police release the cabin, we’ll move. Bear with me!” They merely sulked.

At least they’re not raising the roof, he thought.

He was taking the copy for Tuesday’s “Qwill Pen” to be faxed in the manager’s office. When he arrived, Lori was on the phone, however, and he waited in the hall. She was saying:

“Yes, I know . . . I know, Mrs. Truffle, but . . . I agree, it was most unfortunate, but . . . Mrs. Truffle, will you let me explain that our insurance will cover repairs . . . On the contrary, they do expert repairs, but it will mean sending it to Chicago. When are you leaving for Milwaukee? . . . And when will you return? . . . Then we’ll wait till you get back, and you can supervise the shipping . . . No! No! You have nothing to worry about. The repairs will be undetectable . . . Hope you have a nice—” Lori was interrupted by a slammed receiver.

“Excuse me,” Qwilleran said. “Are you having trouble?”

“Sit down, Qwill. That was Mrs. Truffle, who is renting one of the cabins while a local contractor is building a vacation home for her. She’s going to Milwaukee on business for a couple of days. The last time she went, squirrels gnawed through the roof and chewed one of the Oriental rugs she’d brought up for the new house. They also dragged some of her underwear through the hole in the roof—good nesting material, I suppose.”

Qwilleran chuckled. “She sounds like the kind of person who attracts glitches.”

“They never told me that innkeeping would be like this . . . What can I do for you, Qwill? Is that your copy for today’s paper? I’ll fax it right away.”

Going into the dining room for breakfast, he took a table near a couple who were mesmerized by the squirrel show outside the window.

“They’re fantastic,” said the woman.

“They’re rodents!” said the man.

“Well, I think they’re adorable. Beautiful tails!”

“They’re rodents!”

Leaving the dining room without a second cup of coffee, he came upon Nick Bamba, going to the post office for mail. “Want to ride along, Qwill?”

As they drove away from the inn, Qwilleran said, “I’m going to write my next column on squirrels.”

“The price of peanuts will go up all over the county,” the innkeeper said cynically.

“I hope you don’t mind if I poll your lodgers. Not everyone will be pro-squirrel.”

“That’s all right. I’m not a hundred percent in favor of the hungry horde myself. I know they’re a big attraction but they multiply exponentially, and next year we’ll be wading shin-deep in fluffy tails.”

Qwilleran chuckled. “When the Klingenschoen Foundation bought the mansion for an inn, they thought the squirrels were an asset.”

“What do those guys in Chicago know?”

He began his public opinion poll on the patio at the rear of the inn, where guests gathered to watch the performers’ acrobatics . . . and to simper over the friendliness of the hungry little animals. The tape recorder in his pocket captured it all:

“Look! He’s not afraid of me! He comes right up to me for a peanut!”

“Be careful, Stella. They have sharp teeth.”

“It’s wonderful—don’t you think?—that a wild animal is so trusting of humans?”

“Their tails are so graceful!”

“They have such bright, intelligent eyes!”

“And great ingenuity. Did you ever see one get at a squirrel-proof birdfeeder? He studies it for a while and then figures it out.”

“I had to stop feeding birds. I was filling the feeder three times a day. We’d rather have the squirrels.”

“We’d rather have the birds.”

“Well, that’s what makes horse racing, isn’t it?”

(Laughter.)

“It’s not always funny. Our whole town was blacked out for thirty hours when a squirrel gnawed an overhead power line.”

“What happened to the squirrel?”

(Laughter.)

“The window-washer told me there’s a nest on the roof, between the turret and the slate—just like the crook of a tree. That’s him running up and down the side of the building.”

“It’s not a him; it’s a her. She goes up to feed her babies.”

From the patio Qwilleran went into the conservatory, where some of the older guests were watching the squirrels through the glass.

“My sister-in-law was in a deep depression, but the daily visits of a gray squirrel got her out of it.”

“Squirrels are God’s gifts to humans. I never let anyone say anything against them.”

“They have a lot of squirrels in Washington—”

“You can say that again! Ha ha ha!”

“One year they planted five thousand dollars’ worth of bulbs in the White House flower beds, and the squirrels dug them all up.”

“I’ll bet somebody made political hay out of that little mistake!”

“I’ll bet they had a Squirrelgate Investigation! Ha ha ha!”

“Our dog chases them up a tree, and they turn around and laugh at him. Drives him berserk!”

“They’re born comedians!”

“They’re rodents! If they didn’t have those bushy tails, there’d be a law against them.”

“One winter we went to Florida and squirrels got into our attic and had a ball! They like attics.”

Qwilleran decided this would be the easiest column he had ever written. He turned off the tape recorder and strolled down to the creek.

As he approached it, there were sounds of jubilation. Three persons in front of Cabin Three were laughing and crowing and flinging their arms wide: Hannah and a young couple in jeans. The boy from Cabin Two looked on wistfully until his mother called him away.

“What goes on here?” Qwilleran called out.

All three talked at once. “Good news! She’s gone! . . . The airport limo picked her up! . . . Free at last! We’re gonna celebrate!”

Hannah made the introductions. They were Wendy and Doyle Underhill from Cabin Three. They recognized the author of the “Qwill Pen.” They had enjoyed the column on skeeters. Was it true that only female mosquitoes bite?

Wendy said, “That’s why Doyle gets bitten so much. It’s his sex appeal!”

Both young people were vibrantly attractive. She had a tumble of dark hair and merry eyes; he looked wholesomely healthy like a camp counselor.

Doyle said, “I like the name of your newspaper.”

Wendy said, “I love your slogan!”

Boxed in a corner of the masthead were three words: “There’s Always Something!”

Qwilleran explained his mission:

“Today I’m taking the public pulse on the squirrel situation.”

“Ask him anything,” said Wendy, giving her husband a playful shove. “He’s an expert on wildlife.”

“Not an expert, but I read a lot.”

“Then how do you explain the squirrel’s penchant for gnawing power lines and roof shingles?”

“They have to gnaw—or die. Their front teeth, the incisors, actually grow as much as six inches in a year if they don’t grind them down. They have an instinct for substances that make efficient grindstones.”

Wendy said, “I like having them around, but I don’t encourage them with peanuts, or anything like that.”

Hannah said, “They don’t bother me. I think they don’t like Gilbert and Sullivan. But I saw something amazing one day. A squirrel was floating across the creek on a piece of tree bark or something. I couldn’t believe it! I think he was using his tail for a sail. I wish I’d had a camera.”

“May I quote this?” Qwilleran asked.

“But don’t use my name. Some people think I have a crackpot hobby; they’ll think I’m over the edge. . . . Why don’t we sit on my porch and have some lemonade?”

They moved to Cabin One.

Wendy said, “I’d love to photograph squirrels racing and chasing each other and running up trees and flying through the branches. Then I’d edit the film to synchronize with Schubert’s Impromptu in F Minor—perfect squirrel music! Then I’d do a rabbit film to his Klavierstücke in C—perfect hippity-hop music.”

“One question,” Qwilleran asked. “If squirrels are so agile, why are there so many dead ones on the highway?”

“I just happen to know the answer,” said Doyle. “They’re quite comfortable with parked cars, but they panic when they meet a moving car, and they try to get up a tree. But it has to be a familiar tree! They’re territorial creatures. They’ll fight with another squirrel to protect their own territory. . . . so we have this squirrel running to avoid an approaching vehicle, but there’s a Murphy’s Law for Squirrels: One’s personal tree is always on the other side of the road! He dashes in front of the car and—another dead squirrel on the highway . . . My next lecture will be at . . .”

Qwilleran asked the Underhills how they planned to celebrate their neighbor’s absence. They said:

“We’ll whoop and holler and play loud music.”

“We’ll roast hot dogs on our smoky charcoal stove—bacon-wrapped to make more smoke.”

“We’ll do wild dances on the beach, half naked.”

Hannah said, “Count me out of that one—please! But I’ll make cole slaw.”

Wendy asked, “How about joining the party, Mr. Qwilleran?”

He replied solemnly, “Mr. Qwilleran went home early. I’m Qwill, his doppelganger.” A remark that brought trills of laughter. “Yes, I’d like to join your celebration if you’ll let me provide the beverages and keep my clothes on.”

At six o’clock he arrived at the party with beer, iced tea and fruit drinks in a bucket of crushed ice. A rustic picnic table was set with paper plates. Doyle presided over the smoking charcoal stove, and Wendy played a Tchiakovsky recording at full volume.

When they sat down, Doyle proposed a toast to the terrible-tempered Mrs. T. “May she stay in Milwaukee until her house is finished. One night I dreamed I pushed her off the Old Stone Bridge, and when I woke I was profoundly disappointed.”

Hannah questioned the causes of the woman’s crankiness, and the group suggested rotten childhood, lack of love life, hormone imbalance, genes and so forth.

Then they considered the asocial family in Cabin Two. They had apparently gone out to dinner. Hannah said she knew them only as Marge and Joe. Wendy thought they had gotten Danny from a rent-a-kid agency. Doyle said she had a runaway imagination. A photographer by trade, he hopped around taking snapshots of the group.

Then Qwilleran said he would rent Cabin Five as soon as the police released it.

“You’ll have no squirrel trouble,” Doyle said. “They’re wary of cats.”

Finally they discussed the opera being performed by the Mooseland chorus. The Underhills were attending Friday night, also, and Qwilleran invited the three of them to be his guests at dinner on Sunday after the last matinee.

Doyle said, “I find Mooseville and Moose County on the map but no Mooseland.”

“It was the name given to a new confederated high school,” Qwilleran explained. “Now it’s a label for anything on the fringes of the county, surrounding the urban core.”

“Urban core!” Wendy laughed. “You must be kidding.”

“That’s where everything happens! Pickax City, population three thousand, is the county seat. Sawdust City is our industrial capital, also known as Mudville. The center of aggie business is Kennebeck.”

Aggie. It amused him to talk like a man of the soil.

“Are there any teaching jobs here?” she asked.

“Always. Teachers die, get kidnapped, skip the country.”

“Any movies?” Doyle asked.

“There’s a film society, but the original Pickax Movie Palace is now a warehouse for household appliances.”

Wendy said, “That what’s so enchanting about Moose County. A few miles from your ‘urban sprawl’ you have a dark, scary forest straight out of Grimm’s fairy tales.”

“That’s the Black Forest Conservancy, established by the K Fund for ecological reasons.”

The Underhills approved.

“I hear a truck,” Harriet said. “I think it’s the folks in Cabin Two. We ought to invite them for a beer, just to be neighborly.”

The family of three joined the group. Joe worked hard to be friendly, but Marge was shy, and Danny was tongue-tied.

After the party broke up, Wendy revised her opinion. Danny was Marge’s kid, but Marge and Joe weren’t married.

To cap the evening, Qwilleran distributed copies of Tuesday’s paper. “Read all about it!” he shouted. “Miniaturist discovered at Nutcracker Inn! Inside story of an amazing hobby. Don’t miss it in today’s Something!”

Hannah was on the verge of tears. “I wish Jeb were here. He’d be so proud of me.”

After the hot dogs and cole slaw and iced tea, Qwilleran had a strong desire for a cup of coffee and piece of pie. It was after nine o’clock, and a velvet rope was stretched across the entrance to the dining room. But there were diners lingering over their dessert, and the host said he could accommodate Mr. Q. “Sit anywhere,” he said.

A server passed, carrying a birthday cake with a single candle burning. It was en route to a table occupied by three members of the Brodie family. He followed it.

“You’re just in time, Qwill!” cried Fran. “Pull up a chair! It’s Mother’s birthday.”

Police chief Andrew Brodie was looking self-conscious in the suit, shirt, and tie he always wore to church. His wife, a modest north-country woman, looked uncomfortable in a dress obviously chosen by her sophisticated daughter.

“Happy birthday!” Qwilleran said. “This is an unexpected pleasure.” He clasped her extended hand in both of his.

“Oh, it’s such an honor to have you at my birthday party!” she said.

“The honor is all mine. I’ve heard so much about you!”

“I read your column every Tuesday and Friday, Mr. Qwilleran.”

“Please call me Qwill. I don’t know your first name.”

“Martha, but everyone calls me Mattie.”

“Do you mind if I call you Martha? It has a lovely sound, and there are so many famous Marthas in history.”

“Mother! Will you make a wish and blow out the candle before it sets fire to the cake?” Fran gave Qwilleran a look of feigned exasperation.

He chuckled. Anyone as glamorous and successful as Fran deserved to be exasperated once in a while. When Mrs. Brodie made her silent wish, he could guess what it was—that Fran would marry the president of MCCC and settle down, like the other daughters in the family.

“This is the most wonderful birthday I’ve ever had!” she confided to Qwilleran. “Dr. Prelligate sent me a dozen long-stemmed red roses—first time in my life! He would have been here tonight but he had to go out of town.”

“Mother! You’re supposed to cut the cake.”

The cake was lemon coconut, and Andy announced that Mattie could bake a better one.

Fran asked, “What are you doing here?”

“Snooping. Do you know what happened to the cuckoo clock that was here before old Gus died?”

“There was no cuckoo clock when I started the inventory.”

Andy asked, “How do you like staying here?”

“We’re on the third floor, and the cats don’t like being cooped up, but we can’t get into our cabin because the detectives have it sealed.”

“Looking for clues,” Andy muttered.

Qwilleran huffed into his moustache. “They’ve had forty-eight hours! Koko came up with one in five minutes!”

“I always said that smart cat should be on the force!”

“Are you going to the opera Friday night? It’s the one with the famous cop song: A policeman’s lot is not a happy one!”

“You ain’t kiddin’.”

Upstairs, in 3FF, Qwilleran broke the good news to the Siamese. “Soon we’ll be moving to a cabin with a screened porch—and ducks paddling, trout leaping, squirrels squirreling!”

He was feeling in good spirits himself, and he composed a limerick to amuse readers of Friday’s column.

An amazing young fellow name Cyril

Was ingenious, agile and virile.

He ran up and down trees

On his hands and his knees

And eventually married a squirrel.