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And to add insult to injury, Harriet, Brutus and Dooley filed out of the room, giving me waves with their paws, and then Odelia closed the door and it was just me and Vena…

Chapter 3

“I don’t like this, you guys,” said Dooley, shaking his head. No, he didn’t like this at all.

Odelia was driving them back to the house, all three cats ensconced on the backseat. The mood wasn’t festive, to say the least.

“Never leave a cat behind,” he continued. “Isn’t that what being a cat is all about? And here we are, leaving our best friend in the hands of the enemy.”

“Vena isn’t exactly the enemy,” said Harriet. “Well, maybe a little.” She still looked a little white around the nostrils. Then again, Harriet is a white Persian, so she always looks white around the nostrils.

“Did you see how Vena was poking needles into Max as if he was a pincushion?” said Brutus, who looked as if he’d enjoyed the show.

“Brutus!” said Dooley. “How can you say such a thing? That’s our friend you’re talking about. Our best friend and housemate.”

“Oh, I know, I know,” Brutus said without a hint of contrition. “But you have to admit it was quite the spectacle.” He grinned. “Max looked so mad I thought for a moment he was actually going to bite Vena.”

“Max would never do such a thing,” said Dooley. “Max is a gentlecat, and he would never bite a human unless they deserved it.”

“Looked to me like Vena deserved it plenty,” said Brutus.

“Let’s not forget that everything Vena does, she does for a good reason,” said Harriet. “All she wants to do is make Max better. And he did have a lot of pain in his tooth.”

“Teeth,” said Brutus. “Is she really going to pull three teeth? Ouch!”

Ouch, indeed, Dooley thought. He felt for his friend. Not only was Max going to be forced to spend the night at Vena’s—the last place in the world he would voluntarily have chosen to be—but he was going to suffer the indignation of having no less than three teeth pulled.

And as they sat there, Odelia’s car wending its way home, it suddenly occurred to him that maybe one day they would be driving home like this, and Max wouldn’t be with them, as he wasn’t with them now, and in fact he wouldn’t be joining them ever again.

The thought actually saddened him to a great degree.

So he made the jump from the backseat to the passenger seat, which was conveniently empty.“Odelia?” he asked.

“Yes, Dooley?” said Odelia, while she kept a close eye on the road.

“Is Max going to be okay?”

“You heard Vena, honey. Max is going to be perfectly fine. Once those bad teeth are gone, he’s going to be right as rain, and he won’t be in so much pain anymore.”

Dooley thought about this for a moment, then swallowed away a lump of uneasiness. Thinking hard always made him uneasy.“Odelia?”

“Mh?”

“What if Max doesn’t come back?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if something happens and Max… dies?”

Odelia gave him a quick sideways glance.“Oh, honey. It’s so sweet of you to worry about your friend. But I can promise you that he’ll be fine. Vena is an excellent vet. The best. She won’t let anything happen to your best friend.”

He nodded, but was still not fully convinced. Being without his friend was almost like being without a body part, but he found it very hard to put those feelings into words. So he simply stared out the window, while Harriet and Brutus talked in the backseat, and Odelia directed the car to the homestead.

He couldn’t quite place his finger on it, but for some reason he felt a twinge of worry. And no matter what Odelia said about Vena’s skills, that twinge of worry wouldn’t go away.

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Not that far from where Dooley sat worrying about his friend Max, Albert Balk was thinking dark thoughts about his wife Lenora. She’d sent him out on a fool’s errand. She’d told him to go and fetch her the latestCosmopolitan, but when he arrived at the newsagent they’d assured him the nextCosmo didn’t come out for another couple of days. Darn it, he thought. It wasn’t as if he had all the time in the world. Then again, maybe she was planning a surprise? His birthday was coming up soon, so…

He perked up considerably at the thought of finding all of his friends and family yelling‘Surprise!’ the moment he walked through the door. Ha ha. He loved surprises.

He parked the car in the drive and got out. Hurrying up to the door, key in hand, he had a spring in his step. And when he entered the house he was smiling in anticipation. No one jumped out at him, though. They were probably in the living room. Ha ha. Funny!

“Lenora?” he said as he carefully poked his head through the door. “Honey?”

And that’s when he got the shock of a lifetime. Lenora was on the couch, but she wasn’t alone. She wasn’t even dressed, and neither was the hunky male lying on top of her. He pushed his glasses further up his nose, just in case he was seeing things.

“Lenora?” he said, his voice suddenly weak and his knees wobbly.