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“Hi, my name is Fred Peppard, and I’m so happy to welcome you all to my program,” the man intoned. He looked a little like Colonel Sanders. He then spread his arms wide. “Welcome, pets and pet parents, and let’s all have some fun!”

Loud cheers rang out, and we followed the man into the next room. Well, at least Odelia and we did, and the dozen or so dogs present. The other pet parents all had to pick up their pet carriers and carry them over, which I thought was a little sad. Then again, it did provide Dooley, Brutus, Harriet and myself the opportunity to be the first ones to enter Fred Peppard’s Pet Paradise. For that was what this clearly was: I could see pet toys everywhere, climbing poles, toy dog bones, and those dangly things more adventurous cats like to dangle from. But first and foremost, I could see large bags of pet food piled high, and all of them were labeled Miracle Cure.

“Oh, my,” said Dooley, jumping up and down with anticipation. “Oh, my, oh, my, oh, my.”

“This is looking good, you guys,” said Brutus. “This is looking mighty good!”

“I just hope there’s enough for everyone,” said Harriet, sounding nervous. “I mean, look at the number of pets. They may have accepted too many applications and underestimated the response rate.”

“Oh, relax, Harriet,” I said. “Can’t you see those bags? There’s plenty for everyone.”

But then I caught sight of some very big and very hungry-looking dogs, and I wondered if Harriet didn’t have a point.

Fred Peppard soon put us at ease, though.“This is how this will work,” he said, clapping his hands. “Every pet will go through a quick medical checkup to determine a baseline of health and fitness. Then we’ll assign a certain amount of Peppard Pet Food Miracle Cure for them and they will eat this with relish, I can promise you. We’ll repeat this during the three days they’ll spend at our facility, at the end of which we’ll repeat the physical, and see if there have been marked changes in their overall health and fitness levels, which I can also promise you there will be!”

“We have to get a physical?” asked Harriet, aghast.

“We have to stay here for three days?” asked Dooley, equally aghast.

“Yeah, they didn’t mention that over the phone,” said Odelia, also dismayed.

“If for any reason you feel like you can’t in all good conscience leave your pet with us for the designated time span, that’s just fine,” Peppard continued. “You’re free to leave right now, and grab yourself one complimentary bag of Miracle Cure as a thanks from us to you. If you do decide to enter your pets into the program… free pet food for life!”

“Free pet food for life!” Dooley cried, almost fainting from sheer excitement.

All around us, excited chattering broke out, as pets all across the room were already salivating at the prospect, and pet owners were already counting out their profits.

Odelia had crouched down and asked, earnestly,“Are you sure you want to go through with this? I don’t care about this pet food for life scheme, all right? All I care about is seeing you guys happy and healthy and enjoying yourselves. So just say the word and we’re out of here with our one bag of kibble.”

“Four bags of kibble,” said Brutus. “Four cats, four bags. Right?”

“I want to stay,” said Harriet now. “Not for the pet food for life thing, but just look at all the friends we could make—the bonds for life we could forge by participating.”

She didn’t sound entirely sincere, I thought, but I decided to keep my tongue.

“Yeah, I want to stay, too,” said Brutus. “I like the prospect of helping these nice Peppard Pet Food people to create the best pet food on the planet. I want to help.”

Again, not entirely sincere.

“I don’t like the idea of a physical, but I think I want to stay, too,” said Dooley. “I like to eat, and I like to eat for free.”

Now that was sincere.

“I guess I want to give it a shot as well,” I finally intimated. “It looks like a nice experiment, and I’m sure they’ll handle everything by the book.”

“I don’t know…” said Odelia, clearly of two minds about this.

“Look at it this way,” I said. “You get to save a lot of money on pet food and we get to spend three days in pet paradise.”

She smiled.“Well, if you put it that way… All right, fine. But on one condition.”

“Anything!” said Harriet.

“I’ll drop by tomorrow morning, and if you don’t like it here, you tell me and I’ll take you home. Deal?”

“Deal!” we all said, and put our paws against Odelia’s hand for a high five.

And thus our Peppard Pet Food adventure finally began.

Chapter 22

Alec opened his door carefully, hoping to avoid getting a brick against the noodle, but to his relief the coast was clear. So he stooped down to pick up his newspaper, and saw that someone had scribbled across the front page the words,‘Repist Go Ome!’

“I am home, you morons,” he muttered, and turned to go in when a car honked and drove up his driveway. It was Father Reilly.

“Well?” said the priest, getting out. “Where were you this morning?”