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Odelia stared at her gran, who nodded.“I’m not sure,” she admitted.

“Reasonable doubt,” Chase said. “You have to admit something smells fishy, Chief. And I’m not talking about the smell of cyanide.”

The Chief raked his fingers through his few remaining hairs.“Okay, so I would have preferred if she took a bunch of sleeping pills or maybe even used one of her silk scarves, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t do it.”

“She looked fine to me,” said Odelia. “Before she stormed off and went up to her room? She didn’t strike me as a woman about to commit suicide.”

The Chief eyed her for a moment, then finally nodded.“Okay, so convince me. Make me see the light.”

Odelia smiled.“You have to give us time, Uncle Alec.”

“You have twenty-four hours, and then I’m calling it. All right?” Before he left, he wagged his finger in his mother’s face. “And you, better behave, okay? I don’t want any complaints.”

“When have I ever not behaved?” said Gran indignantly.

“Oh, heaven help me,” said the Chief, and left the room.

“This is so great!” Gran cried. “The gang is back together!”

The gang had never been apart, I thought. Except for a brief interlude last night. And while Odelia, Chase and Gran sat down to compare notes, suddenly a voice piped up. It was Harriet.

“So are you seriously telling me Brutus and I can’t start a family?!!!!”

Chapter 23

“You do realize that a single female feline and her litter can produce offspring totaling 370.000 in a seven-year period, right?” said Gran.

“Holy cow,” I said. “Half a million kittens? That’s a nice, big family.”

“We don’t want half a million kittens, though, right, snuggle pooh?” said Brutus, as he cast a nervous glance at his one true love.

“No! Of course not!” said Harriet. “We’ll start with just the one, then maybe have another one in a year or so—a little brother or sister.”

“Look, toots, this is crazy talk,” said Gran. “Cats don’t get to choose the number of kittens they’re going to have. Expect between two and five in your first litter. And seeing as cats are in heat several times a year, multiply that number by three. Plus, do you really think Brutus is the only one who’ll come sniffing at your butt once you’re in heat? Forget it! Every cat on the block will be all over you. You won’t be able to fend those suckers off!”

“See, that’s why we did this,” said Odelia, sitting down next to Harriet. “We wanted to save you the inconvenience of being in heat all the time, and being pregnant all the time. It’s not the happy home you expect it to be, Harriet. Cats are not people.”

“Tell me about it,” I said. “Half a million kittens.”

Brutus was now looking distinctly ill at ease. The thought of fathering half a million babies seemed to have him discombobulated.

“I don’t get it,” said Dooley. “What’s all this talk about being in heat?”

“It’s when a female cat is ready to, um, be with a male cat,” said Gran.

“But Harriet is ready to be with Brutus all the time. Does that mean she’s in heat all the time?”

We all chuckled softly at this. Dooley wasn’t wrong.

“Wow, wow, wow!” Chase suddenly cried. “What the hell is going on here?!”

Oops. Looked like Odelia and Gran had totally forgotten Chase was in the room.

“Oh, we were just fooling around, me and Gran,” said Odelia, trying to project an air of happy unflappability and doing a pretty good job at it.

“You were talking to your cats! And they were responding! I could see their little mouths moving, and how you were actually… talking! And they were talking back!”

“Don’t be silly, Chase,” said Odelia. “Nobody talks to cats. That’s crazy.”

“I know! It is crazy—but it just happened! I saw it!”

“Oh, Chase…”

“And it’s not the first time. This has happened before!”

“I think the jig is up,” said Gran. “I think it’s time to level with him.”

“Level with me about what?” asked Chase.

Odelia looked doubtful.“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I do.”

Odelia studied her grandmother for a moment, then nodded pensively.

“Sit down, hun,” Gran told Chase. “This might come as something of a shock to you.”

Chase sat down, looking a little apprehensive.“What’s going on?”

“The thing is, Odelia and her mom and me? We can all talk to cats.”

Chase waited, then when nothing more came, said suspiciously,“This is a joke, right? This is some kind of trick you’re pulling on me.”

“No joke,” said Odelia. “And Gran is right. It’s time you finally learned the truth. You’ve been suspecting it for a long time, and we always managed to convince you you were seeing things. Well, you were right the whole time. We really can talk to cats, and they can really understand us and talk back.”

“Well, duh,” I said. “If he hasn’t gotten the message by now he hasn’t been paying attention.”

“He got it a while back, though,” said Dooley. “Remember how he talked to us when we were all sitting on the porch swing?”

“Yeah, and he still managed to convince himself he was seeing things.”

“What are they saying?!” asked Chase.