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And she’d just finished telling us about her startling discovery when the sound of a human talking had me look up. Somehow the inflection sounded familiar, so I padded to the edge of the roof and looked down. “Hey, it’s your human,” I announced. Dooley joined me.

“Hey, it’s Grandma,” he said.

“That’s what I just said.”

Odelia’s grandmother was walking down the street, in the middle of the night, talking on her phone for some reason. Odd. Very odd. Then again, this night had already proven to be the oddest night I’d had in a very long time. So Grandma Muffin roaming the streets of Hampton Cove at night was simply par for the course.

“Yes, Chancellor. No, Chancellor. Yes, Chancellor,” she was saying, her voice carrying up to where Dooley and I were sitting and watching. “No, I don’t think the current crisis can be solved with violence. Diplomacy is the solution, Chancellor Merkel. Oh, yes, I told Ban the same thing I’m telling you now. Yes, I will put in a good word for you. No big deal. Yes, I’m always at your service, Angela. Day or night. We all need to do what we can for world peace.”

She passed around a corner and her voice drifted off.

“Angela Merkel,” Dooley said musingly. “Somehow the name sounds familiar.”

“German Chancellor. Top European politician. But why Grandma would be talking to her beats me.”

“She’s been talking to a lot of important people lately. She even talked to the President the other day.”

“Our President?”

“I don’t know. Do cats have a president?”

He raised an interesting question. Did cats have a president? I didn’t think so. We’re anarchists by nature, apt to adhere to no one. Then again, we do like Abraham Lincoln, since he allegedly used a golden fork to feed his son’s tabby at White House dinners. I guess a guy like that is worthy of our everlasting allegiance.

Brutus seemed to have finally tired of sitting by himself, and wandered over.“You know? I’m starting to feel that maybe we should give Dieber a second shot at adopting us.”

“He won’t adopt us, Brutus,” I told the cat, who’d clearly lost his mind. “We’re males, and Charlie only adopts females.”

“So what if I tell him I identify as female?” Brutus suggested. “Wouldn’t that work?”

I wanted to ream him out for talking nonsense when there was a commotion behind us. The rickety fire escape was groaning and creaking violently, indicative of a large body climbing up. If this was a cat, it was a substantial one. Moments later, a head cleared the roof, and then a bare tattooed torso, and I saw that once again we were in the presence of Charlie Dieber.

“Hey, dudes and dudettes,” the irrepressible singer caroled. “Now this is what I call a fine gathering!” He looked a little unsteady on his feet, swaying dangerously, his eyes half-lidded. I hoped he wouldn’t come near the edge of the roof, for if he fell off and got squashed he wouldn’t get up again. No nine lives for the Dieber. He caught sight of us and frowned, pointing a finger in our general direction. “Dudes! We have got to stop meeting like this!” He lurched, then pivoted, his arm outstretched, until he was pointing, like a weathervane, at Shanille. He blinked a few times. “Um, so are you a dude or a dudette, dude?”

“I’m a dudette, actually,” said Shanille, whose exuberance had returned at the sight of her great idol.

“I think you’re a babe,” the Dieber announced, then did the most outrageous thing. He scooped Shanille up into his arms and started staggering back to the fire escape. “You’ve been adopted,” he announced to a slightly startled Shanille.

“Oh, that’s fine, Charlie,” she trilled.

“Shanille!” I cried. “Where are you going?”

“Didn’t you hear? I’ve been adopted by Charlie Dieber!”

“But… what about Father Reilly?” I asked, referring to her most recent human.

“He’ll just have to learn to live without me,” she said, and gave us a diva-like wave farewell. “Just like I’ll have to live without cat choir! Goodbye, cruel world! Goodbye!”

The three of us watched, stunned, as Charlie disappeared down the fire escape, this time clutching the former cat choir conductor in his arms.

“I didn’t know Shanille was such a drama queen,” said Dooley.

“It would appear Diego brings out the worst in cats,” I said.

“Charlie should have picked me,” Brutus lamented. “I should have told him about my transition.”

“Oh, stop talking nonsense, Brutus,” I said. “Cats don’t transition. Do they?”

“If it gets me out of the house I share with Harriet I’ll do whatever it takes, Max. Anything is better than having to feel this pain. This searing heartache. Thistristesse.”

Wow. Talk about drama queens.

“It’s the pain of lost love,” Dooley said knowingly, then placed a sympathetic paw on Brutus’s shoulder. “I feel your pain, brother Brutus.”

“Sister,” Brutus announced. “From now on I’m a dudette.”

Chapter 19

Odelia woke up from a loud noise. Since she’d spent half the night dealing with this Dieber knife business, it was a grumpy and decidedly annoyed Odelia Poole who opened first one tentative eye and then the other.