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“Oh, Max,” said Harriet, shaking her head sadly. “You still don’t see it, do you?”

“Um, no,” I said. “I guess I don’t.” I wondered what she was on about this time.

“You are the cat everyone looks up to, Max, whether you like it or not.”

“No, they don’t,” I said, greatly surprised.

“Dooley looks up to you. And I know for a fact that Brutus does, too.”

I laughed what I hoped was a rollicking laugh.“Brutus, looking up to me? No way.”

“Oh, yes. In fact half the town’s cat population looks to you for leadership, Max, and frankly so do I. And all I can say is that you’ve failed us.” She nodded seriously. “You have failed us and you’ve put us all in mortal danger when you took your eye off the ball.”

I stared at the ball of fluff, and wondered if this was the ball she was referring to.

“You dropped the ball, Max, and I’m very, very disappointed in you.”

First I took my eye off the ball and then I dropped it. Or was it the other way around?

Suddenly the idea of moving into a different home, far away from Harriet and her strange theories and bossy ways sounded a lot more appealing than it had before.

Maybe I should participate in this quiz. But first I needed to find out who can run faster: a hare or a fox. Something told me it was one of those trick questions, though.

Chapter 3

“Max—Max, where are you—Max?!”

Oh, dear Lord in heaven!“What?!” I yelled from my position on the couch. Some days are like that: everyone and their grandmother seems to need to talk to you about something, and feels it incumbent upon them to disturb your peaceful slumber.

This time it was my very own human who’d come to bring me great tidings of joy—or sorrow, as the case may be.

“Hey, Max,” said Odelia, sounding and looking a little breathless. She was blushing, and looked as if she’d just run a marathon—or at least a 60-yard dash. “How are you, my precious little Maxie?” she said, and started nuzzling me in the most outrageous fashion: digging her nose into myneck and making the kind of nonsensical gibbering sounds humans usually reserve for the moment they encounter a newly born baby.

“I’m fine,” I said a little frostily. Being rudely dragged from those precious snatches of sleep will do that to a cat. This time I’d been dreaming of a nice piece of fish fillet that had my name on it.

Odelia was still fussing over me, and stroking my fur and even going so far as to tickle my fluffy cheeks, grabbing my face in both hands and rubbing me under my chin. And in spite of the fact that I’d had my imaginary fish fillet rudely snatched away from me, I couldn’t resist to smile at the treatment my human was giving me, and then, of course, I was betrayed by my own body when I started purring. It’s an involuntary thing, I tell you.

“So what’s the emergency?” I asked finally, when Odelia’s fervor started dissipating.

“No emergency,” she said with a smile as she grabbed her phone from the table and made herself comfortable on the couch next to me. “Just happy to see my precious baby.”

I cleared my throat. Maybe this was the time to address the issue Harriet had brought to my attention. No time like the present, right?“There have been some complaints.”

“Oh?” she said distractedly, as she’d started reading something on her phone.

“Yeah, about cleanliness and a general lack of hygiene.”

“Mh,” she responded as she started tapping a message on her phone. Clearly I’d missed my window of opportunity and had lost her full attention.

Still I trudged on.“The thing is… Harriet feels that standards have been dropping precipitously as of late, and she doesn’t think this is necessarily a good thing.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah—it’s all the dust she seems to object to, mainly. Dust bunnies in particular. She doesn’t like them. She found one underneath this couch, and one over by the window.”

We have one of those nice hardwood floors, and with the sun bathing it in a warm glow right now, the dust bunny was clearly visible from where I was lying and looking.

Odelia didn’t even glance up, though, focused as she was on her digital gizmo.

“Odelia?” I said, gently giving her leg a tap.

“Mh…”

“So what do you think should be done about this dust bunny issue?”

“That’s great, Max,” she said, and then got up and moved away, her eyes still glued to her phone, and her fingers too, as she tapped out another message with lightning speed.

I let out a deep sigh and vowed to give it another shot at a later date. Tough to compete with a smartphone for your human’s attention, I mean to say.

But as luck would have it, just then Gran walked in, looking as spry and chipper as ever. Well, maybe not chipper. As a rule Grandma Muffin doesn’t do chipper.

“Gran,” I said, perking up. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Later,” she snapped, as she searched around for someone who wasn’t me. “Odelia,” she said as she located her granddaughter. “The neighborhood watch are organizing a meeting next week and I want you to come. Odelia, are you listening? Odelia!”

“What?” Odelia asked, looking up from her phone.