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“Of course that’s a good thing,” I conceded. “But that’s why we have Uncle Alec and Chase.”

“Well, not exactly,” said Brutus. “Uncle Alec and Chase find the thieves, and lock them up, and they return the stolen items to the victims. But they don’t burgle the burglars.”

“Some thieves are too big to lock up,” said Dooley. “I saw it on the Discovery Channel. Some thieves are so big and powerful no one can touch them, not even the police. And if we could steal from them, I think that wouldn’t really be stealing, would it?”

He had a point. Sometimes the thieves got so big they were untouchable. Then again, lucky for us there were no such thieves in Hampton Cove. At least not that I knew of.

“You’re thinking of Robin Hood,” said Harriet.

“No, I’m not,” said Dooley.

“Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor. They made movies about him.”

This piqued my friend’s interest. “Tell me more,” he said, and so Harriet told him more. I could have told her this might not be such a good idea, as Dooley has a very active imagination.

And sure enough, before the barbecue was over Dooley was already thinking up ways and means for us to go thieving together!

“We could both wear masks and be like masked vigilantes,” he enthused. “Like Batman, but without the bat part, and the man part. And without the cave, of course. I don’t like caves. They’re dark and creepy.”

“I don’t know, Dooley,” I said. “I don’t think robbing people is a nice thing to do.”

“We’d be like superheroes,” he said as his eyes flickered with excitement. “We could skip from roof to roof on our quest to right wrongs and mete out justice.”

“Right,” I said dubiously. “So no more quiz shows for you, I gather?”

“No more quiz shows,” he said, darting a quick look at Harriet. “I don’t want to win a house anymore. I like the house we have, and I like the people in it—and the cats.”

Harriet smiled.“I’m sorry for trying to steal your idea, Dooley,” she said. “I guess I got carried away.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “We all get carried away from time to time.” He yawned. “And now I need a nap.” And so he rolled himself up into a ball and went to sleep.

“Dooley the superhero,” said Brutus. “I hope he’s not serious.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “This time tomorrow he’ll have forgotten all about it.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Harriet, and pointed to our friend.

Dooley was smiling in his sleep, and his four paws were twitching.

He was dreaming, and possibly running in his dream, or even skipping from rooftop to rooftop, the feline crime fighter.

“And you’ll be his loyal sidekick, Max,” Harriet whispered.

“Yeah, if Dooley is Batman, you’ll be Robin,” said Brutus.

“In tights,” Harriet chuckled. “Don’t forget about the tights.”

And laughing a little too heartily for my taste, they both hopped down from the swing and walked off in the direction of the bushes at the bottom of the garden.

I glanced down at myself. I didn’t think I’d look good in tights. Or a mask. Then again, I had nothing to worry about. Soon Dooley would forget all about his silly little—

“Let’s go get them, Max!” he suddenly muttered in his sleep. “I’m Batcaaaat!”

Holy smokes.

26. PURRFECT PATSY

Chapter 1

There comes a time in every cat’s life when he’s forced to face his greatest fears—or at least one of them—and today that day had come for me. Odelia, having made this promise a long time ago, had finally decided to make good on the swimming lessons she felt we all needed.

As you may or may not know, cats don’t like water. We don’t like getting wet, and we certainly would never volunteer to enter a large, or even a medium-sized or small body of water if we could help it.

But I could see she had a point. In the recent past we’d been faced with the kind of emergency that befalls all of us from time to time: Brutus had fallen into a duck pond, and only happenstance had prevented him from meeting a watery death at the time. Happenstance or, as the case may be, Chase Kingsley, who’d saved his life and had earned our eternal admiration and gratitude in the process.

Chase, if you happen to come upon these chronicles for the first time, is my human’s boyfriend and future husband, and a local cop with the Hampton Cove Police Department. We also think he might be Jesus reincarnate, but the jury is still out on that.

“Look, it’s very simple,” Odelia said now as she pointed toward the small inflatable paddling pond Chase had acquired especially for the occasion. It was one of those garishly colored plastic thingamabobs Chase had managed to inflate to the right proportions and that Tex had filled to capacity with his garden hose. “All you have to do is step into the little pool and get acquainted with the feel of the water on your bellies. That’s all.”

“But we’ll get wet,” said Dooley, who’s my best friend and a cat, just like me.

“Of course we’ll get wet, Dooley,” said Brutus, another one of my feline friends. “It’s water. What do you expect?”

“But… I don’t like to get wet,” Dooley pointed out.