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37. PURRFECT SPARKLE

1

“Max?”

“Mh?”

“Do you think the earth is round… or flat?”

I opened one lazy eye and instructed it to take in my friend Dooley, who was lying right next to me on the lawn.“Why do you ask?”

“Well, I was talking to Buster last night, and he told me that Fido has become a member of the Flat Earth Society. And now Buster is wondering if his human is off his rocker, or if he’s onto something. And since he knows I’m a specialist, he decided to ask me for advice.”

“You’re a specialist?” I asked, quirking an amused eyebrow.

“Well, everyone knows that I watch the Discovery Channel, Max, which makes me a specialist in pretty much everything. So they all come to me with the tough questions.” He made a face. “Though I have to admit that even with all of that knowledge under my belt, some of these questions still getme stumped, like now with Buster.”

I yawned and stretched out on the smooth lawn. Ever since Chase decided to borrow his father-in-law’s lawnmower from time to time, he kept the lawn manicured to perfection, almost like a golf course. And he wasn’t getting any complaints from me. I like those golf course lawns: smooth like a billiard table, with no excess blades of grass tickling those sensitive body parts.

“So what do you think, Max?” Dooley insisted. “Flat or round?”

“Hasn’t there been a documentary about the Flat Earth Society recently?” I asked, not in the mood for this philosophical stuff. When the sun is tickling my belly, and I’m on the verge of diving headfirst into a relaxing slumber, the kind of slumber that refreshes and makes you feel like a new cat, I try to avoid interruptions that will stand in the way of the perfect napping experience.

“I don’t think so,” said my friend, frowning. “Unless I missed something.” His eyes went wide. “Oh, no, Max! Maybe I missed this all-important documentary! Now I’m suffering from POMO!”

“It’s FOMO, Dooley, not POMO.”

“No, definitely POMO. Pair of missing out.”

“That makes no sense at all.”

“Oh, it does, Max. You see, if you miss out once, it’s fine, but if you miss out twice, it’s bad. So a pair of missing out, see?”

All I saw was that my friend had been misinformed, either by some joker who was pulling his paw, or with good intentions. But since I was too relaxed to bother, I decided not to engage.

Dooley is a gray raggamuffin, by the way, and a good deal smaller than myself. I’m a tabby with fur the color of the setting sun. I call it blorange, a contraction of blond and orange, though there have been folks who don’t always see the distinction and simply call me orange. I’m what you might call a full-bodied cat, on account of the fact that I was born with big bones. Don’t let my sizable appearance fool you, though. I’m generally a sweet-natured feline, not inclined to cause bodily harm to anyone, man or beast, unless they try to cause me harm first, of course, and even then.

“I think the answer is very simple, Dooley.”

“It is?”

“Sure. Tell Buster to start walking in any direction, and just keep on walking. If after a while he falls off the face of the planet, the earth is flat. If he ends up back where he started, it’s round. Easy peasy.”

Dooley thought about this for a moment, which gave me the opportunity to drift off into the refreshing sleep I just mentioned. Unfortunately, just when I was about to plunge headfirst into oblivion, he spoke once more.

“I think that’s brilliant, Max.”

“Of course it is,” I said, deciding not to bother with humility for once.

“I’ll tell him tonight, and he can start his experiment immediately.”

“You do that,” I murmured, the warmth of the sun now having a profoundly soporific effect on me.

For a long moment, things were quiet there in Odelia’s backyard. Odelia Poole is my human, and Chase Kingsley her husband. Together they take good care of us, and in return we take good care of them. The perfect example of you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, though it’s easier for them—and less painful—to scratch my back than it isfor me to scratch theirs.

“Max?” suddenly my friend piped up again.

I released a tired sigh.“Dooley?”

“So I was thinking, maybe we can join Buster on his trip.”

“What trip?” I asked, having long forgotten the topic of our recent conversation.

“Why, his trip around the world, of course. We start off here, and we just keep on walking until we get back where we took off, and that way we’ll have settled once and for all that the earth is round, not flat, like Fido seems to think.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Dooley,” I said, this time not even bothering to open my peepers.

“Oh, and why is that?”

“For one thing, the earth is very, very big, and for another, how are we going to survive, traipsing all around the globe without our daily dose of kibble?”

“We could ask Odelia to prepare us a snack?”

I smiled at my friend’s naivety. He may watch the Discovery Channel on a regular basis, but that doesn’t mean he’s wise to the ways of the world yet.