Petectives: Under Fire

Chapter 1

"Cats are a mysterious kind of folk – there is more passing in their minds than we are aware of."

- Sir Walter Scott

     It was a late morning in early July and it was hot. Horribly, ridiculously hot. As I walked through my neighborhood on my way to a ten o' clock appointment, I was mentally cursing the humans for the whole global warming thing. I usually loved to be outside but on that day I couldn't wait to get back to my air conditioned home. The humans that I lived with usually turned the AC down before they left for work and daycare but the temperature in the house was still cooler than what I was dealing with outside. The sidewalks were so hot that I had to walk across the lawns so as to not burn my paws and when I got to a driveway or had to cross a street, I raced across as fast as possible. Fortunately my appointment was only a few blocks away from my house.

     The neighborhood showed all of the signs of a protracted heat wave. It was easy to tell which houses were obeying the water restrictions by how brown their grass had become. Even though school was out, there weren't many kids outside. In fact there weren't many people outside at all as apparently most of them had enough sense to stay inside when the temperature hit three digits.

     Not being blessed with that much sense, I trotted on to my destination. My partner Yoshi had reacted with shock and horror when I'd told him that I had to go out to meet a potential client. He was of the opinion that any cat that would willingly go outside in this weather was out of his mind. To look at him you might assume that the reason for this attitude was the fact that he was a black cat and everyone knows that the color black absorbs heat. That might be a good theory but it wouldn't explain why he refused to step foot outside of our house at any other time of the year.     

     If the color of your fur determined your level of comfort in extreme heat then a lightly striped orange cat like me should be fine but I was feeling the heat as much as anyone else. The sooner this meeting was over with the better.

     When I got close to the street corner that served as the location of my appointment I got the first of several nasty surprises that I was going to receive over the next couple of days. There were three dogs sitting at the corner, a big German Shepherd, a medium sized Bulldog and a small but formidable looking Pit Bull. The German Shepherd's name was Duke and he was the leader of a four dog organization that provided a form of law enforcement to the neighborhood animals. The Pit Bull was young and friendly looking (for a Pit Bull). His name was Rocco (a.k.a Rocky) and he was a member of the Dog Patrol. He didn't take things quite as seriously as Duke, but then I've met junkyard dogs with toothaches that were less serious than Duke.

     The Bulldog's name was Percy and he was something of a neighborhood bully. He was typically kept chained in his backyard where he would threaten and intimidate any animals in the vicinity. The few times that he had gotten loose, he had chased some animals around but he had never hurt anyone. He was the prototypical dog whose bark was worse than his bite. One of the pleasures of my life was sitting just beyond the reach of Percy's chain and mocking him. There's nothing better than getting a dog all worked up into a frenzy but unable to do anything about it.

     This situation was very odd. Normally the way my life worked was very simple. Most of the time I ate, drank and slept the days away. Then occasionally someone who needed the kind of help that Yoshi and I could provide would contact me, usually through a messenger like Murray the mouse. Last night Murray had told me that someone wanted to consult me but that it was extremely confidential and that he wouldn't tell me who it was. I had no problem with those conditions but usually under these circumstances I would meet a female cat who would want me to follow her significant other and see if he was tomcatting around. It looked like today I was here to meet two dog cops and a bully.