Ships Ahoy!

The Tinkerer

"Thank you for coming, Odd Squad! Sorry I'm not a little more dressed up."

Olive and Oscar hid their cringes. Their client today was an elderly woman wearing nothing but a bathrobe, slippers, and curlers in her grey hair. And, as per the stereotype, her darkened living room was filled with dozens of cats.

"Um, what's the problem, ma'am?" Olive asked, shooing away a calico cat that had taken an interest in her shoelaces.

"Right this way." The old woman motioned for them to follow, then very slowly shuffled into an adjacent room. Trying not to get impatient, the two agents just as slowly followed behind, nudging more than one cat out of their way with their feet.

When they finally made it inside the room, the old woman pointed at a writing desk in the corner. Three Siamese cats were sitting on top and acting very odd indeed.

Oscar blinked, resisting the urge to rub his glasses. "Are they writing calligraphy?"

"No, worse than that," the old woman complained. "Chinese calligraphy!"

"Whoa," Olive murmured. Sure enough, the three cats were dipping their tails into pots of ink and using them to draw Ancient Chinese symbols all over a stack of newspapers. "Do we have a gadget for that?" she asked her partner.

"Depends," Oscar replied. "Ma'am, how would you like us to solve your problem? Do you want the cats to stop writing completely, or just stop writing in Chinese?"

Olive hid a smile. It looked as though Oscar had finally lost his stutter.

"I think I'll take that second option, dear," the old woman said, pulling a stray mischievous patchy kitten out of her bathrobe and handing it to Olive, who immediately passed it on to Oscar. "I just want to read it. And who knows if my cats may ever need to warn me about something important!"

"Very true, heh!" Juggling the kitten in one arm, Oscar reached behind his back with the other and pulled out a gadget. "Olive? Would you mind using the Translatinator?"

"My pleasure!" she said, eagerly taking the gadget from him and pointing it at the three Siamese cats. With the flick of a button the three beams hit their targets, and in the next moment all of the cats' writing was transcribed into English.

"There you go, ma'am!" Olive said, handing the gadget back to Oscar. "No more Chinese calligraphy for you!"

The old woman leaned forward and squinted at it. "I can't see very well without my reading glasses," she said, "but I'll take your word for it. Thank you, Odd Squad! Oh, and you can keep little Nemo there, he could use a home to himself."

"Oh, uh, thanks! Happy to help!" Oscar said with a bewildered glance at the kitten in his arms as he turned to the front door to go. "Have a nice day!"

As they bid their goodbyes and headed outside to the nearest tube entrance, Oscar remarked to Olive, "When you have no idea what to do on the case, let the client tell you what to do, heh!"

Olive opened her mouth, then closed it. She wasn't sure that was quite how the process was supposed to work, but at the moment there was something more pressing that needed to be addressed. "So what exactly are we going to do with Nemo?"

Meanwhile, the old woman had found her reading glasses and was peering at the writing made by her Siamese cats. "There are dogs in your bathrobe sleeves," she read. "Dogs in my sleeves? Well that's ridiculous, why would I—"

No sooner had the words left her mouth then she felt an odd rustling in her robe, and suddenly four long-haired dogs burst out of her sleeves with loud barks and began chasing her frightened cats through the house.