The Nine Lives of Christmas Page 8

  “This isn’t a freakin’ restaurant,” Zach called after him. “You eat this or you starve.”

  Of course Tom didn’t pay any attention to Zach’s threat. Zach watched him go and frowned. How many days could a cat go without food? Would old Tom be okay while he was gone?

  * * *

  Ambrose sat in the window and watched Zach drive away. He hoped Zach was going to Pet Palace to get advice from Merilee. Maybe he’d even bring her home. Then Tom could end this hunger strike.

  But what if Zach was going to work? Ambrose would be on his own for a long time. This place didn’t have a problem with rats or mice like some houses he had lived in, which meant he’d be reduced to living off the occasional bird landing in the yard to forage for berries. And he’d have to use that horrible cat door even more. Ugh. The mere thought made his tail twitch.

  Hunger. Ambrose still remembered the miserable gnawing he felt in his gut on a regular basis when he lived his third life as an alley cat. He didn’t relish the prospect of experiencing it again. But feigning disinterest in his food was the only thing he could think to do to drive Zach back to Merilee.

  He jumped down and trotted to the kitchen, the aroma of Tuna Surprise beckoning him. He crouched in front of the bowl and sniffed. Ah, just one lick. What would it hurt?

  No, no. If he so much as took a lick he’d devour the entire bowl. Willpower, Ambrose. You have survived on little before. You can do it again.

  At least he hoped he could. He’d grown accustomed to eating on a regular basis.

  He eyed the cat door with reluctance. Oh, the things a guy had to do to help his human.

  SEVEN

  Zach returned home from the station to find Tom’s food bowl untouched. Okay, what was that about? He dumped the untouched food and tried again but Tom just sniffed at the fresh serving and then opted for winding around Zach’s legs instead.

  “What’s wrong, guy?” he asked, picking up the cat. Had he lost weight since Zach was gone or was Zach imagining it? “You know, tuna’s your favorite.” The little guy just sat docilely in his arms. This wasn’t good. “Okay, bud, something’s not right. We’d better go see the vet.”

  At the word vet, Tom leaped out of his arms and left the kitchen at a fast trot. Okay, that was obviously not the magic word.

  “I don’t care,” Zach called after him. “You’re going. You should probably have a checkup anyway.”

  Informing a cat he’s going to the vet and getting him to the vet are two different things, as Zach discovered once he’d made an appointment. First he had to find the cat. Tom wasn’t under the couch or the bed, or any other chair. He was getting sneaky.

  And Zach was getting irritated. “I know you’re in here somewhere.” Unless he’d run outside.

  Except he still hated his cat door and used it as little as possible. Besides, there was a light snowfall on the ground and Tom was not fond of snow. Zach kept searching.

  He finally found his quarry crouched in the far corner of the bedroom closet, his head barely visible behind Zach’s bowling ball.

  Zach shoved aside his shoes and a pile of dirty underwear and crawled in. “Okay, now you’re just being a wuss. We have to find out what’s wrong with you.”

  Tom backed up and growled. Who knew cats could growl?

  “I’m bigger than you,” Zach informed him. “That means I will win this fight, so you might as well surrender now.” He leaned in and reached out and Tom hissed and took a swipe at him, scratching the side of his hand. Zach pulled it back in shock and Tom bolted. “Oh, not cool.”

  He wiped off the blood with the closest T-shirt and ran down the stairs after the cat. This time old Tom wasn’t so smart and Zach found him under the couch and hauled him out, getting another scratch in the process.

  “You really are pissing me off,” he snapped, stuffing Tom in his cat carrier. “You’d damn well better have something wrong with you.”

  However, after listening to the animal’s pitiful yowls all the way to Dr. Burnside, Zach’s anger dissipated, and by the time he took the cat carrier out of the back of his Land Rover he was feeling sorry for Tom. “The doc will make you all better,” he promised.

  But then they entered the clinic and Zach saw the Great Dane. Oh, boy.

  Tom hissed.

  “He can’t get you, I promise,” said Zach.

  The Great Dane barked and Tom pressed himself into the far corner of the cat carrier, arching his back and puffing out his fur. Zach kept himself between the two animals as he made his way to the reception desk, which lay across the vinyl floor and past the row of chairs where the dog sat at the feet of his owner (a senior woman half the animal’s size).

  “Hi,” he said to the receptionist. “We’ve got an appointment with Dr. Burnside.”

  The doc was obviously a popular guy, judging from the long row of Christmas cards strung across the front of the reception desk. If people liked him this much he had to be good with animals.

  The receptionist was a hot blonde with a nice rack. Normally she would have gotten Zach’s attention, but he was too worried about Tom to care. “Name?” she asked.

  “Zach Stone.”

  “No, I mean your pet.”

  “Oh, yeah. Uh, Tom.”

  The receptionist smiled at Tom and cooed a hello. “The doctor will have you feeling better in no time,” she promised Tom, and Zach almost added, “See? I told you.”

  With Tom checked in there was nothing to do but sit and wait, and try to ignore the animal smells floating around the room. They took a seat as far as possible from the dog, which was straining at his leash to come over for a visit. The walls were painted hospital green, supposedly a calming color. Maybe that only worked for humans. The dog barked again and pawed at the vinyl, making Tom hiss.

  “No, Tiny,” said his owner firmly, and the dog sat back on its haunches, tongue lolling.

  The nurse came out and called Tiny in. “There. He’s gone now,” Zach said to Tom.

  Tom just growled.

  Yeah, we’re both having fun now.

  Another ten minutes and Tiny and his owner trotted out the door and it was Tom’s turn. He yowled as they went into the exam room.

  “I know,” said Zach, “I don’t like going to the doctor either.” In some ways it didn’t look all that different from a regular doctor’s exam room. Well, except for the fact that there were animal charts on the walls and the exam table was stainless steel.

  Dr. Burnside entered shortly after them. He was about the age of Zach’s father, with salt-and-pepper hair and a short muscular body, but with soft hands, an odd contradiction that made Zach vaguely uncomfortable. “So, what seems to be the problem with our boy,” he asked, removing a now limp Tom from his cat carrier and setting him on the table.

  “He’s not eating,” said Zach.

  “Well, that’s not good, is it?” the vet said to Tom, and petted him. “My, my. You’re a dead ringer for another cat I’ve seen.” The doctor opened Tom’s mouth and checked his teeth. “And how long has this been going on?”

  “A couple of days,” said Zach, watching nervously.

  “Has he been lethargic?”

  Zach thought of their chase around the house and the fresh scratches on his hand. “No.”

  The doctor grabbed a rectal thermometer and lifted Tom’s tail.

  “Whoa, he’s not going to like that,” Zach predicted.

  Sure enough. Tom let out the cat equivalent of a yelp and looked over his shoulder at Zach. Accusingly.

  “Sorry, dude,” Zach said. “It’s for your own good.” Geez. Now he sounded like his mom. How many times had she said that to him when he was a kid?

  “Is our boy on any medication?” asked the vet.

  “None that I know of.”

  One of the doctor’s graying eyebrows rose. “You would know, wouldn’t you? You are his owner?”

  “Yeah, but only recently. I took him in. His owner died.”

  Out came the thermomet
er for inspection. “No fever. The owner died, you say?” Now the doctor was poking and prodding. Amazingly, Tom was tolerating the abuse quite well. “What was the owner’s name?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Zach. “I talked to her daughter.”

  The doctor checked the tag. “Ambrose. Well, well. I saw that torn ear and wondered. So Adelaide is gone. She was a nice old lady. Good for you for taking in her cat.”

  Like he’d had a choice?

  Dr. Burnside kept on with his examination. At last he said, “I see no broken bones, no evidence of injury. His heart is fine.”

  “Then what’s wrong with him?”

  “We’ll do some blood work,” said the vet, “but I suspect he’s just anxious. Changes in environment can upset cats. He lost his owner recently, he’s in a new home. It’s understandable.”

  “Except he’d settled in okay and there was nothing wrong with his appetite until a couple of days ago,” Zach protested.

  “Have you had any changes in your home?”

  Breaking up with Blair probably didn’t count since she and Tom hadn’t exactly bonded. Other than that, Zach couldn’t think of anything. He shook his head.

  “Change in routine? Travel?”

  Zach thought of their failed excursion to see Santa. “We went to Pet Palace. He didn’t like it.” Neither had Zach. “But that was Saturday.”

  “Well,” said Dr. Burnside. “I suspect he’s simply upset. We don’t want to let this go on too long but I’d like to wait another day before prescribing anti-anxiety medication. It’s highly effective but it can have detrimental effects on your cat’s personality and disposition.”

  After their tussle in the closet anything would be an improvement on Tom’s disposition, if you asked Zach.

  “You’ll pull it together, old boy. Won’t you?” The doctor slipped Tom in his carrier. “If he doesn’t improve in the next twenty-four hours bring him back.”

  Yeah, that would be fun. Zach drove home wishing the vet had prescribed some anti-anxiety meds for him. “You know, you’re stressing me out,” he told Tom.

  There was no reply from the carrier.

  Zach frowned. He needed a cat whisperer.

  And he knew just where to find one.

  They did a detour by Pet Palace. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to make you go in,” Zach assured Tom.

  He cracked the window for fresh air and then made his way across the slushy parking lot.

  Not many people were inside shopping today. Hardly surprising, since the weatherman had predicted more snow and the sky was a sheet of bloated gray clouds, just waiting to dump. Zach looked toward the checkout stands. No sign of Merilee. He went to the cat section. No one. He walked around the whole store but saw no sign of her. It was a weekday. She should have been there somewhere.

  At last he snagged a couple of cans of cat food and wandered up to a checkout where a plump girl with short black hair and a nose ring was busy gossiping with the woman at the stand behind her.

  “It was so unfair to fire her for standing up to that beeatch,” said Miss Nose Ring. “Just because her family owns the store. Poor Merilee. She left in tears.”

  So that explained why Merilee was nowhere in sight. And it sure wasn’t hard to figure out who the beeatch was. Zach ground his teeth.

  “She did get hired part-time at the animal shelter. God knows how she’ll make her rent working part-time, though.”

  Behind her the other woman caught sight of Zach and tried to tip off her coworker, nodding his direction.

  “It just goes to show, you shouldn’t get involved,” finished the cashier. The other woman cleared her throat and nodded again. Miss Nose Ring followed her gaze and saw Zach. Her face turned fire engine red and she cleared her throat. “Uh, hi. Welcome to Pet Palace. Can I help you?”

  “You already have,” he said.

  He stormed out of the store and marched to his car, pulling out his cell phone as he went. He barely gave Blair time to answer before snarling, “You got that girl fired. And right before Christmas. Nice, Blair. Way to go.”

  “Excuse me?” Her voice was huffy.

  “There is no excuse for you,” he snapped, and ended the call.

  Good God. He sure could pick ’em. Here he thought he’d been hanging out with a fun-loving, hot-blooded American girl and he’d really been with Scrooge in drag. That was it. He was done with women.

  Except Merilee. He needed to find a way to set things right for her. How, exactly, he was going to do that he had no idea.

  Tom was getting restless in the backseat so Zach took him to the house and set him free. “Try to eat something, and don’t whiz in the house,” he told Tom, and then drove off.

  Halfway to the animal shelter the snow started falling, big fluffy flakes that looked like they meant to stick. That was sure to result in traffic accidents and trouble. It didn’t snow a lot in the Northwest, but when it did people freaked out. He passed very few cars on the way to the shelter and once there he found only two in the parking lot, probably belonging to the employees. Was one of them Merilee’s?

  He was halfway to the door when she came out, all bundled up in that ugly coat and galoshes she’d been wearing when he first met her. She looked small and lost and he felt an overpowering urge to hug her.

  “Merilee,” he called.

  She turned and her eyes opened wide at the sight of him. “Hi,” she stammered. “I’m afraid we’re just closing. Snow,” she added.

  Behind her a middle-aged man slipped out the door and locked it. “Better hurry, Merilee. This stuff looks like it means business.”

  She nodded, pulled her coat collar more tightly together, and looked up at Zach.

  Suddenly he felt at a loss for words. “I was just at Pet Palace looking for you.”

  Her face flamed and her gaze dropped. “I’m not working there anymore.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. It’s because of what happened Saturday, isn’t it?”

  She shrugged. “It’s not your fault. I should have been … more understanding.”

  Her reply sounded like it that had been programmed into her. “It was an abuse of power and we both know it.” She didn’t have anything to say to that and they stood there for a moment, snow swirling around them. “Are they paying you enough here?” Dumb question. Of course, they weren’t. Working at an animal shelter was the kind of thing people did because they wanted to try to make a difference in the world, not because they wanted to make money. Now she looked embarrassed. “Sorry,” said Zach. “That’s none of my business.” Except it was partly his fault, so didn’t that make it his business? Sort of?

  “I can pay my rent. Thanks for asking.”

  But what about food? Utilities? “Look, could I pay you to help me with my cat?”

  She shook her head. “Really, you don’t need to do that. It’s not your fault.”

  “Yes … I do. Anyway, the fire department pays me more than I can spend.” Slight exaggeration but anything to convince her. Still she hesitated.

  “This is a legit job,” he insisted, “Tom won’t eat. I just came from the vet’s.”

  Her eyes filled with concern. “Oh, no.”

  “I think he needs a cat whisperer, and you’re the closest thing I know. You’d really be helping us. So see? It would be a win-win.”

  She smiled. Then she looked uncertainly at the snow quickly carpeting the parking lot. “My car.”

  Was now the only one left in the lot and it was a beater—an ancient Chevy with tires that were going bald. “Tell you what,” offered Zach. “I’ll follow you home and then we can take my SUV. If you don’t mind making a house call,” he added. “I’ll pay you whatever the vet would have charged.”

  “You don’t have to do that, really,” she repeated.

  “I want to.” It was the least he could do. And maybe it would help Tom.

  She came to a sudden decision and nodded. “All right then. I’ll just check on my cat and then we can go look in
on yours.”

  She hurried to her car and Zach climbed in behind the wheel of his Land Rover. This was great. For Tom, he amended.

  EIGHT

  As usual, Queenie was waiting for Merilee by the door. Not because Queenie was dying to see her, but because Queenie was dying to see what lay beyond the door. Merilee had informed her secret houseguest on many occasions that this was exactly the kind of curiosity that killed the cat, but Queenie paid no heed.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” Merilee said, putting her foot between Queenie and the dangerous freedom she coveted. “We have dogs around here and last week someone saw a coyote. You’d be dinner in no time.”

  Queenie wheeled around and trotted toward the kitchen—always her second destination when the great escape failed.

  Merilee hurried in after her and dished up some canned kitty food, all the while trying to decide if she should invite Zach in for some eggnog when he brought her back home. It was light eggnog. Hmmm. What else could she give him? She didn’t have any Christmas cookies sitting around. She had cheese, though, and Rye Crisp. Cheese and Rye Crisp and light eggnog. He’d take one look at that holiday snack and ho-ho-ho. The apartment looked festive enough. She’d hung red tinsel garlands across the top of the windows and put up a tree with all the ornaments out of reach of little white paws.

  Really, she didn’t know why she was even entertaining the idea of entertaining. A handsome fireman like Zach wasn’t going to be interested in hanging out with her. She probably couldn’t even lure him into her apartment with the promise of a Christmas goose and a red velvet cake. All he wanted her for was to whisper to his cat.

  Still, she wasn’t about to whisper with day-old breath. She dashed to her bathroom to give her teeth a quick brushing.

  The girl in the mirror had flushed cheeks and bright eyes. But they were plain, like the rest of her face. Why hadn’t she bothered with mascara today? Or any day, for that matter?

  She spat out toothpaste and then scrounged around in the vanity drawer for mascara. She’d had this for … how many months? Years? Millennia? Oh, good grief. It was all dried out. Still, she poked the wand around, mining for what she could find, and applied it. Not much, and not much of an improvement. She added pink lip gloss, which Liz had convinced her to get last time they were at the mall. Okay, better.