How to Moon a Cat (5 page)

“Hmm,” I murmured, perplexed as I stared at the slender green vase. “Not what I was expecting.”

THE LOOSE FABRIC
that formed the legs of my vinyl coveralls swished back and forth as I carried the vase to the kitchen table. My tennis shoes crunched on the layer of dust and debris now coating the ceramic floor tiles near the edge of the gaping hole in the wallpaper.

Isabella trotted circles around my feet, eager to inspect the vase. She hopped onto a chair by the table as I set the vase down in the center, just beyond the reach of her outstretched paw.

This certainly wasn’t one of Oscar’s hidden bundles of cash, I thought, feeling somewhat deflated by the results of the search.

I propped my elbows on the table’s edge and shifted my glasses beneath the goggles to adjust the focus of the bifocals. The morning’s efforts hadn’t been a total bust, I thought and shrugged, as Isabella swatted the air, trying to get close enough to perform her own analysis.

The dusty vase was a grimy replica of one that had once been displayed on the cashier counter in the downstairs showroom. The victim, I suspected, of an inadvertent Rupert tail swish, the previous vase had shattered when it fell from the counter and hit the hardwood flooring below. I’d searched all over San Francisco for a replacement, including the flower shop in the financial district where it had been purchased, but I’d been unable to find anything that came close to the same shape and color—until now.

I straightened back to full height and pulled the mask and goggles up and over my glasses, perching them on top of my forehead. Still wearing the elbow-length rubber gloves, I lifted the vase from the table and held it up to the kitchen’s central light fixture to inspect it more closely.

From the opposite side of the room, Rupert began a slow creeping approach toward the kitchen table. With each cautious step, his gaze swung between the vase in my hands and the enlarged hole in the wall behind me.

Isabella, meanwhile, balanced herself on her back feet so that she could reach up toward my chest with her front ones. I shifted the vase into my left hand, attempting to fend off Isabella’s stabbing paws with the right. As the vase rotated, something inside it rolled against the glass.

“
Mrr-ow
, ” Isabella called out shrilly to ensure I hadn’t missed this important development.

“Yes, thank you,” I replied uneasily as I resumed my examination of the vase’s dusty, translucent surface.

I aimed the top end of the container toward my face and squinted down into its narrow cylindrical opening. A hairy brown lump lay on the bottom of the vase.

“You don’t want to see this, Issy,” I tried to convince her. “I think some poor creature died in this thing.”

Perturbed at my unwillingness to share my discovery, Isabella returned to the seat of her chair, but her eyes remained glued on the dark lumpy shadow inside the vase. I turned the vase on its side and gently began nursing the stiff object over the humps and valleys of the internal curvature.

I caught a whiff of a strange smell and assumed the worst. Wrinkling my nose, I swung the vase away from my face. A pointed edge connected to the furry mass scraped against the interior surface of the glass. I winced, imagining a gruesomely exposed bone.

The sound only heightened Isabella’s curiosity. She chirped up at me encouragingly.

“You know, that might be reassuring,” I replied sourly, “if you weren’t a mouse-eating cat.”

Isabella’s voice warbled in confusion at my squeamishness. Her brother, however, appeared to share my apprehension. Rupert now sat on the floor near my feet, the furry orange tip of his tail tapping against the leg of Isabella’s chair as he continued to stare nervously at the hole in the wall.

With a reluctant sigh, I gently jiggled the vase, trying to coax the corpse out the top of the container, to no avail. The motionless lump appeared to be stuck midway through the vase’s long slender neck.

“
Mrao
,” Isabella urged as I turned the vase upside-down and secured my grip on its rounded base. Desperately hoping I wasn’t about to drop a dead mouse onto my kitchen table, I gave the vase a firm vigorous shake.

“Eeew,” I cried, closing my eyes as a furry brown figure tumbled out the opening.

Isabella popped up onto her haunches and leaned over the table, sniffing loudly as she issued a string of chattering observations. I placed a restraining hand on her slim shoulders and anxiously peered over the top of her head to the brown heap lying motionless at the center of the table.

“Not a mouse,” I breathed out with relief as Isabella huffed a disappointed sigh.

It was, instead, a small stuffed animal. The toy looked as if it had been well loved by a child and perhaps washed several times; its synthetic brown fur was mottled and worn down in places. A thick black thread stitched a crooked smile across its mouth; two dull black buttons formed the eyes.

With a gloved hand, I gingerly turned the toy to its upright position. The animal appeared to be standing or sitting on its back haunches—the misshapen bulging of the creature’s body made it difficult to tell which.

The scraping sound inside the vase had been created by a toothpick attached to the outstretched paw of an upper limb. Glued to the free end of the toothpick was a stampsized piece of paper. Isabella and I leaned over the table to examine it.

“It’s the California state flag,” I mused as I studied the printed image of a brown grizzly bear walking beneath a red five-pointed star. “The Bear Flag,” I added, with an informative nod to Isabella, who murmured in concurrence.

“I guess that makes you a bear,” I said dubiously to the tattered stuffed animal.

Isabella appeared unconvinced of this last conclusion. Her pointed ears swiveled sideways as she considered the strange-looking beast.

“What were you up to, Oscar?” I wondered aloud. My initial disappointment in the discovery of the green vase was now being replaced by the growing realization that I might have stumbled onto something far more valuable than a wad of fried-chicken-infused dollar bills.

This toy bear might well be a clue to one of Oscar’s hidden treasures, I thought excitedly. I flipped the paper flag over and read the message printed on the opposite side.

Shiny gold lettering typed out the words: NEVADA CITY, CALIFORNIA.

Rupert didn’t share his sister’s interest in the inspection of the toy bear; he had ignored the human and feline commentary postulating on its potential significance. From his position on the floor beneath the kitchen table, his eyes remained fixed on the gaping hole in the wallpaper. Of the three of us, he was the only one aware of the kitchen’s fourth occupant that morning.

Hidden in the shaded recess of the wall’s interior framing, two shiny pinpoints glowed in the darkness, the luminous pupils of a tiny hairless mouse.

I WAS STILL
studying the toy bear’s paper flag when I heard three cracking knocks against the front glass of the storefront below.

Whack
.
Whack
.
Whack
.

“We’re not open,” I whispered down to Isabella as I dropped the bear back onto the table.

Bona fide customers were a rare occurrence in the Green Vase showroom. It had been over a week since the last stranger had stepped in off the street, and she certainly hadn’t made any purchases.

“Mrs. Dempsey,” I sighed as I remembered our last such visitor. “The tooth lady.”

Rupert’s head jerked up at me, his gaze temporarily leaving the hole in the wallpaper. The mere mention of Megan Dempsey’s name still filled him with dread. The bustling matriarch of a family of five had made quite an impression.

I’d been sitting on the stool behind the cashier counter when a big-bosomed woman with bright lipstick and unnaturally white teeth opened the front door and asked for directions to North Beach. Midway through my handwaving attempts to point her toward the corner up the street, she spied the antique leather dentist recliner in the back of the store.

“Oh, what do you have here?” she asked, stepping into the shop. Three rowdy children and a bedraggled husband followed her inside.

It turned out Mrs. Dempsey had worked her entire adult life as a dental hygienist. After years of propping open people’s mouths and peering inside, she had developed a deep fascination with all things tooth-related.

Before I knew what was happening, the entire clan had proceeded to the back of the showroom. The three children were already bouncing on the dentist recliner by the time I caught up to them. Oblivious to her offspring’s antics, Mrs. Dempsey bent over a display of rudimentary tooth removal devices from the Gold Rush–era.

“It’s horrifying to think what people went through in those days,” she said with a shudder as she pulled out her camera and began taking pictures to show her coworkers back home.

With a tired sigh, Mr. Dempsey bumped the children off the recliner and collapsed onto its worn leather seat cushions. His wife set down her camera and picked up a pair of rusted metal pliers.

“Can you imagine what would happen if I tried to use
this
on one of my patients?” she asked her husband with an evil leer. She mashed the handles back and forth over his head as she aimed the pinchers at his mouth. Mr. Dempsey flattened himself against the back of the recliner, his expression one of genuine terror.

I didn’t have time to worry about the torture Mrs. Dempsey was contemplating for her husband. The youngest of their children had begun to chase a terrified Rupert around the showroom. Isabella watched from the top of a bookcase while Rupert scrambled for cover. The little girl’s wheezing, high-pitched voice filled the room as she squealed with delight, “Kit-
tee
. . . Kit-
tee
.”

It took almost thirty minutes to get Mrs. Dempsey and her brood out the door. Rupert didn’t emerge from hiding until dinnertime, nearly four hours later.

Customers, I had decided, were overrated—particularly the non-purchasing kind. Rupert and Isabella heartily agreed. I was beginning to appreciate the rationale of Uncle Oscar’s customer-deterrent strategies.

With a grimace, I glanced down at my orange nylon jumpsuit and thick rubber gloves. One look at this outfit should be enough to scare off even the most tooth-enamored dental hygienist.

A second series of raps echoed up from the showroom, and I glanced skeptically at the clock mounted onto the still-intact wall on the opposite side of the kitchen.

In my short year of experience, antique buyers, elusive creatures that they were, rarely visited Jackson Square before early afternoon. Even in my more optimistic days of running the Green Vase, I’d given up manning the cashier counter downstairs until after lunch. A sign posted on the front door clearly advised passersby that the showroom didn’t open until 1:30 p.m. Whoever was trying to gain entrance to the Green Vase this sunny Friday morning was unlikely to be a shopper.

Given the sounds echoing up from the floor below, the persistent person on the street outside had apparently decided to switch tactics. I began to struggle out of my rubber gloves as the decorative brass handle on the showroom’s front door rattled in its fittings. A moment later, I heard the metal grating of a key sliding into the door’s lock. With a slight
clink
, the key turned in the keyhole’s fittings.

“Hello?” I called out tentatively as the unmistakable creak of iron hinges signaled the opening of the front door. Both cats immediately turned to look toward the top of the stairwell that led from the kitchen to the showroom below.

“Hmmm,” I mused uneasily. I picked up the scraper and slapped its flat metal side against the palm of my hand. I thought I had confiscated all the rogue keys to the Green Vase that inexplicably circulated among Uncle Oscar’s friends and colleagues. Clearly, I had missed one.

Heavy footsteps clunked across the showroom toward the bottom of the staircase. There was an awkward stilted motion to the stride, as if the walker were carefully measuring his motions to retain his balance.

“Hello?” I called out again, my voice more demanding in tone. Still, the entrant below did not respond.

The voiceless, unnamed feet began hiking up the stairs, loudly clapping against each step as if they were encased in concrete. The repeating sound rattled through the second floor, jostling the dishes in the cupboard over the sink.

I glanced down at the cats. Isabella wore a dour, knowing look on her face as Rupert bounded happily across the room to the entrance of the staircase, his pudgy body wiggling in anticipation of the visitor’s arrival. I put my hands on my hips and turned toward the top of the stairs, waiting for the intruder to enter the kitchen.

A dark rounded shadow emerged at the top of the stairwell. As the figure mounted the last few steps to the kitchen, the image of a black plastic helmet came into view. A pair of shiny reflective sunglasses obscured the man’s eyes, but I had seen enough of the long narrow face smashed inside the helmet to confirm his identity.

The man raised himself another step in height. The momentum of the motion caused the helmet’s black nylon strap to sway beneath his pointed chin. He cleared his throat importantly as his shoulders leaned forward to reveal a green nylon shirt crisscrossed with a purple and white argyle pattern.

The man smiled as Rupert hopped up and down in greeting. A black-gloved hand reached out to scratch him behind the ears. “Hey there, buddy,” the man said playfully. Then, with a dramatic flourish, he cleared the last step and entered the kitchen.

Isabella and I stared skeptically at the bottom half of his biking gear: shiny green skintight leggings, partially covered by a pair of floppy black shorts. An odd-shaped bulge poked out from his posterior, the result, I suspected, of extra padding sewn into the seat.