Sunny awoke the next morning to find Shadow sleeping beside her. “How’re you doing, little guy?” she asked.
Shadow stretched and rubbed against her—but then immediately began licking at his front paw.
“We’re going to have that looked at in a little while,” she promised him.
There was no time for the usual lazy Saturday morning rituals. Jane’s office hours ended at noon. So after a quick breakfast, Sunny got out the cat carrier and set it down on the kitchen floor, adding the furry raincoat lining that Shadow had appropriated as a security blanket. She’d heard stories from other cat owners about wild chases and terrible battles trying to get cats off to veterinary appointments. But Shadow was very cool about it. After an exploratory sniff, he strolled right in, and off they went.
The Kittery Harbor Pet Hospital was a short drive away, on the edge of the town’s business district. Sunny entered the one-story brick building to find the waiting room empty and Jane’s receptionist, Rita Greene, standing behind her desk, pulling on a parka. Rita was in her late forties, her hair slightly tinged with gray. Like most old-line Kittery Harbor types, she didn’t fool around trying to color it.
“Dr. Rigsdale is in the back,” Rita said, gesturing down the hall to the examining room. “She asked me to hang on until you arrived.” Rita was having a little trouble getting the zipper started on her bright green parka; Sunny suspected that was last year’s coat, and that Rita had put on a few pounds. “I want to get a start on my grocery shopping today. We’ve got a storm coming, you know. Got to stock up, just in case it really turns into something and we get snowed in.”
Sunny had heard the news radio storm watch hoopla during breakfast. They’d hit all the main bases—the readiness of the county’s plow fleet, the sudden rush for snow shovels at the home improvement places, and of course, the emergency food purchases. The more she heard, the surer Sunny became that this prediction would be a big bust. Still, she thanked Rita and wished her good look on the shopping front. Then, making sure not to bang the cat carrier against the walls, she walked down the corridor to Jane’s domain.
Jane looked professional in her white coat, but she aimed a very personal smile at the cat carrier. “Good to see you again, Shadow.”
Sunny placed the carrier on the exam table and opened the door. Shadow stepped out onto the metal surface, heading straight for Jane. He sat back on his haunches and extended his injured paw to the vet.
“Pretty smart,” Sunny said. “And he certainly trusts you.”
“Conditioned reflex,” Jane joked. “Lord knows, Shadow’s come in here with enough battle wounds and injuries. That’s a very adventuresome cat you’ve got there.” She leaned forward and examined the paw, paying special attention to the pads, looking at them through a magnifier.
“Was he outside recently?” she asked, glancing over at Sunny. “Since the snowfall?”
“He snuck out yesterday morning,” Sunny replied. “My dad says he came home limping.”
“I think someone in your neighborhood had a heavy hand with the ice melt.” Jane let go of Shadow’s paw. He immediately extended it again. That got a laugh out of Jane, who gently stroked his leg.
“There wasn’t all that much snow on the ground when I got up in the morning,” Sunny said. “But we have a couple of neighbors who really don’t want to find themselves stuck in their driveways.”
“It looks as if Shadow might have walked across one of those drives and picked up a few grains of ice melt between his pads. Hey, didn’t your dad deliver rock salt back in the day?”
“Oh yeah, he drove truckloads of salt all over New England before his heart attack. In the old days, they shipped the stuff here from India. Now I hear it comes from Chile,” Sunny replied.
Jane nodded, her expression grave, but her smile returned as she took Shadow’s paw again. “Well, the stuff you get in most stores now is more chemically active than plain old salt. Sometimes it can even crack the pads on a cat or dog’s paw. We usually close those up with a bit of superglue, believe it or not.”
She looked up at Sunny. “No sign of that here. On the other hand, while the pads on a cat’s paw are pretty tough, the flesh between them is more sensitive. Getting this stuff caught in there is like having a pebble in your shoe, except it’s not only getting stuck between your toes but burning them, too.”
“Is there a way to fix it?” Sunny couldn’t keep the anxious tone out of her voice.
