“It’s a spot where cats come to have nooky,” he said before I could stop him.
“Okay, so what’s nooky?” asked Dooley, his inquisitive mind never resting.
“Nooky is when two cats rub their noses together,” I explained quickly.
“Oh, that’s fun,” said Dooley. “I like rubbing my nose against yours, Max.” And to show us that he meant what he said, he demonstrated this sweet and innocent pastime by rubbing his nose against mine while saying, “Nooky nooky nook.”
“Yes, nooky nooky nook,” I murmured, catching Brutus’s eye. The big black cat was shaking his head at this display of affection. Clearly he wasn’t in the mood.
“I want you to talk to Harriet, Max,” he said now. “And I want you to take a firm line this time. This kind of behavior has to stop.”
“Harriet is a free woman, Brutus,” I felt impelled to remind him. “If she wants to carry on with Kingman, she has every right.” And even though I didn’t think there was anything going on between Harriet and Kingman, clearly something was going on, and it was leading to Brutus experiencinga nervous breakdown.
“But there has to be something you can do, Max!” he cried helplessly.
“I’ll talk to her,” I promised him. “Again.” Not that I thought it would do a lot of good. Clearly whatever secret Harriet was harboring was one she wasn’t prepared to share with her friends and housemates. But it was certainly worth another try. Then I got an idea. “Why don’tyou talk to Harriet, Dooley?”
“Me? Talk to Harriet?” He made it sound as if I was asking him to walk the plank. Or to cross into the Amazon Rainforest and brave an ancient hostile tribe.
“Yeah. Harriet likes you. I have a feeling that she might open up to you.”
“Harriet likes me?” He perked up at this.
“As a friend,” Brutus growled warningly. “She strictly likes you like a friend.”
“Oh, I knew that,” said Dooley quickly. “Harriet and I are great friends.”
“So talk to her like a friend,” I suggested. “Try to find out what’s going on.”
“You mean, like a detective? Like Chase did today with that Rocamora person?”
“Something like that. Though try not to be as tough as Chase.” Tough doesn’t cut it with Harriet. She doesn’t respond well to belligerence and bellicosity. The upshot might be that Dooley got his head bitten off, and we didn’t want that.
CHAPTER 27
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Dooley liked Harriet, that much was certainly true. The fact that Harriet liked him was something new, though. In general he’d always seen her as a good friend, even though once upon a time he’d had fond feelings for her that might have been construed as deeper than mere friendship. But then the entire male cat population of Hampton Cove had harbored those types of feelings for the pretty Persian, so that was not exactly remarkable or surprising. And then of course Brutus had arrived on the scene, and that was that.
For a long time Brutus had been regarded as the third dog that runs away with the bone two other dogs had been fighting tooth and claw over. Only in this case the third dog was a strapping big cat, and the two other dogs had been about ninety-nine meeker cats, who had quickly accepted the new law of the land.
So when Dooley had taken on the mission to talk to Harriet and extract certain confidences from her, he wasn’t entirely sanguine about the outcome. But when Max asked him to do something he always did it, because Max was his best friend, and Max was wise and Max knew, so it must be the right thing to do.
The fluffy Ragamuffin screwed up his courage and went in search of the equally fluffy white Persian. He didn’t find her in the house, and he didn’t find her in the backyard, nor did he find her in Marge and Tex’s house, or in their backyard either. After a long search, he did find her one more backyard over, talking animatedly with Rufus and Fifi, the neighboring dogs—respectively belonging to Ted and Marcie Trapper and Kurt Mayfield, the retired music teacher.
The moment Dooley stuck his head through the fence, though, the lively conversation between the three pets abruptly halted, and an uncomfortable silence fell. To lift the tension, he did what any timid cat would do: he started babbling.
“Oh, hi, Fifi—Rufus,” he said as he joined the trio, who regarded him with a touch of animosity. “Nice day, isn’t it? The sun—very nice. The sky—very blue. Little white clouds—very cute. The weather report said we might have some rain tomorrow, though to be absolutely honest I don’t put a lot of stock in the weather report anymore. They’re often wrong, you know, even in this day and age of supercomputers and satellites. Have you eaten? I haven’t eaten. Though I’m going to eat soon. Odelia is baking sausages, and I was hoping to get me some of those. Though sausages aremeat, of course, and I’m a vegetarian. But Max says—”
“What do you want, Dooley?” Harriet interrupted the flow of words.