Dutifully I filled her in on my own habit of taking the first crack at a new bag of crispy kibble, but then Dooley said I had another secret to share, one Harriet had revealed to him.“Max has a dirty mind. Harriet says so. I don’t know how it happened. Maybe some dirt got in through his nose or his ears. But now we’ve been racking our brains on how to wash his brains. Maybe Vena will know. I think we’ll have to remove his brain from his head and wash it with strong soap.”
Shanille produced a loud squeal of mirth at this surprise revelation, and before we knew what was happening, she’d gathered about a dozen cats around her, and was revealing my big secret! We could actually see how this mouth-to-mouth business worked and watch the news travel through the entire chowder of cat choir members. It was like watching wildfire spread through dry twigs.
“Dooley, my brain isn’t dirty,” I told my friend finally, when my so-called secret had done the rounds, and especially Dooley’s solution of washing my brain with soap.
“But Harriet said so!”
“Harriet was just being mean, because you wouldn’t tell her about Brutus’s secret. So she lashed out, which is what she does when she doesn’t get her way.”
“So your brain isn’t dirty?”
“My brain isn’t dirty. In fact no brain can actually be dirty. Not literally, anyway.” I didn’t want to explain to him that a brain can be figuratively dirty, since that would only lead us astray. But at any rate, he was visibly relieved.
“Oh, Max, I was so worried about you! You have such a big, beautiful brain. It can’t get dirty, cause then it would stop working. Like Odelia’s car.”
Odelia’s pickup is an old jalopy that should have been put out to pasture a long time ago. But she’s attached to the old thing, even though the engine keeps giving her grief. “My brain is fine,” I said.
“What a relief! I’m so happy, Max!”
“Yeah, I’m happy, too,” I said morosely. Not only had I been turned into the laughingstock of cat choir, but we still didn’t know Harriet’s big secret, and Brutus had now taken to whittling a piece of wood by cutting strips from it with his sharp claws, regarding Kingman malevolently all the while. I smelled trouble!
The big cat now came waddling up to us, a look of concern on his wide face.“What’s gotten into Brutus?” he asked, discreetly directing an anxious look in the latter’s direction. “He looks at me as if he wants to kill me!”
“Secrets and lies, Kingman,” I said. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
“What are you talking about?” asked Hampton Cove’s unofficial feline mayor.
“Brutus thinks you’re having an affair with Harriet.”
“An affair with Harriet! You have got to be kidding me!”
“No, I am not,” I assured our voluminous friend. “So are you?”
“How can you ask me that, Max! Of course I’m not having an affair with Harriet!”
“You were seen canoodling.”
“Canoodling!”
“Late at night.”
“Late at night!”
“In the bushes.”
“In the bushes!”
“Look, if you’re going to repeat everything I say this is going to be a long night. Just tell me what’s going on, Kingman. Because something is going on. I can feel it.”
“In his brain,” said Dooley helpfully. “In his very clean, not dirty at all, brain.”
This caused Kingman to produce a high-pitched titter. But when he caught my stern look, he quickly simmered down.“Okay, I would tell you, but I can’t.”
“Of course you can.”
“No, I can’t. I was sworn to secrecy. And I may be a lot of things but I’m not a tattletale, Max,” he added with a touch of pomposity.
“You’re the exact definition of a tattletale, Kingman. I’ll bet when people look up the word ‘tattletale’ in the dictionary your name is mentioned. So spill!”
But he clamped his lips together and shook his head emphatically.
“Fine,” I said. “Be that way.” Frankly I was getting a little fed up with this whole business. Which wasn’t actually my business at all. Just something I got mixed up in. Well, me and the rest of Hampton Cove’s cat population, apparently.
“Do you have secrets, Kingman?” asked Dooley.
“Oh, sure,” said Kingman. “Plenty.” He thought for a moment. “There’s that time when I ate half the contents of the General Store meat locker, and Wilbur thought the store had been burgled so he called the police.” He grinned at the recollection. “You should have seen his face when they checked the CCTV. I was grounded for a week after that stunt. And then of course I pooped in Wilbur’s bed once. Or more than once, if I remember correctly.”
“You pooped in Wilbur’s bed?”
“He was involved with some devious female at the time. She used to kick me when Wilbur wasn’t looking, and pinch me in the dark. The only way to get back at her was to leave a small deposit in the bed every time she stayed over. I think Wilbur finally got the message, cause he broke up with hersoon after that.”
I could have told him that the girlfriend had probably broken up with Wilbur after repeatedly finding poo in the bed and assuming Wilbur wasn’t potty-trained.