“Well, it should be! If they can’t guarantee our safety, at the very least they should give us our own rehearsal space. A nice big conference hall, for instance.”
Somehow I doubted whether the powers that be could be enticed to give the cats of Hampton Cove access to a conference hall. Then again, I wouldn’t want to spend all my nights indoors. Part of why I like cat choir so much is that it takes place in the great outdoors.
“Maybe we should move to the woods,” Brutus suggested as he ducked an Ugg. “Plenty of space out there, and no annoying neighbors to give us any grief.”
“I don’t like the woods,” Dooley intimated with a shiver. “They’re dark and creepy and full of animals!”
“You’re an animal, Dooley,” Brutus reminded him. “We’re all animals.”
“Yeah, but the animals that live in the woods are wild animals!”
He had a point, of course. After millennia of sharing humans’ homes I guess we have become domesticated to some extent. Being released into the wild would come as a big shock to most of the members of cat choir. Having to fend for ourselves, and forage for food and such. “Dooley is right,” I said therefore. “The woods are no place for a couple of nice, civilized cats like us. The woods are dangerous, and full of wild creatures who wouldn’t take kindly to our presence.”
You’ll be gratified to know that we finally made it out of the park alive, though it was a narrow escape. And as we wended our way home, Dooley reminded us of more pressing matters than escaping these shoe-throwing anti-cat zealots.
“We have to find Shanille,” he said. “She could be in big trouble.”
CHAPTER 2
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Marge Poole was surprised to find that she was the first one out of bed that morning. When she arrived in the kitchen and didn’t find her mom sipping from a cup of coffee, she glanced through the window, but instead of the usual sight of Vesta pottering about in the backyard, busy with her trowel and her flowerbeds, the old lady wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Usually an early riser, Marge’s mom wasn’t in the living room either, nor had she taken the car and gone for a drive.
Figuring she’d probably gone for a stroll, Marge went about her business of getting ready for her day. And she’d already prepared breakfast and put a wash on when she wandered into the bedroom and saw that her hubby was still sound asleep, which was not his habit.
“Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” she called out therefore.
Tex mumbled something, then turned and went straight back to sleep.
Walking into her mother’s bedroom to put the laundry away, she discovered to her surprise that her mother was still in bed! Now that was odd—very odd!
“Ma, time to get up,” she said, as she opened the curtains with a vigorous movement and stood staring out through the window for a moment, as one does.
Behind her, nothing stirred, and when she glanced over, she saw that her mother hadn’t moved an inch. She was sleeping on her back, her mouth half open.
A sudden fear gripped Marge, and she crossed the distance to the bed in two seconds, then stared down hard at the gray-haired old lady. But her chest was still rhythmically rising and falling, and soft snores emanated from her lips, so Marge relaxed, stilling her wildly beating heart and telling herself not to be silly. Her mother might not be as young as she liked to think, but she wasn’t that old either!
It was ten minutes later when she was taking an empty bottle into the garage and opening the appropriate receptacle so she could deposit it amongst its discarded colleagues when she saw no less than three wine bottles in the bin.
She blinked. Now where had those come from? She wasn’t a big drinker, and as far as she knew, neither was Tex. Though it was true that lately he’d started drinking more. An aperitif before dinner, some wine with his meal, and sometimes when they were watching TV he’d have another. But that still didn’t explain these empty bottles, so the only person who could have put them there was her mother. Which might go a long way to explaining why she was still in bed instead of getting up at the crack of dawn as she usually did.
Three bottles—but she couldn’t possibly have drunk all three of them last night, could she?
Marge thought hard. When was the last time she had looked into this bin? Must have been a couple of days ago—a week at the most. Still, three bottles in perhaps just as many days? That was one bottle of wine per evening!
Time to have a little talk with her mother about her drinking habits!
[Êàðòèíêà: img_4]