Chapter Ten: I Do Business with the Cat

Pretty exciting, huh? You bet, and here’s how it happened.

After enduring that loopy conversation with Drover about nutshells and monkeys, I hurried away before he could draw me any deeper into the swamp of his mind. I mean, Drover is a nice little guy in some ways, but carrying on a normal conversation with him can be very discouraging. He talks in circles and spirals, and before you know it . . . never mind.

The point is that I had escaped with most of my mind intact. I hurried down the yard fence and happened to catch a glimpse at Mister Kitty Perfect, lounging in cool air-conditioned comfort of his iris patch. As I blew past, he perked up and waved.

Did I speak or wave back? Absolutely not. Speaking to cats is not only a tee-total waste of time, it’s also against regulations. No sir, I blew past him and made my way up the hill to the . . . boy, it was hot!

I slowed my trudge up the hill. I stopped. I turned my gaze back to the cool greenness of Sally May’s yard and . . . uh, found myself easing back down the hill and to the yard fence.

I threw glances over both shoulders, just to be sure that Drover wasn’t around to spy on me. He wasn’t. I had no idea where he went and I didn’t care. At least he was out of my life for a while.

I, uh, drifted down the fence and . . . well, noticed Pete on the other side, sitting in the shade. You know, it never hurts to be neighborly to the neighbors, even if one of your neighbors happens to be a cat. I know, I know, we have rules against flatternizing with kitties, but speaking to them every once in a while doesn’t cause any great harm.

“Hey, Pete, how’s it going?”

He smirked and waved a paw. “Hello, Hankie. You’re back.”

“Ha ha. I wouldn’t put it exactly that way, Pete. I mean, to say ‘You’re back’ makes it sound as though, well, you’ve been expecting me.”

“Um hm. I have been. What can I do for you, Hankie?”

“Oh, nothing. No, I was just, you know, out on a stroll and saw you there and thought I’d be neighborly and say howdy. No kidding.”

“Howdy. It’s hot out there in the sun, isn’t it?”

“Oh, it’s not so bad. No, I kind of like the heat.” I gazed up at the flaming ball of sun overhead and felt myself melting. I leaned toward the cat and lowered my voice. “Okay, Pete, what would it take to rent your iris patch?”

He took a moment to buff his claws on his chest. “Three days’ scraps for one day’s rent.”

“Pete, that’s outrageous!” The cat shrugged. I ran his numbers through my spreadsheet application. “Okay, maybe we can work with your numbers, but there’s one problem. Sally May.”

He gave me a wink. “She’s through watering the flowers and she won’t come outside again today. I know her habits. She’ll never suspect a thing.”

I began pacing back and forth, as I often do when my mind is reaching into new and unexplored territory. I submitted kitty’s deal to another blistering analysis, checked every detail and number, did the math forward and backward.

I marched back to the cat. “Okay, Pete, we’ve got ourselves a deal.” All at once the cat started . . . I don’t know what. Coughing or sneezing or choking. “What’s the problem?”

“Oh, nothing. Just a little . . . hee hee . . . sneezing spell.”

“It’s probably all this dust. So when do I take possession?”

“Well, Hankie, we might as well get started now, huh?”

Pete was still struggling with his allergy attack, but he managed to climb outside the fence and I leaped over into the yard. I looked at him through the fence.

“This is something new, isn’t it? Me in the yard and you outside in the heat and the dust. How times change! I mean, who would have ever thought the day would come when you and I would do business together?”

He stared at me for a long moment with his weird yellow eyes. “Well, Hankie, none of my nasty tricks work any more. Maybe I’ll think of some new ones.”

I chuckled. “You can always hope, kitty.”

“And maybe, after you’ve spent some time in the shade, you’ll . . . get careless.”

That got a big laugh. “Ha ha ha. Don’t count on it, Pete. See, you’re dealing with the Head of Ranch Security, not some ordinary mutt like Drover. The Head of Ranch Security never gets careless.”

“We’ll see, I guess.”

“You bet. Oh, say, here’s a thought. Since we’ve just cut a major business deal, maybe we ought to shake on it.”

“Maybe we should, Hankie.”

He came toward the fence and stuck his entire front leg through the fence wire. Instead of giving his paw a shake—hee hee, you’ll love this part—I stood on it, so that he couldn’t move. Hee hee.

He shot me a daggerish glare and began twitching the last two inches of his tail. “Hankie, this isn’t polite.”

“Yeah? Well, get used to it, kitty. Oh, by the way, I would have paid twice the rent you’re charging. Ha ha! Enjoy the heat.”

And with that, I marched away from the little sneak, left him crushed and broken, and took possession of my new air-conditioned office in the iris patch.

What a deal!

Boy, you talk about a great place to be in the heat of summer! Wow. Five minutes after I’d moved into the iris patch, I knew that it was not only the best, coolest, refreshingest spot on the ranch, but maybe even in the whole world.

It was on the shady side of the house, see, and the ground stayed damp because it was out of the sun. But even better was the fact that a cool breeze swept around the corner of the house, a great little breeze.

Yes sir, the iris patch and I were going to get along fine. Why, if I’d known it was such a pleasant spot, I would have evicted the cat long ago. Come to think of it, why hadn’t I? Oh yes. Sally May. But we had solved the Sally May problem, hadn’t we?

Pretty shrewd, huh? See, I had figured out that once she’d done her daily watering, she would stay in the house for the rest of the day. Okay, maybe Pete had pointed this out, but the fact remained that she would stay in the house during the heat of the day. And I had figured it out on my own.

Had I made a great deal or what? Heh heh. What a dumbbell! Kitty Kitty was out in the heat and I was in the shade, and for that I had given up three measly days of scraps! See, what Pete didn’t know—and what you haven’t known up to this very moment—is that on miserable hot days, I don’t care about scraps anyway.

But there’s more still. I had every reason to suspect that after Poor Kitty spent the rest of the day baking in the sun, he would lose his appetite too, and when scrap time came around, he would discover the awful truth about our deal.

He had traded his air-conditioned iris patch for something worthless!

Ha ha, ho ho, hee hee.

I loved it! I’m sorry, I don’t mean to gloat about this, but you have to remember that Pete and I had a long and bitter history. The little snot had pulled many cheap tricks on me and had gotten me in trouble more times than I could count. Now that I had skinned him in a business deal, I just . . . well, I couldn’t hold back my devilish joy and delight.

It was turning into one of the finest days of my career.

Yes sir, there I was in the World’s Coolest . . . the only problem with the iris patch was . . . well, the irises. The iris plants made a lumpy bed, shall we say, and after I’d occupied the spot for thirty minutes or so, I decided to, uh, rearrange the furniture. We needed to move the sofa over here and the chair over there and soften up the bed a little bit.

This required some . . . well, digging, you might say. Not much. I mean, I sure didn’t want to make any drastic changes to the, uh, decorum because, well, Sally May might not approve.

Sally May wouldn’t approve, no question about it. No, these were just little changes, tiny rearrangements of the, uh, facilities.

Dig dig. Hack hack. Scrape scrape.

Have you ever tried to rearrange a patch of irises? It’s not as easy as you might think. In the first place, irises grow in clumps and they’re tough little plants. In the second place, when you lie on top of them, they poke you in many awkward places, such as the rib cage and belly.

That’s exactly why the people who build mattresses have never made a mattress stuffed with iris plants. They would go broke trying to sell an iris mattress to the American public.

Scrape scrape, hack hack.

But I’m no quitter. To quote the words of Slim Chance, “If at first you don’t succeed, get a bigger hammer.” It took a while to get those stubborn irises arranged just right, but I got ’er done. And then . . .

WOW!

Cool breeze, cool ground, cool air, cool shade . . . all of that amidst the fragrance of fresh iris juice! And let me tell you, fellers, fresh iris juice smells pretty nice.

I didn’t think my life could get any better, but you know what? It got better. As I was lying there, letting the cool breeze tickle my ears, I began to notice Pete. Remember him? The dumbbell, the guy I had recently trounced in a big real estate deal?

Hee hee, ha ha, ho ho. Sorry, but this part is so funny, I can hardly control myself.

He’d been out in the heat for an hour, see, and it was starting to grind him down. You know what he did? He started whining and moaning! Yes sir, whining and moaning and yowling about all the misery his pampered little body was finding out there in the Real World.

Did I feel sorry for him? Heh heh. You’ve probably guessed.

No, I didn’t feel sorry for him. I ate it up, gobbled it down in huge bites and savored every morsel of his unhappiness. You know why? Because he deserved it. I’d spent years hoping to cause the little creep this kind of misery, and now, all of a sudden, I had him just where he wanted me.

Get this. After whimpering at the yard gate for an hour, he made his way around the fence and took up a position only ten feet away from my new office. And there, he set up a pitiful moan-and-cry routine that was calculated to . . . I don’t know what. Make me feel some sympathy, I suppose.

Moaning and yowling, he said, “Oh, Hankie, I never realized just how hot and miserable it could be out here!”

“No kidding? Well, education is always expensive. Now you know what I’ve been living with all these years.”

“But Hankie, I’m not as big and tough as you.”

“Pete, that’s the price you pay for being a sniveling little cat. Stop complaining.”

“But Hankie, I’m beginning to feel that I made a bad trade.”

I snorted with laughter. “Go easy, Pete, you’re about to break my heart.”

“Won’t you reconsider and let me have my iris patch back?”

“Look, pal, we made a deal, fair and square. The fact that it was a bonehead deal is what we call ‘too bad.’”

“But Hankie, I’m so hot and miserable!”

I was loving this. “Look at the brighter side, kitty. Your misery is bringing joy to others. After all these years of being a selfish little creep, you’re finally making the world a brighter place. Oh, and I’d appreciate it if you’d tone down the moaning. I’m fixing to take a nap and I’d rather not listen to your noise.”

He stared at me with wide eyes. “You mean . . . you mean you could sleep while I’m in such misery?”

“Yes. Like a log. Like a chunk of petrified wood. Good night.”

I lowered my enormous body down into the cool embrace of the shaded ground and . . . wow, you talk about a great place for a nap! It couldn’t have been better.

Well, it might have been better if Pete had shut up his noise, but you know what? Certain dogs have the ablurtity to shut all snorks out of their murks, and they can actually porkchop the honking sasafrass and snurp through all kinds of noizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . . .

Through the haze of delicious sleep, I heard a woman’s voice say, “Pete? Kitty kitty? What’s wrong? Where are you? Oh, there you are, but what . . . HANK! What are you . . . look what you’ve done to my flower bed, you hound!”

HUH?

My eyes popped open.

Sally May? She was standing over me with . . . uh-oh . . . with flared nostrils and flaming eyeballs.