Something was wrong. On Sunday, Marvin didn’t eat anything. And Monday morning he didn’t feel like having breakfast.
I stuffed Marvin into his pet carrier and drove him to Dr. Furr’s before school.
Dr. Furr listened to Marvin’s heart. He felt Marvin’s stomach.
“I’m going to take an X-ray,” said Dr. Furr.
I waited and waited and waited. Finally Dr. Furr brought Marvin back into the room and showed me the X-ray.
The X-ray didn’t look like Marvin. It looked like a little dinosaur skeleton. But I knew it was Marvin. It was the inside of Marvin, and I loved every strange shape and every tiny bone.
“This is Marvin’s stomach.” Dr. Furr pointed to a shape on the screen. “There’s something in there that shouldn’t be.”
I almost fell over. Could it be?
“It looks like a little heart,” said Dr. Furr. It was a little heart. It was Tonya’s little plastic heart.
I told Dr. Furr about the barrette that smelled like peppermint.
Dr. Furr said that he would have to keep Marvin overnight. He would get the heart out of Marvin’s stomach.
“I guess you’ve heard that the way to a cat’s heart is through his stomach,” said Dr. Furr.
I was so relieved that I laughed at Dr. Furr’s joke.
I kissed Marvin good-bye and stopped to look at his X-ray one more time.
I pointed to a tiny shape behind Marvin’s eye. “What’s that itty-bitty thing?”
“That’s Marvin’s brain,” said Dr. Furr.
Dr. Furr and I laughed again. Marvin was not amused.
