After a long and glorious nap, Stick Cat and Edith woke up. Actually, Stick Cat woke up first, but he waited silently and motionlessly until Edith awakened too.
“What do you want to do today?” Stick Cat asked her.
“What time is it?”
Stick Cat looked out the window. He couldn’t see the sun—there were too many buildings blocking his view—but he could discern where it was by the brightness of the sky.
“It’s early afternoon, I think,” Stick Cat answered. “That was a very long nap.”
“I could sleep longer,” Edith said. “I LOVE sleeping. I’d sleep right through the whole day if Tiffany didn’t wake me up every morning.”
“You would?”
“Most definitely,” Edith said. She was quite sure of herself. “But she’s always getting up and making my breakfast. She tries to be quiet, but she can’t be. It drives me crazy! Then the smells from the kitchen come pouring into the room, and that wakes me up even more.”
“What did she make for you this morning?”
“Huevos rancheros.”
“What’s that?”
“Scrambled eggs with hot sauce,” Edith answered. She licked her lips in an attempt to recapture the flavors. “I LOVE hot sauce.”
“I know you do. You’re spicy.”
“I’m TOTALLY spicy,” Edith confirmed. She liked being described this way, you could tell. She licked her lips again—and it seemed to remind her of something else.
“And bacon. I had seven strips of bacon. I’m in LOVE with bacon!”
Stick Cat smiled. “Sounds like it was a meal worth getting up for.”
“I suppose,” answered Edith casually. “I’ve had better.”
Changing the subject, Stick Cat asked again, “What would you like to do today?”
Edith glanced out the window and up at the sky. Finally, an idea came to her. “We could take another nap. That would be fun.”
“What about something a little more exciting?”
“Naps can be exciting.”
“What about something a little more active?”
Edith didn’t seem to like that idea too much. She rolled her eyes up and away from Stick Cat. She suddenly seemed quite determined about something.
“Let me tell you what we’re not going to do today, Mr. Man,” Edith stated. “We are not going to rescue some poor person who is stuck in a piano or is drowning in a massive pot of bagel batter.”
“We’re not?”
“No,” Edith said, and shook her head. “I’m sick and tired of all these rescue missions. These people need to learn to take better care of themselves.”
Now, Stick Cat did not agree with this attitude. But he also knew there was an incredibly small chance they would see another person who needed their help. And he certainly didn’t think it would happen in the next few hours.
So he answered, “Okay.”
“No more parachuting across the alley,” Edith went on. “Even though it was tons of fun. I want today to be a rest day. A plain, simple, quiet rest day.”
Again, Stick Cat said, “Okay.”
And Edith closed her eyes again.
For fifteen seconds.
Cr-eea-k. Oomph!
“What was that?!” she screamed as her eyes snapped open.
Stick Cat leaped from the windowsill down to the living-room floor. He jerked and twitched his head left and right. He tried to identify the source of the sound.
“I think it came from the ceiling!” he whispered.
He was right. The sound did come from the ceiling. And he was right about something else too.
He and Edith would not try to rescue someone today.
No.
Today they would try to catch someone.