“I’m not going to tell you about Utah just yet,” the dog said, in that infuriating way he had.

“Well, thank you so very much for leading me right up to the thing and then leaving me hanging. Must every conversation with you be a series of cliffhangers?”

“Ah, but I don’t find the cliffs to hang things on; the cliffs find me.”

The cliffs find me? What arrogance! I was about to point out as much when he made things so much worse by adding:

“I am the world’s greatest consulting detective, am I not?”

I rolled my eyes.

“I do understand your feeling of professional jealousy, Catson, but only one of us can be the best. The best is another one of those things like famished or dead – you either are or you are not. And, in my case, I am the best and there’s nothing more to say about it.”

Now, not only was I rolling my eyes, but I wanted to kick him too, which I would never do. I’m not the violent sort. In the Cat Wars, I didn’t fight; rather I stitched and sewed up and tried to repair and save those who did fight. But roll my eyes and want to kick him I did, because not only was what he said annoying to me, but I also knew that last part was wrong. Nothing more to say about it? I knew him. If he stayed living here long enough, he’d find plenty more to say about it. Over and over again.

“You were saying?” I prompted. “About not being ready to discuss Utah yet?”

“Why, yes. I thought that, first, it might be best to review the details of the last case we worked together, since that case is tied in to this case.”

“I still don’t know what ‘this case’ is!”

“All in good time, all in good time.”

How infuriating. It was the verbal equivalent of being patted on the head by a human.

“You will recall,” the dog said, “that our last case formally began with the murder of a man with a German name.”

“Yes, I do recall. And I also recall that at the time, I suggested – and you and the public human detectives all agreed – that we could just refer to him as, er, John Smith.”

I have the devil of a time trying to get names of foreign origin straight – really, any human names can throw me – and so I had settled on this as a solution that would work nicely for everybody, especially me.

I also remembered the two public human detectives involved in the case. One was an Inspector Strange, who Bones had apparently had several previous dealings with. Bones and Inspector Strange did not appear to like each other much. In my opinion, Inspector Strange resented that he had a need for Bones’s superior intellect and Bones resented that Inspector Strange never credited him for the cases he solved. The other public human detective, a rather quiet chap, I knew only as Inspector No One Very Important, due to the fact that I missed his name the first times it was spoken and it would have been embarrassing to ask for it after so much time had passed.

“Just so,” the dog agreed. “And you will further recall that a second murder took place.”

“Yes,” I said. “We all agreed we could call that second victim the Secretary which only made sense since he was, in fact, Mr. Smith’s secretary.”

“That is also correct, although the Secretary – an American, I might add – did have a name, and that name is Stangerson.”

“Potato, potahto,” I said. “Plus, if we start calling him that now, Stangerson being so close in name to Inspector Strange, I shall become thoroughly confused. If he figures further into the tale, can we not continue calling him the Secretary?”

After much thought, the dog nodded. “I will agree this time, to what you think are simplified names, but I do hope, if we are to continue in business together, that soon you will embrace what is accurate rather than what is easiest for your brain.”

It sounded to me as though there were more than one insult buried in there. A couple of other things rankled about it as well.

One, ‘if we are to continue in business together’? What, was I on trial here? I thought he was! Just because I’d let him move his things in, no one ever said I’d let him make this situation permanent. It was still my house.

Two, this idea of a longer acquaintance with him changing me in some way. What about me needed to change? I would confess that since meeting the dog, my limp had decreased both in severity and the amount it troubled me. Perhaps I limped less because he kept me so active. Or – and oh, how I hate to entertain this thought – maybe he was good for me in that he kept me so busy, both in mind and body, I no longer had time to dwell on what was really a minor physical impediment?

But then, hadn’t he changed too? When I first met him, even though so much about him had struck me as strange (what kind of dog wears a deerstalker hat?), he had in essence been your typical dog – panting, over-eager – and he was now a little less so. Interesting. Our acquaintance was causing us to change already.

A large paw passed in front of my field of vision, quickly followed by the sound of snapping paws.

“Huh?” I said, uncharacteristically struck dumb. I felt as though I was emerging from a trance.

“Earth to Catson,” the dog said.

Is there anything more annoying than the old “Earth to X”?

“Earth to Catson,” the dog said again, flicking his paw gently against my skull repeatedly in a tapping motion.

Apparently so. A skull-flick definitely beats “Earth to X” on the annoyance scale.

“I am, as always, present and accounted for,” I said with no small degree of grumpiness.

“I don’t know about that ‘always’ … ” he started to say before I interrupted.

“Are you going to say something important soon, or are you simply going to go on insulting me? Because if it is to be the latter, I may as well go back to daydreaming.”

“Dreaming of squirrels, were you?”

“I prefer not to say.” Well, I certainly wasn’t about to tell him that I’d actually been thinking of him.

“Fine, have it your way,” he continued. “Finally, you will recall that the murderer, who I apprehended through the use of my superior detecting skills, was a rather tall man with tiny feet by the name of Jefferson Hope.”

“I don’t know as that I’d word it all quite like that, but yes, that is what happened.”

“Good, because that brings us to – ”

“Utah!” I cried triumphantly.

Two could play at this game.