It took Stick Cat only a few seconds to realize what had happened. Hazel had slipped in the spilled coffee and fallen into the pot.
Stick Cat could feel his heart speed up and thump hard inside his chest. He stood up on the windowsill and pressed against the glass, waiting for Hazel to climb out of the pot.
She didn’t come out.
Stick Cat waited.
She didn’t come out.
Stick Cat couldn’t wait any longer.
“Edith!” Stick Cat yelled urgently. “Edith, wake up! There’s an emergency!”
Only Edith’s eyelids moved. The rest of her body remained perfectly still and calm. It was as if only her eyes had awoken while the rest of her body stayed in a perfect state of slumber. She didn’t speak, but answered simply by shifting her eyes to look at Stick Cat.
“It’s Hazel!” Stick Cat yelled. “She fell into the bagel pot!”
Edith closed her eyes.
“Edith!”
This time her mouth was the only body part that moved. Her eyes stayed closed. She calmly asked, “What is it, Stick Cat?”
“Hazel! Trouble! She fell in!”
“Fell into what?” Edith sighed.
“The bagel pot!” Stick Cat yelled. “She fell off the ladder! She hasn’t come out!”
“Maybe she’s going for a swim,” Edith suggested, maintaining her complete sense of calm and absolute lack of motion.
“A swim?!”
“Sure,” Edith said. “Humans like to swim. I don’t get it, to be honest. It just messes up their hair. It’s like taking a shower or a bath. Why would anyone want to mess up their hair? People are crazy.”
Stick Cat tried to calm his racing heart. He took three deep breaths and exhaled the air as slowly as he could.
“Edith,” he said. “I need you to wake up! Hazel’s in big trouble. I think the stuff in the pot—the cloud powder and the water mixture—is so thick that she can’t pull herself out.”
At this, Edith finally opened her eyes and turned toward Stick Cat.
“Did I miss the cloud powder part?”
Stick Cat nodded.
“I love it when she gets covered in cloud powder!” Edith said, and giggled. “Doesn’t she look totally ridiculous? It’s so funny!”
“Umm, yeah. I guess,” Stick Cat said.
Edith giggled some more as she remembered past times when Hazel had been covered by white powder. “It’s like the cloud just explodes on her!” Edith exclaimed, and laughed even harder. “She instantly looks like a ghost or something.”
“Edith,” Stick Cat said. “I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation. It’s serious! Hazel’s in danger!”
“I told you, she probably just went for a swim.”
“In a big pot of that stuff?!”
“Sure, why not?” Edith answered. “Let me ask you this, Stick Cat: Was Hazel wearing a bikini when she dove in?”
Stick Cat stared at Edith for a few seconds. “No. She wasn’t wearing a bikini. And she didn’t ‘dive’ in. She fell in.”
“Did she have a beach ball?”
“A beach ball?”
“Yes, a beach ball,” Edith answered. “People always take beach balls when they go swimming.”
“Umm, no. She didn’t have a beach ball.”
Edith stood up on the windowsill and stretched her back into an arch. She glanced out the window at the sky.
“It’s sunny out today,” she observed.
“Umm,” Stick Cat said. “It is, yes.”
“People always go swimming when it’s sunny.”
This had become too much—even for Stick Cat. He tried to compose himself. He took three deep breaths again. He rotated his shoulders a bit in an attempt to release the tension he felt there. As calmly as he could, Stick Cat said, “She’s not swimming, Edith.”
After a moment, Edith conceded.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “Maybe she isn’t swimming after all.”
Stick Cat nodded and smiled a bit. He felt a tremendous sense of relief that Edith had given up on her swimming theory. The whole discussion had taken up precious time.
“Okay,” he began to declare. “Now we need to—”
But he was interrupted by Edith.
“Maybe she’s scuba diving.”
Stick Cat lowered his head and studied the wood grain of the windowsill. He silently counted to five in his mind.
Edith asked, “Was she wearing any oxygen tanks on her back?”
Stick Cat didn’t answer. He counted to five again.
“Or flippers?”
He counted to five again.
“Or a snorkel?”
He counted to five.
“Stick Cat?” Edith asked. “Is something wrong?”
Stick Cat finally—and slowly—raised his head. “I’m fine,” he answered. “And I just want you to know how much I appreciate your thoughts and ideas about what happened to Hazel. I truly believe you’re the only one in the whole world who could come up with such ideas.”
“Well, thank you, Stick Cat,” Edith said. She looked away and smiled to herself. You could tell she took Stick Cat’s words as quite a compliment indeed.
“Great ideas, for sure,” Stick Cat reiterated. Then the spark of an idea came into his mind. He asked, “But since there was no bikini, beach ball, oxygen tanks, flippers, or snorkel, what do you think she could be doing in there?”
“You know what?” Edith said. It was as if an idea had suddenly occurred to her. Her eyes flashed open wider. She leaned closer toward the window and peered across the alley. “Maybe she fell in.”
Stick Cat snapped his head toward Edith. His mouth was agape. “I think you might be right.”
Edith nodded knowingly. She licked the back of her left front paw and rubbed it across her left eyebrow. “Might be right?”
Stick Cat immediately said, “You are right, Edith. I’m sure of it.”
By this time, something had happened across the alley that neither Stick Cat nor Edith had noticed.
Two frail, pale, batter-covered hands had reached out from inside the big pot and gripped the rim.
Hazel was trying to get out.
But she didn’t stand a chance.
Not by herself.
