Tap-tap-tap-ta-tap!
The cat was waiting outside Orwell's door when I arrived and announced myself with our secret knock.
"Scram!" I told him, giving the sly feline a gentle shove with my sock-covered toes. "Sortez!"
"Take a look at this, Orwell," I blurted out the moment I entered his peaceful hideout. "Same newspaper. Same day. Same astrological sign. Different horoscope. What do you make of it?"
The newspaper I'd plucked from the curb in front of my house carried the half-light, half-dark moon-that-can't-make-up-its-mind sign and warned me of an impending challenge at school:
STUDY SCHOOL BOOKS TONIGHT
POP QUIZ TOMORROW.
But under the identical neutral moon in the newspaper I'd picked up at the Saturn-Mart, Scorpio's daily prediction was
STAY ON TOP OF WHAT IS HAPPENING.
"I suppose they could both mean the same thing," I admitted. "But the one in the home-delivered newspaper is much more specific. I mean, under the circumstances, you'd have to be a complete idiot not to do exactly what it says."
Dutifully, I opened my math book and turned to the appropriate chapter. Orwell stared pleasantly at me, twitching his nose.
"Not that I really believe it," I added. "But, you know, just in case."
Orwell craned his neck and yawned. His tiny pink tongue extended slightly as he stretched his upper body. He seemed bored.
"I wonder how they do it," I said.
Orwell stretched his forelegs until his paws touched the curled-up edge of the newspaper that lined his bathtub bed. He casually raised his right paw above the paper's brittle edge. With those cushioned, circular pads that protect his furry feet from cold and shock, he softly sounded out a signal.
Tap-tap-tap-ta-tap, went Orwell's little rabbit foot.
Tap-tap-tap-ta-tap!