Cat on a Cold Tin Roof by Mike Resnick

Author:Mike Resnick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2014-06-25T16:00:00+00:00

14.

I actually made it to my bed and spent the whole night fighting Marlowe for the pillow, which was annoying as all hell because I knew that if I’d fallen asleep for the night in front of the TV I’d have been fighting him for the softest cushion on the couch.

I woke up when Bettie Page, who had miraculously morphed into Marlowe half a second earlier, sneezed in my ear, and since my watch, which I’d forgotten to remove as usual, said it was 9:30, I figured I might as well stay up. Marlowe figured so too and started prancing nervously while I climbed into those few clothes—my shirt, my tie, and one sock—that I hadn’t slept in and raced me to the door.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I know. You gotta go first.”

So I clipped the leash onto his collar, tried to ignore my own bladder, and took him out for a walk. This time he didn’t even make it to Mrs. Garabaldi’s, which was fine with me, since it was drizzling again. As soon as he was done pretending to be a lawn sprinkler I turned around and headed for home.

Mrs. Cominsky was waiting for me.

“It’s working!” she announced excitedly.

“The furnace?” I said. “I hadn’t noticed that it had stopped again.”

“No!” she said. “Our ruse!”

“Which ruse was that?” I asked, still half-asleep.

She pointed to a huge box of mail. “Our ad! There was so much that the mailman left it in one of the post office’s white plastic boxes.”

“Look, it wasn’t the best idea I ever had,” I said. “Counting today’s mail, and what’s doubtless coming tomorrow, we’ve got hundreds of people who swear they found the cat and turned it in, and would like their reward.”

“Oh,” she said, frowning. “I hadn’t considered that.”

And suddenly I saw a way to simplify my life for a few days.

“Still,” I continued, “there’s always a chance that one of them has made a telltale blunder. As long as we’re partners in this little enterprise, why don’t you give them a first run-through and then pass on any that look truly suspicious?”

“I’ll get on it right after I do the laundry!” she promised.

“Good,” I said.

“Great!” she said. “Gonna catch us a cat thief, we are!”

“Let’s hope so,” I said, walking past her and climbing the stairs with Marlowe. When we got inside he explained to me that his food bowl was empty, so I opened the fridge, pulled out a couple of not-quite-stale jelly donuts, and tossed them in his bowl.

Then, while he was growling at and terrorizing the donuts prior to eating them, I finally made it to the bathroom and pulled out the insurance policy to see if it made any more sense in the daylight than it had the night before. Oh, there was no question that Palanto—well, Pepperidge—had taken it out, and no doubt it was for ten diamonds. It was dated three years ago, and that made sense too, since he’d been retired when he’d moved to Cincinnati,

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