Purrfect Fitness

  The Mysteries of Max 29

  Nic Saint

  Puss in Print Publications

  Contents

  Purrfect Fitness

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Purrfect Setup (The Mysteries of Max 30)

  About Nic

  Also by Nic Saint

  Purrfect Fitness

  Sign up for Nic’s no-spam newsletter and get 3 stories for FREE!

  nicsaint.com/news

  Go for the burn…

  I don’t know if you’ve ever shared your home with a fitness fanatic. I have, and it’s a disturbing experience. Both my humans are fitness nuts, you see, and like nothing more than to contort themselves into strange positions, or jump up and down while sweating profusely. Things didn’t improve when fitness celebrity Randy Hancock came to stay with us. He told us he’d recently been injected with a slow-acting toxin and only had four days to live. So he asked Odelia to save him. It was the beginning of a troubling time, more so because he’d brought along his dog Little Randy.

  Meanwhile Brutus had struck up an unlikely friendship with a turtle, and Gran an even unlikelier one with Wilbur Vickery, going so far as to actually start dating the man. Soon rumors of an upcoming wedding were doing the rounds, prompting Dooley to fear he’d have to move out along with Gran to go and live with her new husband and Wilbur’s cat Kingman. And then of course there was The Affair: Marge being caught in the arms of Randy, creating a second rumor mill that predicted divorce. It was all cause for great concern, and one of my most perspiratory mysteries yet.

  1

  There’s a story someone once told me about not judging a person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. And I remember thinking at the time that this story doesn’t really apply to cats, since we don’t wear shoes. Still, the gist of the thing has always stuck with me, and when I now watched Odelia and Chase sweating and grunting their way through some sort of aerobics routine, I was reminded of this neat little aphorism or idiom.

  It’s hard for a cat to feel a lot of sympathy when humans put themselves through the wringer like this. I mean, no cat would willingly subject themselves to such silliness, but then that’s humans for you. They must have some sort of masochistic streak, and like to torment themselves for no good reason whatsoever.

  The shoes Odelia and Chase were wearing were sneakers, so I tried hard to picture myself wearing those same sneakers and jumping around like a crazy person, losing about a gallon of sweat in the process. Try as I might, though, I simply couldn’t see it.

  “What are they doing?” asked Dooley, who’d been observing the scene with the same stupefied expression on his face as no doubt I was wearing on mine.

  “It’s called aerobics,” I explained. “Humans do it to stay in shape.”

  “What shape? Square or round or…”

  “It doesn’t matter as long as it’s slim. Humans like to be slim.”

  “It looks extremely painful,” Dooley said, wincing a little as Odelia practiced a high kick that looked very dangerous indeed.

  “Humans like to suffer,” I explained.

  “So weird,” Dooley said with a shake of the head.

  On the television a man was showing our humans how it was done. He was a man with a big curly head of hair, a pink sweat headband and very bright spandex clothes. Behind the man were five women mimicking his every move, just the way Odelia and Chase were, and the music pumping through our living room speakers accompanying the man’s instructions was loud and energetic. It also made my ears bleed.

  Well, maybe not literally, but you know what I mean. Cats have a very sensitive sense of hearing, and the noise from the TV was very unpleasant to say the least.

  I liked that Odelia wasn’t alone, though. In case she pulled a muscle, her boyfriend could immediately call for a doctor—and she could do the same for him. Also, they say couples who suffer together, stay together, and judging from the pained grimaces on our humans’ sweat-soaked faces, they were suffering a lot, which boded well for their future.

  “You would think that after spending so much time with our humans we would understand what they’re up to,” said Dooley. “But the opposite seems to be true. The longer I’m with them, the less I understand them.”

  “You certainly have a point, Dooley,” I said, as I felt exactly the same way.

  Suddenly the sliding glass door opened and Grandma Muffin walked in. She cast one look at her profusely sweating and grunting granddaughter and boyfriend, shook her head in dismay, and walked out again. Gran doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and whatever she had to tell us could probably wait.

  Suddenly the doorbell chimed, and since Odelia nor Chase reacted, I easily slid down from my perch on the couch and ambled over to see who it was.

  Cats can’t open doors, unfortunately, but they can take a peek through the letterbox and ascertain the identity of the person making a house call, which is what I did now.

  Much to my surprise, the person standing in front of the door was the same person now working up a sweat on our television screen and shouting a good deal as he did.

  For a moment I thought I was seeing things, for he looked exactly the same as he did on TV: that same curly head of hair, that same garishly colorful spandex outfit, and the same sneakers. Only the man at the door had a careworn expression on his face while the man on TV looked like he was about to reach his personal peak of pleasure.

  So I padded into the living room again, and tried to attract Odelia’s attention. It took me a while to accomplish this feat, as she was just demonstrating a very complicated routine that involved jumping up and down while waving her arms just so. Finally she dragged her eyes away from the screen and saw I was also waving my paws, only without defying gravity the way she was.

  Immediately she turned down the sound. “Yes, Max?” she said, panting heavily while planting her hands on her hips. “What do you want, buddy?”

  “There’s a man at the door,” I said. “The same man that’s on TV, in fact.”

  “Maybe he’s here to give you some extra instructions,” Dooley suggested.

  “Yeah, that could be it,” I said, nodding.

  “He probably thinks you did something wrong and he wants to correct you in person,” Dooley added as he placed his head on his front paws.

  “What’s going on?” asked Chase, who’d also become aware of this sudden lull in the proceedings.

  Just then, the man at the door made his presence known once more by pressing his finger on the bell and this time keeping it here, causing it to jangle freely—usually a sure-fire way of making sure whoever is inside comes to the door post-haste.

  Odelia now grabbed a towel and as she dabbed at her face hurried into the small hallway and opened the door. She must have been as surprised as I was to see her television fitness instructor in the flesh, for she stammered, “Mr. H-H-Hancock!”

  “Odelia Poole?” asked the man, looking distinctly ill at ease. “The detective?”

  “That’s right—I mean, my name is Odelia Poole, but I’m not a detective. I’m a reporter, actually. With the Hampton Cove Gazette.”

  “I’m in trouble, Miss Poole. Big trouble. And I’m hoping you can help me.”

  “Yes–yes, of course,” said Odelia, still visibly dazed by this strange coincidence.

  When mere mortals meet their heroes in the flesh, they usually respond by turning both tongue-tied and weak-kneed, and I could observe this phenomenon up close and personal in my own human, who looked star-struck by this funny-looking fitness man.

  “Can I come in?” asked Mr. Hancock after a moment in which Odelia did nothing more than goggle like a lovesick teenager meeting Justin Bieber for the first time.

  “Yes! Yes, please do!” said Odelia, snapping out of her momentary stupor.

  “Who is it, babe?” asked Chase as he came to see what was going on. When he caught sight of Mr. Hancock his jaw actually dropped and he just stood there, gawking.

  Mr. Hancock smiled nervously, and since his onlookers were now both struck dumb, he did the honors himself by walking into our modest little home, closing the door. Then he said, “I only have four more days to live, Miss Poole, and I
’m hoping you’ll be able to find out who’s doing this to me… and maybe stop them from murdering me.”

  2

  Harriet gazed before her into the middle distance, a worried look marring her usually smooth brow.

  Next to her, Brutus glanced over, and when he caught the look of worry, reciprocated with a pang of concern himself. “The eyes?” he said.

  Harriet nodded. “Yeah, I don’t know what’s happening, smoochie poo, but it looks like I don’t see as well as I used to.”

  “Maybe we should tell someone?”

  “No!” said Harriet immediately. “I don’t want anyone to know. Promise me you won’t tell a soul, Brutus. Not a single soul!”

  “All right, all right,” he said.

  Harriet opened and closed one eye, then the other, but the object she was staring at didn’t become any clearer. On the contrary, the rose bush on the other side of the backyard only seemed to become more blurred. Finally she shook her head in dismay. “I don’t know what’s happening, tootsie roll, but if this keeps up soon I won’t be able to see a thing.”

  “I’m sure it’s just temporary,” said her partner, giving her a sweet little nudge.

  Harriet’s eyesight had been diminishing for the past couple of weeks now, and even though it wasn’t something she liked to discuss with anyone—in fact only Brutus was aware of the baffling malady—it did give her great cause for concern.

  Harriet prided herself in her twenty-twenty vision, like most cats do, and this sudden deterioration of what she’d always considered a natural ability was frankly worrying her to no slight degree.

  “It could be our diet,” she said now. “Maybe I’ll ask Marge to put some more fresh meat in our diet. All that kibble and packaged food probably isn’t very healthy.”

  “Yeah, good idea,” said Brutus with a nod. “Or maybe Marge could feed us some of those vegetables humans like so much? Broccoli and, um, tomatoes?”

  “Carrots!” said Harriet suddenly. “I’ve always heard carrots are good for the eyes, as they contain beta-carotene, so maybe I should start eating more carrots from now on.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Brutus, though he clearly wasn’t a big proponent of this theory.

  “You know what? Maybe we can go on a diet together,” she suggested now. “If I’m going to do this, it will be a big sacrifice, snickerdoodle. No more Cat Snax, and no more of those delicious wet food pouches. So let’s do it together. It’ll be much easier for me to keep up with my new dietary regimen if I have you right there doing it along with me.”

  Brutus gave her a startled look. “You mean… no more Cat Snax? No more… wet food?”

  “That stuff isn’t good for you anyway, sugar lump. And this way you’ll join me on this health kick.” She smiled as she gave her partner a loving nudge. “Thanks, snookums. I owe you one.” And with these words, she disappeared inside to look for Marge and give her the good news.

  A turtle was making its way through the undergrowth. She wasn’t in a hurry, and when she came upon a fresh leaf that had recently fallen from an overhanging tree, she ate it at her leisure. It hadn’t been long since she’d escaped her home, and this sojourn through the wide and open spaces was a real pleasure.

  So when she came upon a black cat, muscular and built for action and speed, she eyed it with interest. Turtles, as a rule, are built for taking things slow and at their leisure, and coming upon this supreme specimen gave her a moment’s pause, and even caused her to put down the tasty leaf so she could speak.

  “Hi, there, sir,” said the turtle. “Could you please tell me where I am? I seem to be lost.”

  The butch black cat glanced down and did a double-take. “I hadn’t seen you there, buddy,” said the cat. “You being the exact same color as the lawn and all… What do you want to know?”

  “Where I am, exactly,” the turtle repeated. “You see, I seem to have gotten lost.”

  “Who do you belong to?” asked the cat.

  “I don’t belong to anyone, sir,” said the turtle, slightly offended. “I’m a free turtle.”

  “A free turtle?” asked the cat with a frown. “You mean… you’ve walked all the way here from the ocean?”

  “The ocean?” asked the turtle, licking her lips delightedly. “You mean to tell me there’s an ocean nearby?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure. But then you probably already knew that, seeing as you come from there.”

  “Oh, no. I’ve never seen the ocean in my life, cat.”

  “Brutus,” said the cat.

  “Nice to meet you, Brutus. My name is Pinkie.”

  “So if you weren’t born in the ocean, what do you call home?”

  “The pond, of course,” said Pinkie, wondering if all cats were as slow on the uptake as this one.

  “Pond? What pond?”

  “Well, the pond. Is there any other?”

  And seeing as this cat named Brutus hadn’t even heard of the pond before, Pinkie figured she might as well return to her slow but sure-footed progress in the direction of wherever it was that her tiny feet were taking her.

  “Wait,” said Brutus. “Where are you going?”

  “You clearly have no idea where the pond is, Brutus,” said the tiny turtle, “so I’m guessing you don’t know where the ocean is, either.”

  “Oh, I know where the ocean is, all right.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course.”

  She mulled this over for a moment. “Would you mind taking me there, Brutus?”

  “Um… yeah. Yeah, why not?”

  Pinkie smiled. She was a sociable turtle, and appreciated all creatures, great and small. “Thank you, Brutus.” She then glanced around and noticed the nice backyard, the nice house, and wondered why a cat would want to leave all that behind to go on a trip with a turtle he barely knew. “Don’t you like it here anymore, Brutus?”

  “Oh, I like it, I do. But my girlfriend wants to put me on a diet of carrots, and between you and me I’m not all that crazy about carrots, so I figured I might as well lay low for a little while, until this latest craze of hers passes—they tend to pass pretty quickly.”

  “Plenty of food in the ocean,” Pinkie said.

  “You think?” said Brutus hopefully.

  “Oh, sure. Plankton, seaweed, algae, sponges, worms… A regular all-you-can-eat buffet.”

  Brutus gulped a little. He didn’t seem to share Pinkie’s excitement for seeking out the ocean, the source of all life, but Pinkie didn’t mind. She was sure that Brutus would grow to love the ocean as much as she did. First they had to get there, of course. But she wasn’t in any kind of hurry—turtles rarely are. And they’d walked about a foot in ten minutes when Brutus said, “This’ll take forever. Why don’t I ask one of my humans to take us?”

  And so it was that Pinkie was safely seated on the front seat of a nice car, a little old lady behind the wheel, Brutus in the back, the three of them on their way to the ocean.

  Life, Pinkie thought as she happily hummed a merry tune, was pretty darn fun.

  3

  “What is a fitness guru, Max?” asked Dooley.

  “I think this guy is one, Dooley,” I said.

  We both sat staring at this new arrival, this star who’d suddenly graced us with his star-studded presence. Odelia and Chase certainly were still in awe, judging from their slack-jawed appearance, and their unusual reluctance to utter a single intelligent word.