“Or we could ask Grace to help us out,” I suggested. “Chances are Odelia hasn’t told her about our fast. So if we tell her she forgot to feed us, she’ll be more than accommodating.”

  “But Grace isn’t here, is she?” said Harriet plaintively. “If she was, this wouldn’t be a problem at all. That girl loves us so much she’d go to the ends of the earth to feed us.”

  She was right. When Odelia had taken off to join her husband in the new murder investigation, leaving the four of us locked up in the house, she’d asked her mom and dad to keep an eye on Grace—and left us to our own devices.

  “We could always form a feline pyramid,” Brutus suggested. “You know, we climb on top of each other, and hopefully, we’ll be able to reach that bag of kibble and topple it to the floor.”

  “It’s worth a try,” I said.

  “But won’t Odelia be upset that we went against her wishes?” asked Dooley.

  “She’ll never know,” said Harriet confidently. “All we need to do is make sure we get rid of the evidence.”

  And so it was decided: we’d try to save ourselves from this acute sense of hunger by staging a rescue operation. The target: a bag of kibble located in the pantry. The mission: get a hold of that bag!

  Before long, we were sitting side by side, looking up at that much-coveted bag.

  “It looks delicious,” said Dooley, licking his lips.

  “It looks divine,” said Harriet fervently. If she had been sick, she didn’t look it now—in fact, she looked extra hungry.

  “Are you sure this is good for you, smoochie poo?” asked Brutus. “You know what Vena said. You shouldn’t eat anything if you don’t want to risk your tummy getting sore again.”

  “My tummy is perfectly fine,” said Harriet. “In fact, it’s screaming: feed me! Feed me now! And I’m not cruel like Odelia or Vena. If my stomach needs feeding, I feed it. So who’s going to form the bottom of this pyramid?”

  “I will do it,” said Brutus heroically. But then he glanced at me and changed his mind. “Maybe Max should do it. He’s the biggest one of the four of us.”

  “Yeah, let Max be the foundation,” said Harriet. “Then Brutus, then me, and finally Dooley, who’s the smallest and the lightest.”

  “How do I get up there?” said Dooley, looking nervous. This whole operation revolved around him. If he couldn’t bring home the bacon—so to speak—it would all be for nothing.

  “Just think delicious food,” said Brutus. “That will make your body think up the best moves to get that food. It’s all about instinct, buddy boy.”

  “Instinct,” Dooley repeated. “Got it.”

  If I’m being completely honest, I wasn’t all that comfortable about forming the bottom tier of the feline pyramid, but Brutus was probably right: I was a little—or even a lot—bigger than he was. Not heavier—just big-boned. It runs in the family.

  And so I got into position on the pantry floor, and Brutus proceeded to climb onto my back, then Harriet mounted the two-cat pyramid, and finally Dooley followed suit.

  “I can’t quite reach it,” he said. “Maybe you guys can lift me higher?”

  “This is a good opportunity to practice some yoga,” said Harriet. “Do you know the downward-facing dog position, Max?”

  “Um… no?” I said.

  “That’s because Max is not a dog,” said Brutus. “Shouldn’t it be downward-facing cat?”

  “Whatever,” said Harriet. “Just push up your back, Max. Push it! Push! Push! Push! There you go! Now you do the same, Brutus. Push! Push! Push! That’s it! And now it’s my turn!”

  “I’m getting there!” Dooley cried from the top of the pyramid. “Almost there! Just a little bit more!”

  “Push, Max, push!” Harriet yelled.

  “Push harder, Max!” Brutus tooted in my ear.

  I strained and pushed and worked until my paws all started shaking, but it was hard going with no less than three cats standing on top of me!

  “Hurry up, Dooley,” I managed to huff out. “I can’t hold this much longer!”

  “Almost there!” Dooley yelled. “Just a teensy-weensy little more push, Max!”

  “Why do I have to do all the pushing?” I groaned. “Can’t you guys push too?!”

  “I’m pushing,” Harriet informed me. “I’m pushing as hard as I can!”

  “Same here,” said Brutus. “It’s all up to you, Max. You’re the only one who can make a difference here, buddy.”

  “Yeah, you’re the only one who can make sure we eat tonight, Max,” said Harriet, piling on the pressure. “Do you want to eat?”

  “I do!” I croaked. “I do want to eat!”

  “Then push! Put your back into it!”

  I was putting not just my back but my everything into it, but still, it didn’t seem to be enough.

  “Maybe we should’ve asked Fifi to join us,” I muttered, forgetting for a moment that we were locked in and our neighbors were locked out. “Or Rufus. They would’ve made the difference.”

  “Less talk, more push!” Harriet screamed from her position higher up the food chain.

  “I’ve got it!” Dooley yelled. “I’ve got it, you guys!”

  Just then, there was a tearing sound, and a bag dropped down right next to me. It was big and bulky, and as I watched, a flood of kibble poured out right in front of my nose!

  Delicious, lovely kibble—there for the taking!

  Okay, so I know I probably shouldn’t have done it, but my stomach seemed to have taken on a life of its own. Without thinking, I bent down and took a couple of those delicious nuggets of food into my mouth.

  As a consequence, the pyramid tipped over, and my friends all lost their balance. Dooley managed to cling to the pantry rack, Harriet jumped down onto the washing machine, and Brutus landed right on top of the bag of kibble.

  “Max, watch out!” said Harriet from her perch.

  Unfortunately for her, she had landed on top of the laundry hamper that had been positioned there for later use by Odelia. The hamper, with Harriet in it, tipped over and fell to the floor, spilling a load of laundry all over.

  “You guys!” Dooley yelled. “I’m stuck! Help!”

  We all looked up to see that our friend wasn’t kidding: he was indeed stuck on that shelf. And as we watched, he made the fateful decision to balance himself on a device Chase had recently bought to bake homemade bread. The device, which hadn’t been fully stable on the shelf, became dislodged, and as Dooley tipped over, so did the device. And since it had a lot of weight, it ended up dragging half the contents of the shelf down with it.

  The upshot: a sort of avalanche or torrent of household appliances, food items, and several other indispensable and not-so-indispensable things came raining down on top of us.

  Or they would have rained down if we hadn’t had the presence of mind to skedaddle.

  A moment later, the three of us stuck our heads back in and saw that Dooley was sitting pretty on top of a veritable pile of stuff. Whatever had once been neatly arranged on shelves now sat scattered across the floor.

  “Hey, I survived,” said Dooley happily.

  A creaking sound made us look up, and as we watched, a shelf started to come loose from its moorings.

  “Dooley, run!” I yelled.

  My friend skittered away—and not a moment too soon—for the shelf came clattering down from a great height, dragging more shelves with it.

  As we surveyed the devastation our ill-advised actions had caused, I saw to my satisfaction that the kibble hadn’t suffered. It still looked as yummy as it had ever done.

  So we decided to have a nice little meal right then and there, amidst the rubble.

  Five minutes later, the kitchen door opened and we hurried over to see who it was. Much to our surprise, Gran walked in—along with Grace.

  “Yoo-hoo!” the old lady called. “Where are you guys? We come bearing gifts!”

  As we trotted over, we saw she had brought food—and plenty of it, too.

  “Gran, you’re such a lifesaver!” said Harriet.

  “When Marge told me about Odelia’s boneheaded decision to make you guys fast through the night, I knew I had to come to the rescue,” she said as she scattered some of that much-appreciated food into our bowls. “Dig in. And thank me later.”

  As we tucked in, Grace’s voice suddenly sounded from the pantry:

  “Gran? I think you better come and take a look.”

  Gran hurried over, and as the four of us shared a look over our bowls, I had a feeling that more punishment awaited us.

  A lot more.

  And so we gobbled up that food as quickly as we could.

  The problem with humans is that you simply never know what they’re up to: one minute they’re doling out the good stuff with abandon and generosity—the next, they take it away.

  So better to get it while you can!

  CHAPTER 7

  Fortunately for us, Gran had left the door open when she walked in, and since we figured that after the mess we’d made in the pantry Odelia might lock us up indefinitely—or even hand us off to the pound—we decided it might be smart to put some distance between ourselves and our humans.

  Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and if we didn’t return home for just a little while, Odelia might forget all about her perfectly justified anger and be happy that we were home safe and sound.

  “It’s reverse psychology, isn’t it?” asked Brutus as we made haste in the direction of our local park. “First they’re angry with you for doing something they don’t like⁠—”

  “Like destroying their pantry,” Harriet said.

  “But then they start to worry when you stay out too long, and they start to wonder if possibly you’ve been abducted.”

  “Again,” Harriet remarked.

  “And so their anger turns to concern, and that concern turns to panic, and so when you finally show up again, instead of putting you on house arrest like they intended, they hug you and kiss you and are so happy to see you that this bad thing you did is completely forgotten!”

  “Now we need to figure out exactly how long we have to stay away,” said Harriet. “If we return too soon, she’ll be waiting behind the door with a cage to trap us into.”

  “Odelia would never trap us in a cage,” I said.

  “Just a manner of speech, Max,” said Harriet. “But if we stay away too long, she’ll be so worried that her concern morphs back into anger and sort of blends with the original anger.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” said Brutus.

  “We need to find the sweet spot. That moment when she’s no longer mad, and just worried enough.” She thought for a moment. “I’d say the rest of the night should suffice.”

  “And I think that after the mess we made—and the direct order we ignored—Odelia will need more than one night to cool off,” I said.

  “Most humans, after they’ve slept, usually forget all about what happened the day before,” said Brutus. “It’s as if their minds are reset. A blank slate. So if we show up in the morning, we should be fine.”

  “Ooh, we can simply show up for yoga practice,” said Harriet. “And then I can finally start practicing to break that ball-balancing world record. I wouldn’t want to miss that. It’s my shot at fame, you guys. My big break.”

  “Fine,” I said. “We’ll show up bright and early at six o’clock at Kurt Mayfield’s house for yoga practice so you can balance a ball on your nose. And if Odelia is still mad at us, we’ll know, and then we can disappear again and pop in from time to time to test the waters.”

  “Excellent idea,” said Harriet. “That way we should be able to avoid being punished.”

  “I hate being punished,” said Brutus.

  “I hate it that Odelia is mad at us,” said Dooley. “She was mad at us for the meat thing, and now she’ll be mad for the pantry thing. Looks like there’s nothing we can do that will make her less mad.”

  “I’m sure it’s one of those phases all humans go through,” said Harriet. “You know, she’s probably in a mad mood right now, but catch her in a week or so and she’ll be all smiles.”

  “Humans,” said Brutus. “They’re so unpredictable.”

  We had finally arrived at the park, and I was surprised to see that dog choir had expanded into quite the large gathering. Many moons ago, it had only been a couple of dogs, and now there were dozens—starting to rival cat choir in size. But when I looked a little closer, I saw something very disturbing: leading dog choir were those two huskies we’d met at Vena’s.

  “You guys, isn’t that…?”

  “Blizzard and Storm,” said Brutus through gritted teeth. “Looks like they’re gradually taking over our town.”

  “I’m sure that’s not the case,” I said.

  “And I’m sure it is,” riposted Brutus. “Which means things are going to be difficult for us.”

  He was probably right. So far, we’d managed to get along with all the dogs in Hampton Cove, and in fact these two were the first who seemed to have taken an instant dislike to us.

  Still, since they belonged to Mick Harper—and Mick was a full-fledged cop now—we felt we needed to make an effort to befriend them, as they’d be part of the scenery from now on.

  And so even though we didn’t much feel like it, we still made the conscious decision to walk up to them and introduce ourselves once again.

  “What do you want?” asked Blizzard in a grating sort of voice.

  “Ooh, it’s the cats!” Fifi cried as she came hurrying up to us. “Have you guys invited your humans to join us for yoga tomorrow morning?”

  “Invited who to do what?” asked Storm.

  “Max’s human lives next to my human,” Fifi explained, “and so I asked him to invite his humans to join my humans for yoga practice.”

  “What a silly thing to do,” said Blizzard, who simply couldn’t help being as obnoxious as possible. “Who does yoga?”

  “Well, my humans do,” said Fifi. “It’s good for your general health and fitness, and it quietens the mind. And since Kurt’s mind is quite a busy one, it’s done nothing but good things for him.”

  “I guess if you believe in stuff like that,” said Blizzard, who clearly wasn’t a yoga fan. “My human doesn’t do yoga. He says it’s for sissies.”

  “So what does he do?” asked Fifi.<>

  “Hardcore bodybuilding,” said Storm. “Lifting weights—and very heavy ones.”

  “That’s the stuff your human should do,” advised Blizzard. “It’s what real men do.”

  “I’m not sure Kurt would be into that kind of thing,” said Fifi, clearly not convinced. “Though Chase also goes to the gym, doesn’t he, Max?”

  “He does,” I said. “He even has a home gym—of a sort. Though mostly he goes down to the fitness club, and so does Odelia.”

  “Maybe Mick and Chase should set up a posedown,” said Storm with a grin.

  “What’s a posedown?” asked Dooley.

  “It’s when two bodybuilders strike poses simultaneously,” said Blizzard. “To determine who’s got the best physique. Newsflash: Mick would win hands down from Chase, who looks like a scrawny chicken in comparison.”

  “Chase is not a scrawny chicken,” said Brutus, who hates it when people say disparaging things about his human. “He’s very buff and very big.”

  “He’s got no guns!” Storm cried.

  “His guns are like mosquito bites,” said Blizzard with a grin.

  “And his legs are like sticks,” said Storm.

  “Typical rookie mistake,” said Blizzard. “They train their upper body but neglect to do legs.”

  “Leg day is very important. Mick makes sure never to skip leg day, no matter how grueling it is.”

  “Leg day is the worst. After leg day Mick is so exhausted he practically collapses when he gets home.”

  “There have been days he actually vomited right there in the gym,” said Storm proudly. “Puked his guts out!”

  “Our human is hardcore,” said Blizzard.

  “Chase has great legs,” Brutus protested. “I love Chase’s legs. They look amazing.”

  Blizzard grinned and turned to me. “That’s probably not something you ever imagined anyone would say, right, Maxie baby?”

  I started at this. The only one who had ever called me Maxie baby in that derogatory tone was Brutus—and mostly back when he had just arrived in town, cocky and full of desire to prove he was superior. Looked like these two were cut from the same cloth.

  Brutus had noticed the same thing—and he didn’t like it.

  “Nobody calls Max that name apart from me,” he said in a threatening tone.

  “Oh? And what are you going to do about it?” said Blizzard, squaring off against our friend.

  “I could do a lot of things, but I’m not, since I don’t pick fights with losers,” said Brutus.

  “Oh? Who was at the crime scene today, and who wasn’t?”

  “Yeah, and who is going to catch the killer and who isn’t?” asked Storm. “Us, that’s who. Not you guys!”

  Those words cut right to the bone, I have to admit. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been riding alongside Odelia, acting as her eyes and ears, solving case after case. And now she’d decided to cut us out of her latest investigation—and I wasn’t happy about it.

  “There’s a perfectly good reason why Odelia decided to leave us out,” I said.

  “Oh, I know,” said Storm. He went nose to nose with me. “Because you’ve lost it, old man.”

  “What did Max lose?” asked Dooley.

  “He’s lost his edge! Odelia knows he’s old and tired, so she decided to give way to the new team in town.”

  “Who’s the new team?” asked Dooley.

  Blizzard gave him a dirty look. “Are you pulling my leg right now?”

  “Pulling your leg?” asked Dooley, staring at the huskie’s leg. “Um… no? Should I? I could pull it if you wanted me to. Do you want me to, Blizzard? I don’t mind pulling your leg.”

  “There’s something seriously wrong with you,” hissed Blizzard. “Something doesn’t compute.”

  Dooley laughed. “That’s because I’m a cat, not a computer.”