Chapter 4 #5
I make my way inside the lobby. There’s a counter with a phone and a calendar.
I double-check it, and see Clover’s name–is the only one written there–but no time.
We seldom take a look at animals; we are not certified to do it yet.
We do have two vets on call, and they come in turns once a month.
I should check Clover’s pet file before he arrives.
I lift an empty, dirty mug and pass the line of chairs—tripping on one—I open the door to the kitchen to leave it in the sink.
It reminds me of the cups I used to leave around my dorm bedroom before Ezra bought me that mug heater.
A sudden thought makes me freeze. How did he know I needed one?
Did he hear Lori and Ollie talk about my dirty mug cemetery?
That doesn’t comfort me, and at the same time, the thoughtfulness of his gesture makes me feel all tingly again. Am I reading too much into it?
I leave the kitchen and walk back into the green waiting room.
This time, I move toward the swinging doors, which open—one almost hitting my face—to the long corridor.
Pet Manor is the cream of the crop. There’s a large space outside reserved for dog runs and training.
Inside, the three rooms on the left are filled with cages—all empty at the moment, a very rare occasion for us.
Dare expects a full house soon unfortunately, since the other pet shelters in the vicinity have no vacancies.
The first room is the Tiny Critters Cottage for small animals—rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters.
The second is the Pooch Palace, and the third is the Cat Colony with shared or individual spaces for cats.
On the right are the exam rooms where the animals are checked upon arrival, and the meet-and-greet room for potential adopters to bond with a pet. Lately, I’ve been thinking about a quiet zone for senior dogs, a low-stress area. I want to pitch the idea to Ren next time.
I get to the end of the corridor, passing the last three rooms, one used for grooming and the other two as nurseries for puppies, kittens, and their mothers, and I leave my stuff in my locker.
I put on a pair of green scrubs, and after I’m ready, I stop by the file room to get Clover’s pet file.
When I find it in one of the cabinets, I get a papercut from the file edge.
I’m sucking on the bleeding skin as I move to the yellow exam room to prepare the equipment I might need for the check-up.
But when I open the door, a voice halts my advance.
“Mr. Squashy Nuts, it’s just an examination, don’t turn bitey on me.”
A Rattus norvegicus, commonly known as a fancy rat, is perched on Clover’s shoulder, munching on a piece of cracker. I was curious about the pet’s funny name, but I can clearly get the meaning behind it. The fancy rat has two huge nads between his legs.
“You’re finally here.” Clover’s voice takes my eyes away from Mr. Squashy Nuts’s…nuts.
“How did you get in?” Ren said that Clover was supposed to come later. Didn’t he?
“I always need to keep sharp. It’s important in my line of work.” He points at the vent on the ceiling of the exam room.
Did he really get in from that narrow, dark space?
I think about it for a moment. Clover is slim and agile.
I can see him sliding down a dark vent. Is this the line of work he’s talking about?
Finding methods of trespassing? Breaking and entering?
I’d better stop asking myself questions I don’t want to know the answer to.
“Even bumblebees power-nap on flowers when they run out of energy,” I blurt out.
“Really? Bumblebees are coolass.”
Cool? Bad…ass?
“By the way, your alarm system is ridiculous. Dare needs to up his game,” he lets me know, pulling a baby carrot out of the fanny pack resting across his black jacket. He gives it a bite before passing it to Mr. Squashy Nuts.
Dare installed his own brand of security at this shelter. Rami confirmed that it’s a masterpiece of safeness.
“How can I help you?” I ask him, wanting to change the subject. I grab a pair of latex gloves. I’m strangely not a total disaster when I tend to animals; it’s like all my clumsiness leaves my body.
“I’m fine, but thank you. It’s Mr. Squashy Nuts I’m worried about. He seems to have a sight problem sometimes. He bobs his head a few times and screams before climbing my leg, disappearing under my jacket, and refusing to come out.”
“Let’s see. Can you place him on the metal examination table and hold him still? I need to check his eyes.”
I grab the pocket light from the drawer behind me and proceed to check the pet’s pupils.
He wiggles and squeaks, but Clover is quite good at keeping him still.
I worked as an assistant at a vet clinic for six months, and the owner taught me quite a lot until I discovered she did it as a way of flirting with me.
I left the job immediately, even though I really enjoyed it.
“His pupillary reflex is normal,” I state a few seconds later. “Rodents have poor, blurry vision and light sensitivity. Which means that they are sensitive to bright lights. He probably climbs under your jacket to escape the brightness and uses his whiskers as tactile sensors.”
“Ohhh, that’s ironic.” Clover nods his head in thought. “I had a dark sensitivity when I was a kid.”
A dark sensitivity? Does he mean being afraid of the dark?
“I overcame it thanks to my aunt. I let her lock me in a chest with only a safety pin, and she left me there. I finally picked the lock a day later and was back in my ebony black bedroom sleeping like the dead.” He gives me such a big smile, his eyes turn into two narrow half-moons.
I open and close my mouth. Is he serious? I think he is.
“Pitch black,” I say before I can stop myself. “The expression is pitch black.”
“Pretty sure you’re wrong.” He snorts, scratching Mr. Squashy Nuts’s belly.
I am not. It doesn’t matter, though. Clover is Japanese, but his English is perfectly fluent and almost flawless. His use of wrong words here and there is totally fine and kind of endearing.
“Oh, but you might be right about Mr. Squashy Nuts’s aversion to brightness. Since he’s very good at detecting air currents, navigating tight spaces, and finding objects in total darkness.”
“Are you training your pet for a maze race?” I joke.
“No, but that’s a great idea. It could give him the chance to get some extra skills.”
“For what exactly?” I ask, confused.
“His job. We are a team.” Clover gives me that bright smile again.
“That’s actually sweet.” Even though I don’t know what he’s talking about. I can clearly see how much he loves his pet, and that’s all that matters.
I grab the pet’s red file, and after reading the few pages Ren wrote, I put it down to take the stethoscope.
I quickly remind myself what I need to do during a veterinary check-up on a fancy rat.
H for hear. I instruct Clover to keep the pet still as I set the instrument over his side.
His breathing is clear, no wheezing, clicking, or rattling noises.
S for smell and see. I check for red-brown staining around the nose and eyes, and there’s none, which means no respiratory infection.
T for touch. The skin and fur look fine, no lumps or bumps.
T for taste. I gently but firmly grab the rodent’s face to look at his incisors.
No overgrowth or chipped teeth. W for walk.
I tell Clover to let him go to observe his movement. No limping, weakness, or stumbling.
I check the number appearing on the scale incorporated in the metal bed and write down the pet’s weight in the file before stating, “Mr. Squashy Nuts looks healthy and happy.”
“Perfect.” Clover taps his shoulder, and the rat quickly climbs his torso and nuzzles his neck.
“You should take him to a certified vet, though. Ren and I are still studying.”
“Your love for everything that crawls precedes you.” His tone turns into a half-scold as he adds, “Hurry up with the studying part, my furry baby needs the best.”
I feel flattered and a little scared at the thought of having Clover as a recurrent client in the future.
He walks to the door but stops on the threshold after opening it. He spins and tosses me a little plastic container. When I look down in my hand, I realize it’s a stool sample container.
“I brought Mr. Squashy Nuts’s poop sample.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Ren told me to.”
That joker asshole.
I look up again to tell Clover this wasn’t necessary, but he’s disappeared.
I move to the corridor and look both ways.
Nothing. The other two times I saw him, he used the front door to leave and certainly didn’t perform a disappearing magic trick.
Is he getting better at his work or worse because of it?
I go back into the exam room and look through the window to see if I can catch a glimpse of him. But there’s no one outside. The guy is curiously odd.
I look intently at the trees, feeling like there’s something there. I lean toward the window when my phone starts vibrating inside my pants pocket.
“Dare,” I answer.
“Hey,” he greets me with his deep voice.
“Clover just left.” I place the stool sample in a brown bag and write Ren’s name on it.
“I know. I was checking the cameras in and out of the shelter.”
“He snuck inside without alerting the security system,” I tell him, hearing the preoccupied inflection in my voice.
“He didn’t. I let him.”
“Oh, great.” A relieved breath leaves my lips.
“You are safe, Sully.” Those are the words I need to hear once in a while.
So, there’s no one else out there? I want to ask, still feeling…watched. But I don’t. Dare would have told me otherwise.
“A woman is coming with a ferret. She found it in her garden.”
“Aww, I love ferrets. Was it hurt?”
“Did not sound like it. Also, Perfect Friends, the pet shelter in St. Joseph, is full. Four dogs and six hamsters are coming your way. Want me to call Ren?”
“No. I’ll do it if I need to. Thank you.”
As I said before, having no guests at Pet Manor is a very rare occasion.