Chapter 16
The night was still young when we decided to head out to the park. Our brief sojourn at the senior center had taught us that humans have a very boring life, and that if we wanted to have fun, we probably should steer clear of them as much as possible.
“I mean, imagine just sitting there all day, doing your nails,” said Brutus. “Or having them done. There is probably nothing more tedious in the world than that!”
“I wouldn’t mind having my nails done,” said Harriet, reiterating a point she had made earlier. “If the smell didn’t get into my nostrils and cause me to gag.”
“Scarlett seems to like it,” said Dooley. “Doesn’t she, Clarice?”
“Hmm?” said Clarice.
Our friend had been pretty absentminded since that afternoon, I thought. She had never been a flibbertigibbet, but now she was even quieter than usual.
“I said?—”
“I heard you the first time, Dooley,” said Clarice. “And for what it’s worth, I feel that Scarlett should do what Scarlett wants, and it’s certainly no business of mine.”
We all shared a look of alarm. Looked like Clarice was still unhappy with her human.
“Are you cross with Scarlett, Clarice?” asked Dooley.
“No, I’m not cross, Dooley,” said our formerly feral friend. “I’m livid. I mean, you take a cat into your home and make certain promises, and then when you throw all of those promises out of the window, you shouldn’t expect that cat to stick around. Oh, no.”
“You’re not… thinking about leaving Scarlett, are you, Clarice?” asked Dooley.
“Actually, I am,” said Clarice. “If she can’t be bothered to take care of me, why should I stick around and take care of her?
A marriage works both ways. And if one party is determined to put her own needs first, then the other party is no longer obliged…
um, no, I think I got that the wrong way around.
If one party can’t consider the fact that the other party… ”
“Oh, poor Clarice,” said Dooley as he patted our friend on the back. “Scarlett hasn’t been nice to you, has she?”
“No, she certainly hasn’t,” Clarice agreed.
I thought she would burst into tears, but Clarice isn’t the kind of cat who does burst into tears. Instead, she continued to treat every square inch of asphalt as her personal enemy and tried to pound it into oblivion.
I guess she really was very cross. Or livid.
“Maybe she didn’t mean it like that,” Harriet ventured. “After all, humans sometimes do things that they don’t really mean, honey. And Scarlett is human, after all.”
“I don’t care. She made certain promises. And she should keep them. That’s the rule. And now,” she added, “I think I will go and have a long think about my future. Find a new place to stay and all of that.”
And before we could stop her, she was off in the direction of the beach, possibly to sit on the boardwalk and have that long think she had mentioned.
“We have to do something, you guys,” said Harriet. “We can’t allow Clarice to leave Scarlett. Not when she has found such a happy home with her.”
“Looks like her home isn’t as happy as it once was, though, is it?” said Brutus. “If Scarlett has started ignoring and neglecting Clarice, maybe she should leave.”
“I don’t understand,” said Dooley, who seemed more affected than the rest of us. But then he has always been the most gentle-hearted one of the four of us. “Why isn’t Scarlett taking better care of Clarice? Why is she neglecting her all of a sudden?”
“Maybe she isn’t,” I ventured. “Maybe this is all in Clarice’s head, and Scarlett doesn’t even realize how she feels.”
“You’re right, Max,” said Harriet. “I can’t imagine Scarlett intentionally neglecting Clarice. She loves her too much to do that.”
“I can believe it,” said Brutus. “And there is only one explanation.”
“And that is?” said Harriet with a frown. She doesn’t like it when we counter her arguments.
“Easy. Scarlett is in love. That’s when humans lose their minds and forget all about what’s going on in their lives. That’s when they start neglecting their friends, and pets.”
“Scarlett in love?” asked Harriet. “But with whom?”
“Dick Bernstein, of course. Didn’t you see the way she did her nails today?
And made herself the center of attention at the senior center?
The nails are a determined bid to impress Dick.
And making herself the center of attention has the same purpose: making sure that Dick sees her and falls in love with her. ”
“I don’t think Scarlett even likes Dick very much,” I said. “Much less is in love with that man.”
“I guess it’s possible,” said Harriet. “Dick is one of those silver foxes that women like so much. The moment a man’s hair starts to go gray at the temples, he becomes absolutely irresistible to a certain type of woman.
They go all gaga over him and lose all sense of self-respect by prostrating themselves before him. ”
“But Scarlett has known Dick for such a long time,” I argued. “Why would she fall for him now?”
“Anything can trigger the specter of infatuation in a human being, Max,” Harriet lectured, touching on her favorite topic.
“Maybe Dick got a new haircut. Or a new suit that makes him look super-duper dapper. Or maybe they went to one of the dances that the senior center organizes from time to time, and they danced very close together and very slowly. That kind of thing sets the heart racing faster and the pulse quickening.”
“It’s true,” said Brutus. “Humans sometimes fall in love simply from being in close proximity to one another. It’s something to do with pheromones. Or hormones. Or both.”
This suddenly made me think of something that hadn’t occurred to me before.
“You guys, what if Odelia falls in love with one of the other recruits at the police academy? I mean, she spends all day surrounded by these men. And they probably do all kinds of training exercises that bring them into very close physical contact.”
“Oh, no!” said Dooley. “I saw a documentary about the police academy once, and they have to crawl through the mud and climb wooden obstacles and all of that stuff. What if a man gets down in the mud with Odelia? Or touches her butt as she tries to climb one of those wooden obstacles? She will fall in love with him for sure!”
The prospect of Odelia falling in love with another man held us so spellbound that for a moment we forgot all about the specter of Clarice leaving home.
And since the notion of Odelia and Chase getting a divorce was so abhorrent to us, we decided right then and there that something needed to be done.
“We need to stop this from happening,” said Harriet. “We need to stop Odelia from falling in love!”
It seemed like the most important mission of our lives: prevent our family from falling apart. And since this brought home to me the fact that ours wasn’t the only family that was about to fall apart, I said, “And let’s make sure that Clarice doesn’t leave home.”
How we were going to accomplish that, I didn’t know.
But it certainly was important enough for us to try.