The Great Cat Caper (15 page)

S
unny rounded on the camera crew. “If he’s dead, so are you, busters!”

“Lemme check,” came a shaky voice from the other side. There was a muffled
ouch
and the crunch of gravel. “No. I just let go of the top bar too late. I think I’m taller now. Cool.”

“The cats?” Vee asked.

“How many should there be?”

“Twenty.”

Sounds of breathy counting. “Twenty-one.”

“That’s because Flick is in there,” Vee said.

“Make that twenty. One cat high-tailed it over the fence.”

“Flick,” Vee said.

“Uhh, hurry up and get us out of here,” C. P. said. “They’re all looking at me and then the fence. I think they’re going to use me as a ladder. Hurry
up!
“

Oops.
Vee, Aneta, and Sunny swapped looks. How were they going to get C. P. and the cats out? Sunny covered her mouth to smother a laugh. Vee clutched her head, and Aneta’s eyes got big. The camera crew chuckled.

“Girls!” Frank yelled, with Esther following behind, gasping and leaning to put her hands on her knees to catch her breath. He unlocked the gate. “There are people right behind with cat carriers. Just keep those dratted cats from sneaking out the gate when I open it.” He and the girls slipped inside and began rubbing bellies, coaxing cats off the slatted fence, and telling C. P. how wonderful he was. He assured them he knew.

Heather, Dad, and the Twin Terrors appeared in the doorway of the fence.

“Dad!” Vee was startled. She held a cat in each hand.

“Vee the B!” The Twin Terrors each opened their carrier, and she popped in the cats. The boys closed the carriers and quickly brought two more in. Those little guys could move fast. Not a single cat escaped on their watch.

Dad and Heather rounded up the rest of the cats, placing them in the carriers. Some of the cats weren’t too happy with sharing a carrier, but the hissing and spitting was soon over.

Heather and the boys left with Frank and the rest of the Squad. The crew followed, still filming. Dad and Vee closed and locked the gate and walked back to the community center.

“What are you doing here, Dad?”

“Trying not to be a jerk,” Dad said. “You remember I told you I wanted to talk to you about your want-to?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Heather has been showing me that revving up your want-to isn’t always the wisest way to go. Like me spending too much time at work, trying to be a big shot so my family can have cool things. Like I did with you. I don’t want to do that anymore.”

“That’s good for the Twin Terrors,” Vee said slowly.

“I hope it will be good for you as well. I’m sorry I made a big deal about the retest. I’m sorry I didn’t show up for your cat project. I’m sorry I treated your project like it wasn’t worth anything.” He stopped and put a hand on each shoulder.

Here we go with the hand on the shoulder again.
It must be an adult thing.

“I won’t say I won’t ever let you down again, but today’s not the day. Will you accept that?”

Vee flung her arm around her dad’s waist. “Oh, Dad.”

T
he Squad stood in the Cat Room, admiring the newly returned adoptables in their decorated cages. Vee watched her family—Heather, Dad, and the boys who were strutting around telling about their role in the rescue. The stories got bigger with each telling.

The seniors fussed over C. P. with free food from all the booths and a bottle of water. As he sat in one of the chairs in the adoption center, swinging his feet and polishing off an orange, he suddenly spoke. “Hey!”

The girls turned around from straightening the scattered tables from the mouthwash lady’s flight with all the cats.

“How were you going to get me and the cats
back
over that fence?” he asked, accusing.

Sunny looked at Aneta. Aneta looked at Esther. Esther looked at Vee.

He shook his head and stuffed the rest of the orange in his mouth. “Girlthhs!” he said thickly.

The rest of Friday and all of Saturday turned out to be a good day for treasure. The Petting Palace was busy with a smiling, laughing Mrs. Sissy, who quickly memorized every bio on every cat and shared it with all the petters. Twice the adoption center had lines. The Cat Kits sold out quickly. The organic cat treats were a hit. Ginger was clearly thrilled with the footage of the dramatic rescue.

It was the Feather Freakies and Sock ’Ems that the
Everything Animal
producer loved the most, however. “They are just so cool,” she said, holding Momma Cat on her lap and dangling the Freakie in front of her. Momma Cat responded quickly, slapping out a paw and capturing the feather and then batting it back and forth between her paws. Soon she had rolled onto her back in Ginger’s lap and had all four paws involved. “I love this cat. Too bad I live in New York.”

Vee watched Mrs. Sissy watching Ginger with Momma Cat. “I think Momma Cat already has a fan here.”

“Yeah, it would be tough to fly her back. She wouldn’t like it. I’m going to go to a no-kill cat rescue in the city. Can I show them the Freakie and the Sock ’Em? They could use them for an activity in their humane education.”

“Of course,” Esther said, looking pleased.

Before she left, the producer asked if she could e-mail the Squad with pictures once she adopted a cat. The girls agreed it would be very cool to see a New York City cat that was now an
Everything Animal
treasure.

Ginger finished up her interviews and final footage, then the crew packed up. She seemed to linger after they left. Finally, she blushed a bit. “You girls have such a great life here and do wonderful things. Being a kid is so trouble-free, it makes me want to be a kid again.”

The Squad just smiled. Vee forced herself
not
to roll her eyes.

Where
was
he? All around her, the festival was closing down. People were taking down long tables, backing cars and trailers into the park and loading, and yelling good-byes. Vee felt forgotten. The senior center had closed early with every cat adopted. Tonight there would be a big concert in the park, but the Squad was meeting at her house to celebrate a successful Great Cat Caper. Bill had said he’d be there by now to pick her up.

The lightness that had settled on Vee since the cats had been found began to fade. What was it about dads and semi-dads and being on time? She had pretty much figured by now that Bill was a Super Bill.
Guess not.
She wished she hadn’t left her ATP at home.

The blast of an air horn jolted her, and she ran around the corner of the senior center to see what it was. A gigantic diesel truck without a trailer was rolling toward her down the road from the main street. Bill was leaning out the window yelling, “Vee girl! Hey, are you still here?”

“I’m here! I’m here! You’re here! You’re late!” she waved, all heaviness banished. He
came.

As soon as the rig slowed to a stop, Bill swung down. His face was scraped and bloody, and he moved as though he’d had a run-in with an entire football team. He bent down and scooped her up into a bear hug. For once Vee didn’t mind. Even if she wasn’t a huggy person. When he set her down, she slugged his arm and felt better. He winced.

“What happened to your face? Did you get into a fight with a barbed-wire fence?”

He motioned for her to get in, and she smiled. Going home in style. She climbed up and hitched across the front to the passenger side. Bill slowly got in, swung the door shut, and they rolled around onto Park Street to make a circle around the park and head home.

“I was working on a rig, and something went wonky with the lift. It just dropped.”

“Dropped on you!” Vee drew in a sharp breath. “Why aren’t you dead?”

“Not my time,” he said, although the smile was shaky. “The lift just stopped as soon as it touched my face. It should have crushed me. It took the guys a while to stabilize everything so I could get pulled out without everything collapsing.”

Remembering all her dark thoughts about dads and being left, Vee swallowed a lump in her throat. This time she patted Bill’s arm instead of punching it. She and Mom had almost lost Super Bill. That would be worse than
beetle-y.

At the S
TOP
sign on Park, Bill looked for traffic both ways and then down at Vee. “I’m sorry I was late. I won’t promise I won’t ever let you down, Vee girl, ’Cause I know I probably will—”

“But today is not the day,” she finished for him. And smiled.

L
ater, in Bill’s tiny backyard full of people, the barbecue, and Buzz’s new cat playhouse that Bill had just finished that day, Sunny looked concerned. “So what happens to the Accelerated Learning Center?”

“That’s the coolest cat cage,” Jacob said, standing near the playhouse where Buzz roamed up and down the ramps and batted various hanging Freakies and Sock ’Ems. Vee now knew he was Jacob because out of all the tiny freckles he had on his pale face, he had one by his left ear that was slightly larger. Joshua didn’t.

“Remember, don’t tease the cat,” Dad said. He and Heather sat side by side in the chairs they’d brought. Vee had reminded everyone to bring their own chairs.

“Maybe we should keep Buzz out here with us and put the boys in the playhouse,” Heather remarked, and everyone laughed. The Terrors thought it was a great idea and had to be instructed not to open the playhouse and climb in.

“I get to stay in the ALC!” Vee said happily.

C. P. was patrolling the table filled with chips, sour cream onion dip, and yes, baked potatoes with bowls of weird toppings. “Vee gets special treatment. Not that the ALC is so great.”

“No, I don’t!” she flashed until she saw his sneaky grin. “Oh, close your yap, C. P.”

“Spill,” Esther said, sitting next to Aneta and The Fam. The rest of her family was sprinkled around the yard in various types of chairs.

“I’m—,” Joshua began.

“—hungry,” Jacob finished.

“Just about done,” Bill promised.

“The guidance counselor said I was a type of student they would like to see more often.” Vee turned her head toward the twins who were softly chanting, “Vee the B, Vee the B” as they walked in circles around each other. “Guys.” They collapsed on the grass and pretended to be asleep.
If only.

Mom picked up the story. She was assisting Bill at the grill where hot dogs and hamburgers were coming off and headed toward buns on the table. “Long story short, she can retest Monday after school. The guidance counselor said”—she looked fondly at Vee—“Vee showed her priorities in life skills with choosing to help her friends and the cause to which she was committed.”

“Yayness!” Sunny clapped.

“What will happen to Vee if she does not pass?” Aneta passed a red plastic cup of punch to her grand.

“If she passes, she’s in the Accelerated Learning Center. If she doesn’t, she will still stay in the Accelerated Learning Center and go to the regular math class. If that’s the case, she’ll be a test case to see how it works. The district is thinking to expand the acceptance criteria into the accelerated center so those kids get the options to move ahead while shoring up their weak subject.”

“You girls did a great job on the Great Cat Caper,” Dad jumped in after Mom finished. “Heather and I talked it over, and while we don’t think a cat is in our future—boys!” The twins settled down. “We decided that whenever our family eats at Burger Mania, where we do a lot, we’re going to stop by the grocery store and pick up a cat meal to donate to Paws ‘N’ Claws.” He turned to Vee. “But I would like to know what happened to the woman who snatched the cats and dumped them over the fence. Did they catch her?”

The girls were silent so long, C. P. spoke up.

“It’s a bummer story,” he said. “The mouthwash lady—”

“Mouthwash lady?” Mr. and Mrs. Martin said together.

“Vee kept smelling a certain mouthwash whenever it seemed something was just a little off at the Cat Room,” Bill explained. Vee had dumped the whole story on him on the way home in the diesel cab. “Turns out it was a woman who was kind of skulking around the senior center.”

“Who turned out to be Cat Woman’s daughter,” Vee added.

“Cat Woman—I mean, Gladys—was very involved in helping cats when her daughter was about twenty-one. Gladys said her daughter started mistreating the cats, and Gladys had to move her out of the house. She hadn’t seen her daughter for years.”

“Nobody recognized her?” Aneta’s mom spoke up. Vee figured she was thinking like the attorney she was. Somebody was probably going to get sued for letting a crazy person run around the senior center.

“She wouldn’t have hurt us,” Vee hastened to say, and Aneta’s mom’s face relaxed. “It was the cats. They found her at the Paws ‘N’ Claws office, vandalizing it. After they arrested her, she said she’d planned to pull the cats back up from the fence with the rope attached to the stroller and dump them somewhere her mother would never find them.”

“They would have died,” Aneta said, her face shocked.

Vee nodded. “People think cats can go back to the wild. Not true. They need us.”

Mr. Martin held up his hands. “Okay, don’t you girls get started again. Sunny’s been lecturing us for weeks on cats and people not spaying and neutering. Our family is continuing our service-learning project for the rest of the year.”

“I’m going to be a photographer of the animals at Paws ‘N’ Claws! I’ll take photos of the new cats coming for the website, the lost ones found, and do different photo spreads. My family is going to keep the cat toys stocked and host a pet food drive with our youth group when the weather gets cold.”

Bill set the platter on the table. “Ready!”

Everyone settled around the picnic table, several card tables, a church banquet table, and a white, round plastic table. But they all fit. They joined hands at Heather’s request. Vee asked her stepmother to pray.

“Thank You, Lord, for the food we are about to eat. Help us find our place in You in every moment.”

Startled, Vee squeezed her eyes shut.
Place.
She’d found more than a spot. In God—as His treasure. In her family—both of them. In her school. And she knew now that she’d already had a spot in the S.A.V.E. Squad from the first time they’d disagreed. She opened one eye and found the Squad peeking at her. They shared a Squad smile.

Soon everyone had stuffed themselves and was lying around—except the Twin Terrors and Sunny who were playing with the cat. Sunny was keeping a very close eye on how they handled Buzz, Vee was glad to see. Sunny knew little brothers.

Vee sat in a patch of sunlight that had seemed to shine just for her. What a weekend. What a start to school. She couldn’t wait to get to school on Monday. When the guidance counselor had talked to her and Mom, she had asked Vee if she could handle walking out of the learning center every day for math if she didn’t pass the placement test. After thinking about it, Vee had replied that if the counselor had asked her the first day of school, she would have said, “No way.” Now? She’d given it her best shot. If she needed help, she needed help.

From her sunlit spot, she observed Esther and Aneta walk over to Sunny and whisper in her ear. She lifted her head. Sunny picked up Buzz, much to the cries of the Twin Terrors, and walked with the other two girls to Vee.

“We have a surprise for you,” Esther said, pulling a small paper bag out of her shorts pocket. “Come on over to the table.”

What were they up to? The girls sat at the table. The families looked on from their chairs. The twins pushed in next to Vee, pungent in their sweaty boyness.

Esther nodded at Sunny, who handed Buzz to Vee, cleared her throat, and said dramatically, “We want you to have a memento of the Great Cat Caper. Remember how when school started you kept talking about how you didn’t have a spot?”

Vee blushed and avoided looking at her family by holding Buzz like a baby and stroking his tummy. He buzzed contentedly.

“You have a
spot
in the S.A.V.E. Squad,” Sunny finished, with an emphasis on
spot.

Esther tipped the bag open onto the table. A single white bead, oblong, with a large black spot rolled onto the table. “To add to your Squad bracelet.”

Picking up the bead, Vee laughed and then hugged her friends. “I have lots of spots now and a place with God. It all started with you guys. This is perfect! Thanks!” She untied the leather cord and slid the bead on, knotting before and after it. She held it up. The girls held theirs up. “To the S.A.V.E. Squad!”

Bill tapped his tongs on the grill and then raised them. “I, too, have a presentation.”

Enquiring eyes turned from the girls to him. “I watched you girls and especially my Vee girl—”

Vee grinned.

“And I saw them learn to look for treasure in God and in others. I’m proud to be Vee’s stepdad. Proud to know the S.A.V.E. Squad.” He fished in his pocket and withdrew four tiny treasure chests. They lay in his broad palm, gold with red and blue trim.

The girls drew close and inspected them. “They are beads!” Aneta gasped, holding one up to the sun. “For our bracelets!”

A murmur ran through the backyard and then applause.

“To the S.A.V.E. Squad!” Dad said, raising his red plastic cup.

“Hey!” a new voice broke through the laughter and clapping. A tall, blond man with a deep tan wearing a Western shirt and jeans stepped through the wooden gate. “Did I hear S.A.V.E. Squad? I must be in the right place!”

“Uncle Dave!” Sunny shrieked and threw herself into the man’s arms. Once he’d set her down, she turned and declared unnecessarily, “It’s my uncle Dave Martin. You know, the one who’s moving his horse place here!”

Dave greeted the rest of the Martin family and shook hands with everyone else. He protested he’d never remember everyone’s name. When he got to Aneta’s mom, she looked up at him laughing, and he laughed down at her. They were nearly the same height, so it wasn’t far.

Vee poked Sunny. “Do you see what I see?”

Sunny poked Aneta. “Do you see that goofy look on my unmarried uncle’s face? He likes your unmarried mom!”

Aneta poked Esther. “Do you see the funny look on my not-married mom’s face? She looks like she wants to laugh and cry all at the same time. Why is that?”

The girls linked arms, and with Buzz in Vee’s arms they moved to an empty corner of the yard.

Their very own Squad spot.