The Great Cat Caper (5 page)

O
h look! Your Dumpster cats, Vee.” Sunny pointed toward six felines, all shades and stripes of gray, black, and white, who loitered in and out of the bushes and on the Dumpster.

Vee stretched on the stairs, watching the curious kitten play with some kind of crawling bug over by the Dumpster. Bugs. She shivered and flexed her feet. “I can’t understand why old Hermann wants to get rid of them. And what does he mean by getting ‘rid’ of them?”

“Hermann’s old. Maybe he’ll forget he wants to do that,” Esther suggested. “Okay, girls, time to sign in for our projects.”

Groans from everyone.

“I do not like the smell of chicken.” Aneta pulled her hair off her neck and twisted it into a knot.

“I do not like handing Frank tools,” Sunny joined in.

“I do not like old ladies telling me ninety jillion times how to upload pictures to the website for the Helpful City Festival,” Esther complained.

“I do not like sorting and scanning photographs.” Vee laughed with the girls. After Dad’s
ultim-o-horrible
suggestion that she be the numbers keeper on Saturday, she had volunteered for anything upon entering the ALC today. Now she wished Mr. Tuttle had picked something more interesting for her.

Esther pulled an “I’m sorry” face. “Aneta, I heard the kitchen lady say you were cutting onions for lunch tomorrow.”

At Esther’s comment, Aneta made a face, stood, and pushed her hair behind her ears. “I will cry, cry, cry,” she said, making an equally pretend sobbing face.

Vee sprang to her feet. “I have to be home for Math Man in two hours. I better get going with my sorting and scanning. What are we supposed to learn from these projects anyway?” She stretched. “If I’m late twice or a no-show, ole Math Man will kick me off his list and it’s good-bye ALC.”

“We are good workers,” Aneta said, sounding a little anxious. Vee knew her friend had a tendency to worry about doing the right thing.

“Even if our projects are screaming boring,” Sunny added.

Vee trotted into the building. Almost two hours of photo boxes.
Geesh.

At the end of her time, balancing three boxes of photos that had been combed through and scanned, Vee staggered down the hall toward the arts and crafts room where she had been promised the closet had been cleaned out and was ready for more stuff. What did they need to keep old photos for anyway? Who was going to look at them stashed in a closet? She felt a sneeze coming on and slowed, trying to keep the big boxes steady.

The enormous man had said she should only take one box at a time, but that would mean going back for two more trips. She would then cut it too close to make it home for Math Man. So she had insisted the enormous man place two
small
boxes on top of the first one. His idea of small and hers were different. She felt the boxes slip.

The sneeze tickled again. So did thoughts of whether to set down the boxes and just sneeze. Then she might not be able to pick them up again. That would make her really late. What if she sneezed with the boxes? Would she fall down and not be able to get up and
still
be late? Trying to breathe deeply and thwart the sneeze, she smelled burning onions. And smoke.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Aneta’s voice, rising to a shriek, came in loud and clear as Vee neared the kitchen.

“Help! Fire!” came Sunny’s voice from somewhere. The next moment, something hit Vee behind the knees, and she flew forward. Only it wasn’t like she’d ever expected flying to be. Rather, she leapfrogged awkwardly into the air, letting go of the boxes, collapsing on her hands and knees. Right before a wheelchair ran over her, pinning her to the floor.

“Yikes! Sorry! Sorry!” It was Sunny’s voice again.

The boxes, released into flight, moved like a slo-mo commercial—bashing into Esther who had stepped out of the audio-visual room with an old lady. The stocky girl tipped over like a bowling pin on Family Fun Night. A grunt escaped her. Vee winced. Those boxes were heavy.

Trying to get her brain to remember where her legs and arms were so she could stand up and help Aneta, who was still screaming, and somehow stop the smoke that still poured out of the kitchen, Vee thought of Math Man. She could not be late. But it was more important that she find out if Sunny was hurt. Was Esther okay? Wasn’t anyone going to stop that smoke?
Beetle!
How much worse could it get?

“Just what is going on here?” A sharp voice punched through the chaotic yelling and groaning.

Vee peered up at the senior center director standing with Hermann, and the Animal Control officer. Oh, it could get plenty worse.

T
he next day, as Vee approached what she considered “Squad” steps after school, she looked at the Dumpster. About half the cats were lying on the lid of the Dumpster in the sun. There was no sight of the curious kitten. Something clutched in her stomach.

Arriving late for Math Man after the disaster at the senior center yesterday, he’d yapped about how she had one time left to be late. Vee, explaining that it had been a matter of life and death with smoke and onions and wheelchairs and murderous boxes and the really mad senior center director, hadn’t moved Math Man.

The Squad hadn’t talked to each other last night. That meant everyone was either busy or in trouble for getting kicked out of the senior center. Or both. With Vee, it had been both. Her mother had called her dad; both had said they were disappointed in her and they hoped she would use better judgment in the future. And of course, there was math homework.

The girls were there already, sitting off to the side of the library steps, as far away from the senior center as you could get and still be at the community center.

Esther leaned back on her elbows. Vee saw her point toward the Dumpster. That Cat Woman was there, preparing her pie pans of kitty food.

“Have you seen the curious kitten?” Vee asked, dropping down next to Esther.

Sunny turned toward the Dumpster. “You mean your under-the-bush buddy? Nope. Looks like some others are missing, too.”

“You don’t think the Animal Control officer got them already, do you?” Vee remembered the Animal Control officer in the senior center yesterday.

“Don’t worry.” Esther stretched out her solid legs on the step below. “Don’t you think we would’ve heard Cat Woman if he was doing that?”

“Hmmm,” was all Vee said.

After a few moments of quietly watching the cats, Vee started the conversation they were all avoiding. “You won’t believe what my mother is making me do.”

“What?” Aneta asked.

“My mom says I have to find a new project at the senior center.” Vee waited for the girls to freak that Mom was making Vee go back to where certain death awaited.

Sunny halted her spinning and staggered in a circle. “You’re kidding. So did mine.”

Aneta said, “My mom said it would be a redemption, whatever that means.”

Esther began laughing. “Mine,
too.
It’s never good for us when they start talking.”

“How can we go back in there? They hate us!” Vee’s voice was loud.

A long, large car, the kind that old people drive, pulled into the community center parking lot. Hermann slowly climbed out, slamming the door. Two Dumpster cats shot past his feet.

“Kots!” He said. He looked at the girls. “Kids!” he said.

Moments later, they stood outside the senior center director’s door.

“You knock on her door.” Sunny nudged Esther.

Esther backed up. “No, you. She likes you better.”

Are you nuts? She doesn’t like any of us.
Vee hung back.

Sunny whispered, “Yeah, but she didn’t see Esther do anything.”

Aneta frowned. “We didn’t
do
anything. It all just
happened.
“

“True,” Vee said. “Esther, you knock on the door.”

“I’m glad I’m good for something, since you guys got me in trouble.”

“We didn’t mean to get you in trouble,” Sunny said, giving Esther a quick hug and darting back. “You just stuck your head out the door and
wham—
“

“Yeah.” Esther tapped on the office door then rubbed her shoulder. “
Wham.
I’m injured for life.” No answer. She knocked again, harder.

The door swung inward. The director, a tall, dark-haired woman who looked as if she would schedule when to smile into her monthly to-do list, looked down at the girls. “I am in a meeting with the mayor.” She moved to close the door.

Good
, thought Vee.
The mayor likes us.
She brushed past Esther. “Hi. We came to apologize for the um … things … that happened.”

The director’s sour-candy-sucking expression didn’t change. “You girls certainly know how to disrupt an entire building. We’ve never had such volunteers.”

“Girls?” said a familiar voice from behind her. The short mayor, who only came to the director’s shoulder, peered around the larger woman. “Why, hello, S.A.V.E. Squad! Sissy was just telling me about the mishap.” She broke into a wide grin. “You certainly shook things up around here!”

Sissy?
Vee started to grin. The director so did not look like a Sissy. A tall dwarf, like Grumpy, maybe, but not a Sissy.

“We are not in need of being shook up,” Mrs. Sissy said between her teeth.

The mayor stepped around her and out into the hall. “My sister isn’t a big fan of change.”

Sister?
Weirder and weirder. The two ladies didn’t look at all alike. Kind of like herself and the Twin Terrors.

Vee seized her chance. “We’re here to ask if we could still finish our service-learning project here at the senior center.”

Behind the mayor, the director seemed to swell. “To cause more trouble? I don’t think so.” She waved her arm at them. “I accept your apology, but returning is not an option.”

The mayor, however, patted Vee on the shoulder and began to usher the girls toward the door. “Of course, Sissy.”

“Don’t call me Sissy. It’s unprofessional.”

The mayor escorted the girls out of the building and onto the steps in the sunshine. There she stopped and folded her arms across her ample chest.

“So what’s your plan, girls? My sister is pretty tough to convince.”

“I—we—” Vee tripped over her tongue and flung an agonized look at the girls. They opened their mouths with the same result.

She didn’t need this in combination with studying for the all-important math retest. A simple job, please. One to make her mom and dad and Mr. Tuttle happy. Her gaze flickered over at movement out of the corner of her eye. The curious kitten was back! Hermann hadn’t succeeded yet. The mom cat and curious kitten were back; the kitten was wavering on the corner of the opened container.

As Vee watched, listening to the girls suggest projects like
yard work—ew
—the kitten wobbled fiercely, uttered a tiny squeal Vee heard across the parking lot, and, scrabbling for a foothold, fell into the Dumpster.

In the next breath, Vee heard the roar of the garbage truck as it pulled into the parking lot.