Gingerbread 19; Cherry Vanilla 11
Author: Marina
Story: The Dragon World
Challenge: Gingerbread 19 (my, what big teeth you have), Cherry Vanilla 11 (a greater evil appears)
Toppings/Extras: Caramel
Word Count: 3,227
Rating: G
Summary: Eva and Carrie get a kitten. Chase is not a cat person.
Notes: Takes place the summer before Carrie and Chase go to high school. There’s more that follows this, but I’ve split it into two installments because it just didn’t all go together, no matter how much I wanted it to. Inspired by my cats. (4k for me and Casey for today!)
Chase arrived at the Michaels residence one balmy, summer morning to find Carrie’s mother sitting in one of the wicker chairs on their tiny front porch, drinking sweet tea and reading one of the romance novels he had seen lining her living room shelf. The front door hung open behind her, as it usually did during the summer months. “Hello,” he said, waving to her.
“Good morning, Chase,” she replied. “Carrie’s inside. You can go right in. Feel free to help yourself to the tea if you’d like some.”
“Thanks, Mrs. M-Eva.” He hurried in before she could laugh at his flustered state, feeling ashamed that he still felt uncomfortable calling her by her first name. Very rarely did any adult treat him as casually as Eva did. He never dared tell her that it bothered him, because she was Carrie’s mom and a very nice lady in spite of it.
He found Carrie in the living room as usual, working on a sketch. “Chase!” she cried, when she caught sight of him. “Guess what?”
“You finished the new concept artwork?” he asked excitedly. She had let slip some intriguing hints over the phone the previous night.
She shook her head. “Not yet, but probably by tomorrow.”
“Okay, then…you’re going to Disney World.”
“Nope! Better!” She beamed. “One of Mrs. Winslow’s cats had kittens, and she said we can have one when they’re old enough!”
Chase winced. “Kittens aren’t better than Disney World.”
“Sure they are! Mom and I go to Disney World every year, but we always have to come home, and kittens are for always.”
“Yes, but…then they grow up to be cats, and cats are evil.” He held up a finger. “There’s a reason they are banned in the Realm of the Magical Rabbit.”
Carrie regarded him with an amused, if slightly exasperated expression. “Cats are awesome, Chase. Besides, Boo-boo loves me, so I can do what I want.”
“That’s King Boo-boo to you,” he retorted.
“I’m sorry. King Boo-boo.” She swiftly flipped her sketchbook shut and rose to her feet. “I’m thirsty. Do you want some of Mom’s tea?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Okay, I’ll go get us some.” She pointed imperatively in his direction. “Do not look at the sketchbook, or I will eat you.”
He held up his hands. “Wasn’t even thinking about it, I swear.”
She grinned at him and merrily flounced off to the kitchen. He waited until she had left his line of sight before cautiously crossing over to the coffee table to investigate the sketchbook, hoping to catch at least a glimpse of the new concept artwork. “What about hairballs?” he called after her as he skimmed the pages, mostly to cover up the sound.
“All animals are gross, Chase. If we had a dog I’d have to walk it, pick up its poop, and give it baths. Plus, that’s what Mom says hairball medicine is for.”
“If you say so.” He turned a page and blanched, taking in a half-finished sketch of a cat playing with a ball of yarn. Carrie had begun to go into great detail, giving the cat a playful expression and graceful movement. She had even started filling in the little threads that made up the yarn ball, as well as the fur on the cat.
He pulled his hand away as though it had been burned.
Carrie returned with two glasses of tea and handed one to him. “Sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry in the slightest. “I’m just really excited about this. We haven’t had a cat since before I met you.”
This previously unknown fact piqued Chase’s interest, if only a little. “You used to have a cat?”
“Yeah, Puddle. She was the cat my parents had when they first got married, and she was gray, like a rain puddle, and really sweet. She died in January of 2009, so you definitely wouldn’t have known about her.”
“What happened to her?”
“Just old age,” she said, giving him a reassuring smile. “She was older than me, pretty old for a cat.”
Chase nodded. “That’s true, I guess.” Even if Puddle had been a cat, he did not like to think that something terrible had caused her demise. “So you haven’t had a pet since?”
“No.” Carrie absently rummaged through the clutter on the coffee table as she spoke. “Mom really loved Puddle and didn’t want to take in a new cat right away, which I totally understand, and she was still working a lot at the time and didn’t think I could handle housebreaking on my own. Aha!” She extracted two coasters from the mess, handed one to him, and set her drink on the other. “I’ve really missed having a cat, though.”
“Can’t see why,” he muttered.
Out came the amused, indulgent look again. “I don’t know why you hate cats. They’re lovely!”
“They’re evil,” Chase insisted. “Grandma has one that’s barely even a cat, it’s so evil. It’s like, a demon, or something.” Remembering the thing gave him chills. It hissed like a rattlesnake, and had deep black fur and sharp claws that had caused him many painful wounds before he had learned not to get close. Though his grandmother had owned the cat longer than he had been alive, it showed no signs of slowing down, much to his eternal dismay.
“Maybe it doesn’t like you very much just because you don’t live with it,” Carrie pointed out. “A lot of cats are like that. They’re not very friendly with people they don’t have constant contact with.”
“If you say so.”
“No, really. If a cat’s used to you, it’ll probably like you fine, and this one’ll be a kitten so it’ll have the chance to get used to you early, since you’re here all the time. Some of them are really friendly, too. You’d have liked Puddle.”
I don’t like it when she talks sense, he thought, attempting to cover up his sulking. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Okay.” She picked up the TV remote with a shrug. “D’you want to play KH II?”
Chase brightened, getting up to help her with the console. “Do you even need to ask?”
***
A week later, Carrie called at an only marginally reasonable hour. “This had better be good,” Chase grumbled. He had just started preparing his breakfast, and had barely been awake twenty minutes.
“Sorry, I wanted to catch you before you came over here or went somewhere with Laura,” she said cheerfully. “I’m going over to Mrs. Winslow’s house to visit the kitten in an hour, and I wanted to know if you wanted to come.”
The Winslows lived halfway between Carrie’s house and the high school that both children would attend in September. Mrs. Winslow, the elderly lady who lived with her youngest son and his wife, was known as Madison’s resident cat lady. She owned three adult cats, one of whom had helped to shape Chase’s prejudice toward cats in general by leaping at him out of nowhere every time he put even so much as one toe through the door. “Why would I want to do that?” he asked, making a face.
“Because kittens are cute and you love me?”
He could not deny the truth of either reason, so he agreed. “I’ma eat and then I’ll be there.”
Mrs. Winslow answered the door promptly when they arrived, cane and pleasant old-person smile in hand. “Hello, you two!” she said. “Are you here to see the kittens?”
“Yes, please!” Carrie said, beaming back at her.
“Where’s your attack cat?” Chase asked.
Mrs. Winslow laughed. “You mean Frisky? She’s the one who had the kittens, so she’s with them right now. By the way, Chase, there are still two that need a good home, so if you and Laura want one, feel free to pick one out while you’re here.”
Pfft, when pigs fly, he thought, but forced himself to make his reply more polite. “Laura’s going to college soon and I’m not really a cat person, but thank you.”
Carrie smirked at him as they followed their host through the front hall and the living room. “Oh, shut up,” he said, lowly, so that Mrs. Winslow would not hear and reprimand him for impertinence.
“I said nothing,” she said innocently.
“Yeah, well, you were thinking it.”
Mrs. Winslow showed them to a childproofed doorway and reached to undo the plastic gate. “There you are.”
Carrie immediately darted inside the room with an eagerness that alarmed her companion, who followed much more slowly. He took a careful position several feet away and watched as she bent over the basket of kittens. “They’re darling,” she said, over her shoulder. “Chase, come see ours.” She gingerly lifted one of the two calico kittens up as he advanced. “This is the one Mom and I picked. We haven’t decided on a name for her yet.”
The kitten had large eyes that bored straight into his without flinching. “How do you know she’s yours?” he asked, to cover up how unnerved he was. “That other one looks just like her.”
“She has an orange spot on her bum, next to her tail,” Carrie said, showing him. “The other one doesn’t.”
“Gotcha-aaaaaaaaaaa.” Feeling something rub against his legs, he looked down to see the terrifying Frisky nuzzling up to him. I let my guard down! Stupid! He edged away, resolving to keep one eye out for her until he left.
“I think you’re secretly a cat person at heart,” Carrie said. Chase stuck his tongue out at her. “What? They seem to like you well enough. Maybe there’s something there.”
“You think you’re so clever,” he muttered.
She held out the kitten. “She’s really soft. Just pet her a bit.”
Hesitantly, he reached out and ran a finger over the top of the kitten’s head, so as not to appear rude. “Wow. She is really soft, like a bunny rabbit.” He glanced at Mrs. Winslow. “How old are they?”
“Six weeks,” she said proudly, as she finished snapping the gate back into place. “Just about old enough to go to their new homes. They’ve been a joy, though my daughter-in-law will be happy to have them out of the house.”
“Eight cats is a lot,” he said diplomatically.
She sighed. “I suppose so.”
Chase felt drawn to check out the other kittens in spite of himself. Besides the second calico, there were three more: one with gray stripes, one with orange stripes, and a white one with black paws and other random black dots on its body. “Okay, kittens are cute, I admit it,” he said to Carrie.
“Told you so,” she said.
He started to straighten when he heard a little hair-raising purr-growl behind and above him. Slowly, he turned that way to see that Frisky had climbed a nearby shelf the minute he had taken his eyes off her, and sat in a low crouch, as if beginning to pounce. He shrieked. “Run, Carrie!” He dashed off without waiting for her to follow, vaulting over the gate as if it were nothing and stampeding down the hall and out the front door as fast as he could go.
Carrie sighed and placed her kitten back in the basket, unwilling to tear herself away, but feeling as though it would be better to just go after that spectacle. “I really don’t know why I take him anywhere,” she said apologetically.
Mrs. Winslow beamed vaguely and let her out of the room. “He’s just young. He’ll grow out of it soon enough. I’ll give your mother a ring when the kittens are ready to go.”
“Awesome! I’ll tell her. Thanks again!”
She let herself out and found Chase waiting for her on the porch, rubbing his arms and looking around nervously. “Oh good, you didn’t get eaten,” he said in relief.
“You’re impossible,” she said affectionately.
“And you love me,” he quipped, throwing her earlier words back at her.
“Oh, shush.” She poked him in the shoulder, but then thought better of it, taking his arm as they continued down the front walk. “Actually, better yet, you can tell me a story on the way home. You owe me for that spaz attack you had in there.”
“Fine, fine.” He did not mind. He never did. “I’ve been thinking about a new one anyway. So, there was this one time in the Realm of the Magical Rabbit when a group of traveling artisans came to town…”
***
“All right, I need to go meet Lindsey.” Laura scooped the last curly fry into her mouth, set down her soda cup and picked up her purse.
Chase grinned impishly as he followed her lead. “Can I come with you?”
“If you want to sit around and read tabloids while Lindsey and I get pedicures and talk about the girly stuff you don’t want me to talk about with you,” she returned, with a knowing quirk of her eyebrows.
“Definitely not.” He made a face.
Laura laughed and counted out a few bills to leave for the server. “That’s what I thought. I’ll drop you off at Carrie’s on the way.”
“You’re awesome.”
They spent a few short blocks riding with the convertible top down, blasting the Mulan soundtrack and singing along to “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” at the top of their lungs. Laura turned the sound down once they pulled up in front of Carrie’s house. “Are you going to be home for dinner?” she asked.
“Think so,” he said, getting out of the car. “Thanks for lunch and have fun with Lindsey.”
“Bye, kiddo.” She tossed him a wave and drove away, and he danced up the front walk, feeling fairly good about his life.
All of that abruptly changed when he reached the porch and caught a whiff of a sterile, yet oddly fresh smell that had never been there before. He looked around, noticing suddenly that Eva was not reading on the porch, a brand-new screen door had been attached to the front entry, and the smell-and some disturbing giggly noises-seemed to be wafting from beyond it. He frowned. Maybe Laura got the house wrong…or maybe I’ve stepped into the Twilight Zone… “Carrie?” he called, unnerved by the likeliness of both scenarios and desperately hoping he was wrong.
“Chase!” Carrie appeared behind the screen, relieving him. “I’ve been trying to call you, where were you?”
“I was having lunch with Laura.”
“You really need a cell phone. Come on in.”
“Chase, hello,” Eva said, as Carrie opened the door for him. “You’re just in time! Come meet our new arrival.”
He froze, eyes drifting slowly from her broad smile to the white, black, and orange puff of fur in her lap. “It was today?” he hissed in Carrie’s direction. “You could’ve warned me.”
“I told you weeks ago,” she replied, just as lowly, “and anyway, I said I was trying to call you. Seriously, get a cell phone.”
He rolled his eyes and cast a furtive glance around the room, noting with no small amount of horror that it looked like less of a war zone than it usually did. All the couch cushions had been neatly placed on the couches, the clutter removed from the coffee table, the DVD boxes and magazines picked up off the floor, the floor vacuumed, and the furniture newly dusted. In place of the familiar mess now stood a cat tree, several cat toys, and a litter box filled with fresh cat litter. “Your living room looks lovely,” he said to Eva, forcing a polite smile.
She beamed, scratching the kitten behind the ears. “Thank you. It hasn’t been this clean in years. Carrie and I finally decided that we needed to tidy up if we were going to have a cat. Keeping a cat in a messy house is just asking for constant germs.”
“Go say hello to Sketches, Chase,” Carrie said, with a smug smile.
“Sketches? That’s what you named her?”
She shrugged. “Yeah. She’s colorful, so color led to paint led to paintings led to drawings to my sketchbook to Sketches. It makes sense.”
“Yeah, actually,” he agreed, privately thinking that the name was the first thing that had actually made any sense since the whole cat nonsense had begun. At a poke from Carrie, he walked over to Eva and crouched down a bit so he could look at the kitten. “Hi, Sketches,” he said. “I’m Chase. We met before. You probably don’t remember.”
Sketches blinked back at him with big, solemn eyes. He tentatively reached to scratch her behind the ears, as Eva had done, and she tolerated it for a few seconds before moving out of his reach and letting out a little kitten yawn.
“Awwwww,” Eva and Carrie cooed in unison.
This is a nightmare, Chase thought, but he smiled anyway.
Eva got up from the couch and offered him the kitten. “Do you want to hold her while I go whip up a snack, Chase?”
“No, thank you,” he said politely. “I think maybe she’d like to walk around for a little bit. It looks like she’s kind of bored with all the petting.”
“All right, then. You can pick her up whenever you’d like, as long as you’re careful.” She set Sketches on the floor and gave her one more adoring smile as she left. “I made some more sweet tea, and there’s also some brownies left from yesterday that I can heat up.”
“Sounds great!” He turned to Carrie and found her giggling into her hand. “What’s so funny?”
“You,” she said. “You’re trying so hard not to like her, but come on. She’s the sweetest thing ever.” She intercepted Sketches’ attempted escape to the cat tree, scooping her up despite a tiny mew of protest. “How can you resist this face?”
I can’t, he thought, but it was Carrie’s expression that really got him. “Is that why you got the screen door?”
She nodded. “We want her to be an indoor cat, at least until she’s a little older, and keeping the door shut in the summer is just asking for death. Also, less flies.”
“Good point.”
Settling the kitten down, she brushed off her jeans as she straightened. “Anyway, I finished the fortress, finally. D’you want to see it?”
“Um, yes.”
“Okay, be right back.” She skipped out of the room to get her sketchbook, leaving him alone with Sketches.
Chase glanced down, and Sketches looked up and met his eyes, appraising him calmly. “Okay, you’re cute, I admit it,” he said, squatting down to her level. “And even softer than the last time I saw you, which I guess is another point for you. I’ll cut you a deal. I hate cats, but I do like Carrie and it means a lot to her to have you around, so, I will try to like you too, if you’re a good kitty and not evil like all the other cats.”
Sketches yawned again and promptly ignored him in favor of the cat tree.
“Awesome. Glad we’ve reached an understanding.” Chase watched her climb for a moment in silence. “I’m doomed, aren’t I?”
The only answer he received was the sound of kitty claws tearing at the fake carpeting on the tree.
Story: The Dragon World
Challenge: Gingerbread 19 (my, what big teeth you have), Cherry Vanilla 11 (a greater evil appears)
Toppings/Extras: Caramel
Word Count: 3,227
Rating: G
Summary: Eva and Carrie get a kitten. Chase is not a cat person.
Notes: Takes place the summer before Carrie and Chase go to high school. There’s more that follows this, but I’ve split it into two installments because it just didn’t all go together, no matter how much I wanted it to. Inspired by my cats. (4k for me and Casey for today!)
Chase arrived at the Michaels residence one balmy, summer morning to find Carrie’s mother sitting in one of the wicker chairs on their tiny front porch, drinking sweet tea and reading one of the romance novels he had seen lining her living room shelf. The front door hung open behind her, as it usually did during the summer months. “Hello,” he said, waving to her.
“Good morning, Chase,” she replied. “Carrie’s inside. You can go right in. Feel free to help yourself to the tea if you’d like some.”
“Thanks, Mrs. M-Eva.” He hurried in before she could laugh at his flustered state, feeling ashamed that he still felt uncomfortable calling her by her first name. Very rarely did any adult treat him as casually as Eva did. He never dared tell her that it bothered him, because she was Carrie’s mom and a very nice lady in spite of it.
He found Carrie in the living room as usual, working on a sketch. “Chase!” she cried, when she caught sight of him. “Guess what?”
“You finished the new concept artwork?” he asked excitedly. She had let slip some intriguing hints over the phone the previous night.
She shook her head. “Not yet, but probably by tomorrow.”
“Okay, then…you’re going to Disney World.”
“Nope! Better!” She beamed. “One of Mrs. Winslow’s cats had kittens, and she said we can have one when they’re old enough!”
Chase winced. “Kittens aren’t better than Disney World.”
“Sure they are! Mom and I go to Disney World every year, but we always have to come home, and kittens are for always.”
“Yes, but…then they grow up to be cats, and cats are evil.” He held up a finger. “There’s a reason they are banned in the Realm of the Magical Rabbit.”
Carrie regarded him with an amused, if slightly exasperated expression. “Cats are awesome, Chase. Besides, Boo-boo loves me, so I can do what I want.”
“That’s King Boo-boo to you,” he retorted.
“I’m sorry. King Boo-boo.” She swiftly flipped her sketchbook shut and rose to her feet. “I’m thirsty. Do you want some of Mom’s tea?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Okay, I’ll go get us some.” She pointed imperatively in his direction. “Do not look at the sketchbook, or I will eat you.”
He held up his hands. “Wasn’t even thinking about it, I swear.”
She grinned at him and merrily flounced off to the kitchen. He waited until she had left his line of sight before cautiously crossing over to the coffee table to investigate the sketchbook, hoping to catch at least a glimpse of the new concept artwork. “What about hairballs?” he called after her as he skimmed the pages, mostly to cover up the sound.
“All animals are gross, Chase. If we had a dog I’d have to walk it, pick up its poop, and give it baths. Plus, that’s what Mom says hairball medicine is for.”
“If you say so.” He turned a page and blanched, taking in a half-finished sketch of a cat playing with a ball of yarn. Carrie had begun to go into great detail, giving the cat a playful expression and graceful movement. She had even started filling in the little threads that made up the yarn ball, as well as the fur on the cat.
He pulled his hand away as though it had been burned.
Carrie returned with two glasses of tea and handed one to him. “Sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry in the slightest. “I’m just really excited about this. We haven’t had a cat since before I met you.”
This previously unknown fact piqued Chase’s interest, if only a little. “You used to have a cat?”
“Yeah, Puddle. She was the cat my parents had when they first got married, and she was gray, like a rain puddle, and really sweet. She died in January of 2009, so you definitely wouldn’t have known about her.”
“What happened to her?”
“Just old age,” she said, giving him a reassuring smile. “She was older than me, pretty old for a cat.”
Chase nodded. “That’s true, I guess.” Even if Puddle had been a cat, he did not like to think that something terrible had caused her demise. “So you haven’t had a pet since?”
“No.” Carrie absently rummaged through the clutter on the coffee table as she spoke. “Mom really loved Puddle and didn’t want to take in a new cat right away, which I totally understand, and she was still working a lot at the time and didn’t think I could handle housebreaking on my own. Aha!” She extracted two coasters from the mess, handed one to him, and set her drink on the other. “I’ve really missed having a cat, though.”
“Can’t see why,” he muttered.
Out came the amused, indulgent look again. “I don’t know why you hate cats. They’re lovely!”
“They’re evil,” Chase insisted. “Grandma has one that’s barely even a cat, it’s so evil. It’s like, a demon, or something.” Remembering the thing gave him chills. It hissed like a rattlesnake, and had deep black fur and sharp claws that had caused him many painful wounds before he had learned not to get close. Though his grandmother had owned the cat longer than he had been alive, it showed no signs of slowing down, much to his eternal dismay.
“Maybe it doesn’t like you very much just because you don’t live with it,” Carrie pointed out. “A lot of cats are like that. They’re not very friendly with people they don’t have constant contact with.”
“If you say so.”
“No, really. If a cat’s used to you, it’ll probably like you fine, and this one’ll be a kitten so it’ll have the chance to get used to you early, since you’re here all the time. Some of them are really friendly, too. You’d have liked Puddle.”
I don’t like it when she talks sense, he thought, attempting to cover up his sulking. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Okay.” She picked up the TV remote with a shrug. “D’you want to play KH II?”
Chase brightened, getting up to help her with the console. “Do you even need to ask?”
***
A week later, Carrie called at an only marginally reasonable hour. “This had better be good,” Chase grumbled. He had just started preparing his breakfast, and had barely been awake twenty minutes.
“Sorry, I wanted to catch you before you came over here or went somewhere with Laura,” she said cheerfully. “I’m going over to Mrs. Winslow’s house to visit the kitten in an hour, and I wanted to know if you wanted to come.”
The Winslows lived halfway between Carrie’s house and the high school that both children would attend in September. Mrs. Winslow, the elderly lady who lived with her youngest son and his wife, was known as Madison’s resident cat lady. She owned three adult cats, one of whom had helped to shape Chase’s prejudice toward cats in general by leaping at him out of nowhere every time he put even so much as one toe through the door. “Why would I want to do that?” he asked, making a face.
“Because kittens are cute and you love me?”
He could not deny the truth of either reason, so he agreed. “I’ma eat and then I’ll be there.”
Mrs. Winslow answered the door promptly when they arrived, cane and pleasant old-person smile in hand. “Hello, you two!” she said. “Are you here to see the kittens?”
“Yes, please!” Carrie said, beaming back at her.
“Where’s your attack cat?” Chase asked.
Mrs. Winslow laughed. “You mean Frisky? She’s the one who had the kittens, so she’s with them right now. By the way, Chase, there are still two that need a good home, so if you and Laura want one, feel free to pick one out while you’re here.”
Pfft, when pigs fly, he thought, but forced himself to make his reply more polite. “Laura’s going to college soon and I’m not really a cat person, but thank you.”
Carrie smirked at him as they followed their host through the front hall and the living room. “Oh, shut up,” he said, lowly, so that Mrs. Winslow would not hear and reprimand him for impertinence.
“I said nothing,” she said innocently.
“Yeah, well, you were thinking it.”
Mrs. Winslow showed them to a childproofed doorway and reached to undo the plastic gate. “There you are.”
Carrie immediately darted inside the room with an eagerness that alarmed her companion, who followed much more slowly. He took a careful position several feet away and watched as she bent over the basket of kittens. “They’re darling,” she said, over her shoulder. “Chase, come see ours.” She gingerly lifted one of the two calico kittens up as he advanced. “This is the one Mom and I picked. We haven’t decided on a name for her yet.”
The kitten had large eyes that bored straight into his without flinching. “How do you know she’s yours?” he asked, to cover up how unnerved he was. “That other one looks just like her.”
“She has an orange spot on her bum, next to her tail,” Carrie said, showing him. “The other one doesn’t.”
“Gotcha-aaaaaaaaaaa.” Feeling something rub against his legs, he looked down to see the terrifying Frisky nuzzling up to him. I let my guard down! Stupid! He edged away, resolving to keep one eye out for her until he left.
“I think you’re secretly a cat person at heart,” Carrie said. Chase stuck his tongue out at her. “What? They seem to like you well enough. Maybe there’s something there.”
“You think you’re so clever,” he muttered.
She held out the kitten. “She’s really soft. Just pet her a bit.”
Hesitantly, he reached out and ran a finger over the top of the kitten’s head, so as not to appear rude. “Wow. She is really soft, like a bunny rabbit.” He glanced at Mrs. Winslow. “How old are they?”
“Six weeks,” she said proudly, as she finished snapping the gate back into place. “Just about old enough to go to their new homes. They’ve been a joy, though my daughter-in-law will be happy to have them out of the house.”
“Eight cats is a lot,” he said diplomatically.
She sighed. “I suppose so.”
Chase felt drawn to check out the other kittens in spite of himself. Besides the second calico, there were three more: one with gray stripes, one with orange stripes, and a white one with black paws and other random black dots on its body. “Okay, kittens are cute, I admit it,” he said to Carrie.
“Told you so,” she said.
He started to straighten when he heard a little hair-raising purr-growl behind and above him. Slowly, he turned that way to see that Frisky had climbed a nearby shelf the minute he had taken his eyes off her, and sat in a low crouch, as if beginning to pounce. He shrieked. “Run, Carrie!” He dashed off without waiting for her to follow, vaulting over the gate as if it were nothing and stampeding down the hall and out the front door as fast as he could go.
Carrie sighed and placed her kitten back in the basket, unwilling to tear herself away, but feeling as though it would be better to just go after that spectacle. “I really don’t know why I take him anywhere,” she said apologetically.
Mrs. Winslow beamed vaguely and let her out of the room. “He’s just young. He’ll grow out of it soon enough. I’ll give your mother a ring when the kittens are ready to go.”
“Awesome! I’ll tell her. Thanks again!”
She let herself out and found Chase waiting for her on the porch, rubbing his arms and looking around nervously. “Oh good, you didn’t get eaten,” he said in relief.
“You’re impossible,” she said affectionately.
“And you love me,” he quipped, throwing her earlier words back at her.
“Oh, shush.” She poked him in the shoulder, but then thought better of it, taking his arm as they continued down the front walk. “Actually, better yet, you can tell me a story on the way home. You owe me for that spaz attack you had in there.”
“Fine, fine.” He did not mind. He never did. “I’ve been thinking about a new one anyway. So, there was this one time in the Realm of the Magical Rabbit when a group of traveling artisans came to town…”
***
“All right, I need to go meet Lindsey.” Laura scooped the last curly fry into her mouth, set down her soda cup and picked up her purse.
Chase grinned impishly as he followed her lead. “Can I come with you?”
“If you want to sit around and read tabloids while Lindsey and I get pedicures and talk about the girly stuff you don’t want me to talk about with you,” she returned, with a knowing quirk of her eyebrows.
“Definitely not.” He made a face.
Laura laughed and counted out a few bills to leave for the server. “That’s what I thought. I’ll drop you off at Carrie’s on the way.”
“You’re awesome.”
They spent a few short blocks riding with the convertible top down, blasting the Mulan soundtrack and singing along to “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” at the top of their lungs. Laura turned the sound down once they pulled up in front of Carrie’s house. “Are you going to be home for dinner?” she asked.
“Think so,” he said, getting out of the car. “Thanks for lunch and have fun with Lindsey.”
“Bye, kiddo.” She tossed him a wave and drove away, and he danced up the front walk, feeling fairly good about his life.
All of that abruptly changed when he reached the porch and caught a whiff of a sterile, yet oddly fresh smell that had never been there before. He looked around, noticing suddenly that Eva was not reading on the porch, a brand-new screen door had been attached to the front entry, and the smell-and some disturbing giggly noises-seemed to be wafting from beyond it. He frowned. Maybe Laura got the house wrong…or maybe I’ve stepped into the Twilight Zone… “Carrie?” he called, unnerved by the likeliness of both scenarios and desperately hoping he was wrong.
“Chase!” Carrie appeared behind the screen, relieving him. “I’ve been trying to call you, where were you?”
“I was having lunch with Laura.”
“You really need a cell phone. Come on in.”
“Chase, hello,” Eva said, as Carrie opened the door for him. “You’re just in time! Come meet our new arrival.”
He froze, eyes drifting slowly from her broad smile to the white, black, and orange puff of fur in her lap. “It was today?” he hissed in Carrie’s direction. “You could’ve warned me.”
“I told you weeks ago,” she replied, just as lowly, “and anyway, I said I was trying to call you. Seriously, get a cell phone.”
He rolled his eyes and cast a furtive glance around the room, noting with no small amount of horror that it looked like less of a war zone than it usually did. All the couch cushions had been neatly placed on the couches, the clutter removed from the coffee table, the DVD boxes and magazines picked up off the floor, the floor vacuumed, and the furniture newly dusted. In place of the familiar mess now stood a cat tree, several cat toys, and a litter box filled with fresh cat litter. “Your living room looks lovely,” he said to Eva, forcing a polite smile.
She beamed, scratching the kitten behind the ears. “Thank you. It hasn’t been this clean in years. Carrie and I finally decided that we needed to tidy up if we were going to have a cat. Keeping a cat in a messy house is just asking for constant germs.”
“Go say hello to Sketches, Chase,” Carrie said, with a smug smile.
“Sketches? That’s what you named her?”
She shrugged. “Yeah. She’s colorful, so color led to paint led to paintings led to drawings to my sketchbook to Sketches. It makes sense.”
“Yeah, actually,” he agreed, privately thinking that the name was the first thing that had actually made any sense since the whole cat nonsense had begun. At a poke from Carrie, he walked over to Eva and crouched down a bit so he could look at the kitten. “Hi, Sketches,” he said. “I’m Chase. We met before. You probably don’t remember.”
Sketches blinked back at him with big, solemn eyes. He tentatively reached to scratch her behind the ears, as Eva had done, and she tolerated it for a few seconds before moving out of his reach and letting out a little kitten yawn.
“Awwwww,” Eva and Carrie cooed in unison.
This is a nightmare, Chase thought, but he smiled anyway.
Eva got up from the couch and offered him the kitten. “Do you want to hold her while I go whip up a snack, Chase?”
“No, thank you,” he said politely. “I think maybe she’d like to walk around for a little bit. It looks like she’s kind of bored with all the petting.”
“All right, then. You can pick her up whenever you’d like, as long as you’re careful.” She set Sketches on the floor and gave her one more adoring smile as she left. “I made some more sweet tea, and there’s also some brownies left from yesterday that I can heat up.”
“Sounds great!” He turned to Carrie and found her giggling into her hand. “What’s so funny?”
“You,” she said. “You’re trying so hard not to like her, but come on. She’s the sweetest thing ever.” She intercepted Sketches’ attempted escape to the cat tree, scooping her up despite a tiny mew of protest. “How can you resist this face?”
I can’t, he thought, but it was Carrie’s expression that really got him. “Is that why you got the screen door?”
She nodded. “We want her to be an indoor cat, at least until she’s a little older, and keeping the door shut in the summer is just asking for death. Also, less flies.”
“Good point.”
Settling the kitten down, she brushed off her jeans as she straightened. “Anyway, I finished the fortress, finally. D’you want to see it?”
“Um, yes.”
“Okay, be right back.” She skipped out of the room to get her sketchbook, leaving him alone with Sketches.
Chase glanced down, and Sketches looked up and met his eyes, appraising him calmly. “Okay, you’re cute, I admit it,” he said, squatting down to her level. “And even softer than the last time I saw you, which I guess is another point for you. I’ll cut you a deal. I hate cats, but I do like Carrie and it means a lot to her to have you around, so, I will try to like you too, if you’re a good kitty and not evil like all the other cats.”
Sketches yawned again and promptly ignored him in favor of the cat tree.
“Awesome. Glad we’ve reached an understanding.” Chase watched her climb for a moment in silence. “I’m doomed, aren’t I?”
The only answer he received was the sound of kitty claws tearing at the fake carpeting on the tree.