Critters of Mossy Creek Read online

  Charles mumbled something only a Who could hear.

  “Louder,” Will said, checking the time on his wristwatch.

  “I pulled her hair at school!” He pouted. “She was asking for it, being all goody-two-shoes.”

  Great. My son was about to start World War Three with our new neighbors, who I hadn’t yet introduced myself to, and all because Melanie behaved. This part of Charles’s personality had to come from Will’s Finch clan; it certainly wasn’t one of my Abercrombie genes. “That’s no reason to pull the child’s hair, young man. Where’s your folder? What color slip did you get today?”

  “Orange.”

  Uh oh. The Mossy Creek Elementary security alert system: Orange was only one color away from red, the worst color, the color that earned a note home and a trip to the vice principal’s office. “I thought our goal was green all week.”

  “If I stay green all next week, can I ’dopt one of those beagle puppies at the Blackshears’?”

  “No!” Will and I shouted at the same time.

  “Can we at least get a dog when Biscuit dies?”

  “Charles Albert Finch!”

  “But, Mom, Biscuit isn’t even a nice cat. All she does is hiss at me.”

  “Because you bother her,” Will said. He looked from the cooling casserole to me. “Where are Randy and Mary Alice?”

  I heard the water run for a second time and one set of feet tromping down the stairs. “They’re coming.”

  “I don’t bother Biscuit,” Charles said. He slipped out of his chair and walked over to the sink, where Biscuit was lying next to her food and water trough. She likes to lie down to lap her water.

  I thought Charles had decided to wash his hands with soap and water. But then he looked down at our peaceful, plump tabby.

  I warned quickly, “Don’t pick her . . . up.”

  Too late. As Charles scooped the cat into his arms, she yelped. Still held despite the warning, she hissed, exposing her tiny, sharp teeth.

  “See,” he said, “she doesn’t like me.”

  Will stood up. “Put her down. You know she doesn’t like to be picked up. She’s old.”

  Charles placed the cat back on the floor. She promptly swatted at his ankle. She gave his leg a nip as well.

  “Hands,” I said.

  Charles mumbled something about hating cats and goodie-two-shoes girls who like cats as he lathered up.

  “Mom, guess what Randy has in his room,” Mary Alice said in her best sing-song, tattle-tale mode as she ran to the table.

  Our oldest, Randy, slid into his usual spot with a scowl. “Just shut up.”

  “A Victoria’s Secret catalog,” Mary Alice said before I could even venture a guess.

  Somehow this wasn’t the way I pictured family dinners proceeding when Will and I talked about getting married and having children.

  And Charles wanted to add a poor, unsuspecting dog to the mix? No way.

  ooo

  Eileen

  “I hate boys,” my six year old said, letting her backpack slide with a thud to the floor. For added emphasis, Melanie slammed what sounded like her Hannah Montana lunchbox on something hard, probably the kitchen countertop.

  I checked the time in the bottom corner of my computer screen. My goal for today had been to complete the action plan for a tank yank up in Habersham County, about a half-hour’s drive north of Mossy Creek, for the engineering firm I work for, then empty the three moving boxes I’d placed on the kitchen table we hadn’t yet used in its official capacity. The unpacking hadn’t happened yet thanks to two unscheduled calls—my boss and our client.

  I braced myself for another installment of my six-year-old daughter’s speech titled, “Why We Should Move Back to downtown Mossy Creek,” followed by its spin-off, “Why I Hate Charles Finch.”

  From what I could tell, Melanie’s beef with fellow first-grader Charles was that he existed.

  Apparently, she had assumed when I built a brand-spanking new house in this new neighborhood outside town, and let her design her room, pick out new furniture and bed linens, she’d somehow get a made-to-order best friend who lived next door. No such luck. Sure, she had friends at Mossy Creek Elementary, but since we moved to Yonder—a wide spot in the mountain roads anchored by Yonder Groceries and Gas and the tiny Yonder Community Center (which doubles as the voting station in all elections), the casual, after-school play dates had dried up. The only child Melanie’s age on our road, with its scattering of new homes and old farms, was Charles.

  From the daily reports Melanie provided, my neighbor’s son didn’t seem any more pleased about her presence across the road than she was about his. And his mother, although diligent enough to force her son to apologize for pulling my daughter’s hair, hadn’t shown herself to be best-friend material, not that I expected a neighbor to become a bosom buddy. Out in the country, people live by the old axiom that “fences make good neighbors.”

  “Where’s Fluffy Anne?” Melanie asked. “Fluffy A-a-nne! Where are you?”

  I saved what I’d completed on my report, squeezed myself between the stacks of boxes inside my office, and met my baby in the kitchen. I tried to ignore the large cardboard boxes labeled “KITCHEN” in thick, black, Magic Marker letters.

  Problem number two: Fluffy Anne had become even more adventurous since our move to the mostly rural environs of Yonder.

  “I guess she’s off exploring,” I said. Fluffy Anne had been gone longer and longer each time she explored. I didn’t point that out to Melanie.

  “Are you sure?” she asked, her voice now small and worried.

  “Sure, I’m sure,” I bluffed.

  “She might have gone back to—”

  “What should we have for dinner tonight?” I interrupted, lifting the menu for Mama’s All You Can Eat Cafe to distract her. “Chicken fried steak or pork chops? I already called in our dessert order—chocolate pie.” It was quite a trek to pick up a take-out dinner from Mossy Creek, but I knew Melanie was comforted by the familiar connection.

  Melanie placed her dimpled hands on her hips and sighed. “She might’ve gone back to Laurel Street. This house doesn’t feel right to her. I don’t think she likes it here in the woods, Mommy.”

  As smart as the cat was, I didn’t think Fluffy Anne could make the trek from Yonder to Mossy Creek, a ten-mile drive along a roller coaster of narrow mountain roads. I also didn’t think Melanie and I were talking about Fluffy Anne anymore.

  I traced the apple of Melanie’s cheek, still as downy as it had been as a baby. “Fluffy Anne will settle in just fine in time. Once we get everything unpacked and decorated.”

  I glanced at the neutral-colored walls. ‘Baked Scone’ paint had seemed like a good choice when in the midst of building and I had fifty million decisions to make. Now, as I stared at the bland palette of our new house, our new life, I wished I’d been a little more adventurous with the color or with the khaki-and-brown furniture. My house was a sepia-toned photograph.

  Melanie’s big brown eyes filled with tears. She twisted the front flap of her skirt. “Mommy, what if some truck hit her? What if she’s lying in the road somewhere dead? Like a possum or a raccoon or a baby bear?” We’d seen a dead bear cub on the road once. Melanie had never forgotten it.

  “Fluffy Anne isn’t dead.” I used my authoritative tone usually reserved for teeth-brushing. “I’d know it if she was. Someone would stop, pick her up and call the number on her collar. Do you have any homework?” I prayed my question would distract her from her maudlin thoughts.

  “Reading,” Melanie said. “Charles made fart noises in our reading group today. He had to sit in the thinking chair.”

  She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a juice box. She ambled over to the back door, which she opened. “Fluf-fy A-anne!”

  Frowning, she sipped her juice and scanned the barren backyard for any swish of a cat tail. I’d tackle the yard this summer. Maybe hire Sammie Pritchard to landscape it for me.

 
Still frowning, Melanie turned to face me. “What if she doesn’t come back?”

  “She’ll come back.” I hoped I was right. The sound of the can opener might bring her trotting. Unless someone else was feeding her. The bowl of kibble I set out for her was empty every morning, so she had to be eating it. “If she doesn’t come back, and I’m not saying I think she won’t, but if she doesn’t, I’ll get you a kitten.”

  “I don’t want another kitten, I want Fluffy Anne.”

  I went to the den and lifted the skirt on the reclining sofa. One time, on Laurel Street, Fluffy Anne somehow got herself under it but couldn’t find her way out. Never mind that Melanie and I were frantic calling for her inside and out. She sat without a meow even when Melanie cried. The kitty let me know where she was only after her hunger overcame her embarrassment.

  Yeah, this was the cat we wanted and loved.

  Maybe she was hiding in one of those boxes I hadn’t unpacked in the garage. Or maybe she’d been eaten by some critter, a bear or a fox. Only time and hunger would tell.

  ooo

  Nancy

  Several afternoons following Charles’s orange slip, he arrived home later than usual from the bus stop. It was a wet, no soccer practice (hallelujah) afternoon, and he stumbled inside with something other than his sopping backpack, something wet and furry that meowed. If it hadn’t, I would never have known the animal was a cat.

  Worried to the point that I had actually picked up the phone to call the school, since I’d heard the bus go by ten minutes prior and my son still hadn’t hit the back door, I didn’t know whether to kiss him or towel him off. He held out the wet, emaciated cat, whose drips added to the growing puddle on my clean floor.

  “Her name is Spot,” he said, manipulating the cat so that he could show me the white patch on her matted gray tail. “We need to get her dry,” he called out as he dripped up the stairs still toting this cat, who (unlike Biscuit) liked to be handled.

  He came back down with several towels and my blow dryer. I plugged it in for him. He never let go of Spot or even took off his raincoat.

  “Sweetheart, that cat isn’t going to . . .” My words dried up as the blow-dryer whirred and Spot stayed put in my son’s arms. She actually enjoyed the warm air fluffing out her gray fur.

  Biscuit, on the other hand, meowed her displeasure from her seat on the sofa in the den. She ran, belly swaying, up the stairs to escape from the offending noise and the prospect of Charles sending some of that loud, warm air her way.

  “Please, pu-lease, can I keep her?” he asked once Spot was dry.

  Spot purred and looked at me with the sweetest green eyes. A second cat would be less of a problem than a puppy. And the poor thing obviously hadn’t been fed in a good while. No! What was I thinking? I had my hands full with one cat and three children. No more pets. We could take Spot to the new Bigelow County Humane Society. She’d get a good home.

  “I’ll take care of her,” Charles offered. “I think she really likes me.” He grinned, revealing his half-grown-in front teeth.

  Spot rubbed her pretty gray head against Charles.

  “What if she belongs to someone else?” I didn’t really think so because, first of all, she was skin and bones. And secondly, who would leave a cat out on a thunder soaker day like today? But she must have belonged to someone at one time, to like people so much. Probably some college student dumped her off in our area since spring break was about to begin. I’d read a story in the Mossy Creek Gazette about certain neighborhoods being targets for that sort of thing. The college kids get pets, but their parents don’t let them bring them home for spring break or for the summer, so they find a country road and dump them, assuming the pets will survive in the wild or find a nearby house and someone to feed them.

  “Charles? Did you hear me?” I said, “What if she belongs to somebody?”

  “She doesn’t. I swear.”

  I swear? An odd response for a six-year-old.

  “I think she’s hungry, Mom.”

  Probably was, poor thing. I’d never seen a cat so skinny. “Give her some of Biscuit’s food, but put it in a different bowl in case she’s got a cold or something. I think I’ll make some fliers, just in case.”

  Charles knelt down on the floor and pulled out Biscuit’s food from the pantry. “Mommy, I thought you said this food was for old kitties.”

  “It’s fine for now, sweetheart.”

  He toted the plastic jug of cat food to his favorite cereal bowl, the one with Spiderman on it. As the kibble pinged against the bowl and Spot plunged into it eagerly, Biscuit strolled into the kitchen and stopped just shy of the island. She looked down her regal beige and pink nose; she brandished her tail like a sword, back and forth in indignation. She blinked her honey-colored eyes at me. I could almost read her mind. Who is this peasant? Why is it eating my food in my kitchen?

  A low growl, one that Biscuit usually reserves for Hank Blackshear and his vaccinations, issued from her throat. Spot stopped eating and cowered. Biscuit advanced.

  “Mean old cat,” Charles yelled.

  Spot darted past Biscuit, who sauntered over to me with a self-satisfied crackle in her old joints. She meowed up at me repeatedly.

  “He found her. What was I supposed to do, let her starve?” I said.

  Apparently, Biscuit thought starving was just fine for Spot. She turned her hind end to me, swished her tail once and padded away.

  By dinnertime, Charles had taught Spot tricks in his room, which he declared a Biscuit-free zone. He debuted Spot’s talent for the entire family, including Biscuit, after dinner. The first trick involved chasing a die across the hardwood floor and batting it. Charles called this game “cat soccer.” The second trick was “cat fishing.” He’d taken one of Biscuit’s old toys and tied it to the end of his toy fishing rod. He cast the toy out as bait. Spot grabbed hold of the toy, and he reeled her in.

  Biscuit looked down from her perch on the back of the couch, her paws crossed in a queen-like pose, and yawned.

  Will and I clapped.

  “Are we keeping Spot?” Mary Alice asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, and I was being truthful. She was cute, adorable, lovable. But could the vacuum cleaner take the additional hair? Could the budget take the additional food and vet bills?

  “Please, Mom,” Charles begged. “I’ll even empty the litter box. Every day. I swear. I’ll even clean up her hairballs. They couldn’t be nastier than Biscuit’s.”

  Biscuit narrowed her eyes to slits as she focused on my youngest.

  Will clicked his tongue and Spot climbed into his lap, settled herself and purred. He’d melted, too. So there was no one to prod my backbone. What could I do but cave?

  I still, however, needed to verify that this fabulous foundling that my family loved didn’t belong to anyone else. I made fliers that night, and Charles promised he’d distribute them on the bus and at school. I also notified the Homeowner’s Association, and they posted a notice on the website.

  When I put Charles to bed, I reminded him about the fliers.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said as I kissed his forehead.

  I switched his nightlight to on.

  “And we need to go to Pet Smart in Bigelow,” he added. “Spot needs some toys and a real cat bowl and some catnip.”

  ooo

  Eileen

  Missing Cat, Day Four. I hadn’t seen Fluffy Anne, but her food bowl had been emptied, so she’d come home, I thought. She just wasn’t staying, from what I could see. Or she was hiding in one of the boxes in the garage just to vex me. Or that fat possum I saw nosing around the garage the other night had been eating her food and had lulled me into a false sense of security.

  All Melanie’s conversations included the theme of lost pets and hating boys, especially boys who get new pets for no good reason. Apparently, Charles had a new cat.

  I assumed she was jealous because our neighbor’s son got a new pet, which he apparently talked about incessantly at
school. A dog, I also assumed, because the animal was named Spot, and I was told Charles was bragging at school about the different tricks he’d taught Spot.

  I was actually unpacking today. I had the family room just about complete, only two more boxes of books and knickknacks to go. Melanie was so mopey, she wasn’t interested in picking out where we’d eat tonight. The kitchen items were at long last unpacked, but I’d gotten in the habit of eating microwave meals and not having to clean the dishes. It’s a nice, if expensive habit.

  I’d tried several of those thirty-minute meals Bubba Rice touted on his Saturday morning cable access cooking show, but it always took me more like an hour and a half. Where is the truth in advertising?

  “There’s nothing to do,” Melanie whined.

  “Polly Pockets.”

  “You made me pick them up so you could vacuum.”

  She had a point. I would like to enjoy the clean, unpacked, perfectly arranged, if boringly neutral, den for twenty-four hours before Polly City returned.

  “Draw me a picture.”

  “We haven’t found my easel.”

  This is why I should have been more organized while packing. “You don’t need an easel to draw a picture.”

  “But it’s no fun without one.”

  “Fine,” I said, placing a wrought-iron candelabra I’d forgotten about on the mantel. “So watch TV.”

  “There’s nothing on.”

  “Why don’t you go outside and play?” The words echoed in my head. My mom had often said that to me as a child. It’s a weird feeling, almost like deja-vu, only I’d call it a ‘deja-don’t.’ I hate sounding like my mother.

  “There’s nothing to do out there,” Melanie whined, which I hate even more than saying things my mother said.

  “Sure there is. Chalk yourself a hopscotch, bounce a ball, ride your bike, but put on your helmet if you ride.”

  Melanie sighed. “It’d be more fun if Fluffy Anne were here.”

  I had moved onto the dining room and was unpacking the rarely used fine wedding china by the time Melanie returned. “Mom! Mommy!” she called out.

  Salad or dessert plate in hand, I wasn’t sure which; I waved at the whirling dervish that was my daughter. “I’m in the dining room. What’s wrong?”