Chez Stinky (2 page)

“Sure. You can evaluate how bad the proposal is and I’ll drink. You might edit better with some adult beverages.”

Although her editing skills were rarely enhanced by the addition of alcohol, Kat nodded at Maria and smiled. Maria was Mark’s secretary and on her best days she looked like a somewhat shorter and stouter (Maria preferred the term
Rubenesque
) version of Sophia Loren. Today was not one of her best days, however. Maria took the concept of casual Friday seriously. There’s a fine line between comfortable slacks and sweat pants and today Maria was on the sweaty side. On Fridays, Maria often didn’t use the expensive hair products that kept her unruly curls under control, so today her normally big hair was downright enormous. But Maria was one of those friends you could count on to be sympathetic, particularly about work-related idiocy. This evening’s bitch fest could be amusing. Undoubtedly, it would be the best part of the weekend.

A phone rang and both Kat and Maria turned their heads to look over at Kat’s workstation. “I think that’s yours,” Maria said.

“Probably Chris with more bad news.” Kat rushed back to her cubicle and said over her shoulder, “I’ll talk to you later and we can work out the time to get together tonight.”

Kat grabbed the phone and said “Hello?” with a great exhale of breath, so her greeting came out as more of a shout.

“Hello, is this Katherine Stevens?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, I just got back to my desk; I didn’t mean to bark in your ear like that. May I help you?”

“My name is Larry Lowell and I’m a lawyer in the town of Alpine Grove. I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

Kat nodded. How could this day possibly get any worse? “What news?”

“Your great-aunt Abigail has died. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Aunt Abigail? Really?” Kat flashed on a memory of a thin white-haired woman wearing a floppy peasant skirt. “Wow, I haven’t seen her in years and I think my mother lost track of her. What happened?”

Larry cleared his throat and said quietly, “I’m not entirely sure of the precise details, but I know she was ill. She was an ‘unusual’ person, but smart and funny, even right before she passed away. I talked to her just a few weeks ago. She came into my office to talk about her estate.”

Kat raised her eyebrows, “Her estate?”

“Yes, you are named the principal beneficiary of her estate. You have inherited all of her assets up here in Alpine Grove.”

“Assets? What exactly do you mean by assets?”

Larry cleared his throat again. “She has a home up here, but it’s not in the greatest shape at the moment. With a little TLC, you could fix it up. However, there are a few stipulations, as well.”

What was this? Twenty Questions? Getting information out of this guy could take a while. Fortunately, as a technical writer, Kat had years of practice extracting information from recalcitrant people.

“Mr. Lowell, what exactly do you mean by ‘stipulations’?”

“It seems, Ms. Stevens, that there are some animals residing on the property. Abigail loved her babies, as she called them, and she wanted to make sure that they would be well taken care of after she was gone. She remembered that you love animals, and that’s why she wanted you to be their new mom as she would say.”

Their
mom
? This guy had to be kidding. Maternal she definitely was not. “So Mr. Lowell, what type of animals are we talking about here? I mean, I don’t know anything about cows or chickens or ducks or anything. I have one cat and I live in a 950-square-foot apartment.”

“Please call me Larry. We’ll probably be talking to each other a lot over the next few weeks. It would be best if we could meet in person. Would you like to set up a time to talk about this matter and go over the details?”

“Okay Larry. You can call me Kat. So how many animals are we talking about?”

“Abigail had four dogs and a number of cats. When I went to the property, I don’t think I actually saw them all, so I’m not entirely sure. But we think at least five cats. Abigail left detailed descriptions of the animals, but people had a habit of dumping stray cats out at her place when they no longer could take care of them, so I may have missed some outside barn cats.”

Once he finally spit it out, Larry could share some serious facts. After digesting the lawyer’s information dump for a moment, finally Kat said, “I think you’re right. We should talk about this in person. Could you give me directions?”

Larry related how to get to his office in Alpine Grove and agreed to meet Kat on Saturday afternoon. They would then drive out to the property. He promised to explain the rest of the details when they met.

Kat hung up the phone and stared blankly at her Half Dome poster again. Her quiet and slightly boring life was about to get a lot more complicated.

After the conversations with Mark and the lawyer, it was clearly time to go home and enjoy a little feline companionship. Kat had had enough of the humans of the world. She picked up the three-inch binder with the printout of Chris’s proposal and grabbed an assortment of red pens from her desk. She stopped by Maria’s cubicle on her way out and poked her head in the doorway.

“Hey Maria, I’ve gotta take a rain check for tonight.”

Maria looked up and gave Kat a questioning look. “What happened? Chris didn’t do something even dumber, did he? Maybe we need one of those industrial-size boxes of wine.”

“No, it’s nothing like that. I can’t really talk about it right now. I’m tired and I have to get up early in the morning, so I’m just gonna go home, feed Murph, and go to bed. It’s been a long, weird day.”

Maria nodded her head. “Okay, so now I’m totally dying of curiosity. If you decide to share, give me a call.”

Kat promised to fill Maria in on the details. She sighed as the tension left her body. It was a relief to open the door and exit the building.

Later, Kat opened her apartment door and was greeted by a rotund black-and-white cat who loudly expressed a compelling need for dinner.

“Well, meeeee-yow to you too,” Kat said as she picked up the cat.

“How’s my little Murphee cat?” she said, snuggling the wriggling feline in her arms.

Murphee wormed out of Kat’s embrace and jumped to the floor. The cat turned around and glared at her with a look of disgust.

“Sheesh, everyone wants something,” Kat mumbled as she walked to the kitchen. Grabbing the bag of outrageously expensive cat food from the pantry, she walked over to Murphee’s cat food dish as the cat continued her monologue about the merits of speedy service and fine feline dining.

“All right, all right, I’m working on it!” Kat said as she poured the food.

Murphee’s prominent belly swayed as she rushed to the bowl. She started gobbling down the food, but stopped to look up lovingly at Kat for a moment. Now that her obvious starvation had been addressed, she was feeling more congenial.

Kat placed the proposal binder on the kitchen table and opened it to the first page. Several typos leaped into view. She sat down, grabbed a pen, and started marking up the text as she listened to Murphee begin her post-feeding cleaning routine.

From below came distressingly familiar noises. “Urrk, aaack, hrrak, yurk!” Without thinking, Kat leaped up, grabbed Murphee out from under the table, and ran to the bathroom, holding the alarmed cat in front of her as foam oozed from between Murphee’s lips.

“Barf on the tile! Barf on the tile!” Kat yelped as she placed the cat on the bathroom floor and slammed the door.

The sounds of “Hack! URRRK! Blaaaap!” came from behind the door as Murphee finished the process of purging the contents of her stomach and a little extraneous hair from her system.

Kat sat back down and looked at the proposal.
Yeah, that’s pretty much my response, too
.

The next morning, after enjoying a vomit-free feline feeding experience, Kat drove out to Alpine Grove. The lawyer had said
four
dogs?
Five
cats? She’d never thought of herself as an animal person, per se. Sure she liked animals, but she also liked to think that she wasn’t the clichéd weirdo cat lady living alone talking to her cat. In fact, Maria liked to tease her about her early days with Murphee, which didn’t exactly do much for her status as a cat lady.

Kat had found the tiny kitten one evening when she was taking out her garbage. As she opened the lid of the huge green Dumpster to throw in the plastic bag, a little mewing noise came from behind one of the Dumpster’s back wheels. When she crouched down to investigate, she found a very disheveled-looking black ball of fuzz. Kat ignored the pungent smell of the garbage around her as she cautiously picked up the kitten and brought her inside her apartment.

Gender identification on young kittens is difficult for experts and Kat was definitely no expert. She had assumed the kitten was male and named him Murphy in honor of Murphy’s Law, which seemed appropriate for a cat that had obviously had a little too much of that law in its short life.

Kat went to the store for kitty supplies. Within a couple of days, it became obvious that kitten-proofing the apartment was going to be vital for the kitten’s safety and Kat’s sanity. Murphy was everywhere and into everything. In the first week, the tiny animal managed to break two vases and chew up the afghan on the sofa. It was hard to believe something so small could be so destructive. But as the kitten grew, Kat started to appreciate Murphy’s independent spirit and zest for life. Watching the kitten zoom around the apartment was endlessly entertaining and having a cat made her apartment feel more like a home. It wasn’t as quiet anymore and when she came home from work, she could depend on Murphy to be there to welcome her. Or at least to request dinner.

One day a few months after she’d brought home the kitten, Murphy started yowling a new and peculiar yowl. It almost sounded like the cat was screaming or in pain. Alarmed and worried that there might be something really wrong with her kitten, Kat called the veterinarian and made an appointment.

At the veterinarian’s office, the vet gave Kat a sympathetic look and said, “This is your first cat, isn’t it?”

Kat nodded. “Yes, why?”

“Well, for one thing, Murphy isn’t a boy.”

A slight flush rose on her cheeks and Kat replied, “Well I wasn’t sure how you tell and I didn’t want to get all personal with him…or her.”

“For another thing, you really need to get her spayed. She’s about to go into heat. That’s what all the yowling is about.”

Kat shook her head at the memory. No, she wasn’t exactly an animal expert, but after getting the kitten spayed, Kat did change the spelling of Murphee’s name, so it was a bit more feminine anyway. Maria had thought Kat’s lack of knowledge about cat physiology was hilarious. Every time Maria came to Kat’s apartment, she picked up Murphee, held her in front of her face and said, “So are we having gender identity issues today?”

Kat found the lawyer’s office in Alpine Grove and parked her car by the curb. Alpine Grove was a small town about two hours away from the city. As its name suggested, the town was surrounded by many evergreens. The big local attraction was the fall logging festival with tree climbing, log rolling, and exhibitions with burly men wielding large chain saws.