The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook (3 page)

“There.” I scribble
I ♥ Fred
under my rebus.

I feel like Miss Crackenhower must have felt. Miss Crackenhower was my first-grade teacher, way back. Practically everything she ever said was in caps. Her teeth were very white and it looked like she had more of them than a usual human. She was always smiling. That's because you get a happy feeling helping someone read. You feel sort of like a wizard. I have to say, to this day, Miss Crackenhower still has the whitest teeth. And she still seems much happier than any other teacher, especially my fourth-grade teacher, Mr. Fry, who has trouble keeping the lid on Room 7.

“Ha, ha, that's silly! Nine lives!” says Fred, and he gives me a little punch on my arm. Of course he doesn't believe me. And all of a sudden, it's important, VERY important, that Fred understand and believe. He'll feel happier right away. And like I said, I'm happy when Fred is happy.

So I start talking very fast. “Listen to me, Freddy. Cats are born with nine lives inside of them. They have the ability—the POWER—to live nine whole lives! Some of those lives can
be very long, and maybe some are shorter, but this is how it works: Whenever something bad happens, like a cat fight, or a bad fall, or a failing kidney, just like that, PRESTO! That cat's back in business again!”

“You mean he dies and comes back again?”

“He sort of dies, but not really. He starts a whole new life. Nine lives altogether. Cats are amazing that way.”

The Cats-Have-Nine-Lives Theory is what people call “an old wives' tale.” It's a theory that's been around since olden times. Everyone who knows cats knows how often they do dumb, death-defying stunts that would kill other living things. How many cats have you noticed snoozing peacefully under a car? Ever seen a dog do that? I rest my case.

I look around and notice an older woman approaching our bench.

“See her? I'm going to prove it to you,” I say quietly out of the corner of my mouth, because the woman is coming closer. Sometimes older people have hearing problems, but sometimes they don't. For instance, Gramma Dee claims she can hear a fly's little hairy legs touching down onto her kitchen countertop.

Now the woman sits down on the bench with us. Fred and I squiggle to the side to make more room.

“But, really, how do you know it's true?” Fred asks, continuing the conversation.

“I just know,” I say. “It's one of those things you learn when you get older.”

I can feel the woman beside me listening. She smells like mint tea and just-washed laundry. Of course, she can't help listening, since we're all squished together on the bench. But often older people do eavesdrop on kids' conversations, and even jump right in. That's because they miss the children they used to have, who have all grown up and left home.

I smile at her. “Nice day,” I say.

I try to keep a couple of good conversation starters up my sleeve. And it's usually a nice day in Oakland, except for a couple of months in the winter when it rains. We even love the rain, especially when there's a drought. But even when there's lots of rain, we all still try to practice water conservation whenever we can. For example, not running the water while we brush our teeth.

“Yes, it sure is a pretty day today,” the woman says.

“My brother and I are talking about cats. How many lives would you say they have?” I ask, hoping she'll say the right thing.

“Nine, of course.”

BINGO!

“And you wouldn't believe the scrapes my cats have bounced back from!” the woman says. The bus arrives before she can tell us about those scrapes. She waves from a window of the bus, and we wave back.

“See?” I say to Fred. “Just ask anyone.”

ere are some things about me:

I am a ten-year-old girl. I like to dip my french fries in vinegar. I love when the sun shines through spiderwebs. My best friend is Riya. I love my little brother so much, my heart hurts. I like dancing and drawing.

I am easily spotted in a crowd because I'm the girl wearing the black Oakland Raiders sweatshirt that's way too big for her because it used to belong to her dad. I pulled it out of a box of old clothes on its way to Goodwill a few months ago. Everywhere I go, people usually yell out “Go Raiders!” I'm not that up on football, but “Go Raiders” can often be a good conversation starter for other topics.

Also, I need to wear glasses, but I am a good noticer, as I
mentioned. Being a noticer helps you come up with inventions and theories and stories. For instance, I noticed that people use a drinking straw only once and then they throw it away. Very wasteful. So one day I invented the Family Straw. Everyone has their own straw permanently attached to a bigger one which would be hooked up to the pitcher of juice or beverage of the family's choice. An excellent water-saving idea, because you wouldn't have to wash all those drinking glasses. And good for the environment because it's just one big straw that you don't have to throw away. I'm still working out the details on how to build it, the materials needed, etc., etc.

My dad used to tell me I have an inventive mind, but I actually prefer thinking up theories and stories rather than inventions. You don't have to build theories and stories, just make them up.

For instance, my Rainbow Whopper Theory.

That's another important thing about me, and I have to admit it, even though it doesn't sound so great. I tell whoppers. Whoppers are lies, plain and simple. Some whoppers are worse than other whoppers, and those are nothing to be proud of. But some whoppers are stories. Those are the good kind. Thinking about different kinds of whoppers can get
very complicated and make your brain jump around in your skull, so it helps if you attach colors to them. That's where my Rainbow Whopper Theory comes in.

BLUE whoppers save your scaredy skin, or someone else's, to smooth things over for a while. When I told Mom that Fred didn't flush the goldfish down the toilet (he wanted it to join other fish in the ocean), that was a blue whopper. I told her I did it myself, accidentally.

RED whoppers are the kind that make other people think you're greater than you are. For a long time (OK, up until a year ago), I enjoyed telling everyone that Neil Armstrong, the first man to bounce around on the moon, was my father's second cousin. It just seemed very cool to be related to him.

BLACK whoppers have only one purpose: They are meant to hurt someone. I don't think I've ever told one of these during my lifetime. WHITE ones do the opposite—they make someone feel better. For instance when I was in second grade, I told Sam that, no, he didn't smell like pee like everyone said. Telling someone that cats have nine lives (when you've just made your cat's vet angry) is half blue, half white. Sky blue, maybe.

But then there are the whoppers you don't tell. The kind
when you leave something out and keep the secret all to yourself. Those whoppers are YELLOW.

Here's the thing: When we found Zook lying in that geranium pot in the alley on that sunny Saturday two and a half years ago, something else was attached to his collar besides that rectangle with the fake diamond on it. There was also a name tag. The name tag said
MUD, 1235 Clover Street
, which is around the block from where we live. Here are the reasons I threw that name tag away and never told a living soul about it:

1. I wanted us to keep that cat as our own pet. We renamed him Zook right away. So it was just convenient (blue whopper) to say he was homeless.

2. Zook wanted to stay with us, too! He followed us up to our apartment without a backward glance, as if he knew it was his home. And it was.

3. Only a dork calls their own cat “Mud,” and only someone worse than a dork doesn't feed their cat properly, or give him flea medicine, or uses him for target practice with a BB gun!!!!!! A villain does all that. No way was that cat going back to 1235 Clover Street.

I committed that address to memory so I could visit the Villain myself and seek revenge. Not that I had any plans for revenge. Two and a half years ago I wasn't even allowed to go around the block by myself.

But now I'm allowed to go lots of places. I pick up Fred from preschool, and I go to Safeway to buy milk and fruit and stuff, and then there's O'Leary's Pizzeria, where we hang out a lot because of our job (more about that soon), and the Good Samaritan Veterinary Clinic, and the Bank of the West that I investigate in case of robberies. Man, the places I'll get to go when I can drive a car! Six long, long years away, even though my mother and Gramma Dee say it's not anywhere near long enough for them.

Lately, we've been passing by the Villain's house.

Today after leaving the bus stop, we actually do more than pass by. We sit on the curb across from the Villain's house to rest. That's what Fred thinks we're doing, anyway. I myself am noticing things.

Zook's old home is a small house with shades pulled all the way down and a broken-down front porch. Overgrown lavender plants in the yard sweeten up the air, almost completely covering up the chipped front walk. Sometimes I see
a motorcycle parked in the sloped gravel driveway, but we've never seen the Villain.

Fred reaches into his little plastic bag for a fish cracker, his mind still on my whopper.

“How many lives has Zook lived already?” he asks.

“Nobody knows for sure. But trust me, less than nine.”

Right now I feel like grabbing a sharp pebble, then racing across the street to scratch a big
Z
for Zook on the shiny hub of that motorcycle's front wheel.

“But how many do you think?” Fred asks.

I brush a crumb from his chin. I look right into his worried brown eyes. “Zook is working on his fifth life,” I say, pulling a number out of the air. Well, not exactly out of the air, because five is Fred's favorite number, being a proud five-year-old himself.

Fred nods thoughtfully, then counts on his fingers. “Four left.”

He eats a bunch of crackers and his mouth is stuffed when he asks the next question. It comes out sounding like “How shoe your snow?” or “Cows moo and blow?” But I'm prepared for the question, so I understand him perfectly.

“How do I know? I'll tell you how I know,” I say. “Cats give
us ‘clues,' that's what they do. If you're a real good noticer, you pick up those clues, those really important details. Those clues tell you about all the lives before, and maybe even all the lives coming up.”

“Oh,” says Fred, in a way that means there will be more questions later. “OK. Anyway, let's go now.” He doesn't look worried anymore, and stands up.

I hear a jingle of keys. There he is! The Villain, double-locking his front door. And sure enough, he looks like a pirate. I've never actually seen a pirate personally, except in drawings. But I can imagine a pirate like the Villain, handsome and brown-skinned, with a black braid down his back and a red shirt with yellow fringes on it. A pirate wouldn't be holding a motorcycle helmet, but you get the picture.

The Villain waves at us. “Hey,” he says.

“I heart your bike!” says Freddy.

The Villain grins, flashing his white pirate teeth. “Come over and take a look!”

His smile looks evil. OK, to be fair, his smile would be an ordinary one on anyone else. But knowing what I know about his BB-gun activities, it looks evil to me. I narrow my eyes at him. I once saw a cop do that on TV.

“Let's go,” I say to Freddy, grabbing his arm.

“Aw, I wanna touch his bike!” Freddy says.

Freddy is young. He doesn't understand things about the world. He doesn't understand about the evil that lurks in some people's hearts. Riya and I talk about that all the time. You just never know, which is why I wasn't allowed to go around the block by myself until I was old enough to know certain things. You just don't make friends with everyone you meet, people who look perfectly fine, but could very well have hearts oozing with evil. At ten, I've figured out the difference between a pirate who shoots at cats and a lady at a bus stop who smells like mint tea.