Ruff vs. Fluff Read online

  TO ALL THE EPHS OUT THERE,

  ESPECIALLY FAMILY EPHS—DAD,

  LILY, JAKE, AND MADDY—AND

  THE CLASS OF ’68

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  One: Queenie

  Two: Arthur

  Three: Queenie

  Four: Arthur

  Five: Queenie

  Six: Arthur

  Seven: Queenie

  Eight: Arthur

  Nine: Queenie

  Ten: Queenie

  Eleven: Arthur

  Twelve: Queenie

  Thirteen: Arthur

  Fourteen: Queenie

  Fifteen: Arthur

  Sixteen: Queenie

  Seventeen: Arthur

  Eighteen: Queenie

  Nineteen: Arthur

  Twenty: Queenie

  Twenty-One: Arthur

  Twenty-Two: Queenie

  Twenty-Three: Arthur

  Twenty-Four: Queenie

  Twenty-Five: Arthur

  Twenty-Six: Queenie

  Twenty-Seven: Arthur

  Twenty-Eight: Queenie

  Acknowledgments

  Sneak Peek

  About the Author

  Copyright

  I HAVE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL VOICE. I USE it to say just one thing: Me-ow! Have you ever heard anything so lovely? And it starts with me! How great is that? I love starting with me. In fact, I have no time for anything that doesn’t start with me and keep on going with me right until it ends, with me. Me—or actually ME—is how I think of myself, but you can call me Queenie, like all the other humans. Call me Queenie—but don’t expect me to come, or perform some stupid trick, or pay the slightest attention to you. You have my permission to look at me all you want. I don’t blame you. I’m a thing of beauty.

  This is probably a good moment to describe myself. Where to even start? With my tail? Kind of cool, starting at the end. And I’m cool, no doubt about that. Mom always says, “That Queenie is one cool cat.” Not my mom, who I really don’t remember, but the kids’ mom, who has another name I can’t be bothered to come up with at the moment, and anyway, she’s just Mom around these parts.

  These parts are what humans call snow country, although we didn’t have any snow yet and it was getting close to Christmas. I knew it was close to Christmas because Elrod hauled a big tree into the Big Room and, after a lot of grunting and fumbling around plus muttered words that won’t be repeated here, got it set up in front of the fireplace. I myself was watching this performance from one of my favorite spots, namely on the top shelf of the bookcase in the corner. Books can be quite comfortable. Were you aware of that already? What do humans actually know? I’m afraid the true answer might disappoint.

  Elrod’s the handyman. Why? Because he’s a man with hands? I had no interest in exploring the question. Humans have their ways, usually noisy, and we in the cat world have ours, usually quiet. At the moment I was absolutely motionless and silent, yet still somehow the main character. Meanwhile Elrod was admiring the tree and rubbing his hands together, meaning job well done.

  Mom came into the room, stopping short when she saw the tree.

  “Elrod?”

  He turned to her. Elrod—a very big guy with a thick beard and a ponytail, a look you see a lot up here in snow country—moves kind of slow. Mom—a small woman with short, no-nonsense hair and real sharp eyes—moves kind of fast.

  “Ma’am?” he said.

  Mom blinked. Because she’d asked Elrod not to call her ma’am from the very first day he came here, and that was … who knew when? And here, so much later, he was still doing it? “It makes me feel old, Elrod,” she always said. Although she didn’t say it now. Instead she said, “The tree.”

  “Ain’t she a beauty? Sixteen feet, six inches—measured it myself.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Guess how?”

  “How what?”

  This, like a lot of human talk, was failing to hold my complete attention. I curled up next to a nice soft paperback.

  “How I did the measure. With an app on my phone!” Elrod slapped his thigh. The sound—like a gunshot at close range—knocked me clear out of the nap I was just sliding into. I eyed the worn woolen cap on Elrod’s head, the one with the Bruins logo, and had an idea. I’m partial to wool.

  “No flies on you,” Mom said, which maybe didn’t need saying at this time of year, when there were no flies anywhere, but I gave her a pass. I like Mom. She and I both have a thing for sardines. “The problem is the distance between the tree and the fireplace.”

  “Gotcha!” said Elrod, and took out his phone. “You want me to measure it?”

  Mom usually keeps her voice nice and even. You learn to look for other things, like the way her foot was starting to tap. “I’m just remembering last year, Elrod.”

  “Last year? You mean when the, um …”

  “Exactly. When the tree burst into flames.”

  Then came the sound of a tinkling bell from the front desk. The tinkling bell could mean the arrival of guests, and guests were what we had to have more of, which Mom had been saying a lot lately. She hurried out of the room and Elrod got busy.

  Maybe now is when to mention that we own the Blackberry Hill Inn—we being me, Mom, and the twins, Harmony and Bro, and me, in case I missed getting me at the top of this list. Elrod’s the handyman and Bertha’s the cook, but she’s just here in the mornings because breakfast is the only meal we serve. At one time there was also Dad, but then came a divorce for reasons I may have slept through, and now he was gone.

  Mom came into the room, accompanied by a man trailing a suitcase on rollers.

  “Elrod, this is Mr. LeMaire. He’s from Montreal, Canada.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Elrod said.

  “Uh-huh,” said Mr. LeMaire, a tall man, as tall as Elrod, but much thinner. In fact, kind of skinny, with a face that started narrow and got more so, the nose beak-like. Mom led him across the Big Room and up the broad stairs toward the guest rooms. They all have names, our guest rooms, possibly different kinds of berries or flowers, I forget which. It might even be … birds.

  Birds. Why did I have to think of birds? Because of Mr. LeMaire’s nose? That was probably it. I licked my paws for a while, trying to drive the thought of birds from my mind. Birds were the reason I didn’t go outside much anymore. Where’s the justice in that? When I catch a mouse behind the fridge, for example, all I hear is “Good job, Queenie! Way to go!” But when I catch a bird—much harder than catching a mouse, by the way, and lots more fun, especially if you nab them at the moment of takeoff!—why, then it’s all about “Bad Queenie!” and “How could you do such a thing?” Sometimes I just don’t get the credit I deserve. I licked my paws some more, even gnawed a bit, trying to gnaw birds right out of my mind. I ended up thinking about birds, birds, birds. What were those red ones? Cardinals? Couldn’t be easier to spot, so what do they expect? Once, I was out in the yard, the backyard that slopes all the way past the woodpile and the apple orchard down to Blackberry Creek, only I was much closer to the house, actually hanging out near the bird feeder, when—

  I heard a squeak coming from the front hall, the squeak of a rubber boot heel on the hardwood floor. I’m an expert at hearing squeaks you probably miss, and not only that but I can identify certain specific squeaks, the higher and squeakier the better. This particular squeak came from the heel of a green boot with red laces that belonged to Harmony. Have I mentioned her yet? She and Bro are the twins. They’re my favorite humans in the world. I like them almost as much as I like me. Well, let’s not get crazy. Bro’s name actually may not be Bro, but that’s what Harmony calls him and it caught on. I tried to remember the name he had before Bro and gave up, inste
ad uncurling myself and enjoying a nice lazy stretch. What a lovely sight that must have been, but there was no one around to see it. Not even Elrod, now on his knees and peering under the lowest branches of the tree.

  The next moment, Harmony came into the room, carrying a load of firewood and, yes, wearing her Christmas boots, the green ones with the red laces. You may think that being right all the time would get boring, but take it from me: It doesn’t.

  “Hey, Elrod,” she said. “What a nice tree!”

  Elrod, now lying facedown and way under the tree, just the lower part of his legs showing, squirmed around and said something muffled that sounded like, “Sixteen feet, six inches, Harmony! And you’ll never guess how I—”

  That was when the tree started getting tippy. I was down on the floor myself, headed toward Harmony with the idea of rubbing myself against her leg for a bit, just reminding her of me, but I’m not the type to stick around when catastrophe is in the air. Before you knew it—almost before I knew it—I’d leaped up to the top of the piano, a fine spot although not as cozy as the bookcase. How pleasant to be so quick!

  Meanwhile, Harmony—who’s pretty quick herself, in human terms—had somehow put down her load of split logs and grabbed on to a big branch of the tree, getting it back to almost steady.

  “Uh, thanks, Harmony,” Elrod said, backing out from underneath, butt first. I actually had one paw raised, all set to slink my way down to Harmony and get on with the leg-rubbing ritual, when familiar crashing and banging started up from the direction of the front door. In walked Bro, also with an armful of wood, but although far from quiet in his movements, Bro wasn’t the chief noisemaker. That would be the final member of our household, whom I suppose I’ll have to mention.

  There he was, real as real could be, and just so excited to be in the mix, careening around in his undignified way, carrying one measly split log, and a small one at that, wedged crookedly in that drooling mouth of his. He was real proud to be helping out. That weird stubby tail wagging at blur speed was the giveaway. Here’s a tip—all you ever need to know about Arthur you can tell from what that tail is up to. Forget about subtlety when it comes to Arthur. That’s true of all dogs, although many of them are much more presentable than Arthur. Maybe all of them. For example, what’s the deal with that gnarly coat of his, kind of like the old tweed jacket Elrod wears when he has to dress up? And do his ears really need to be that floppy, practically dragging on the floor? Plus don’t get me started on his nose, which takes up about half his—

  “Arthur! No! Stop!”

  That was Harmony. But too late. Anything the slightest bit unusual—like the sight of Elrod crawling out from under the tree—is enough to get Arthur going. It was all so, so predictable: Arthur’s sudden change of direction, ripping tufts of wool off Mom’s favorite rug with his clumsy claws; then his all-paws-off-the-ground-at-once sprint toward Elrod, the split log dangling out one side of his mouth; followed by a series of Arthur-type decisions, all customarily demented; and ending with the tree toppling down on Elrod, Harmony, Bro, and a pretty crystal flower vase, Mom’s favorite. But not on Arthur, who stood just outside the circle of destruction, his tail still wagging, although slower now, as though beginning to have doubts. I made a mental note concerning those tufts of rug wool, now readily available, then closed my eyes and settled into that nap, which was what I should have done from the start.

  AFTER SOME SORT OF FUSS IN THE Big Room, the details blurring quickly and then vanishing from my mind forever, I found myself in the kitchen. The kitchen was my favorite room in our whole house, or inn, or whatever it was. I’ve never been clear on that, which doesn’t worry me in the least! Why worry? Whoa! I stopped right there, just inside the kitchen, because I’d been hit—from out of nowhere!—with a strange and bothersome thought. Maybe a pretty good reason to worry would be that things might not work out the way you want. Whoa and double whoa, whatever that means. I had no idea, but it’s something Harmony says.

  Bertha, standing by the stove—she’s the cook, in case you don’t know that already—glanced over in my direction. Bertha’s big and strong and tough and loud, even kind of scary, but it was important to get along with her. Why? For a moment, I couldn’t remember. Then it hit me: Bertha’s the cook! What could be more important than getting along with the cook? Bertha just happened to be frying up some sausages. Sausages! It was the smell of sausages that had brought me here in the first place, from wherever I’d just been, possibly the Big Room.

  “Hey, you big dope,” Bertha said. “Something on your mind?”

  On my mind? No, nothing, not a thing. Well, except for sausages. I wanted one desperately! Or more than one! All of them! Please! Now! I rolled over and played dead, my only trick.

  “What makes you think you deserve a sausage?”

  I lay on my back, all paws in the air, thinking my hardest. Why did I deserve a sausage? Because I loved them! There—the answer to the easiest question I’d ever heard!

  “Know how dumb you look with that enormous tongue hanging out of your mouth?”

  Another question? Hadn’t I just answered one? I gave this new one a pass, not about to make a habit of answering every random question that came down the pike.

  “G’wan,” Bertha said. “Git.” She jabbed her big fork into a sausage, sizzling in the pan, and flicked it my way. I caught it in midair—I can catch like you wouldn’t believe, especially sausages—and hightailed it on out of there, actually twisting around to see if my tail was in fact high. And it was! Straight up and down! Ooo-ee, baby! I gobbled up that sausage—perhaps a touch on the warm side, but no one ever says old Arthur is hard to please—and raced upstairs for no reason at all, except that I felt great.

  Upstairs is where the guests stay, here at the Blackberry Hill Inn. Up the main stairs is what I mean. Up the back stairs is for us, the family: Mom, Harmony, Bro, and me. Have I left anyone out? Not that I can think of.

  It was nice and quiet upstairs, maybe not a good thing. Nice and quiet meant not many guests, and not many guests meant money problems, and money problems made Mom anxious, and that was bad. I love Mom. When she’s anxious she stops and takes a deep breath. She’d been doing that a lot lately. And also staring up at the sky and saying, “We need snow, Arthur. Think snow.” And I had! I’d thought snow my very hardest, thinking snow, snow, snow! But not a single flake came down, the sky remaining clear and blue.

  So there I was, feeling bad for Mom but great about everything else while I pitter-pattered down the hall past the guest rooms, no fresh human smell easing out from under any of the closed doors, meaning no guests. I did catch a fairly recent whiff of … how to put this? Another sort of member of the family I’d possibly left out when I was naming everybody? Maybe better that way. I forgot all about her—and her sharp claws! and her slinky ways! and her golden eyes, so mean and strange!—and headed down to the end of the hall. The last guest room door was not totally closed, and through the opening came the scent of a human male. Nothing unusual except that this particular human male smell was heavy on the earwax. Elrod’s smell has only a hint of earwax, and Bro’s none at all. Meaning this was worth a quick peek. I pushed the door open a little more and stuck my head inside.

  The room at the end of the hall was one of the nicest we had, with a king-sized bed—which I’ve lain on once or twice when no one was around, but that’s a secret—a balcony, and a view of Mount Misty. The man in the room—a stranger to me, a narrow-faced dude with a nose both big and thin at the same time, sort of like an ax blade, actually—sat at the desk. He seemed to be studying some sort of map. I knew maps. Lots of hikers and snowshoers turn up here—snow! snow! snow!—and they’ve always got their faces in maps. This one seemed different from the others I’d seen, all in pencil for one thing, plus the paper smelled kind of old, for another. Ax-Nose Man took out a red pen and made a small circle on the map before folding it up and putting it in his pocket. Then he went to the bed, where a suitcase lay open. He fis
hed through some clothes inside and pulled out … What was this? A gun? Yes. Specifically a handgun, kind of old and beat-up-looking. We get hunters here in the fall, but they carry rifles and shotguns. I’ve been out with the hunters once or twice, but it ends up being a little too exciting. But what I’m trying to get across is that we don’t see much in the way of handguns. And wasn’t hunting season over? I thought I’d heard something about that from Bertha, one of the best hunters in the state, whatever state this was, exactly. So what was this narrow-faced dude doing with a handgun? Aside from opening the chamber—which he couldn’t figure out how to do at first—and sliding coppery rounds into the holes, one by one? It’s possible that I barked at the sight, not a loud bark, just a low rumbly one, sending the message that Arthur was on the scene.

  The man spun around in my direction, real fast, maybe the fastest human move I’d ever seen, almost as quick as a ca—oops. Let’s not go there. Let’s stay with the man, who was now pointing the gun straight at me. I didn’t like that—didn’t like it so much that I forgot to be scared.

  “Stupid hound,” he said, and lowered the gun.

  Hound? Had he called me a hound? I’d heard I was a little of this and a little of that—my makeup being a subject that humans liked to discuss for some reason—but I’d never heard hound before. I decided then and there that I didn’t like this dude, and I’m the type who likes just about every human I meet. Was this a good time for biting? Not a serious bite, more of a nip at the ankles? I was still making up my mind when the dude put on a jacket, stuck the gun deep in the front pocket, and said, “Let’s go.”

  I was going somewhere with him? No way! I sat right down and found that even though I wasn’t the slightest bit scared, I seemed to have backed out of the room and into the hall. The man came out, closed the door, and stepped around me. I didn’t budge. Was I showing him a thing or two? You bet! No one messes with old Arthur. Actually I might not be that old, might have been a puppy fairly recently. I was born on a farm not far from here, and one day Bro came over for fresh eggs, and the rest is history, as humans say, which must mean there’s no point in remembering all the details. That’s my kind of history!