Day Six

I got a half-hour's grace on the 6th day of my cat ownership. Butternut waited until 4:30 to wake me up. I considered my soon to be former roommate who this morning had brought me his spider, freshly killed for the 400th time. We played fetch for a while and then when he settled down to sleep the day away, I got up to start mine. I took a shower and Butternut only stopped in briefly this morning, barely getting his fur misted. He then took his damp body off to my pillow, which he was in the process of claiming by surrounding it with a protective coating of orange hair.

After I got dressed, I walked over and petted my cat. As I was petting him, he started up his engine and purred mightily. I took a quick video of him with my phone. Pretty soon it would be all that I would have of him. I was going to miss the little bugger, but still, he deserved a better life that living on Gerty with me.

I got up and looked at his paperwork to see if they had hours. Sure enough I could drop him back off tomorrow evening during open hours. He opened an eye lazily at me when he heard the paper rustle, but the returned to his pursuit of kitten dreams. His purr eventually stuttered out as he fell deeply asleep.

The day was long and I resented having to go to the Gull. It seemed as if the restaurant was slowly eating all my time. I was there almost every day, and it was wearing thin on my nerves. There was always something to fix, something that demanded my attention. I'd found an office manager a couple of weeks ago when it became obvious that I was getting in over my head. I could fix things up fine, but do bookkeeping in such a way as to be comprehensible to auditors? Good lord, it was hard to remember to write every thing down. Really, why did the government really need to know about the take for the week? Still, I had to do it right. Bill had given me the restaurant, saying it was the closest he could come to keeping it in the family. I couldn't let him down. Having friends, unfortunately, meant having responsibilities to them. Friends could be such a pain in the ass.

Much like pets.

Margie, my new office manager, yelled at me from the second floor balcony that someone wanted to see me. The woman could do my books, but she really needed to work on her people skills. She threw me out of my own office after her second day on the job. Still, she'd given me some freedom from the Gull and I tried to be gracious with her other idiosyncrasies. She seemed to believe I was some sort of wayward child she had to keep track of while keeping me out of her skirts. It didn't help that she was old enough to be my mother, or that I'd never wanted to be in her skirts in the first place. We now had firmly divided the Gull between us. I handled deliveries, basic maintenance, and the occasional event, and she did the books, ordering, and anything that might have to be tracked for legal reasons. We were ok so long as I kept out of her office and she kept out of my way.

I went into the bar and was surprised to see Eleanor there. She had something wrapped up with a bow on it. Basing on the size and shape, it was a thin book. Eleanor smiled at me with a Cheshire cat grin. "Hello, Duke. I hear you've taken on a passenger. I brought you a housewarming present."

I tried to hide my cringe. I loved Eleanor like an aunt, really I did. Maybe the crazy aunt that embarrassed you each time you saw her, but I did care for her. The woman had seen me through rough times and was, in some part, responsible for my being here now. But her gifts? For one of my birthdays she gave me handcuffs, figuring I should have my own pair to cuff myself since by that time I'd already had several run-ins with the law. For another one she gave me the key to the handcuffs. The two birthdays were three years apart. She'd also given me a jellyfish flashlight when she found out I was going to sea. I don't know where she found this stuff, but I wish this store would close.

I smiled at Eleanor. "I'm glad to see you made it back from the conference. Did you have a good time?"

"Well, you know how it is, everyone's sober on the first day and then by the 4th the doctors are drunk and studying more about reproduction then gastrointestinal issues. Granted, no one really likes to study the gastrointestinal system, not even doctors. But still, it's a nice break." Eleanor smiled wryly back at me. "But to be honest, Duke, it was kinda boring. No quirky deaths to explain, no odd illnesses to diagnose. I'm glad to be home."

That was Eleanor for you. I don't think she wished anyone ill. But if there wasn't a mystery, she was a bit bored. Still, I could let her know that Nathan and Audrey had some unusual deaths on their hands. "Well, Audrey should be back from Boston today. I'm sure she and Nathan would be interested in what you think about a couple of deaths since you left. People have been dying in their sleep. However, I don't know who, just that they seemed young to die that way. Nathan and Audrey weren't particularly willing to share the details with me."

"Hmmm... I'll have to stop by the station and see what the reports say. Sounds interesting." She took a sip of iced tea and stared at me with the patented Doctor Stare. "You Ok there, Duke? You are looking a little peaked." Any minute now she was going to try to talk me into going to the clinic. I decided to head her off at the pass.

"I'm fine, Eleanor. The cat is getting me up at 4AM. I go to bed after midnight. This is Day six." I had to pause to do the math. "I've gotten something like 24 hours of sleep since the damn thing came on board. He's claimed my table, my sink and my pillow. He will not be staying long. Just long enough to win a bet with Nathan."

"Yes, Nathan mentioned that. None the less I thought that this was appropriate." Eleanor handed me the wrapped package and motioned for me to open it.

The bow had a small rabbit fur mouse on the end of it. As I unwrapped it I was expecting something odd. What greeted me was an orange book with smiling cats seemingly floating in air and dripping down a fountain. It was a copy of T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. I laughed. "Sorry, Eleanor, there is NOTHING practical about this cat." I then went on to describe the antics of the previous few days. She laughed and enjoyed the tales of His Furriness.

We talked for the next two hours, some about the cat, some about Haven's mysteries, and some plain old gossip about our lives and the lives of our friends. I found trouble in the form of learning that Julia Carr was coming back to town, and Eleanor wanted to plan a Welcome to Haven/Thank You/Birthday party for Audrey and was looking for ideas. It was a pleasant way to pass the time, and made me forget I was starting to resent the restaurant.

Two shifts later, I remembered that I did not like Haven or, indeed, many of its residents. I wondered what I would have to do to get away from all of these people and spend my last evening with Butternut. By the time I got home it was already into the 7th day. Our last one together. He didn't choose to answer to Cheshire, Freak, or Catzilla.