LITMIR.BIZ

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the walnut-framed art print, I whispered into Scooter’s furry neck, “You won’t find any of these titles on the shelves here…but I bet you wish you could read ‘A Tale of Two Kitties’ or ‘Delicious Field Mice I have Known’, hummm?” Scooter wiggled in my arms, making meowing noises, until I asked him, “You need the litter-pan? Or some food?” He immediately quieted down, then turned his head to look at me expectantly, as if to say, So, where’s the food you promised me?

      Rik was right…Scooter (and probably the shy Mittens, too) was smart. The only problem was, how did Rik figure that out in such a short time?

      Once I’d brought Scooter to the back room, and opened the metal popcorn canister where I stored the cats’ dry food, I realized that he and Mittens might not be able to chew the hard nuggets, so I ran a little warm water over them, to soften them up, before setting down the bowl of food on the floor. Scooter began lapping up the watery “broth” while Mittens more cautiously crawled out from behind some boxed books, staying low to the ground as she approached the food bowl, even as she moved her head sideways to get an occasional glimpse of me—once she realized that I wasn’t going to try and grab her, she moved into place next to Scooter, and began eating. While the kittens were busy, I picked up one of the litter pans, checked to make sure that there was some water in the other dish near the kittens, then quietly shut the door behind me after flicking off the light switch.

      Placing the other litter pan near the closed door (I hoped neither Oscar or April would be confused; while they were a loving pair, I doubted they had a complete brain between them), I squidge-squidged my way down the aisles until I reached the front of the shop, then quietly told Rik, “There’s some extra food in that Necco wafers tin under the counter for the lovebirds…the kittens can sleep on the folded blanket back there. Now you’re sure they don’t rip up paper?”

      “They’ll be fine…oh, you did leave the light on for them, didn’t you?” A thread-thin worry line formed in the middle of Rik’s forehead.

      “You mean they need a night-light? But they were living in an alley—”

      “—with a street lamp nearby,” he finished my thought quickly, then added, “It’s no biggie…I can turn it on for them before I leave. I’m sure they’ll be fine in there—”

      “They’d better be…and no ripping up my boxes or books,” I warned him, as I slid into my coat (which I never did have time to take to the back room that morning), and picked up my purse from behind the counter.

      Rik waited to reply until I was halfway out the door, so I wasn’t completely sure I actually heard what I thought he said:

      “They’ve been warned about that…no ripping, just reading—”

      As I’d anticipated, Oscar and April had slept all night in the front window, a feline version of Barrett and Browning, curled into a seemingly continuous ball of white-flecked gray fur, their flanks rising and falling in sweet unison. The molasses-brown brickwork of the window frame formed a rough-hewn frame around them, and I wished I’d had that camera with me—while they didn’t seem to know a mouse from a muffin, they were a beautiful pair. But as I opened the door, and flipped around the Open/Closed door-sign, I found myself worried about that other pair of cats in the store, the ones who had to sleep with an overhead night-light.

      Hoping that Rik was right about them, I nervously opened the door to the back room then peeked around the frame. The litter pan had been used, the food was gone, and the kittens…were actually sitting at attention, as if waiting for me. The only thing out of place in the room was a Richard Scary children’s dictionary, resting on the floor near their folded blanket-bed. I knew we had more than one copy of that particular book on the children’s shelf, but I hadn’t thought that we had another one waiting to be put on on the shelf…it didn’t seem like anyone had brought in any children’s books in the last few boxes of traded books—

      “See, I told you they’d be good—”

      “God, Rik, you scared me!” My heart was still lopping wildly in my chest when I turned around to face my afternoon-time-worker. Rik tried to hide behind a bag of take-out donuts, as he said in a don’t-hit-me voice, “I thought you heard the bell…sorry.”

      “I should’ve heard it…and you brought me breakfast, too. Yes, to answer you…they were good…but where did the book come from?”

      “Oh that…I took a picture of them, last night. I stopped in to check on them, make sure they had enough food. I thought it would be funny to get one of them ‘reading’ a children’s book. I forgot to put it back—” he ducked into the room, picked up the book, and carried it back to the children’s shelf, all the while holding the white bag of donuts in his left hand, just out of my reach. Behind him, the kittens watched intently as the book was lifted off the floor, and carried away from them. They almost seemed disappointed.…

      On the way up to the counter, I snatched the donuts out of his hand, and said between glazed bits, “I thought you had classes at night?”

      “I did…I stopped here afterwards. Oh, I almost forgot—” He dug around in the large patch pockets of his jacket, and pulled out a few cans of cat food, the tiny expensive brand I usually couldn’t afford more than once a year, as the lovebirds’ Christmas treat.

      “Here’s some for the window-dressing, and the rest’s for the kittens. Work-study’s been good this year, so I thought I’d splurge. I’ll buy them some more later this week—”

      “You needn’t do that…they’ll be earning their keep eventually, I hope…or don’t they ‘do’ mice?”

      “Mice shouldn’t be a problem…long as they’re well fed. You know how a less-hungry cat is a better mouser—”

      “Is that something they teach you at the university?”

      Rik nodded as he bit into a jelly-filled donut, then said something around a mouthful of half-chewed pastry.

      “What?” I licked the sugary glaze off my fingertips as he repeated, “‘Something’ like that. I work in the labs, with the animals—”

      “Uhhh…not so early in the morning. I haven’t the stomach for hearing about lab animals—”

      “No, these aren’t the kind that die. We—I…I work with the genetics department. Uhm, Jake does, too,” he added, realizing that I’d caught slip-of-the-tongue “we” seconds earlier.

      “So…that means breeding things, like kittens, maybe?” I thought Scooter and Mittens were too tame to have come from some mall—

      “Sometimes like kittens. Mostly mice and other rodents, though. Not to dissect, or feed to snakes, though. Nothing…yucky,” he added, with a smile, then turned his attention to Oscar and April, who’d finally woken up, and took turns stretching, yawning, and kneading the bright ombré canvas beneath them, before jumping down and milling around our legs. Peeling the pull-tab covers off the food, Rik knelt down and fed the cats behind the counter, giving them a can each. Taking a cue from my worker, I picked up a couple of the small tins of food and carried them to the back room…but the kittens had already left, to sit vigil in front of the rows of children’s books along the back wall of the store.

      Directly in front of that children’s dictionary—

      “Well if you two like it so much, it’s yours,” I said, sliding it off the shelf, and using it as a tray to carry the cans of food into the back room. I did feel guilty about not buying them any cat toys, and after Rik had bought all four cats breakfast, my guilt more than doubled. The kittens happily ate out of the opened cans, and while they noisily attacked the food, I placed “their” book next to their bedding…which was softly indented in two spots, one covered with white and black fur, the other a soft ombré of brown, tan and orange.

      Glancing around the rest of the room, I didn’t see any shredded paper, nor were there any claw marks on the sides of the cardboard boxes, so I found myself saying, “If you two did come from a lab, you must be used to things

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