Howie Plans a Hot Date

Howie

LISTEN TO THIS BONUS SCENE

"I'm not telling you where we're going."

Ella gives me the look she reserves for patients who insist they're fine while actively bleeding. "Bernard."

"It was Mayhem's idea. That's all you're getting."

She pulls her coat tighter and falls into step beside me along Penn Ave, close enough that her shoulder bumps my arm every few strides. It's a gray April Saturday, the kind Pittsburgh specializes in, and her breath makes small clouds in the cold air. No heat wave here.

"How is he, anyway?" she asks. “Mayhem?”

"Not sure," I admit. "He's fine on the ice. But he's obviously got something going on."

"Something or someone?"

I glance at her. She's so damn perceptive. "Why do you say that?"

"Because you said it like you suspect something.”

I shrug, watching the sidewalk. "I think he might be seeing someone from the Uprising." I pause, wondering how much Ella knows about the women’s pro team in Pittsburgh. "Someone named BB."

Ella's head swivels toward me. "Briar Benson? The Olympic gold medalist?"

"You know her?"

"I know of her. She's incredible." She considers this for a moment. "Good for him."

"Yeah." I steer her left. "I think."

Ella spots the sign before I can do the reveal. A small painted cat peers down from above a green door, and below it: Café Meow — Coffee, Pastries, and Adoptable Friends.

Ella stops walking and grabs my arm. “Bernard. Did Mayhem tell you to bring me to a cat café?”

"He said, and I quote, the cat has to choose her. He was very serious about it."

She stares at me for another second, and then her face wobbles as she tries to hold back a smile. "I love that grumpy giant,” she says. "He's my favorite person on your team."

"I'm on your team, too."

"You're not my favorite." She pushes through the green door, giggling.

Inside, it's warm and smells like coffee. I was worried it would be stinky from all the cats. A woman at the counter checks us in, explains the rules — no grabbing, let them come to you, wash your hands before and after — and waves us toward a low room lined with cat trees and cushioned shelves. A half dozen cats occupy various surfaces with the sovereign indifference of creatures who have never once worried about anything.

We get our coffees and find a loveseat in the corner. Ella wraps both hands around her mug and alternates staring at me and glancing around the room, beaming.

"Okay," she says quietly. "Which one?"

"You don't pick. Remember? They pick."

"Bernard, I’ve never had a pet. How will I know if one—” A large, orange tabby jumps onto the cushion beside her, sniffs her sleeve, and walks directly across her lap to get to me, where it sits down, turns its back to her, and begins to clean its ear.

Ella watches this. "He chose you."

"He's not choosing anyone. He's just looking for a heater.”

For the next twenty minutes, we are systematically ignored. Cats approach, investigate my shoelaces or Ella's coat buttons, and wander off. One sits on the armrest, allows Ella to pet it for thirty seconds, and then hisses and leaves.

"They hate me," she says.

"They don't hate you. They're cats."

"Mayhem said—"

"Mayhem has a cat. He's an authority. Just wait." This is the best date of my life. I’m with my best girl, watching her, waiting to get her a pet to keep her company when I can’t be there.

She's mid-sip of her drink when we hear a sound from somewhere near the back, a sound less like a meow and more like a small, rusty gate being opened by someone who has never oiled a hinge. It is aggressive, it is confident, and it sends every cat in the room skittering off their perches like a starter pistol went off.

We both look. 

An aggressively ugly cat picks his way through the suddenly empty room as if he owns it. He’s small and gray, with only one eye, which is yellow and seems suspicious. His fur sticks up in patches, and his tongue protrudes at a fixed angle. I whisper to Ella. “I think Mayhem said that tongue thing is called a bleb.”

She nods as the cat approaches her, sits down, and looks up at her with his one eye. Then he licks her hand with that blebby tongue.

Ella lowers her mug very slowly. "Oh," she says.

"Yeah."

"He's horrible."

"He really is."

"He looks like a used dish sponge."

"He looks like Alder Stag's dog Gordie if Gordie were a cat and also had a stroke."

She snorts coffee. The cat, undisturbed, licks her hand again, then headbutts her wrist hard enough that her coffee sloshes.

"He's perfect," she says, and her voice has gone soft in a way I recognize — the same way it goes when she's with a scared patient, when she's handling something that needs careful hands. She reaches down and scratches behind his ears, and he makes the gate sound again, louder, which I slowly realize is purring.

"You sure?" I ask. "Because we can keep looking. There are other—"

"He chose me." She looks up. "Mayhem's rules."

I can't argue with that. I also don't want to. “I think they’re more like cat rules that Mayhem interprets.”

I flag down a staff member and ask about the adoption process, and when she quotes me the fee, I hand over my card and add three zeros to the receipt amount because this cat clearly fought his way through something to get here, and if Ella wants him, he goes home like a king.

The cafe staff seems thrilled for this scraggly guy and directs us toward a store called Petagogy, where we can apparently get gourmet food and a couture wardrobe for our—for Ella’s new beastie.

The Petagogy crew supports Ella in choosing navy, green, and argyle sweaters, as if the cat were a stodgy old writing professor. 

We leave with a carrier, a bed, a scratcher, the sweaters, and a bag of food that sounds pretty much like what Rookie eats.

In the passenger seat, Ella opens the carrier door and lets him stick his head out. He surveys the interior of my car with his one yellow eye, tongue out, profoundly unimpressed.

"Marc-Andre Purry," she tells him.

He blinks.

"It's a good name," I say.

"It's a great name." She scratches his chin, and he makes the gate sound. "He looks like a Marc-Andre."

I definitely disagree, but I’m not saying that to her. Not where the cat can hear. 

I pull out of the parking spot and reach across the console and take her hand. Her fingers thread through mine without looking.

"Thank you," she says. "For the surprise."

"Thank Mayhem."

"I'll send him a gift basket." She pauses. “Do you think his kitty wants to hang out with Marc-Andre? Should we have a party?”

“A pawty,” I suggest. And I love the promise of that.

Want to learn more about Mayhem’s cat, and Mayhem and BB? Grab Playing it Safe to fall in love with all of them.