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“So Harriet wants to jump Max’s bones and Dooley has lost his marbles and is about to turn rabid. Anything else I should know about?” he asked, shaking his head.

“I’m afraid there is, Brutus. Have you seen the look on Max’s face?”

He had. The otherwise tame feline looked pissed off.“He looks… angry.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” said Milo. “Max has just gotten the results back from that test.”

“What test?”

“The test Odelia had Vena run on him.”

“Oh.” He didn’t know nothing about no test but wasn’t prepared to admit it. Sometimes stuff happened around here that nobody bothered to tell him about. Probably because he was the last acquisition—the last one to join Odelia’s merry band of pets. With the exception of Milo, of course, but then he wasn’t a fixture but a drifter passing through.

“I’m afraid the results of the test were conclusive.”

“What did the results say?”

Milo took a deep breath.“Max is your brother, Brutus.”

“What?!”

“I’m afraid so. The test doesn’t lie. And not only that, Harriet is your aunt.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me? How did this happen?”

Milo placed a paw on Brutus’s shoulder. “And—are you ready for this?”

“Ready for what?” What could be worse than what this cat had already told him?

“Dooley… is your son.”

From the shock, Brutus sank through his paws and dropped heavily onto the floor. For a moment, he merely stared mutely before him, then he finally managed to drag his head up and say,“Tell me all, Milo. Don’t hold anything back.”

And Milo did, and happily so.“See, the thing is that when your and Max’s mother was very young, she had an affair with Harriet’s brother, which resulted in the litter that contained you and which was subsequently rejected by the cat your mother had been seeing before the affair. Your mother went on to have Max, who endedup growing up in a warm nest, while you, the illegitimate spawn of a doomed affair, were rejected and left to die.”

“I was left to die?” asked Brutus, dazed. This was the first he ever heard of this.

“You grew up without a mother, without a father, unloved, unwanted, and forced to fend for yourself on the mean streets of New York, where a cat’s life is worth nothing.”

Odd. He couldn’t remember these mean streets. He liked the story, though. It held a strange kind of fascination. Almost like the soap operas Granny liked to watch. “Go on.”

“You became strong—because you had to be strong to survive. You became… Brutus.”

“You mean I wasn’t always Brutus?”

“Your mother christened you Whiskers.”

Ugh.“What a dumbass name.”

“Right? You’re a self-made cat, Brutus. You even adopted a new name. To better indicate the kind of cat you’d become. Tough. Butch. A real cat’s cat. Top of the heap.”

He liked this story better and better. He was tough. And he was a cat’s cat. The only thing he didn’t like was the part about him being Dooley’s dad. He watched as Dooley sniffed his own poop now and shook his head. No way was he that sad dude’s dad. Milo must have sensed his discomfort, for he said, “If it’s any consolation, Dooley’s mother passed on a long time ago, Brutus.” He quickly crossed himself. “May she rest in peace.”

“Who was she?”

“Oh, just some bimbo you met on those mean streets of New York. You wouldn’t remember her. Just one of the many, many—many—notches on your collar.”

It was true. He’d had a few conquests in his time—and Milo was right. He didn’t remember any cat he ever met and knocked up on those mean streets—he didn’t even remember those mean streets. Or New York. “So how did Dooley end up in Hampton Cove?”

“That’s a very interesting story.”

But the story would have to wait for another time, for at that exact moment Harriet suddenly made a pass at Max and that was something Brutus could not allow to happen!

Chapter 18

I’d been brooding for the longest time, and by the time I reached the good old homestead again, my mood had plummeted to the darkest depths of the feline mind. Which is why the scene as I encountered it upon my return didn’t strike me as odd at first.

The fact that Dooley was chomping down pawfuls of Cat Snax was a little weird, especially since he and I had an understanding: he knew how much I loved Cat Snax, and how I considered them a special treat, only to be devoured at the end of the day, and only in small portions. The fact that he’d eaten all of them and must have induced Gran to open up another packet and had scarfed that down, too, irked me a little. No, make that a lot.

But since I wasn’t on speaking terms with Dooley I found myself a little hamstrung. I made a mental note to tell Odelia later on, though. No more Cat Snax for Dooley.