Cat Who Went Up the Creek

“In the late eighteenth century the ritualistic ending to a meal was nuts, and artists and inventors vied to design clever nutcrackers . . . But I can’t talk now. Phone me at the shop, darling!”

She left, and Cathy Hooper stepped up. “Don’t forget the preview of the reenactment tonight, Mr. Qwilleran. Eight o’clock.”

“I’ve already reserved a booth, Cathy, but thanks for the reminder.”

Qwilleran had asked Riker, “Will you and your lovely wife be my guests at a preview of the Saturday Night Brawl?”

And Arch countered, “Will you and your voracious appetite be our guests beforehand?”

No one ever declined a dinner invitation from the food editor.

The Rikers spent summers in a little yellow beach house atop a sand dune overlooking the lake. It was only a thirty-minute commute to the office, but the psychological distance equaled the hundred miles of lake they viewed from their deck.

They were sitting there with apéritifs when Qwilleran arrived, asking, “What happened to the Dunfield house?”

The casual redwood next door had been replaced by a crisp cube of white stucco and plate glass.

Riker explained, “The widow couldn’t sell it or rent it, because of the rumor that it was haunted. So she tore it down and sold the land. Vacant lake frontage is worth more than the same property with an old house on it. What do you think of the new one? Looks like an ice cube. The dune dwellers haven’t decided whether it makes us look like a slum—or we make it look ridiculous.”

“Who lives there?” Qwilleran was sure he knew the answer.

Mildred said, “A woman from Down Below. I went over to welcome her to the neighborhood, but really to satisfy my curiosity, and she was as friendly as a cold fish. All she could do was complain—about the noise of the surf and the seagulls, about people walking on the beach and staring at her house and even taking snapshots of it, about dead fish washing up. Just to be devilish, I told her not to be alarmed by green lights flashing over the lake at night; they’re only UFOs.”

Qwilleran said, “She sounds like the charmer who was staying at the Nutcracker Inn. Keep Toulouse indoors. She hates cats.”

Toulouse was lounging on the railing of the deck with the assurance of a cat who has adopted a food editor. Mildred gave him a morsel of crabmeat as she passed a plate of canapés. “Is it true,” she asked, “that household pets are going to be the theme of your next limerick contest?”

“I think so. Rhymes about pets can be fun to write—whimsical, exaggerated, nonsensical. Give me another of those crabmeat things, and I’ll show you what I mean.”

In the time it took to eat a canapé, Qwilleran produced the following: “A black-and-white stray named Toulouse / found a home in the county of Moose. / He lives on ice cream / and chicken supreme / and crabmeat and paté of goose.”

“Hit the nail on the head,” Arch said.

Dinner was served al fresco, starting with cold purée of zucchini garnished with fresh blueberries.

Arch said, “Millie throws a handful of blueberries into everything.”

“They’re good for you,” she said.

Then individual beef potpies were served, and Arch remarked, “Do you realize that Millie is descended from a lumber camp cook?”

“My great-grandfather,” she said proudly. “The loggers lived on beans and salt pork, hardtack, boiled turnips, and tea boiled with molasses.”

“What about flapjacks? I thought they ate stacks of twelve, big as a dinner plate,” Qwilleran said.

Arch said, “That sounds like the figment of a Hollywood script writer’s imagination.”

Because there was no time for a formal dessert, Mildred served coffee and a confection called a Black Walnut Bombshell. They were balls an inch in diameter: buttery, nutty, not too sweet, and tasting faintly of chocolate. She packed some for her guest to take home.

“By the way,” Qwilleran said, “did I tell you I’m invited to be guest-of-honor at an MCCC luncheon?”

“What happened?” Arch said wryly. “Did those academic types suddenly find out we have a writer who doesn’t do double negatives and dangling adverbs?”

There had been a lack of rapport between the college and the media. Most of the faculty were from Down Below, and many of them commuted.

Qwilleran explained the breakthrough: “I was interviewing Dr. and Mrs. Abernethy, and she seems to have some connection with MCCC. She invited me to the luncheon. There’ll be a speaker from Down Below, but they’ll introduce me and I’ll be expected to say something trenchant in twenty-five words or less.”

“Write a limerick,” Mildred suggested.

He said, “Do you know that last year’s winner in the limerick contest now hangs in the lobby of the Hotel Booze—enlarged and framed? ‘There was a young lady in Brrr / who always went swimming in fur. / One day, on a dare, / she swam in the bare / and that was the end of HER.’ ”

They rode to the Hotel Booze in separate vehicles, so that Qwilleran could search for column material after the performance. The route lay along the lakeshore to the town of Brrr (as in “cold”).