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Wilkins, who’d been practicing his thousand-yard stare through the front window, immediately sprang to life. Like the man of action that he was, he was off and running in seconds flat. And of course cats being the curious creatures that we are, we were right behind him.

Wilkins got there first, of course, but we only trailed him by milliseconds—if you didn’t know, cats are fast, if they choose to be. The sight that met our eyes was a horrifying one: straight out of a scary movie, in fact. Big John was there, just having woken up, his shaggy blond hair even shaggier than usual, with next to him Janine, who looked absolutely perfect, except for the expression of sheer disgust on her face.

Opal had also hurried up the stairs, and was now standing in the room, along with Odelia and Chase, providing their guests with an appropriate audience.

And there, smack dab in the middle of Janine’s pillow, it lay: a perfectly wrought piece of poo.

“How ghastly!” said Opal, and darted an anxious look at Prunella.

“How inappropriate!” said Big John, and frowned at Little John.

“How nice and round,” said Dooley, and gave me a look of admiration.

“Hey, it wasn’t me,” I said.

“Me, neither,” said Prunella.

“And it wasn’t me!” said Little John.

“Or me,” said Little Janine, admiring the specimen.

“It stinks!” Janine cried in dismay. “The smell woke me up!”

“Oh, dear,” Odelia muttered.

And of course, since nothing ever gets past her, Grace chose that moment to start wailing, drowning out all other sound.

“Who put that there!” Big John demanded, raising his voice over the hubbub.

Odelia had hurried off to see what was troubling Grace, so Chase was left to make the assumptions. He walked up to the offending piece of poo and bent over it to take a sniff.“It smells like poo,” he finally decided.

“You can tell he’s a detective,” said Dooley happily.

“Ofcourse it smells like poo!” cried Janine. “Itis poo! What I want to know is who put it on my pillow!” Her eyes suddenly widened. “Oh, yuck! I probably slept in it! John! Is it in my hair! Please tell me it’s not in my hair!”

John subjected his wife’s hair to a closer scrutiny and finally shook his head. “It isnot in your hair,” he solemnly declared, like the true statesman that he was.

“Thank God. I can’t do an Opal interview with poop hair.”

“Better wash it,” Opal suggested. “Just to make sure.”

“I don’t know why,” said Harriet. “It’s not as if smell transmits through the television. As long as she looks good it doesn’t matter if she smells bad.”

She was smirking, I saw, and so was Brutus.

“You did this, didn’t you?” I said. “Either you or Brutus.”

“Or why not both?” Brutus quipped, visibly satisfied with himself.

And sure enough, suddenly Janine started screaming again and pointing a finger at her husband.“Your hair!” she bellowed. “It’s in your hair.”

And as all those present transferred their attention to the—present or former, the jury was still out on that one—Prime Minister of England, we saw that a piece of poo dangled from his unruly mop, right in front of his nose. He studied it now, looking cross-eyed for a moment, then seemed to sag somewhat. “Oh, snap.”

CHAPTER 28

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The unusual demarche of Brutus and Harriet was cause for a heated discussion outside, amongst our momentarily extended pet family.

“Why would you poop on my human’s pillow?!” Little Janine demanded.

“And let’s not forget about my human!” said Little John.

“Your human is my human and vice versa, John,” said Little Janine.

“Oh, right, of course,” said Little John. “So why would you poop on our humans’ pillows!” he rectified his earlier statement.

Harriet looked taken aback by this sudden attack. Then she extended a paw in my direction.“Because Max told us to!”

I did a double-take.“What? I did no such thing!”

“Yes, you did. You told us to find a way to get rid of the Boggles. And so we devised a plan to get rid of the Boggles.”

Little Janine and Little Janine now turned their ire on me.“I’m disappointed in you, Max,” said Little Janine.

“I’m also disappointed in you, Max,” said Little John.

“But I didn’t say anything about pooping on our guests’ pillows!”

“It was me,” said Prunella, now stepping to the fore. “I told them to do it.”

The two dogs’ eyes went wide. “You!” Little Janine cried. “But why?!”

“Yes, why is what I’m also wondering,” Little John chimed in.

“Because I could tell that Max and his friends weren’t happy that you guys moved in. And so I told them how I once managed to get rid of one of Opal’s unwanted guests by depositing a token of my lack of appreciation on his pillow. I got the idea fromThe Godfather,” she explained. “But since I couldn’t get hold of a horse’s head on such short notice I decided to get creative and say it with poo.”

Now Little Janine turned back to me.“You aren’t happy that we’re here?”

I regarded her a little shamefacedly.“I told you last night that you guys were being a little obnoxious, didn’t I? Treating us like serfs.”

“Yes, like the surfers from Downey Abbey,” Dooley confirmed.