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Weddings, as a rule, are not really my cup of tea. I mean, have you ever seen a cat going through the ordeal of standing in front of a bunch of other cats dressed like a clown and speaking words that are designed to attract ridicule and suppressed snickers? No. And for a good reason, too. Cats, as we all know, are a lot smarter than humans. Which is why I’ll never marry. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t begrudge humans the capacity or the inclination to go through this strange torment. In fact I admire them. Much like one admires a lion tamer sticking their head into a lion’s maw. One thinks the whole thing is absolute folly and obviously ill-advised, but there’s admiration, too. And so I didn’t begrudge Odelia going through the ordeal now, as she stood in front of a man dressed like Elvis Presley, complete with greasy coif, sequined shirt and pants, and sunglasses that obscured the upper half of his face and part of the lower half as well.

I know this is all part of the deal when you go to Las Vegas to get married. And I also know that this solution was one born not from a passion for the music of The King, but out of sheer necessity. But still it was cause for a few gulps of surprise to say the least. And I think I can speak for the entire Poole family when I say that this was the last thing they had expected when Odelia and Chase announced their intention to tie the knot.

Just look at Gran. Usually when a beloved granddaughter is getting married a grandmother’s face lights up with sheer delight. This particular grandmother wasn’t smiling, though. She was frowning darkly. Now it may well be that Gran’s face has naturally set itself into this expression through sheer overuse, but still. It’s one thing to be able to snap a lot of shots and maybe even a video of your granddaughter and her future beau walking down an aisle that looks a little like the one Prince Harry and Meghan Markle passed down when they got married. But quite another when your darling granddaughter is standing before an Elvis impersonator. No bragging rights, if you see what I mean, which probably explained why neither Gran nor Odelia’s mom Marge were holding up their phones and covering the ceremony from every angle and posting the resultant audio-visual material on their Facebook or Instagram pages.

Lucky for Odelia there was still Scarlett, who was doing exactly that, though whether she was doing this as a favor to her best friend’s grandkid or so she could make fun of the whole thing later on is hard to say with certainty, though I suspected the latter.

“Max?”

“Mh?”

“Why is Odelia dressed in white and Chase in black? Is he in mourning?”

“No, Dooley,” I said. “White is traditionally the color of a bride’s wedding dress, and black the color of the groom’s tuxedo.”

It had cost Chase some effort to find a tux at such short notice. He had, of course, anticipated getting married in Hampton Cove, and the whole thing had been thusly arranged, but when the bride and groom had announced, at the last minute, through an article in the Hampton Cove Gazette, that the wedding was off, the tux rental company contracted to supply Chase with the necessary vestimentary accouterments had naturally assumed that since the wedding was off, so were the tuxedo arrangements, and had consequently promised Chase’s nice penguin suit to some other lucky future groom.

The problem was that Chase had found out about this perfect example of crossed wires the night before the wedding party was scheduled to fly to Vegas. Fortunately Uncle Alec still had an old tux hanging in his closet. It was a couple of sizes too large for Odelia’s burly cop, but at least it was better than having to wear jeans and a check shirt.

Likewise, Odelia had had to scramble to find something to wear, as the dressmaker who’d been hired to whip up her precious matrimonial threads was so upset that her wedding invitation had been suddenly revoked that she’d refused to make good on her promise to have the dress ready in time and had declared that she was now on strike.

As a consequence Odelia was forced to dress in her mom’s old wedding dress, which in her case was not such a bad thing, as she and Marge were pretty much the same size.

“I think Odelia looks lovely,” said Brutus, gazing in the direction of the small stage.

“Yeah, I think I understand now why they call it the most beautiful day in a girl’s life,” said Harriet with a coy glance at Brutus. “It really is a beautiful day, isn’t it, snuggle bug?”

Brutus gave his mate for life a startled stare, then cut a look of sheer panic in my direction. I motioned for him to stay calm. Unfortunately the wedding had a powerful effect on the prissy white Persian, and even as we were being flown out to Vegas she hadn’t stopped dropping obvious hints about organizing a similar wedding for herself.

“Don’t you think it’s a beautiful day, smoochie poo?” she now asked.

“Oh, sure,” said Brutus, a haunted look having appeared in his eyes.