Lilian Jackson Braun - Cat 18 Who Said Cheese

If you do, your best examples will become celebrities overnight, and there's no such thing as a prominent nobody.

Having worked against odds, the writer of the "Qwill Pen" finished in time for the meeting at the newspaper office. He said goodbye to the Siamese as he usually did, telling them where he was going and when he would return. The more one talks to cats, he believed, the smarter they become. His two Mensa candidates responded, however, by raising groggy heads from their afternoon nap and giving him a brief glassy stare before falling asleep again.

He walked downtown. No one in Pickax walked, except to a vehicle in the parking lot. Qwilleran' s habit of using his legs instead of his wheels was considered a quaint eccentricity - the kind of thing one could expect of a transplant from Down Below. He walked first to Lois's Luncheonette for a piece of apple pie.

The proprietor - a buxom, bossy woman with a host of devoted customers - was taking a mid-afternoon break and chattering to coffee-drinking loiterers. She talked about her son, Lenny, who worked the evening shift on the desk at the hotel and also attended classes at the new college. She talked about his girlfriend, Anna Marie, who was enrolled in the nursing program at MCCC and also worked part-time at the hotel. Students, she said, were glad to work short hours, even though the skinflint who owned the hotel paid minimum wage without benefits.

Qwilleran, always entertained by Lois's discourses, arrived at the newspaper conference in good humor.

The Moose County Something was a broadsheet published five days a week. Originally subsidized by the K Fund, it was now operating in the black. The office building was new. The printing plant was state-of-the-art. The staff always seemed to be having a good time.

The meeting was held in the conference room. Its plain wood-paneled walls were decorated with framed tear sheets of memorable front pages in the history of American journalism: Titanic Meets a Mightier... War in Europe... Kennedy Assassinated. Staffers sat around the large teakwood conference table, drinking coffee from mugs imprinted with newspaper wit: "If you can't eat it, don't print it"... "Deadlines are made to be missed"... "A little malice aforethought is fun."

"Come on in, Qwill," the managing editor said. "Dwight isn't here yet. Since we hate to waste time, we're inventing rumors about the mystery woman."

There were six staffers around the table:

Arch Riker, the paunchy publisher and editor in chief, had been Qwilleran's lifelong friend and fellow journalist Down Below. Now he was realizing his dream of running a small-town newspaper.

Junior Goodwinter's boyish countenance and slight build belied his importance; he was not only the managing editor but a direct descendent of the founders of Pickax City. In a community 400 miles north of everywhere, that mattered a great deal.

Hixie Rice, in charge of advertising and promotion, was another refugee from Down Below, and after several years in the outback she still had a certain urbane verve and chic.

Mildred Hanstable Riker, food writer and wife of the publisher, was a plump, good-hearted native of Moose County, recently retired from teaching fine and domestic arts in the public schools.

Jill Handley, the new feature editor, was pretty and eager but not yet comfortable with her fellow staffers. She came from the Lockmaster Ledger in the neighboring county, where the inhabitants of Moose County were considered barbarians.

Wilfred Sugbury, secretary to the publisher, was a thin, wiry, sober-faced young man, intensely serious about this job. He jumped up and filled a coffee mug for Qwilleran. It was inscribed: "First we kill all the editors."

Also present, watching from the top of a file cabinet, was William Allen, a large white cat formerly associated with the Pickax Picayune.

Qwilleran nodded pleasantly to each one in turn and took a chair next to the newcomer. Jill Handley turned to him adoringly. "Oh, Mr. Qwilleran, I love your column! You're a fantastic writer!"

Sternly he replied, "You're not allowed to work for the Something unless you drink coffee, like cats, and call me Qwill."

"You have Siamese, don't you... Qwill?"

"Loosely speaking. It's more accurate to say that they have me. What prompted you to leave civilization for life in the wilderness?"

"Well, my kids wanted to go to Pickax High because you have a larger swimming pool, and my husband found a good business opportunity up here, and I wanted to write for a paper that carries columns like the "Qwill Pen." That's the honest truth!"

"Enough!" said the boss at the head of the table. "Any more of this and he'll be asking for a raise... Let's hear it for our gold-medal winner!"

Everyone applauded, and Wilfred flushed. He had come in first in the seventy-mile Labor Day Bike Race, yet no one at the newspaper knew that he even owned a bike- such was his modesty and concentration on his work.