The Cat Who Had 14 Tales

By the end of the week Drummond Street had forgotten about the tail; there was excitement of another sort. A new row of split-level houses was being added to the subdivision, and trucks and backhoes were swarming over the site.

One afternoon when all residents under ten years of age were supervising the sewer excavations, Vernon rushed home for his third chocolate-chip cookie and said to his mother: “The Drooler’s smelling at our grass in the front. I think he found an animal down a hole.”

“Oh, heavens! I hope the moles aren’t burrowing in your father’s lawn,” Mrs. Jamison said. “He’ll have a fit.”

An hour later Vernon raced home for a can of pop. “Hey, Mom, the Drooler’s still smelling around. Gimme something to poke down the hole.”

“Don’t you dare touch your father’s lawn. I’ll go out and look at it.”

The Drooler, Mrs. Jamison agreed, was performing a strange ritual, sniffing the grass eagerly, then retreating and twitching his nose. In a few seconds he was back at the same spot, repeating the performance with evident distaste, sneezing and baring his teeth.

Vernon shooed the cat away, and Mrs. Jamison examined a crack in the soil. “Why it’s gas! I smell gas!” she cried. “I’ll phone your father. Keep everyone away from it, Vernon. If it’s a gas leak, there could be an explosion!”

Vernon ran back to the crowd around the backhoes. “Hey, I found a gas leak!” he said. “The whole street’s gonna blow up. My mother’s calling the cops.”

Within a matter of minutes two emergency trucks rumbled into Drummond Street, and a service crew descended on the Jamisons’ front lawn with testing apparatus and excavating equipment. Two men hurried from house to house, shutting off the gas lines.

Vernon, bounding with excitement, followed one of the men on his rounds. “Hey, I’m the one that found the gas leak,” he shouted, as he clung to the man’s jacket.

“You’re a hero,” the man said, smiling stiffly and shaking free of Vernon’s clutch. “You probably saved the whole neighborhood from some bad trouble.”

“I’m a hero!” Vernon proclaimed some minutes later when his father came home.

Mr. Jamison only groaned. “They’ve wrecked my lawn! There won’t be two blades of grass left.”

“I had a cake in the oven, and it’s ruined,” his wife complained as she paced the floor, trying to quiet the baby, whose feeding was overdue.

The doorbell rang, and there on the front step stood a young woman with a tape recorder. Behind her was a man with a camera.

“We’re from the Daily Times,” she said. “I understand your little boy saved the neighborhood from a disaster.”

“Hey, that’s me!” yelled Vernon. “I’m a hero!” and he grabbed the reporter’s wrist.

“Vernon!” his father snapped. “Keep your hands off the lady.”

“We’d like to take his picture,” she said.

“I don’t think I want my son’s picture in the paper,” Mr. Jamison said. “He would be—”

“Yeh yeh yeh, I want my picture in the paper,” Vernon squealed. He tugged at the camera. “Take my picture!”

“Down, Junior,” said the photographer.

“Honey,” Mrs. Jamison whispered to her husband, “let them take his picture. It won’t do any harm.” So the entire family trooped to the hill of earth that had once been a lawn, Vernon clinging to the photographer’s arm and Mrs. Jamison jiggling the fretful baby and talking to the woman from the newspaper.

“Exactly how did it happen?” the reporter asked.

“Well,” said Mrs. Jamison, “Vernon came running in and said the Drooler was sniffing at our front lawn.”

“Who was sniffing?”

“The Drooler. He’s just a cat that hangs around . . . . See! There he is under the junipers. He’s a mess, but he loves the children.”

“He’s got a tail like a sheep.”

“That’s a weird story,” said Vernon’s mother, rolling her eyes. “A couple of weeks ago my son pulled the cat’s tail off.”

“Really? Do they come off easily?”

“The Drooler’s did. He didn’t seem to mind.”

“And what happened today?”

“Well, the Drooler was sniffing a crack in the ground, so I investigated and smelled gas—that’s all.”

The photographer, meanwhile, had pried Vernon loose from his camera and was posing the boy in front of the junipers. “Now stoop down,” he said, “as if you were examining the place where you smelled gas.”

“Wait a minute,” said Mrs. Jamison. “Let me comb his hair and put him in a clean shirt. It won’t take a second.”

The photographer drew an impatient breath and looked up at the sky, and the reporter told him in a low voice: “It wasn’t the kid who found the leak. It was the cat.”

“That’s even better. Let’s shoot the cat.” He aimed the camera at the Drooler and clicked off a whole roll of film.

When Vernon reappeared with damp hair and clean shirt, the photographer said: “Now stand where I told you and hold your cat so he’s facing the camera.”

“He’s not my cat!” shouted Vernon. “I don’t want my picture taken with that sloppy old Drooler.”

“Sure you do,” said the man. “He’s a celebrity. He smelled gas and saved the whole neighborhood.”