“Oh, um. Thanks.” I took the harnesses automatically, then stared at them.
“I can help.” Kevin snatched them from my fingers. “Come on. You and Mimsy can go in the back with Zelda. That way, Mimsy will feel safer if you sit between them. Look, I think this one’s the right size.”
Which was how I found myself cruising through the streets of Gaynor Beach with a fuzzy dog giving me the side-eye on one side, and my cat in a pink harness and tether, standing on her hind legs to look out the side window, on the other. Up front, Kevin chattered to Arthur about some tiny mouse he’d seen that he thought might be a rare pocket mouse. He knew the Latin name for that one, too. Arthur mostly nodded and hummed and didn’t say much, but the kid didn’t seem to care.
I watched the town go by, the houses getting smaller and plainer as we drove. About ten minutes later, we turned down a side street and into a wide, paved driveway. The house at the end was just one story and not large, although it had a decent-sized yard.
Arthur turned off the engine. “Home, sweet home. It’s not that great, but I own it.”
“I owned a bicycle, once,” I said. Then, in case that sounded likepity me, I added, “Looks cool. And you have somewhere to keep your sixty-three cats and dogs.”
Arthur laughed, although his face colored again. “I don’t have sixty-three.”
Kevin jumped out of the front seat and came around to let Zelda out. “Can I put her in the yard?”
“Left side,” Arthur told him. “We’ll let some of the others out later.”
As Kevin ran to the fence on the side of the house and opened a gate, I untangled Mimsy from the harness and lifted her to my shoulders. “Now what? Do you have, like, a pooper-scooper?”
“Come on in first and meet the gang,” Arthur said. “I’ll tell you what I need done and then I can get on the computer while you work.”
Kevin came sprinting back, dogless. “And I can help.”
Arthur shook his head. “You can say hi to the babies and then you need to head home. I heard your dad when he dropped you off. Back by eleven. You have homework.”
“I always do it faster than he thinks.” But when Arthur just folded his arms, the kid sighed. “Okay. Kittens first, though.”
Arthur got out the cat cage and led us to the front door, a chorus of barking rising behind the blue-painted panel. He stepped into a compact vestibule and said, “Come on in and close that door. Brace yourselves.” When the outer door shut, he hoisted the cat cage high in his arms and opened the inner one. A tide of dogs rushed in.
Well, only five once I got them sorted out. A Corgi, a tall Lab mix, a Pittie with scarred ears, a long-backed beagle-y thing, and something little and barky that was probably part Chihuahua because aren’t all tiny ankle-biter dogs Chi-somethings? They wound around our legs, sniffing shoes and whacking our shins with their wagging tails and licking at hands. The Lab thumped his paws on my chest to sniff at Mimsy and she whacked his nose with a paw, unimpressed by his size.
I pushed him away gently. “Off.”
Arthur added, “Sit!” and reluctantly, all five butts dropped to the ground. The Lab kept wagging up a storm, though, rump wiggling hard. “Wait.” The Corgi whined, but they stayed put. Arthur told Kevin, “Introduce Shane to the gang while I get this kitty set in the cat room. Then I’ll come talk about what I need done.”
Five sets of canine eyes tracked Arthur as he walked between them and off down a hall. Then they all turned to Kevin, who said, “Okay! Good job!”
Slightly less high-volume chaos resumed. Kevin stood on his toes to reach a shelf in the closet and take down a tin that turned out to be dog treats. As he fed each dog a treat, he introduced them. “The Corgi’s Shorty, because of his legs, duh. The Lab’s Eb. Used to be Ebony, but Arthur says that’s too fancy for that dog.” He rubbed the Pittie under her chin and she closed her eyes and grunted in pleasure. “She’s Mouse, for her silver-gray color, and she’s shy. The Beagle is Twain, and this little girl—” He picked up the small, ginger-colored mutt. “—is Chili.”
“Are they all Arthur’s own dogs?”
“Well, he got Ebony on purpose. The rest are rescue fails.”
“How does a rescue fail?
Kevin grinned. “That’s when you can’t manage to give them away.”
Barking suddenly rose from somewhere inside and I blinked. “He hasmoredogs?”
“Those are the new ones he’s trying to find homes for.”
“Ah.” My vision of poop-scooping expanded. This job might not be the charity it’d sounded like. “Any cats beside feral Mama?”
“Yes! Come on.” Kevin set Chili down, led me farther in, and opened the door to a narrow bedroom. “Inside, quick. Keep the dogs out and close the door. This is the kitten room.” On the floor, several kittens romped around, chasing and playing together. Kevin said, “They get bigger every time I visit.” Two of them abandoned their wrestling and pouncing to hurry over, and when he squatted and held out a hand, they batted at him and rubbed cheeks on his fingertips.
“Do they all have names too?” I was never going to keep them straight.
“Just colors.” Kevin pointed to the tip of one tiny ear where I saw a dab of bright blue. “They’re all going to other homes. I really want to take one and I like Blue best, but I also want to start a wildlife rescue when I’m old enough to drive, and a cat isn’t great with wildlife.”
