“You look ridiculous.” I eye the bulge in my brother’s hoodie.
“Me?” Chase laughs, causing the lump to hiss. “What about you?”
“Hmmm.” I swipe the lint roller down the arm of my suit jacket, the sticky paper collecting the various cat hair that’s accumulated since we entered my new local hell– Catastrophy.
My nose tickles from the various colors of cat hair that still cling to my wool gabardine. My suits will never be the same now that Mary has discovered the cat café that resides just one block down from our house.
“Uncle Chase?” Mary, wearing a cat-eared headband instead of her normal tiara in deference to our location, sits on the floor a few feet away waving a collection of feathers in front of a hoard of cats.
Chase makes another attempt to uncover his anti-social cat from the bright yellow cat-carrier hoodie. I’m almost certain Bell bought for him it for Valentine’s Day as a joke, and yet over the past four month’s he’s been living in it. “Yes, munchkin?” He unzips the front pouch of his hoodie only to dodge an outstretched claw to the face.
Mary looks at Mike’s retracting limb, pouting. “Doesn’t Prince Michael want to play?”
Never wanting to tell his niece no, Chase attempts another uncovering. “Come on, buddy.” He reaches a hand into the front of his sweatshirt, and the lump moves lower. “You’re embarrassing your—” Chase freezes, his eyes going round.
I have a feeling Prince Michael just pounced on the royal jewels.
“Look, Mary.” I point to King Richard, the far superior feline I bought for Mary, who is as charismatic as Mike is cantankerous. “King Richard is climbing the tree again.”
“Oh!” Mary scrambles to her feet to help her four-month-old kitten up the cat tree across the cafe. And not a standard beige carpeted cat tree, but one made to look like a real tree—wood trunk and plastic leaves attached to the far wall.
My phone dings and I draw my eyes away from Mary, helping King Richard do battle with gravity, to check my inbox.
Reading the latest information from Detective Mason solidifies the plan I’d been forming since Mary settled into her new school and ended up finishing the school year at the top of her class.
I slide my phone back into my inner jacket pocket while my brother tries to collect himself and what probably remains of his manhood. “You’ll be in Texas next month, correct?”
As if not hearing me, Chase opens the front hoodie pouch in one long, fast zip and unveils the grotesque sack of skin and bones. Mike hisses, but my brother acts fast, lifting and depositing the demon cat onto the floor, in the middle of all the other happy, cuddly and furry kittens.
Chase’s cat eyes him over the balls of fluff, sending a chill down my spine. I’d sleep with one eye open tonight if I was my brother.
“Don’t you look at me like that.” Chase scolding his pet draws the attention of other cat enthusiasts. He points at the emaciated looking beast. “One more hiss and I’m telling mommy on you.”
As if he understands, Mike lifts his head and saunters lazily over to the cat tree. In one leap, he passes King Richard and continues climbing to the top branch, where he stares out at Chase from behind faux foliage.
Like a shrunken, bald lion planning his next attack.
I scoff at my brother shifting uncomfortably in his chair. “Are you finished being manipulated and threatened by a cat?”
“Hmm?” Chase drags his gaze away from the cat tree. “Oh, yes. Sorry. What did you ask me?”
I fight the urge to pinch the bridge of my nose. “Texas. Are you and Bell going next month?”
He nods. “Yeah.” His eyes cut to the tree and back. “We leave in three weeks. Why?”
“My family and I will be joining you.”
“Me too?” Mary bounds over, King Richard cradled in her arms.
I reach out and unhook a strand of hair from around the cat ear of her headband. “You are my family, aren’t you?”
Mary’s face lights up, and I find myself blinking more rapidly than I had against the floating cloud of cat dander.
Clearing my throat, I drop my hand to the furry bundle in her arms. “We’ll be going to Houston.”
Mary’s small jaw drops. “Where NASA is?”
“Yes.” I lean back to brush more cat hair from my trousers, only to have King Richard jump into my lap. “We’ll make sure to go to NASA while we’re there.”
“Yay!” Mary jumps up and down, her custom-made converse with a rhinestone NASA patch—just like the one Mary saw astronaut Dr. Jackie Darling Lee wearing in a recent interview– squeaking on the tile floor.
Kittens scatter and Mary freezes, before picking up another cat toy and trying to round them up again like a miniature cat herder.
Chase laughs at his niece before turning to me. “Not that I’m complaining, but why the sudden desire to go to Texas?”
I rest a hand on King Richard’s back. My version of petting. “I recently discov—
“We’re here!” The café door jingles as Bell enters.
A blur of beige shoots through the air and Chase instinctively curls into himself to protect his previously damaged goods.
He lets out a long sigh of relief when Mike lands at Bell’s feet.
My wife walks in behind her.
I feel the skin crinkle around my eyes as I smile. I’ve been doing that more often since Alice became my wife just a few weeks ago. For real, this time. And soon, once Henry, my now super devoted lawyer, will have the paperwork finished on Mary’s adoption papers.
Then my family will be complete.
Well, almost. The weight of my phone lays heavy against my chest, as does the information Detective Mason emailed.
“Hey, babe.” Nether regions safe, Chase stands and intercepts Bell as she nears. “Guess what?” He kisses her cheek. “T-money says he and the girls are—”
“We’re going to meet astronauts!” Mary shouts, hugging Alice around the waist of her Missoni shift dress.
Mother slides in behind Alice, shuffling forward in her Chanel flats so as to not squash any rogue kittens. “Astronauts?”
“Yes.” Mary skips back to me, picking up King Richard before hopping onto my lap. “Isn’t that right, dad?”
My throat tightens, and I can only nod in response.
The poignancy of the moment is lost on my brother, seeing as he plunks down beside me, his sweatshirt pouch flopping open.
“We’re really going to see the astronauts?” Alice picks her way through the gaggle of kittens, taking the seat on my other side. “What brought this on?”
Squinting through the cat dander at my family, a lot more whole than it had been just a year earlier, I can’t help but notice the empty space still remaining.
Wrapping my arms around Mary, I lean toward Alice and press a kiss to her temple.
Bell hums “Blue Hawaii” while holding Mike Hunt. Chase smirks like a hormone-addled teenager and Mother sighs… then sneezes.
“Houston is where Liz is.” I tilt my chin down to Mary. “We’re going to go meet your other Aunt.”