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the bars of the crate again. “What did you think of that guy Charles, Bubby?”
    Jay rocked his head to the side and slapped the bottom of the crate with his paw. It was probably a comment on sitting in front of Tom and Drake’s house, but I chose my own interpretation.
    â€œYeah, me neither.” The memory of Charles grabbing that grocery bag and reaching toward the kittens made the Singha bubble in my stomach, and I forced myself to think of other things. The look on Hutchinson’s face when he saw the kittens was a good counter balance. When we got the little family back to Alberta’s house and set up in the spare bedroom, where they would have privacy from the dogs, Hutchinson had told us that he’d never seen newborn anythings before. He hadn’t known they would be so small. I think he’d still be there gazing at them if he hadn’t gotten another call. I hit Goldie’s quick-dial number and issued the invitation.
    â€œOh, lovely! I’ve just baked scones. New recipe.” Goldie was always trying new flavorings, usually edibles from her own garden, in her baked goods. “You can be my guinea pigs.”
    The back hatch of the van beeped and opened and Tom let Drake into his crate, where his Labrador tail whammed the side like a sledgehammer. Jay’s nub was too short for whacking things, but he made up for it by bouncing and wiggling. They’d be wild men when we got them home, I thought.
    â€œAll set. Why don’t you call Goldie?”
    â€œDone. We need to stop for milk if you want hot chocolate.”
    â€œDone.”
    Of course it was. Tom’s kitchen was always well-stocked and much tidier than mine. But then he liked to cook.
    â€œI’ve been thinking about that oaf Rasmussen,” I said. “I wonder if he’s the one who wants to put in a new development by the pond next to Alberta’s house.”
    â€œSeems likely,” said Tom. “The development that has the environmental students up in arms is somewhere southeast of town.”
    â€œHe’s quite a guy,” I said. “Alberta said he’s the one who has riled up a bunch of their neighbors about the TNR program.”
    â€œThe what?” Tom glanced at me.
    â€œYou know. Trap, neuter, release. The feral cats.”
    â€œOkay.”
    Tom is a cat-person-in-progress. In fact, my Leo is the first cat he’s ever really gotten to know, but since he met the orange guy, he’s been smitten. He didn’t seem to know squat about programs that work with feral and free-ranging cats, though, much less the politics surrounding them.
    He asked, “Alberta is doing this? Catching cats and having them neutered?”
    â€œYes. Apparently they have quite a little colony hanging around the club house at the golf course out there where she lives.”
    â€œAnd then she finds them homes, right? How can anyone ob—”
    â€œSome of them. Some of them don’t want to be anybody’s pet, though.” I told Tom about a stray cat my mother had tried to bring in when I was a kid. “She had her spayed, and that night the cat practically took down the walls in the bathroom where Mom put her to recover. She screamed like a banshee, and tried to dig her way out the door.”
    â€œSo what did you do?”
    â€œMe? I cried. Mom and Dad decided the cat would be better off outside where she didn’t feel trapped. She’d been holing up under the back porch, so Dad put a box and blanket under there to keep her warm, and my mom cleared a path and sort of guided her to the door while Bill and I watched from the dining room.”
    â€œI can’t picture you cowering in the dining room.”
    â€œI was really upset.”
    â€œAfraid of the cat?”
    I snorted. “No! Afraid she’d hurt herself.” I started to laugh. “Speak ing of hot chocolate, Bill and I both needed hot chocolate therapy after things quieted