Murder and a Song (A Pattie Lansbury Cat Cozy Mystery Series Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

years ago from a
policeman friend of her son’s.  This
friend had come from a nearby town where they had a bit of a problem.  They had a special precinct where they
trained police Alsatians for the whole of Yorkshire: sniffer dogs to detect
drugs and explosives.  Pattie had joked
that they should borrow her cat Jasper, who could ‘smell’ when someone was lying,
to give them some extra training.  Her
visitor hadn’t believed her, of course (more fool him), but he’d said, on the
topic of cats, perhaps he could help her? 
For a long time, a stray cat had been wandering into their dog compound
and eating their food and distracting them from their training.  Curiously, the cat wasn’t the least bit
afraid of the dogs, and the dogs didn’t mind the cat either.  It was as though the cat thought it was a dog
itself.

                Recently
however, the precinct had taken on a wider catchment area and inherited another
dozen dogs.  These were far less tolerant
of a strange animal in their midst, and the cat was causing chaos.  Maybe Pattie was the perfect person to take
the moggy off their hands?

                Pattie
had obliged, and was delighted to see the smart-looking, silvery tom jump out
of the carrier that D.C. Downey had brought him in.  The people at the station had named him
‘Tyson’, for his fearless attitude, and he responded to the name.

                That
wasn’t all.  Tyson seemed as well trained
as any Alsatian: Pattie found that he was incredibly good at sniffing out
treats.  Pattie occasionally secreted cat
treats around the house to keep the cats entertained.  She eventually had to keep Tyson locked in
the bedroom with a bowl of kitten milk to give the others a sporting chance at
getting there first, otherwise he would dash around the house and snap up every
one of them inside of two minutes.  It
transpired that Tyson was a first rate tracker.

                By
the time Pattie had finished her tea and eaten a Kit Kat, she heard the
familiar thud of Tyson coming into the house from the upstairs window.  He usually kept himself to himself, and
abhorred the company of other cats, so made his entrance and exit via the
discreet opening above the fence.  Pattie
went upstairs to greet and feed him. 
Once he’d devoured his small meal, she gave him half an hour to become
interested in something other than sleeping, then offered him O’Malley’s toy,
which she’d gotten from Elaine MacGowan.  Tyson sniffed it, then recoiled, repulsed by
the smell of another cat.  Pattie fed him
a crunchy treat, which he wolfed down. 
Then she offered him the toy again.

                She
had worked out the best way to make use of his skills a while ago.  It had taken over two years of
experimentation, but now she knew how to persuade Tyson to track with his
advanced nose.  A cat’s sense of smell
was only a fraction of that of a dog’s – still fourteen times that of a human –
but Tyson was an exceptional case. 

                She
had never tried an experiment on this scale though.  If a cat could smell something from miles
away, then perhaps this would work…

                Pattie
rattled the box of cat treats.  Tyson
turned his silver face to her expectantly. 
When she proffered the cat toy instead and opened the window, Tyson gave
her one last hopefully look, then leaped outside.

                Excited,
Pattie dashed downstairs, put on her boots, and scoured the front lawn for Tyson’s
long, stripy body.  There he was!  She scampered after him, across the garden
and onto the street.  Tyson trotted casually
down Shepherd’s Street with his nose to the ground, waited patiently at the
street corner, then safely crossed the road. 
It seemed to be working, but then Tyson stopped and turned around.  He came right back to Pattie and meowed for a
treat.

                Pattie
sighed and let him follow