Never Con a Corgi Read Online Free PDF

lost Punkster, the diabolical attack cat that had once inadvertently saved four people's lives (and who had remained ornery as sin throughout the entirety of his nineteen years), Bess was the shelter's most reliable sucker when it came to accepting hard-to-place cats.
    "Sit here," the older woman ordered, waving to a spot already taken by a one-eyed ginger tom who showed no inclination to scurry anywhere. "Ralph!" she chastised. "Go eat something! There's plenty of kibble left in the kitchen. Shoo!"
    The cat shot her a sulky look, but then stretched his legs, rose, and obediently plodded toward the kitchen.
    "Sit!" Bess ordered again, patting the cushions. Leigh sat. "Now," Bess continued gleefully, "look at this!"
    She pushed some buttons on the remote, and Leigh found herself looking at a dark background with a date and time stamp—and not much else.
    "Wait for it," Bess urged. "The camera is motion-activated, so the DVR only kicks in when something is happening. Look!"
    Leigh studied what appeared to be a night-vision video of a pile of wood. A blur that might have been an animal flashed briefly across one corner.
    "Can you tell where it is?" Bess asked excitedly.
    Leigh considered a moment. "Is it out back, the woodpile by your shed?"
    Bess clapped her hands. "Right-O! I have two cameras, but this is the one that hit pay dirt. Keep watching!"
    As Leigh stared at the pile of wood, the animal, now clearly identifiable as a black and white tomcat, jumped up and perched itself at an awkward angle, its attention keenly focused at a particular point on the ground. After several seconds of intent tail flicking, the cat launched himself onto what Leigh could only guess was an emerging field mouse, catching it neatly between his paws.
    Bess squealed with delight. "It's just like National Geographic! Isn't that amazing? And it's real! Talk about ideas to raise money for the shelter! Well, what do you think?"
    Leigh blinked. "Raise money?"
    Bess paused the video just as the cat lifted a paw and the mouse made a break for it. "Of course! You know how fascinated people are with feral cats. My Ferdinand could be a rock star! He could have his own website. I could get more cameras, film the females, too. Fans would tune in to watch, and of course, they could donate to the shelter through the site. Brilliant, eh?"
    Leigh's eyebrows rose. She was no stranger to the tale of Ferdinand, a tough and scrappy tom who had been wandering the woods for years now, resistant to all manner of tricks and traps, until her Aunt Bess had finally cajoled him into a carrier just this past winter. At one point, the woods behind the shelter had been crawling with feral cats and kittens, and although Bess and the staff had managed to reduce the population significantly through live trapping and adoption, there was a core of particularly wily felines they could never manage to capture. When Bess at last caught Ferdinand, the patriarch of the colony, Leigh's father had decided to try a different form of birth control: instead of neutering the tom, he had given Ferdinand a vasectomy. The cat was released back to his colony, vaccinated and otherwise healthy, but the usual crop of spring and summer kittens never came. The scrappy tom was still king of the woods... and evidently, sole master of his harem.
    But an internet sensation?
    "Maybe," Leigh offered. "You really think people would tune in just to see things cats do every day?"
    Bess's forehead creased. "You think people with indoor cats see this everyday?"
    She pressed the play button, and Leigh watched as the cat recaptured the mouse, let it squiggle out between his paws again, then pounced upon it once more.
    "I would rate it PG," Bess said thoughtfully, as the cat tired of the game and stopped the mouse's antics once and for all. "But it's highly educational. Not to mention good publicity for your father's methods of handling feral cats. Just think, if we could actually catch them breeding—"
    Leigh