CHAPTER 36
Oh My God!
I looked around as I followed Greta through the room. I’d never seen anything like it in my entire life. It was literally full of people and cats, and I felt my nose itch.
“Here we are,” she said, as we arrived at a table with a cage on it.
I looked inside the cage; the bloody cat was huge! An enormous grey thing with bright green eyes, its squished face gave it a distinctly grumpy look.
“This is Countess Claw-dette.” She opened the cage and placed the massive ball of fluff on the table in front of me. The fluff immediately collapsed, stretching out regally. It looked like a particularly lazy thing. Not the kind of cat that was out hunting small creatures and climbing trees.
“She’s gorgeous.” I didn’t know the first thing about cats. This could be a cross-breed runt with a gammy paw and I wouldn’t know.
“You think?” Greta asked quickly.
I nodded. “Definitely. Very regal.”
Greta smiled, and I suddenly feltverybad. Oh God, why did I keep getting myself into these terrible situations? Was I just a terrible person? Greta looked at me expectantly and I jumped.
“Right. Yes!” I took a step closer to the cat. “Better get started, then. Time to turn lovely Claw-dette, here, into a paw-fect winner.”
Greta laughed at my lame joke, and now I felt really bad! I looked down at the cat. There was so much of it, where did one start? I didn’t know what to do, I’d never groomed a cat before, so I reached out and placed my hands on its head. Greta looked at me, clearly confused.
“I like to gauge the cat’s vibe first,” I said, answering her silent question of,What the hell are you doing to my cat?
“And?” she asked, looking interested.
“Great vibe. A real winner, here. She seems very psyched for the competition,” I added quickly, as I stroked the cat and smiled up at her.
“You communicate with them?” she asked, with wide eyes.
Oh, damn—what had I just done?“It’s more of a feeling I get, you know. A sense of the animal.”
“That’s incredible.” She smiled at her cat as if it were her most prized possession. “What else are you picking up on?”
“Uh . . . well—” I put my hands by the cat’s head again—“she loves you very much.”
Greta raised a hand to her chest. “Aaaah . . .” She seemed genuinely touched by this. “Can you tell her I love her, too?” she asked.
For fuck’s sake, Becca!How had I gone from groomer to pet psychic in thirty seconds? This was all ridiculous and I really needed to put an end to it. “She knows, Greta. She knows.” God, I needed to get out of here. “Oh damn,” I said. “I need to fetch my tools from the other table. I’ll just go and get them.” I started backing away from her, but she reached out and stopped me with a hand on the shoulder.
“No worries; I have everything you need.” She pulled a brush out of her bag and handed it to me. “We’ve lost enough time, already. We need to get started.”
Double damn!
I took the brush and moved towards the cat again.Just brush her. Just brush her.How hard could this be?
“Hey, kitty,” I said to the cat, who looked very unimpressed with me. Or maybe it was just her face. This cat had a real resting bitch face.
“Her face needs a trim, too, as you can see,” Greta said, passing me some nail scissors.
The cat’s whole body looked like it needed a bloody trim.
“Her eyes also need cleaning, and her nose.”
“Of course,” I said, feeling this massive wave of performance anxiety push down on me as I started to lower the brush towards the cat. It was as if it went in slow motion, as if the whole world was watching me, waiting for the brush to come down on the cat—and, as it did, the cat purred. I smiled, thrilled that I’d done the right thing.
“She likes you,” Greta said. “She doesn’t like many people.”
