The cat glared, giving me the disdain that only a cat could manage. I shook my head. All that reading about hobgoblins and pucks had obviously messed with my head. It was a cat. Just a plain old mackerel tabby. Nothing more.
Still, as the sun rose, I could swear the green eyes were glittering like emeralds.
Mom was in the kitchen when I returned and she scowled at my companion. “Where did that cat come from?”
“She was at the top of the hill.” I turned to the sink and washed my hands. “I’m going to take these cookies over to Grammy and see if she has any food left from when she had Tiger.”
“One of us needs to grocery shop.” Mom sipped her black coffee pointedly.
No sense mentioning the ice cream trick. Mom would be horrified. Hopefully, there would still be room on my credit card for a few essentials. “I’ll go later today. You need anything?”
Mom shook her head. “Did you think about the job I mentioned, with Alina?”
She wasn’t going to let it go. Her determination was the lone trait she had inherited from Grammy B. “Yes, mother. And I promise I will stop by today.”
“In that?” She gestured to my yoga pants that were currently smattered with cat hair.
“I’ll change.” Though my suit was wrecked from yesterday’s mishap, there were other things I could wear.
Mom nodded crisply. “Good. Oh, and I meant to tell you. Your cousin Diedre will be staying with us for a while. She’s coming by bus from Baltimore this afternoon.”
“Um, okay. Why?” Diedre was mom’s younger sister Hannah’s only daughter. She was still in high school. The middle of winter seemed like an odd time for an extended visit.
“Hannah needs to go out of town. You know she works for the UN.”
“You may have mentioned it a time or two.” Another chronic overachiever in the family.
Mom ignored my sarcasm. “Well anyhow, Diedre’s been somewhat troublesome lately. Running with a bad crowd, skipping school. Hannah can’t afford any distractions while she’s working. So, I offered to take Diedre in so she could finish high school here, away from all the influences that are disrupting her.”
I thumped down hard in the chair. “Mom! You can’t just take in a troubled teen on a whim. It’s a huge commitment.”
She cast me a pithy look. “Honestly, Josephine. You act as though I don’t have a clue what it takes to raise a teenage girl when I raised you. And believe me, you were no picnic.” She breezed out of the room, having had her say.
The cat jumped into my lap and I stroked her absently.
“And look how well that turned out,” I muttered.
“Meow.”
Grammy B did indeed have cat food, a metric ton of it. The ingredients displayed on the side of it were better quality than what I typically ate.
“Holy, hoarders, Grammy,” I grunted as I hefted the box down from the shelf in the carport. “Where did you get all this?”
Grammy had picked up the cat and was stroking her easily. “Your mother bought it on sale before poor Tiger stopped eating. I was gonna donate it to the animal shelter but I forgot all about it until you asked. Glad it won’t go to waste.”
With me humping the box and her carrying the cat we headed back into her kitchen. I opened a can and dumped it into Tiger’s old ceramic bowl. Grammy set the cat down and then we watched as she stalked toward the bowl. She sniffed delicately and then looked back at me.
“It’s okay.” Just to be sure, I picked up the can and checked the date. Grammy had been known to keep canned items decades past expiration. The woman was the embodiment of the word thrift. “Yup, all good.”
The cat crouched down with her feet tucked beneath her body, tail wrapped around her backside, and dug in.
“I think she has ear mites.” Grammy gestured to the flat ear. “Possibly fleas as well from living wild. If you want, I can call the vet, set up an appointment for you to bring her in.”
The vet. The one business in town where I’d never applied for a job. I flashed hot and then cold again as I imagined it. Stupid middle-aged hormones.
But bugs…. Ick. I hadn’t thought of that. “It’s probably a good idea if I can get her into Tiger’s old cat carrier. She might be chipped and the vet could find out who she belongs to.”