“JEFFREY the realtor called to say that he’s bringing some prospects on Sunday,” Albertine said, “and he asked me whether we could do anything about the wildlife.”
“The wildlife?”
“Actually, he called it the weird life, the weird wildlife. According to Jeffrey, it is definitely going to be a problem for these people, or one of them, anyway.”
On the other side of the island, at the farthest remove from the hotel, there was an ecosystem of the bizarre. There were chinchilla rabbits, giant frogs, talking budgies, hamsters, minks, raccoons, parrots, turkeys, chickens, and a colony of feral Siamese cats. The wildlife had been on the island longer than Albertine and I had. Again and again, the previous owners of Small’s Island had tried to make the big money by breeding something that would sell, and time and again they had failed.
Their abandoned moneymakers had been breeding out there ever since, out on the far western extreme of the island, near the cove where I had my clam farm. The wildlife was not friendly. They were all jealous of the territories they claimed for themselves, and they considered all interlopers targeted personnel. Most of them didn’t bother Albertine most of the time, excepting the cats. For fifteen years, she had been waffling between “we’ve got to get rid of those damned cats” and “I feel so sorry for those poor cats,” depending on the weather and the number of cats in heat. I had steadfastly maintained that the cats were the only thing that kept the island from being overrun by chickens.
“What have they got against wildlife?” I asked.
“Nothing at all. Apparently that’s the problem.”
“I think we’ve fallen into one of those logical sinkholes that sometimes swallow cars whole.”
“It’s not the wildlife; it’s the need to eliminate the wildlife that’s a problem. Not all the wildlife. Jeffrey thinks it would be enough if we just got rid of the cats.”
“What have they got against cats?”
“Nothing — ”
“And that’s the problem?”
“Yeah. Apparently, one of them is a cat fancier, and Jeffrey thinks that she is just not going to want to have to deal with the problem of the cats. Eliminating the cats.”
“Oh,” I said, since I understood at last. “So we have to find some heartless bastard to get rid of the cats before the cat fancier sees them.”
“That’s pretty much the idea.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
It sounded like a job for Rockwell Kingman.
[to be continued]
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