“Oh, well, since I’m basically an honorary cat, you won’t mind, will you?” And with these words, she picked up a piece of kibble from the second bowl and put that into her mouth as well. She made a face. “Tasty, but with a slight tang that I don’t know if I like.”

“Did you just eat the cats’ kibble?” asked Scarlett, looking the same way we did: full of surprise at Gran’s initiative.

“Okay, I think I’ve got it,” said Gran. “I’ll pick the first one. It’s got the exact same taste as the other one but I like the label more.” She pointed to the two bags positioned on a rack next to us. One was green with black and the other red with brown undertones. “I like the colors on that one,” she said, “and that’s why I’m gonna pick it. Hey,” she added when we gave her a look of exasperation. “Packaging is everything—we all know that to be true. Can I help it that the folks who created Brand B don’t know the first thing about designing the right packaging for their product, no matter how tasty or nutritious it’s proven to be—and how healthy for the creatures?” She then directed a curious look at Wilbur. “What’s gotten into your human?”

“Oh, don’t mind him,” said Kingman. “He’s been counting every single item that leaves the store, and then checking his inventory every hour, on the hour. Someone’s been stealing from the store, you see, and Wilbur doesn’t like it.”

“Who would?” said Gran. “Anyway, I like Brand A the best. So how about you guys?”

“I like Brand A the best also,” said Dooley, happy as a clam that he had picked a winner—or at least Gran’s winner.

“Good for you,” said Gran, well pleased, as she gave him a pat on the head. “Okay, so there’s something I need to run by you guys. Would now be a good time?”

I glanced around, and since nobody seemed to be paying us any mind, I nodded. “I guess so.”

“Okay, so Scarlett and I have all this bug spray, see—the bug spray that has the opposite effect from what it’s supposed to do?”

“You stole it from the salespeople’s room?” I asked.

She gave me a scathing look. “Of course we didn’t steal it! We borrowed it. And since they’re both in jail right now, they’re not going to miss a couple of cans of the stuff, will they?”

I had no arguments, so I simply shrugged.

“Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do,” said Gran. “We’re going to feed it to the dogs, and then when the mutts proliferate, we’ll know that our experiment was a great success.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “What experiment? What mutts?”

“Or maybe we should feed it to the mice,” said Gran, not paying any mind to my question. She turned to her friend. “What do you think, feed it to the dogs, or to the mice?”

“Or rats,” said Scarlett. “If I were you, I’d find a couple of nice big rats and use it on them.”

“Maybe we will do that,” said Gran. “We’ll feed it to the rats and when they proliferate—and they will, since this spray has been put together entirely the wrong way, apparently—we’ll know we’ve got a goldmine on our hands. A goldmine!”

We all stared at her. “What are you talking about, Gran?” asked Dooley, always nervous that his human has finally gone cuckoo and will have to be put into an institution for the insane.

“Don’t you see?”

“Um… no?” said Dooley.

“What is one of the biggest crises that has hit this nation and a lot of other nations also?”

“Um…. unemployment?” Harriet suggested.

“Inflation?” Brutus said.

“Hypertension?” I ventured.

“Wrong!” she cried jubilantly. “All wrong! The biggest crisis that has struck this great nation of ours is the dwindling birth rate!”

I honestly didn’t see what the dwindling birth rate had to do with bugs, but I had a feeling we would get to it—eventually.

“Okay, so women and men are less fertile, all right? It’s a real thing. I saw a documentary about it on the Discovery Channel. Remember, Dooley? You even told me that humans should be more like cats, since cats don’t have this issue.”

“Oh, right,” said Dooley, his face clearing. “Humans really should be more like cats. Or flies. Norm told us that a single fly can have upwards of hundreds of kids—did you know?”

“No, I didn’t know that,” said Gran. “But it doesn’t surprise me. Okay, but let’s forget about flies for a moment, and focus on humans. So women can’t have babies, and have to go through round after round of IVF, right?” She held up a can of bug spray and shook it for good measure. “This is going to put a stop to all of that. We’ll simply hit them with the spray. Zap! And pop!”

“Zap and pop?” I asked.

“We zap them and out pops a baby! Crisis averted!”

Somehow I didn’t think it would be as easy as that, but since I hate to rain on Gran’s parade when she looks so happy, I merely smiled and said, “I like your thinking, Gran. Very creative!”

“I love it,” said Dooley. “Zap and pop! Problem solved!”

Gran grinned and actually rubbed her hands the way supervillains do in the movies. “Oh, you guys. We’re going to be so rich! We might even get the Nobel Prize for medicine!”

“It’s not medicine,” I reminded her. “It’s a bug spray.”

“Who cares,” she said, shutting me down without delay. She held up the bug spray. “This is going to be the biggest revolution for women since the invention of the pill!”

“Zap and pop,” said Dooley. “Genius, Gran! Absolute genius!”

CHAPTER 17

We returned home feeling a little dizzy after the kind of day we’d had.

“So… Gran is going to spray women so they can have more babies?” asked Dooley.

“Something like that,” I admitted, though the plan seemed a little extreme, even for Gran.

“Don’t you need FDA approval before you can bring a drug to market?” asked Brutus.

“Pretty sure you do,” said Harriet. “Otherwise, anyone can sell any drug and claim any benefits. Heck, I could bring a drug to market that promises to give cats gorgeous fur like mine, even though I fully well know it’s simple genetics.” She preened a little.

We had settled on the couch, and I had every intention of taking a long nap before I ventured out again—if I ventured out at all. I might stay on that couch for the next twenty-four hours to catch up on my sleep.

“Norm did a great job, didn’t he?” said Dooley, proud of our little winged friend. “He caught the killers, and he also managed to free us from that horrible hotel manager.”

“He did a wonderful job,” I admitted as I yawned widely. Though I still had my doubts about whether the bug spray people were responsible for the murder of Prince Abdullah. After all, I still couldn’t see a possible motive. Why murder their client when they were about to pitch their new and improved product to him? It didn’t seem logical. Then again, humans aren’t exactly the most logical species, and oftentimes they don’t need a reason to do anything.

I had just closed my eyes when Odelia entered the room via the front door. Chase was also with her, and they seemed happy to see us.

“You guys!” said Odelia. “For a moment, I thought you were still at the hotel.”

“Oh, Odelia, did we have an adventure!” said Dooley as he practically jumped up into her arms. She hugged him close, and he proceeded to fill her in on the details of what we had been through and the ordeal we had suffered at the hands of that evil hotel manager.