She glanced around and saw that Vena had decorated her office and made it a very cozy little place. There were posters on the walls of cats of every possible persuasion, indicating that at heart Vena was a cat person, which probably wouldn’t sit well with the dog owners that paid her for her services. Though she also spotted a nice portrait of a horse, which told her that the vet also had a soft spot for that species.

On Vena’s desk, there was a large plastic Garfield, and on a bulletin board behind the desk, several kids’ drawings. “I didn’t know Vena had kids,” she said. “Did you know, precious?”

“No, I didn’t. But then we don’t know a lot about the woman, do we?”

“No, we don’t,” Harriet admitted. She suddenly realized that in all those years of picturing Vena as a monster, they had never stopped to think that she was also a human being and possibly had a husband and a family.

She now saw that the door of Vena’s office was ajar and joined her boyfriend on the floor. “Let’s go exploring,” she suggested. With the nausea subsiding, her sense of adventure had returned.

“Exploring where?” asked Brutus.

“I want to know what makes this woman tick,” she said.

“Her heart, I guess,” said Brutus, who always did have to take things literally, not a poetic bone in his body.

“No, I mean, what kind of person is she? Behind the mask, I mean.”

“I didn’t know Vena wore a mask,” said Brutus, causing Harriet to execute the perfect eye roll.

“Let’s just go and take a look,” she said. “I want to know what kind of person we’re dealing with here.” And she felt she had a right to know, since Vena was more or less the person dealing with life and death of pets in Hampton Cove.

They slipped through the door and found themselves in a well-lit corridor that led to a large room. When they arrived, she saw that it was a living room, and as brightly and cozily decorated as the vet’s office. On the couch, two kids were playing a video game, and at the breakfast nook, Vena was pouring herself a cup of coffee while glancing out of the window and into the backyard, which looked like a haven of verdant green and quite inviting, Harriet had to say. In an armchair, an elderly man sat reading a newspaper, and Harriet was surprised that people still read the paper on paper, like in the olden days. At her own home, everyone read on their phones or on tablets these days. Of Vena’s husband, if she had a husband, there was not a single trace. Though, of course, the elderly man with the paper could be the husband, but she didn’t think so. Vena wasn’t that old. Unless she favored older men, of course. A lot older.

“Look there, kit kat,” she said, and pointed to a gerbil sitting in a cage in a corner of the room. “She has pets.”

“Just the one pet,” said Brutus. “And I wouldn’t call a gerbil a pet, would you?”

“I would,” she said. “Any animal can be a pet.” They walked up to the gerbil and she decided to engage the creature in conversation, curious what it would have to say about Vena.

“Hi there,” she said. “My name is Harriet and this is Brutus. We’re Vena’s patients.”

“Hi,” said the gerbil, a little shyly. “My name is Jevon, and I’m not a patient.”

“No, I didn’t think you were,” she said with a laugh. “So what I wanted to ask you: what is Vena like? I mean, is she a good person, you think? A good pet parent?”

“Oh, I can’t complain,” said the gerbil. “She treats me well enough, I guess. Feeds me on a regular basis, plays with me from time to time, and even gives me a treat on occasion.”

He didn’t sound very excited, she thought.

“But…” she prompted, feeling there was a ‘but’ coming.

“Well, I would like to be let out of this cage more often, you know. Be like you guys: allowed to walk around and go wherever I like.”

“You’re always locked up in this cage?”

“They do take me out from time to time, but then they always put me back. And I don’t like it,” he said, his face sagging a little as he darted a glance at his human. “She says I can’t be trusted outside of my cage. Says there’s a flight risk, whatever that means.”

“It means she’s afraid you will escape,” Harriet explained.

“Have you tried to escape, Jevon?” asked Brutus.

“Of course I have tried to escape,” said the gerbil. “Wouldn’t you try to escape when they keep you locked up twenty-four-seven? I’ve tried to escape so many times I’ve lost count, but every time they catch me, and now they practically never let me out of here.”

“Maybe if you stopped trying to escape, they would let you out more often,” Harriet suggested.

“Fat chance,” he scoffed. “I have a feeling that I’ll be in this cage until the day I die. And let me tell you that’s not a fun prospect. Like being a prisoner, you know. Sentenced to life in jail.”

It certainly was not a nice prospect, Harriet agreed, and wondered if they couldn’t do something to make life more fun and pleasant for the gerbil. “Okay, so the thing is that Brutus and I can talk to our humans,” she said. “So what if we told them about you and they talked to Vena and asked her to let you out more often? How would you feel about that?”

“But only if you promised not to try to escape anymore,” said Brutus. “You’d have to be good, you know.”

“Oh, I’d be good,” said the gerbil. “If I can just potter around in here, and also in the backyard, I wouldn’t have to escape, would I?”

It was one of those things, Harriet saw. A vicious circle. They kept Jevon locked up because he tried to escape, and he tried to escape because they kept him locked up. And she now saw that it was up to her to break the cycle. And so she gave the gerbil a reassuring smile. “We’ll talk to Odelia, and she’ll talk to Vena, and you’ll be out of here in a jiffy. Just you wait and see.”

“Are you sure?” asked the gerbil hopefully. “Because I’ve been promised stuff before, and it never happened.”

“Who has promised you stuff?” asked Brutus.

The gerbil pointed to the kids on the sofa. “Them. They said they would always love me and play with me, but look at them. All they do is play their video games and they never even look at me anymore. It used to be different. When I first came to live with them, they were always fussing over me and couldn’t get enough of me. But that didn’t last very long, did it?”

“That’s kids for you,” said Brutus. “You were just their latest toy until they replaced you with a different one.”

“It’s sad,” said the gerbil. “Very sad.”

Harriet wondered if they couldn’t adopt the gerbil. She was sure that Grace would love to play with him. But then they couldn’t really do that. Vena wouldn’t like it.

“We’ll just have to educate those kids,” she said. “And make them understand that you’re not a toy but a member of the family. That they can’t just discard you like yesterday’s paper.”

“We’ll talk to Odelia,” said Brutus. “And we’ll make sure that your life will vastly improve, little buddy.”

The gerbil gave them a tentative smile. “Who are you guys? Santa’s little helpers?”

Harriet grinned, and a warm glow spread through her chest. “That’s exactly who we are. We’re Santa’s little helpers, and we go around making the lives of pets like us better.”

“I hope Vena will listen to you,” said Jevon. “Cause I would like my life to improve, you know. It’s been pretty rotten so far.”

“I know,” said Harriet, and wondered if Vena knew that her gerbil was unhappy. It wasn’t enough to clean out his cage on a regular basis and provide food and water. Pets needed more than that. They also needed to be cherished and to feel like they were members of the family and paid attention to. In other words: they needed what every person in the world needs.

They said their goodbyes to the gerbil and snuck back out of the living room of the vet and into her office, awaiting Odelia’s return so they could go home again. Harriet felt a renewed sense of purpose. “We’re Santa’s helpers now, lemon drop,” she said. “We’re on a mission to make the world a better place for pets.”

“I like that,” said Brutus. “I like being Santa’s little helper.”

They both looked up when Vena stuck her head around the corner to look in on them. When she saw they were still where she had left them, she seemed satisfied because she smiled and retracted her head again.

Yep, Vena was a human being just like any other, Harriet thought. So not a vicious monster after all. Who knew!

CHAPTER 32