“What is that?” asked Odelia, who is extremely protective of her cats. She got up. “What did you do to Harriet?”
Gran displayed a mysterious smile as she shook the can. “Harriet is going to be pregnant—so you better get that notebook out, honey, so you can write about this miracle of nature!”
“Did you spray this stuff on Harriet?” asked Odelia, her voice going a little shrill. She tried to grab the can from her grandmother. “Give me that!”
“Never!” Gran cried, and promptly sprinted in the direction of the great outdoors, evading her granddaughter’s attempts to snatch that spray from her hands. “This is history in the making and you better write down every detail! It’s the scoop of a lifetime—get off me!”
“If you used that bug spray on Harriet, I swear to God I’m going to…” Odelia began, and didn’t finish the sentence, though it was clear that what she had in mind for her grandmother wasn’t to be classified under the heading of granddaughterly love. Quite the contrary. It might even get her sent to prison. “Get back here!”
But Gran quickly threw the can in the direction of Blake’s Field before Odelia could grab it. The old lady took a stance like a professional pitcher and hurled that can out so far that it would take a miracle to find it out there unless you knew where to look. She then stood in front of her granddaughter, hands on hips. “You’re a pretty lousy reporter!” she said accusingly. “You can’t even see an amazing scoop when it hits you in the snoot!”
“You just poisoned my cat!” Odelia said.
“I did no such thing!”
“I’m taking her to the vet,” said Odelia, scooping the white Persian into her arms. “And if she gets sick…”
“She won’t get sick,” said Gran. “But she will get pregnant,” she promised. “Just you wait and see.”
“Nuts,” said Odelia, and was off with Harriet in her arms.
“I don’t want to go to the vet!” Harriet lamented.
“Too bad, ‘cause you’re gonna!” said Odelia.
And since we couldn’t possibly let Harriet go through this ordeal alone, the three of us followed after Odelia as she hurried out of the house.
CHAPTER 27
As we sat waiting in Vena’s waiting room, while Harriet was being given the once-over by the vet, our friend Norm came buzzing in. “Hey, you guys,” he said, looking a little downcast, I thought.
“Norm,” I said. “How are things in the world of superflies?”
My words had been chosen as an attempt to cheer him up, but they didn’t have that effect. On the contrary, his wings drooped as he selected a spot on a seat next to us. “It’s Norma,” he said. “She put her foot down this time. If I don’t provide her with offspring, she’ll go and find herself a different husband. One who will fulfill his marital duties with speed and effectiveness.”
“But I thought you said you were going to embrace the life of the paterfamilias?”
“I know, but I’m having second thoughts.”
Sounded to me as if he was having third thoughts, or maybe even fourth or fifth. Then again, becoming a father is a big deal, and a lot of men find it hard to take that step as it is bound to change their lives forever—and quite irrevocably, too.
“But your friend the cockroach—didn’t he tell you how wonderful it is to be a dad?”
“He didn’t. He told me how rotten it is.”
“Harriet is pregnant,” Dooley said.
“We don’t know that, Dooley,” Brutus hissed. Clearly, he wasn’t very keen on becoming a father either. When push came to shove, being a dad was a scary proposition.
“No, but she is,” said Dooley. “Gran says she’s pregnant, and Gran knows, since she’s been pregnant herself, so she knows the signs.”
“Gran zapped Harriet with that same bug spray that Tex used on the bugs in our backyard, the same used at the hotel,” I told Norm. “And since it seems to have led to a proliferation of those bugs, she’s hoping that it will do the same thing with Harriet and pretty soon the world will be full of little Harriets.”
Norm laughed. “Oh, Max. Do you really think you can create kittens by using bug spray on a cat? That’s very naive, even for you.”
“I never said I believed her,” I said. Though obviously my friends all did. Except for Norm, but then he was a wise old fly.
“Look, do you love Norma?” I asked.
“Of course I do. She’s the love of my life. The one fly for me, you know.”
“Then I think you should have a little faith and go for it, buddy.”
“But I have no idea how to be a dad,” he said. “I mean, not the first clue.”
“Just wing it,” was Brutus’s advice. “I don’t know the first thing about being a dad either, and I’m scared to death that Vena will come walking out of that examination room and tell us it’s a boy, but that doesn’t matter one bit. Just do what feels right in your heart. At the end of the day that’s all any of us can do. Give it our all.” He glanced nervously at the door to Vena’s inner realm, expecting the vet to come charging out and holding up a kitten, though I could have told him that it didn’t work like that.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” said Norm. He seemed to relax a little. “Say, I saw that the killers of the prince are locked up in jail? Good job, you guys. I told you they did it, didn’t I?”
“You certainly did, Norm,” I said. “You called it.”
“What can I say? I’m an ace detective.” And with these words, he was off again, possibly to give the good news to Norma that he had thought things through and he wanted to be her baby daddy after all.
“So romantic, isn’t it, Max?” said Dooley with a sigh. “Norm is going to be a daddy!”
“Absolutely,” I said. “And I’m sure he’ll be a great daddy, too.”
