Good afternoon. Gigi the parti poodle here at your disposal to introduce chapter ten of my story Catzilla. It was a dark and stormy week. I am not referring to the weather but rather the profound depth of gloom I was made to dwell in. My novelist abandoned Tucker the Maltese and I for four days. Four days, I say. We were left with the blasted…Him. Him does not give us treats. Him does not take us for walks. It is a completely uncivilized world when Him is here. I could not sleep. I had dreadful nightmares and lay awake at two AM after dreaming I was being chased down by two unsavory characters brandishing a leash and muzzle. Finally, late on the fourth night, my precious novelist returned from her voyage. Apparently, she had to assist a relative with a garage sale. I do not understand why I was not allowed to travel with her. I am masterful at accounting the value of items. I spend much of my spare time watching reruns of The Antiques Road Show as I do adore watching PBS and would have been a marvelous resource for proper prices. But alas, the Canis lupus familiaris is much underrated as an expert in the field of antiques. I suppose I should be grateful for my novelist returning and spoiling me properly, but I do feel I should be included in all things financial. And with that thought, here is chapter ten of Catzilla. Enjoy!

Catzilla

by

Gigi the parti poodle

Chapter Ten

MONDAY.

For the entire day I kept looking over my shoulder wondering when I was going to run into Ellery. I feared he and his family knew about the entire situation. As I worried, I searched for Lyle everywhere, but I didn’t see him in any of my classes. Finally, at lunch (I have the second lunch which starts at a quarter to one) I spotted him. He was sitting outside on a bench he never sits on, so it was almost the end of lunch when I finally found him.

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” I said.

“I’ve been at school all day,” he said before sticking a chip in his mouth. “Of course, I’ve been wearing a disguise so I may have seemed to blend into the background.”

That was irritating. “What are we going to do now, Lyle?”

“What do you think we should do?”

“I think we need to find out what kind of horrific experiments they’re doing on all those cats.”

“We don’t actually know how many cats they have.”

“Regardless, that red kitten that’s been roaming around has to be one of their laboratory animals.”

Lyle nodded, “Probably.”

“How hard would it be for us to get back in there and bug the place?”

“Well, as that guy can recognize us, I’d say pretty darned difficult.”

“Maybe not if he’s only there at night.”

“It would be difficult to sneak in there during the day.”

“What about your mom?”

“My mom isn’t going to bug her place of work.”

“She would if she didn’t know she was bugging her place of work.”

“But she doesn’t even have access to the lab.”

“She has access to part of the lab.”

“Let me think about it.” Lyle put his thinking face on. Finally, he said, “It might be a shot in the dark, as my grandpa used to say, but we could bug the cat. I saw them do it in a movie once and it worked.”

“Do you think they take that red cat back to the laboratory sometimes?”

“I think Professor Grosser implied on the recordings that they do.”

“Then let’s take a chance on implied.”

“You want to meet me after school and help me catch the kitty?”

“Absolutely.”

“Your right about it having gotten bigger. I saw it in my next-door neighbor’s driveway last night. Mr. Gasper was feeding it.”

“How much bigger?”

I’d say twenty-five pounds.”

“But it’s still a kitten!”

“It doesn’t look like a kitten at all.”

“Okay, look. I’ll meet you tonight after dinner and we’ll bug the thing. You do have a spare bug, right?”

“No. I’ll have to make one. But I’ve got the materials to do it so it shouldn’t take long.”

“How long?”

“I can have it done and meet you at nine.”

“Nine? That’s late. And we were already out late.”

“Eight-fifty?”

“How about eight o’clock sharp?”

“Well…I’ll try.”

I sighed. “Text me if you need more time.”

My mom made baked salmon for dinner with rice and frozen mixed vegetables. My mom was never a very good cook. But it was one of those simple dishes that always seems to come out right.

“You have a lot of homework tonight?” my mom asked.

“A…a little.”

“What are you working on?”

“A…a science project.”

“Really? What’s the project?”

“We’re in an electronics unit.”

“I thought you were taking Biology this semester.”

“I am. We’re studying a unit on…cyborgs.”

“They study cyborgs in high school now?”

“Yes. Yes, they do.”

“Wow. You kids are a lot more advanced than my generation was.”

“I suppose,” I said and went back to eating my dinner, but I could feel my mom’s eyes watching me.

“I guess we won’t be able to watch that movie tonight we were planning to see.”

“Nope,” I said keeping my eyes on my plate. My mom nodded and looked at her dinner. I glanced at the clock. Seven-thirty PM. Thirty minutes to go. “Well, I better get to it,” I said and took my dinner plate and glass into the kitchen.

“Would you like some dessert?”

“Maybe later.”

I headed into my bedroom, closed the door, and texted Lyle:

            U make the bug?

A few minutes went by before he finally texted back:

            Almost. Working out the bugs. LOL no pun intended.

Yeah, funny, Lyle. Then I texted back:

            R we still meeting @ 8?

            Yup.

            Good.

I went on my school laptop and looked up my actual homework, an English assignment. I had to read this short story and write about the symbolism in it. As I read my assignment, I thought about the lemon shortbread cookies my mom had made for dessert. She makes them with white chocolate chips, which is awesome. I kept telling myself I would enjoy them even more after we bugged the cat.

Just as I finished the short story, Lyle texted me:

            Bug done.

            Cool.

            CU @ 8:15.

            CU.

I completed the last page of the story, put on my sneakers, quietly opened my bedroom window, and snuck out. I peddled my bike to Lyle’s house where I saw him waiting for me on the sidewalk one house up straddling his bike.

“I think I saw our target at the Big Bird house,” he said.

It was called the Big Bird house because its residents painted it bright sunny yellow last summer and added hot pink and orange shutters. It was bizarre. The couple had a little boy who always wore green coveralls. His parents were into saving the earth despite their choice in nuclear colors and had found this company that grew cotton that had a natural green color to the fabric it produced. And so, the kid always wore green coveralls.

Sure enough, when we peddled down to the Big Bird house there was the red cat sitting in the driveway eating out of a psychedelic tie-dye-colored ceramic bowl. Lyle was right. The kitten was gigantic. More than the twenty-five pounds Lyle said it was. More like forty. And the weight it carried looked like solid muscle.

“The cat’s huge,” I whispered to Lyle.

“Yes,” Lyle said surprised. “It appears to be growing by the day.”

“Do you think you can still bug it?”

“I…think so…”

We stood there watching the mushroomed feline for several minutes.

“Well,” I finally said. “We should probably get this done.”

“We should get it done together.”

I slipped the mini backpack I was wearing off my shoulder, reached inside, retrieved my dad’s heavy gloves, and handed them to Lyle.

Lyle looked at the gloves, then the kitten then back at the gloves. Lyle put on the gloves, flexed his fingers, and said, “Let’s rock.”

MY BOOKS

You can check out my books Chicane and all five installments of the Musicology book series Musicology: Volume One, Baby!, Musicology: Volume Two, Kid!, Musicology: Volume Three, Twist!, Musicology: Volume Four, Sweetie! and Musicology: The Epiquad on Amazon in Kindle and Paperback editions. You can also check out Musicology’s web site at www.musicologyrocks.com and vote for who you think will win Musicology!

STREAM OF THE WEEK: AIR (2023)-AMAZON PRIME

This week’s choice is a slice of modern history about a little shoe company named Nike who found themselves playing against the big boys like Adidas and Converse in 1984. They were a scrappy little group out in Oregon state who were desperate to get in the game and save their basketball shoe division. CEO Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) and his Marketing VP Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) enlist their marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), an expert in basketball talent scouting with the job. After watching endless videos of recent college games, he sees something special in a player named Michael Jordan. He realizes Jordan is unique in his effortlessness in playing the game. Perhaps more so than any player he has ever seen before. Vaccaro gets the idea to base a shoe on only Jordan built especially with him in mind much like a line of Head brand tennis rackets Arthur Ashe had on the market at the time. A shoe that is the epitome of the athlete.

Despite Nike’s wariness of even getting a chance to interest Jordan in considering their company, Vaccaro then meets with Jordan’s Olympic basketball coach George Raveling (Marlon Wayans) at a bar and after discussing the plan, Raveling promises to back Vaccaro in pursuit of signing Jordan to Nike. Vaccaro then calls Jordan’s mother Deloris (Viola Davis) without telling Nike about it and asks to meet her family.

Rounding out the cast are Chris Tucker as Nike’s Director of Athlete Relations Howard White, Chris Messina as Jordan’s agent David Falk, Mathew Maher as Nike shoe designer Peter Moore, Julius Tennon as Jordan’s father James Jordan and Damian Young as Michael Jordan.  I should add that Arthur Ashe was an INTJ personality type. INTJs are always wonderfully but painfully ahead of their time.