Petectives: Under Fire

Chapter 5

     I raced to Molasses' house as fast as four paws could carry me. My mind was racing faster than my paws. It was all coming together. Nails had to be staying somewhere. I had just heard how she was taking care of food and water; shelter would be next on the list of basic needs. Molasses and Butterscotch's people were gone to Disneyland for the week so their house would be a fine place to stay. Yoshi probably guessed all this and then asked Duke to verify. Yoshi wouldn't have told me because he would've thought that I would rush right over there and gotten myself killed.

     If things had gone as I had figured, Duke or one of the members of his Dog Patrol would be keeping an eye on Molasses' house. If so, Rocky the pit bull wasn't the one on that particular duty – he had been following me since I'd left my house this afternoon. I had discovered him when I was on my way to Willy's house and he had stuck with me ever since. That was fine with me. If I was running headlong into a confrontation with Nails, I was okay with another pit bull backing me up.

     The first hint that something was wrong came when I was around the corner from my destination. Chuck shot around the corner and was coming right at me with a frantic expression on his adolescent cat face.

     "Hey!" he yelled as soon as he saw me, "Get to Molasses house! Duke's in trouble!"

     "What's wrong?" I asked. Then thinking better of it I said, "Never mind! I can go see for myself. Rocco's following me; go tell him what's going on!"     

     I took off. As soon as I turned the corner I saw something that made the fur on my neck stand straight up. Molasses' home was four houses down from the corner and on her front lawn I could clearly see Nails, Fusco and Geech about to attack Duke. Duke was backed up against a tree with the three dogs surrounding him. That was bad enough but the topper was that I could see a very frightened Molasses in the tree directly above the dogs.

     I thought that I was going at full speed before but I kicked it up another notch and headed for the dogs. Nails and Fusco jumped Duke. He was able to fend Fusco off but at the cost of leaving himself open to Nails. She sunk her teeth into his underside. By that time I was right there and bracing to launch myself at Nails and Duke.

     Now I knew full well that even as mad as I was, a Pit Bull, a Doberman and whatever Geech was were unlikely to be intimidated at the sight of a twelve pound, extremely handsome orange cat but I was still going to hit them with everything I had and hope that I could knock Nails off of Duke. Maybe I did look pretty ferocious –Geech and Fusco's eyes widened and they turned tail and ran. Then I heard pawsteps coming rapidly behind me and I remembered that Rocky had been following me. I eased up just a little and Rocky raced past me and launched himself at Nails.

     Nails had seen him coming and released her grip on Duke's side so that she could face Rocky's attack. When he landed on her, they got tangled in a whirlwind of teeth and paws and they forcefully rolled into the tree behind them.

     Their impact shook the tree causing Molasses to fall off of her branch.

     Everyone knows that cats always land on their feet. Not always. Not if the fall is less than six feet. And not if they're so stressed that their body's natural instincts don't kick in. Molasses either didn't have time to right herself or the situation was too much but either way she fell from the tree and hit the hard, dried out ground head first.

     I got to her fast. She was lying on her side and I wasn't sure if she was breathing or not. She was definitely unconscious. I swallowed hard and tried to keep calm. I have a vague recollection of fighting going on around us but I couldn't tell you what was going on with the dogs. My focus was entirely on the beautiful, injured cat in front of me. Only a few sounds got through to me: I could hear some humans coming out of their houses and yelling at the dogs and also the whine of approaching sirens.