The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers Read online

  THE CAT WHO HAD 60 WHISKERS

  Also by Lilian Jackson Braun

  THE CAT WHO COULD READ BACKWARDS

  THE CAT WHO ATE DANISH MODERN

  THE CAT WHO TURNED ON AND OFF

  THE CAT WHO SAW RED

  THE CAT WHO PLAYED BRAHMS

  THE CAT WHO PLAYED POST OFFICE

  THE CAT WHO KNEW SHAKESPEARE

  THE CAT WHO SNIFFED GLUE

  THE CAT WHO WENT UNDERGROUND

  THE CAT WHO TALKED TO GHOSTS

  THE CAT WHO LIVED HIGH

  THE CAT WHO KNEW A CARDINAL

  THE CAT WHO MOVED A MOUNTAIN

  THE CAT WHO WASN’T THERE

  THE CAT WHO WENT INTO THE CLOSET

  THE CAT WHO CAME TO BREAKFAST

  THE CAT WHO BLEW THE WHISTLE

  THE CAT WHO SAID CHEESE

  THE CAT WHO TAILED A THIEF

  THE CAT WHO SANG FOR THE BIRDS

  THE CAT WHO SAW STARS

  THE CAT WHO ROBBED A BANK

  THE CAT WHO SMELLED A RAT

  THE CAT WHO WENT UP THE CREEK

  THE CAT WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE HOUSE

  THE CAT WHO TALKED TURKEY

  THE CAT WHO WENT BANANAS

  THE CAT WHO DROPPED A BOMBSHELL

  Short story collections

  THE CAT WHO HAD 14 TALES

  SHORT & TALL TALES

  THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE CAT WHO…

  LILIAN JACKSON BRAUN

  THE CAT WHO HAD 60 WHISKERS

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2007 by Lilian Jackson Braun

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  ISBN: 1-4295-0320-3

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Dedicated to Earl Bettinger,

  The Husband Who…

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To Earl, my other half—for his husbandly love, encouragement, and help in a hundred ways.

  To my research assistant, Shirley Bradley—for her expertise and enthusiasm.

  To Becky Faircloth, my office assistant—who’s always there when I need her.

  To my editor, Natalee Rosenstein—for her faith in The Cat Who…from the very beginning.

  To my literary agent, Blanche C. Gregory, Inc.—for a lifetime of agreeable partnership.

  To the real-life Kokos and Yum Yums—for their fifty years of inspiration.

  THE CAT WHO HAD 60 WHISKERS

  PROLOGUE

  Overheard at an alfresco party in Moose County, 400 miles north of everywhere:

  WOMAN IN BLUE SHETLAND SWEATER: “I have never heard of such a thing! And I’ve been a veterinarian for twenty years!”

  MAN WITH LARGE MOUSTACHE: “What can I say? I counted them myself.”

  WOMAN: “You might have miscounted.”

  MAN: “Would you like to count them yourself? If I’m right, you can report the evidence to a scientific journal. If I’m wrong, I’ll take you to dinner at the Mackintosh Inn.”

  WOMAN: “Fair enough! We’ll do it the next time you bring him in for a dental prophylaxis.”

  ONE

  The man with the large moustache (a well-groomed pepper and salt) was Jim Qwilleran, columnist for the Moose County Something and transplant from Down Below, as locals called the metropolitan areas to the south. They themselves, for the most part, were descended from the early settlers, and they had inherited the pioneer fortitude, sense of humor, and appreciation of individuality.

  They enjoyed the Qwill Pen column that ran twice weekly…accepted the fact that he lived alone in a converted apple barn, with two cats…and admired his magnificent moustache.

  James Mackintosh Qwilleran had entertained several ambitions in his youth Down Below: first to play second base with the Chicago Cubs, then to act on the Broadway stage, and later to write for the New York Times. He had certainly never wanted to be the richest individual in the northeast central United States! How it happened was a tale “stranger than fiction.”

  “Aunt Fanny” Klingenschoen probably knew what she was doing when she made him her sole heir.

  Qwilleran established a philanthropic organization: the Klingenschoen Foundation, which went to work improving the quality of life in Moose County. Medical, scholastic, cultural, and infrastructural improvements were made possible by the K Fund, as it was known to one and all.

  To everyone’s surprise, other old-moneyed families were inspired to put their fortunes to work for the public good. A music center, two museums, and a senior recreation facility were in the works.

  Everything’s going too smoothly, Qwilleran thought, with the pessimism of a seasoned newsman. “What’s your fix on the situation, Arch?” he asked his old friend from Chicago.

  Arch Riker was now editor in chief of the Something. He shook his head morosely. “When there’s so much money floating around, somebody’s gonna get greedy.”

  (Visitors from far and wide—in formal attire—had paid five hundred dollars a ticket for a preview of the mansion, called the Old Manse.)

  It was a late evening in August. Qwilleran and the cats had been enjoying a cozy evening in the barn. He had read to them from the Wall Street Journal, and they all had a little ice cream.

  The barn was an octagonal structure of fieldstone and weathered shingles more than a century old. Indoors, all the old wood surfac
es and overhead rafters had been bleached to a honey color, and odd-shaped windows had been cut in the walls.

  Where once there had been lofts for storing apples, now there was a ramp winding around the interior, with balconies at three levels.

  Later in the evening, the Siamese deserted the reading area and chased each other up and down the ramp, then dropped like flying squirrels onto the sofa on the main floor. The living areas were open-plan, surrounding a huge fireplace cube, its stacks rising to the roof forty feet overhead.

  It was almost eleven P.M., and Koko and Yum Yum were being unduly attentive; it was time for their bedtime snack.

  Proceeding in slow motion, to tantalize the anxious cats, he rattled the canisters of Kabibbles and dusted off their two plates with exaggerated care. They watched hungrily. Koko appeared to be breathing heavily.

  Suddenly Koko switched his attention to the wall phone that hung between the kitchen window and the back door. He stared at it for a minute, twitching his ears nervously.

  Qwilleran got the message. By some catly intuition, Koko knew the phone was going to ring. After a few seconds it rang. How did that smart cat know? Guessing that it would be Polly Duncan, the chief woman in his life, Qwilleran answered in a facetiously syrupy voice: “Good evening!”

  “Well! You sound in a good mood,” she said in the gentle voice he knew so well. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing much. What are you doing?”

  “Shortening my new dress a couple of inches.”

  “Whoo-ee!”

  Ignoring the comic wolf whistle, she went on, “It’s much too long, and I thought I’d wear it with some Scottish accessories Sunday afternoon, since the party’s celebrating Dr. Connie’s return from Scotland. Would you consider wearing your Highland attire, Qwill?”

  Although he had once rebelled at wearing what he called a “skirt,” he now felt proud in a Mackintosh kilt with a dagger in his knee sock. After all, his mother had been a Mackintosh.

  “What was Connie doing in Scotland? Do you know?”

  “She earned her degree from the veterinary school in Glasgow twenty years ago, and she goes back to visit friends. Did you know her cat has been boarding with Wetherby?”

  “No! How does he get along with Jet Stream?”

  “Connie introduced them when Bonnie Lassie was a kitten, and now Jet Stream acts like her big brother. And,” she went on, “Connie brought Joe a lovely Shetland sweater as a thank-you for boarding Bonnie Lassie.

  “Do you realize, Qwill, that the Shetland archipelago, where the wool comes from, has a hundred islands!…A hundred islands!” she repeated when he failed to respond.

  “It boggles the mind,” he said absently, watching the Siamese trying to get into the Kabibbles canister.

  “Well, anyway, I thought you’d like to hear the latest. À bientôt, dear.”

  “À bientôt.”

  After the Siamese had finished their bedtime repast and their washing up, Qwilleran escorted them up the ramp to their quarters on the top balcony. They looked around as if they had never seen it before, then hopped into their respective baskets and turned around three times before settling down.

  Cats. Who can understand them? Qwilleran thought, as he quietly closed their door.

  Returning to his desk at ground level, he wrote about it in his private journal. He was a compulsive writer! When not turning out a thousand words for the Qwill Pen column, he was writing a biography or history of interest in Moose County. And he always filled a couple of pages in his private journal. On this occasion, he wrote:

  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Koko is a remarkable cat! Is it because his real name is Kao K’o-Kung, so he knows he’s descended from the royal Siamese?

  Or is it because—as I insist—he has sixty whiskers?

  He knows several seconds in advance when the phone is going to ring—and also whether the caller is a friend or a telemarketer selling life insurance or dog food.

  When crazies bombed the city hall window boxes, Koko knew ten minutes in advance that something dire was going to happen. Why didn’t someone read his signals? The police chief was sitting here having a nightcap, and neither of us got the message!

  Oh, well! We can’t all be as smart as a psychic Siamese!

  TWO

  Qwilleran was a well-known figure in downtown Pickax: tall, well built, middle-aged, always wearing an orange baseball cap. He responded to casual greetings with a friendly salute and took time to listen if someone had something to say. There was a brooding look of concern in his eyes that made townsfolk wonder. Some wondered if there had been a great tragedy in his life. His best friends wondered, too, but they had the good taste not to pry. Once he had been seen to help an old lady cross Main Street. When observers commended him for his gallantry, he said, “No big deal! She just wanted to get to the other side.”

  At Lois’s Luncheonette, where Qwilleran went for coffee and apple pie and the latest scuttlebutt, customers would say, “How’s Koko, Mr. Q?” Humorous mentions about Koko and Yum Yum in the Qwill Pen were awaited by eager readers.

  Moose County was said to have more cats per capita than any other county in the state. In Lockmaster County, horses and dogs were the pets of choice.

  In cold weather, when the converted barn was hard to heat, Qwilleran moved his household to Indian Village, an upscale residential complex on the north edge of Pickax. There, four-plex apartments and clusters of condos had features that appealed to career-minded singles and a few couples. There was a clubhouse with a swimming pool, meeting rooms, and a bar. There were walking paths for bird-watching along the banks of a creek. And indoor cats were permitted.

  The cluster called the Willows had four rather notable occupants: the manager of the Pirate’s Chest bookstore, a doctor of veterinary medicine, the WPKX meteorologist, and—at certain times of the year—a columnist for the Moose County Something.

  Also in residence were six indoor felines: Polly Duncan’s Brutus and Catta; Dr. Connie Cosgrove’s kitten, Bonnie Lassie; Wetherby Goode’s Jet Stream; and Jim Qwilleran’s Siamese, Koko and Yum Yum, well known to newspaper readers.

  Wetherby Goode (real name Joe Bunker) had a yen for party-giving and a talent for entertaining at the piano. He played “Flight of the Bumblebee” and “The Golliwog’s Cakewalk” without urging at pizza parties on Sunday afternoons.

  Dr. Connie’s return from Scotland was a good excuse for assembling the residents of the Willows.

  The guest of honor was wearing a Shetland sweater in a luscious shade of blue. The host was wearing the taupe sweater she had brought him from Scotland, and there were Shetland scarfs for Polly and Qwilleran.

  “Connie, may I ask why you chose to get your degree in Scotland?” Qwilleran asked.

  She said, “The vet school at University of Glasgow is internationally known—and has been for many years. It’s noted for teaching excellence and research. Early studies of animal diseases later resulted in advances in human medicine.”

  Wetherby sat down at the piano and played a medley of songs from Brigadoon with the flourishes that were his trademark.

  Qwilleran recited Robert Burns’s poem “A Man’s a Man for All That.” Toasts were drunk. And then the pizza was delivered.

  During the meal there was plenty of talk: mostly about Hixie Rice, who was promotion director for the newspaper and a resident of Indian Village. She was masterminding the new senior center on a pro bono basis…. She had worked so hard on the Fourth of July parade, and then it was rained out by the hurricane…and then vandals had trashed the front of the city hall after she had done wonders in beautifying it. As for romance, she had been unlucky.

  Qwilleran, who had known Hixie Down Below and had been instrumental in her coming to Moose County, had little to say.

  She was unlucky, that was all. She was talented, spirited, and a tireless worker—but unlucky. There was a Hixie jinx that followed her, and now she was charged with the responsibility for th
e new senior center.

  The Something had announced a contest to name it, with an entry blank printed on the front page.

  Joe Bunker said, “That was very clever of the Something. To make three entries, you have to buy three papers.”

  Qwilleran said, “You weathermen are too smart, Joe. We thought no one would notice our scheme.”

  Polly said, “The official ballot box has been in the bookstore, and it created a lot of traffic. Judd Amhurst kept moving it around so the carpet wouldn’t wear out in one spot. Judd retired early from his job with Moose County Power, and he still had plenty of pep. He’s manager of the Lit Club and he volunteers at the animal shelter, where he washes dogs.”

  “What’s next on the program at the Lit Club?” Qwilleran asked.

  “There’s a retired professor in Lockmaster who’s an authority on Proust, and he’s coming to lecture…. It would be nice, Qwill,” Polly said, “if you’d put him up at the barn for one overnight.”

  Qwilleran said, “I’m sure it would make a good perk in addition to the modest stipend you can afford. Koko has been making aerial attacks. On ailurophobes. I hope this speaker likes cats.”

  The foursome moved to the deck for coffee and Polly’s homemade chocolate brownies. Jet Stream accompanied them on a leash, because of the recent scare about rabid wildlife. There had been a time when cats were free to visit the creek and watch the fish and birds. Now there was evidence of rabid skunks, raccoons, and foxes. What had happened?