Puss 'N Cahoots

three animals scooted around trainers, riders, and grooms between barns, only slowing down if the humans were mounted or leading a horse. At only ten-fifteen, August’s sultry reputation was well earned.
    By the time they reached Barn Three by the practice arena, Tucker’s pink tongue hung out. She stuck her head in a water bucket for dogs that was tucked in the corner of the barn, as there’s no such thing as a horseman without a dog. The cats, on their hind legs, also drank.
    “Hotter here than in Virginia.”
Pewter panted.
    “It is. At home we’re by the mountains, and the ocean’s not that far away,”
Tucker thoughtfully replied.
“There’s usually a cool breeze.”
    “From our farm it’s one hundred forty miles—well, first you run into the Chesapeake Bay if you draw a straight line, but still, almost the same, to big water,”
Mrs. Murphy stated. She thought of the Atlantic Ocean as big water.
    “How do you know that?”
Pewter doubted the tiger.
    “Because I read the map with Mom. If you draw a straight line from Crozet east, you wind up just below Point Lookout, where the Potomac River pours into the Chesapeake Bay. If you crossed the water you’d wind up at Assateague Island, and that’s the Atlantic Ocean. Okay, so it’s more than one hundred forty miles to the Atlantic, but it’s not all that far to where the river meets the bay. Even though we’re about the same latitude as here, our weather’s different. Anyway, that’s what Mom says, and she
cares
about the weather.”
    “Will you two shut up? Let’s get to work,”
Tucker commanded.
    Neither cat wished to take orders from a dog, but Tucker was right, so they fanned out, alert to any possibility.
    Mrs. Murphy, claws like tiny daggers, climbed up the side of a stall to walk along the joists overhead.
    Coming in the opposite direction, the large ginger cat in charge of the barn stopped, thrashed his tail vigorously, eyes wide.
“What are you doing in my barn!”
    Below, Pewter heard the challenge just as the rest of the barn-cat crew emerged from the hospitality room.
    Tucker, large enough to scare them, bared her fangs so the cats scattered to encircle Pewter. Tucker was on to that.
    Overhead, Mrs. Murphy loudly answered the ginger cat.
“We’re looking for clues about the stolen horse. We figure Charly had the most incentive.”
    “Wasn’t in my barn.”
The ginger allowed his fur to settle down, but the tip of his tail swayed.
    “No, she wasn’t, but we saw her being loaded onto Ward’s van. Do you work for Charly?”
    “No. I work for the fairgrounds,”
the fellow replied.
    Mrs. Murphy checked where a stall corner was, so she could back down just in case he decided to fight. Looked like he was calming down, so she relaxed a bit.
    “Why do you care about the horse?”
    “Kalarama. I’m,”
she told a white lie,
“a Kalarama cat. If anything unusual happens, please tell me. I’m in Barn Five. Doesn’t have to be about a horse. Could be anything, you know, sort of strange.”
    Tucker walked beside Pewter, the other barn cats eyeing them with suspicion from a distance. The corgi stuck her head in a wastebasket outside a stall. Nothing.
    She repeated this, putting her head in a red grooming bucket.
    “Tucker, you’re just looking for chicken, trying to pretend you’re really looking for clues.”
Pewter taunted the dog.
    “In the first bucket I smelled yerba maté tea, health-food-bar wrappers, orange peels, and needles that had contained Banamine.”
She named a horse tranquilizer.
“In this grooming bucket I smell cocaine in the little green tin marked Bag Balm.”
    That shut up Pewter, who became more alert. She even climbed up the stall sides to peer in, then she backed down.
    The last garbage bucket did have chicken bones, but Tucker resisted.
    “Nothing here,”
Tucker called up to Mrs. Murphy.
    “Try the hospitality room,”
Mrs. Murphy called down.
“The humans don’t use it until showtime.”
    Minutes later, Tucker and Pewter emerged from the resplendent navy and red room.
    “Big fat zero,”
Pewter called up.
    “Don’t talk about yourself that way.”
Tucker’s voice filled with mock concern.
    “Bubble butt. Tailless wonder,”
Pewter shot back, but she was grateful Tucker escorted her, keeping the other cats at bay.
    “Thanks for letting us visit your barn. I’m Mrs. Murphy, by the way.”
The tiger cat watched her two friends below.
    “Spike.”
He smiled, revealing that his left front