The Purrfect Murder

“Here it is Saturday, a perfect day for chores and errands, and I’m hauling your little white butt around.”
    “Too much money.” Harry affected a prudent and pious tone.
    “Your husband will buy you a car if you want one.”
    “It seems…” She thought for a moment. “Excessive.”
    “So I drive out to your farm, pick you up, bring you to St. Luke’s, and now we’re cruising around because you want to enjoy how great my wagon rides. I’ve spent three dollars in gas just picking you up.”
    “I’ll pay you.” Harry wrinkled her nose. “Besides, I take you places in my truck. And I just discovered my truck needs a new alternator, so it’s in the shop. You can drop me off on the way home.”
    “Your F-150 that was foaled in 1978? It’s not a bad ride. Better than your dually. That thing will rattle your teeth.”
    Harry nodded. “It may suck up gas, but it hauls the rig, hauls the flatbed. I can do a lot of farm chores with that, and it saves me buying another tractor. Blair lends me his big eighty-horsepower. I thought I might could buy it when he and Little Mim moved to Rose Hill, but he took the tractor. Good thing, because she was still using that old Massey Ferguson from the seventies, the one where the gears would lock up and you’d fly along. Scared the poop out of me when I saw it.”
    “What is that old Massey Ferguson in horsepower?”
    “One twenty.”
    “Mercy.” Even though not a farmer, Susan, like most people in the area, had an appreciation of the equipment, maintenance, skill, and time it took to produce any crop.
    Now that she and Harry were partners in the timber tract, she was learning a lot and she loved it.
    “So, what’s your gas mileage?”
    “I tell you this every time we go out.” Susan noticed a maple tree downtown in high orange-red color.
    The trees and bushes in town usually peaked before the ones in the country, because town temperature was often five or more degrees higher due to building density, more asphalt roads, and more car and furnace emissions.
    “Twenty-five miles to the gallon on the open road. Sometimes twenty-eight,”
Tucker piped up, since she’d heard it so many times.
    Susan patiently repeated these same numbers to Harry.
    “Pretty good for an engine this big, machine this heavy.”
    “You’re not old enough to get Alzheimer’s; maybe you have Halfzheimer’s,” Susan teased her.
    “I remember. I like to hear you say it,” Harry teased her back.
    “Funny, Ned took Owen to the office today, and I miss my little guy. We spend most every waking moment together.”
    “Corgi love.”
Tucker smiled.
    “Don’t make me throw up.”
Pewter faked a gag.
    “Hairball! Hairball alert!”
Mrs. Murphy jumped away in mock disgust.
    “Better than a worm-hanging-out-of-your-butt alert.”
Pewter’s pupils narrowed for a second.
    “I have never had a worm emerge from my nether regions.”
Mrs. Murphy was incensed.
    “Oh, puh-leese Louise.”
Pewter drew out the word.
“I’ve seen spaghetti strings out of that anus.”
    “Never!”
Mrs. Murphy cuffed the gray cat, who slapped her right back.
    “Get me out of here,”
Tucker whined as she tried to climb into the passenger seat up front.

    “No, Tucker.” Harry turned. “You two, stop it. If I have to crawl back there, there will be big trouble in River City. You hear me?”
    “I hear you, but I’m not listening.”
Pewter whacked Mrs. Murphy again.
    Mrs. Murphy leapt onto the rotund kitty. Since Susan had put the seats down, the two now rolled all the way to the hatchback door.
    “Susan, if you pull over, I’ll settle this.”
    “Oh, let them have at it.”
    “You’ll have blood in your car.”
    “Harpy!”
Pewter snarled.
    “Liar!”
Mrs. Murphy scratched.
    The lightbulb switched on in Tucker’s brain, and she called out above their mutual insults,
“What I want to know, Pewter, is what are you doing studying Mrs. Murphy’s anus?”
    This produced the desired effect. Both cats stopped screaming and clawing.
    Pewter disentangled herself from the tiger cat, huffed up to full blowfish proportion, and jumped sideways toward the corgi.
“Death to dogs!”
    “Don’t think about it.”
Tucker, bracing herself, snarled.
    “Harry will put you in mincemeat pie when I’m done shredding.”
Her chartreuse eyes, pupils full to the max, glittered with fury.
    Mrs. Murphy, who should have known better, leapt on Pewter from behind, and the two rolled back to the hatchback door