How to Wash a Cat Read Free Page A

settees, credenzas, vases, maps, prints, engravings, pewter pieces, and historic trinkets.
    Uncle Oscar had blatantly ignored this trend. Plopped down in the middle of a row of these highbrow stores, the Green Vase could not have been more out of place. The bright and shiny storefronts on either side blushed with embarrassment at its faded awning, cracked glass, and crumbling brick exterior. Oscar had not cared much about appearances, his own or the store’s.
    While I found his cavalier spirit endearing, others did not—particularly his new next-door neighbor, Frank Napis. From the moment he moved in, Frank began filing complaints about the Green Vase with the city-appointed board responsible for ensuring the historical preservation of the buildings in the Jackson Square neighborhood.
    Oscar’s attorney usually represented him during these board meeting confrontations. He rarely attended.
    “I don’t like to give Frank the satisfaction,” Oscar would say, spitting out the name as if it tasted bitter and unpleasant.
    Even as Oscar finished preparing our dinner that last Saturday night, he was still fuming about the board meeting that had been held earlier that week.
    “What a bunch of nonsense,” he said bitterly, aggressively whipping a large, wooden spoon through a bowl of mashed potatoes. Oscar turned his attention to the sizzling sounds of the chicken simmering in his heavy, cast iron skillet. “This time, he’s complaining about my gutters .”
    Oscar’s cheeks began to flush. “Historical preservation! What do they think the gutters on this street looked like during the Gold Rush?”
    I ducked as Oscar sloshed more cooking oil into the pot, creating a shower of oil-splattering sparks. Oscar’s gutters were so beaten up and full of holes, they looked as if they had taken on artillery fire, but I nodded along supportively.
    “My gutters are fine, thank you very much,” Oscar said defensively. “They’ve been through a couple of rainy seasons, that’s all.”
    Oscar had been ranting about his neighbor for months, but I had only seen my uncle’s loathed antagonist once. Oscar had been out of town, and I had stopped by after work to pick up his mail.
    It was early evening and the afternoon’s bright sun was quickly fading to dusk. The streets of Jackson Square were quiet and abandoned, with most of the shopkeepers having gone home for the day. I stood in front of Oscar’s heavy, iron-framed door, grappling with its rusty latch. As I knelt down to get a better look at the lock, I sensed a movement on the edge of my periphery. My head turned to see a man closing up the store next door.
    He had a short, Napoleonic figure with a pot-bellied middle and stout, round legs. The downy, maple-brown fuzz of his thinning hair gave his head a hawk-like appearance—an effect that was further enhanced by the beaked nose that hooked out from his otherwise flat face and cast a shadow over his thin, deflated lips. Crouched on the sidewalk, the darkness closing in, I’d felt an uneasy squirming in the pit of my stomach as the man turned to stare at me.
    His thin lips curved upwards in acknowledgement, followed by a strange twitch that spasmed the pale skin hiding beneath his enormous nose. I managed a weak smile in return as the lock finally submitted to the bent and twisted spare key.
    I stepped inside the dark store and stooped over to pick up a couple of letters off of the floor where they had fallen through the mail slot. When I rose to leave, Napis’s short, stumpy legs were already carrying him down the darkened street. I watched him disappear from my vantage point inside the Green Vase before heading back outside.
    Oscar was still muttering biliously about the dispersions to his gutters, but his mood seemed to lighten as he loaded several steaming dishes onto the kitchen table, and we sat down to eat. I dove into the plate of fried chicken while the cats curled up at our feet, contentedly crunching on a mixture of