Sour Puss Read Free Page A

cross.
“I am innocent.”
    “That’s what they all say.” Fair laughed as though he understood Pewter’s meow.
    Bride and groom, each carrying an extremely naughty cat, walked down the center aisle as Mildred hit the keys.
    Miranda, the lead singer in the choir of the charismatic Church of the Holy Light, said as the bride and groom walked by, “My delight is in the Lord; because He hath heard the voice of my prayer.”
    “Happy that they’re finally married, honeybun?” Tracy held her hand.
    “Yes, but my prayer was those two bad cats would get caught,” Miranda replied.
    The reception, held at the farm, exceeded everyone’s expectations for a perfect April day. Small tables set up under the trees each had a lovely spring-flower arrangement. The food was truly superb, and Patricia Kluge and Bill Moses supplied all the wines from their Kluge Estate Vineyard. Over two hundred guests came to celebrate this glorious day. Even Mrs. Murphy and Pewter were forgiven as Harry fed them bits of turkey, ham, roast pork, and salmon.
    She said to Fair, “No one will forget our wedding day.”
    He’d just given Tucker a whole sweet potato as people toasted the bride and groom. “I know I won’t.”
    It was all seemingly perfect.

2

    T he heaven-sent warmth and sunshine of Sunday, April 16, Harry and Fair’s wedding day, evaporated on April 17 as a cold front swept down from Canada, bringing glowering skies, a drop in temperature, and cool showers.
    T. S. Eliot wrote, “April is the cruelest month.” It is doubtful he had agriculture in mind when he penned that immortal line, the beginning to one of the most famous poems in English letters, but any farmer in Virginia can tell you he was right.
    A sixty-eight-degree day can be followed by a blizzard. This Monday, while not blizzard weather, proved cold enough for scarf, gloves, Barbour coat, and Thinsulate-lined work boots, all of which Harry wore as she checked the mares and foals. The mares, bequeathed to her and Fair by a friend who died quite young, unexpectedly, each delivered beautiful foals. Harry could never have afforded the stud fees. She marveled at how correct the three fillies and one colt were as they nuzzled up to their respective mothers.
    Most couples marry in June; October is the second-most popular month, and the Christmas season is also popular. Since Harry worked the farm and Fair, a vet, specialized in equine reproduction, April was the best choice. The crush of delivering foals at two in the morning abated for him; the press of farm chores remained relatively light.
    Harry walked the paddock fence lines. So many horse injuries are fence-related. Checking the fences every day was part of her routine. The health of her animals came first.
    Tucker trotted behind Harry. Mrs. Murphy and Pewter stayed in the barn, the excuse being that the mouse population had mushroomed out of control. The reality was that Pewter didn’t like cold and Mrs. Murphy wanted a good gossip with Simon, the possum living in the hayloft.
    Also living in the hayloft was Flatface, a great horned owl, and Matilda, a huge slumbering blacksnake.
    In Pewter’s defense, she did perch on the tack trunk in the heated tack room, peering down at the cleverly hidden mouse hole behind the trunk. Her whiskers swept forward in anticipation of seeing a mouse snout appear. So far, the mice, smelling her, elected to stay put.
    In the hayloft, Simon, a kleptomaniac, displayed his latest treasure for Mrs. Murphy.
    “Doesn’t it sparkle?”
He proudly pushed forward a little clear tube of iridescent sunscreen.
    “Where’d you find that?”
    “In the old bucket full of the natural sponges.”
    “Hmm, Harry must have dropped it last summer. She rarely uses sunscreen. She should but, well, she gets busy and forgets those things.”
    “How was the wedding?”
    Mrs. Murphy declined to relate her participation in the ceremony.
“Harry was a beautiful bride. Just seeing her in a dress was worth