The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook Read Free Page B

yourself. Those whoppers are YELLOW.
    Here’s the thing: When we found Zook lying in that geranium pot in the alley on that sunny Saturday two and a half years ago, something else was attached to his collar besides that rectangle with the fake diamond on it. There was also a name tag. The name tag said
MUD, 1235 Clover Street
, which is around the block from where we live. Here are the reasons I threw that name tag away and never told a living soul about it:
    1. I wanted us to keep that cat as our own pet. We renamed him Zook right away. So it was just convenient (blue whopper) to say he was homeless.
    2. Zook wanted to stay with us, too! He followed us up to our apartment without a backward glance, as if he knew it was his home. And it was.
    3. Only a dork calls their own cat “Mud,” and only someone worse than a dork doesn’t feed their cat properly, or give him flea medicine, or uses him for target practice with a BB gun!!!!!! A villain does all that. No way was that cat going back to 1235 Clover Street.
    I committed that address to memory so I could visit the Villain myself and seek revenge. Not that I had any plans for revenge. Two and a half years ago I wasn’t even allowed to go around the block by myself.
    But now I’m allowed to go lots of places. I pick up Fred from preschool, and I go to Safeway to buy milk and fruit and stuff, and then there’s O’Leary’s Pizzeria, where we hang out a lot because of our job (more about that soon), and the Good Samaritan Veterinary Clinic, and the Bank of the West that I investigate in case of robberies. Man, the places I’ll get to go when I can drive a car! Six long, long years away, even though my mother and Gramma Dee say it’s not anywhere near long enough for them.
    Lately, we’ve been passing by the Villain’s house.
    Today after leaving the bus stop, we actually do more than pass by. We sit on the curb across from the Villain’s house to rest. That’s what Fred thinks we’re doing, anyway. I myself am noticing things.
    Zook’s old home is a small house with shades pulled all the way down and a broken-down front porch. Overgrown lavender plants in the yard sweeten up the air, almost completely covering up the chipped front walk. Sometimes I seea motorcycle parked in the sloped gravel driveway, but we’ve never seen the Villain.
    Fred reaches into his little plastic bag for a fish cracker, his mind still on my whopper.
    â€œHow many lives has Zook lived already?” he asks.
    â€œNobody knows for sure. But trust me, less than nine.”
    Right now I feel like grabbing a sharp pebble, then racing across the street to scratch a big
Z
for Zook on the shiny hub of that motorcycle’s front wheel.
    â€œBut how many do you think?” Fred asks.
    I brush a crumb from his chin. I look right into his worried brown eyes. “Zook is working on his fifth life,” I say, pulling a number out of the air. Well, not exactly out of the air, because five is Fred’s favorite number, being a proud five-year-old himself.
    Fred nods thoughtfully, then counts on his fingers. “Four left.”
    He eats a bunch of crackers and his mouth is stuffed when he asks the next question. It comes out sounding like “How shoe your snow?” or “Cows moo and blow?” But I’m prepared for the question, so I understand him perfectly.
    â€œHow do I know? I’ll tell you how I know,” I say. “Cats giveus ‘clues,’ that’s what they do. If you’re a real good noticer, you pick up those clues, those really important details. Those clues tell you about all the lives before, and maybe even all the lives coming up.”
    â€œOh,” says Fred, in a way that means there will be more questions later. “OK. Anyway, let’s go now.” He doesn’t look worried anymore, and stands up.
    I hear a jingle of keys. There he is! The Villain, double-locking his