How to Moon a Cat Read Online Free Page A

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    It was during these spontaneous moments of brief but frenetic activity that Rupert performed his most notable acts of destruction. His middle-of-the-night renovation to the kitchen wall was just the latest example of his handiwork.
    Rupert had skittishly avoided the area all morning, as if he might implicate himself by proximity to the scene of his crime. He sat on the floor next to his sister, hunched forward as he nervously eyed my orange vinyl coveralls and goggled headgear.
    “It’s okay,” I said shaking my head in puzzlement at this unusual display of contrition. Rupert had never been known to apologize for the messes he created. “You’re not in trouble.” I cleared my throat to emphasize the clarification. “ This time.”
    I returned to the home improvement book to scan through the list once more.
    “Check. Check. Check,” I repeated to myself as I made another adjustment to my face mask and goggles. These last two items weren’t actually cited in the how-to manual as required equipment, but given my late Uncle Oscar’s eccentricities, I wasn’t taking any chances. Who knew what might be lurking in the crawl spaces behind these walls? I slapped my gloved hands together optimistically—I knew what I was hoping to find.
    For a pudgy cat with few cares in the world beyond scarfing down cat food and sedately soaking up the sun, Rupert had recently developed a unique and incredibly useful talent. Over the past couple of months, he had sniffed out several tightly wrapped bundles that my late Uncle Oscar had apparently hidden throughout the apartment prior to his death—bundles that contained wads of cash.
    Rupert had found the first stash in the bedroom, stuffed inside the box springs beneath the mattress. During one of his early-morning episodes of high-octane exuberance, he had shredded a hole in the fibrous cloth that covered the open end of the box spring’s wooden framing. Soon after he climbed inside to look around, his energy spurt petered out, and he settled in for a nap.
    Despite Isabella’s best efforts to guide me, it had taken the better part of an afternoon to find him. All that was visible from beneath the bed was a Rupert-sized bulge pressing down on the fabric cover of the box spring. After several sharp pokes from the bottom side of the fabric, I’d finally convinced him to leave his new hiding place. You can imagine my surprise when a packet of dollar bills followed a disgruntled Rupert out his improvised exit in the fabric covering of the box spring.
    Since that first discovery, Rupert had ferreted out bundles of money from all sorts of nooks and crannies: in the false bottom of a cupboard drawer, taped inside the covering of a light fixture, and—in a situation that had required an extensive Rupert-extraction operation—in the six-inch crawl space behind the washer and dryer.
    Oscar must have been squirreling away this cash for years; the bills spanned a wide range of serial numbers and print dates. The pieces of paper were wrinkled and worn from use, and each one carried a slightly greasy fragrance. This was, presumably, the scent that Rupert’s olfactory glands had honed in on: It was that of his favorite dish, my Uncle Oscar’s fried chicken.
    I peered through my goggled glasses at the room around me. This was the kitchen where my uncle had spent countless hours cooking up his signature recipe. It had been almost a year since his death, but I could still picture him, standing over the stove, grumbling into his various pots and pans.
    Oscar had been a crotchety old man with a wide stomach, thinning white hair, and a short stocky body that a long life had worn smooth around the edges. His regular wardrobe had rarely varied from a navy-blue collared shirt and pants, both of which were almost always dusted with flour and dotted with flecks of grease. His typically dour expression, however, had masked a warm, caring soul, albeit one that carried more than its fair share of