Last Licks

Sunny peered up at it, trying to identify the species. Something African probably. Antelope? Hartebeest? Okapi? The taxidermy specimen stared down with an accusatory look in its glass eyes.

“Let’s go,” Ollie muttered. “That creepy thing is giving me the same look as the stupid deer that put me here.”

Sunny started moving again, taking the turn in the corner slowly to avoid an unoccupied armchair—or so she thought.

But a head popped over the side, masked in ginger and black fur.

Sunny stopped. “Hello, Portia.”

The cat took advantage of the pause to transfer herself from the chair to Ollie’s lap. He sat frozen in the wheelchair, his hands gripping the armrests. “Ah, jeeze.”

“Take it easy,” Sunny advised. “Portia is a friendly cat. You remember how she sat with Gardner.”

“Yeah,” Ollie muttered, “right before he went off to the big battle of the bands in the sky.”

Actually, Portia showed herself to be a pretty smart cat, resting her weight on Ollie’s unhurt leg. Maybe she smelled the surgical wounds on the broken one.

Ollie sat very still, looking down dubiously at the cat in his lap. Portia tipped her head back, staring soulfully at him with her emerald eyes.

Trust a cat to climb all over the person who’s not very sure with them, Sunny thought.

“She wants you to pet her,” she told Ollie. “That’s her and her brother’s job here, to visit with the residents and let themselves be stroked.”

“Don’t say ‘stroke’ to an old person,” Ollie joked. “What do I do?”

“Bring a hand up, don’t stick your fingers out, let her sniff the back. When she’s comfortable with you, she’ll probably make the first move.”

Ollie extended his hand hesitantly. Portia sniffed it, examined it, and then stretched her head forward.

“Just pat her gently.”

Ollie followed her instructions, barely touching Portia’s head. “The fur’s so soft,” he said in almost a whisper.

Portia evidently thought his petting was nice, but she wanted something a bit more vigorous. She thrust her head against Ollie’s palm, and he quickly pulled his hand away.

“She liked what you were doing,” Sunny explained, reaching around the side of the wheelchair. “But she wants some of this.” She began to scratch Portia between the ears.

Ollie, though, stared at her hand, not at her technique. “What happened there? Did your cat do that?”

A bit belatedly, Sunny realized that her gauze pad must have fallen off somewhere along the way while she was wheeling Ollie around.

“It was an accident,” she told him.

He sat looking warily down at the cat. “And this is an accident waiting to happen. Can you get her off me?”

Portia wasn’t eager to leave Ollie’s well-padded lap. It took Sunny’s best cat-handling techniques to lure her away, and even they might not have worked if Portia hadn’t been eager to get a good sniff of her.

Good luck with that, Sunny silently told the cat.

Shadow stayed away from me after I took my shower.

In the end, Portia wound up back in her armchair, looking rather disgruntled.

Ollie wasn’t too happy, either. He sat stiffly in his wheelchair, a faint look of pain on his face. Discussion time was over. All he wanted was to get back to his room and stretch out on his bed.

Sunny steered him back to the rehab ward. Just before they reached Room 114, they encountered Camille.

“Do you think you can help get Mr. Barnstable into bed—quietly, so we won’t upset Mr. Vernon?” Sunny asked.

Camille took on the challenge, setting Ollie safely back in bed. Sunny whispered her good-byes and left with the aide.

“He’ll be able to catch a nap until suppertime,” Camille said. “Then maybe he won’t be so tired.”

“Um . . .” Sunny showed the girl her scratched hand. “Do you think I could get a bandage to cover these?”

“Those aren’t from one of our cats, are they?” Camille asked, shocked.

“No, no, I got it at home,” Sunny assured her. “I had a gauze pad on, but I lost it.”

“Let me go and talk to the nurses,” Camille said.

Sunny watched from a distance as the aide walked up to the nurses’ station and started talking to one of the nurses on duty.

“Hey,” a voice said in Sunny’s ear. She turned to find Luke Daconto standing beside her, grinning. “I was just going over to see how Mr. Barnstable is doing.”

“By now, he’s probably asleep,” Sunny told him. “He had a difficult day today, since Portia the cat forced her attentions on him.”

“Oh, yeah,” Luke said. “It’s hard to escape when you’re in a wheelchair.”

Sunny nodded. “Especially when the cat is in the chair with you.”

He laughed. “Maybe it’s mean to say, but I’d have loved to see that.”

“Yeah, when he was trying to pet her . . .” Sunny tried to duplicate his awkward attempt. Luke caught her hand. “What happened here? Looks as though you had a run-in with a feline fiend yourself.”

“My own cat got a little too frisky, I’m afraid.” Sunny pulled her hand back. “Frankly, I blame Portia. My guy was zoning out on her scent.”