Muffin and Mr. Cat were lying on the bed next to each other rubbing their heads together. “Okay you two,” I said, “what do you think is wrong here?” Meow, meow.=Human Lena and grandparents good people, they love each other and we need to help. But… Meow.=Yep, I agree with Muffin, but something very wrong here, human Charlie holding something back, even though… Meow, meow.= Though he such nice man, something not right, not know what it is, but he not… Meow.=He not telling whole truth, he know more about these people after them, 14 years is long time, would they still… Meow, meow.=Be looking for them now, or is something more close to now that he not mention. Maybe he… Meow.=Mixed up with these men too, like son was.

“Slow down you two, you’re going to get me mixed up trying to follow what you’re saying,” I told them, “but I think you are right, Charlie didn’t tell us everything, perhaps because Lena came in and maybe it has to do with Charlie himself which he didn’t want Lena to know. Tomorrow I will talk to Charlie alone.” Meow.=That’s good, then we know more. Meow, meow.=We still look for treasure too. “Yes indeed, we came to look for a treasure and that’s what we will do,” I said, “but we need to keep our eyes open too for anything unusual, those men are going to be back.” I yawned. So did the cats. Guess it’s time for bed so we can get an early start. The cats were asleep before I managed to get into bed. I lay there for a bit looking around, then, at the window, a face!

Our room had a door that led to the porch so I jumped out of bed, grabbed my gun, flipped the blanket to wake up the cats and headed for that door. Out I went into the darkness, but no one was there. Meow, meow!=Why you wake us up? “Someone was at the window Muffin,” I said, “but there’s no one here now.” Mr. Cat ran to one end of the porch, Muffin to the other end, but they saw no one around. We all went back inside and there, lying on our bed, was Lena! Muffin went over to her and started rubbing her head on Lena’s face to wake her up. “What? Muffin, why are you in here?”, asked Lena. I turned the light on. “Hey, this isn’t my room, how did I get here?”, she asked again. So I told her what had happened. “Grandma and grandpa!”, she said, her voice quavering.

“You three stay put, I’ll go check on them,” I said and off I went. Their bedroom door was open so I went in, but they weren’t there. Now what? I checked the living room, then saw a light in the kitchen. There they were, Chantelle sitting at the table and Charlie looking out the back door, shotgun in hand. “Charlie,” I said, “what’s going on?” I think both of them nearly died when I said that. “We heard noises outside,” said Chantelle, “Charlie wanted to look, and I didn’t want to be alone.” Just then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I jumped. Lena giggled and so did the cats. “Not funny,” I said smiling. “What kind of noises did you hear Charlie?”, I asked. “Odd sort of whining noise,” he answered, “I have heard before but I don’t know what it is.”

I then told them what I saw. “Maybe Lena should stay in your room the rest of the night,” I suggested to Chantelle. “Yes, very good idea,” she said. So we all went back to bed and the rest of the night was nice and quiet. I got up early and looked out the window, it was a beautiful sunny morning, should be a good day for treasure hunting. Meow, meow!=Mr. Cat gone, he not here! Muffin was right, where did he go? Meanwhile… Meow?=Oh my head, what happen to me? And why I sitting on big hill? There no big hill on farm, only real small hill, this one big. Farm flat. Maybe I sitting crooked. Hey, where farmhouse go? There no house, no barn, only trees and hills. My poor little head spinning round and round. I lie down again under pine tree. All this very strange, what happen to me?

To Be Continued.

Pictures of Mr. Cat, above, are supplied by his human, Nina.

©2020 Steve McLeod.