A Critterful Christmas ~ Part 3 by Leah St. James

Dmitri pulled the SUV to the shoulder, what there was of it, got out and hacked at the wiper blades with his scraper to dislodge the inch of ice that had accumulated. It was the third time he'd had to pull over since leaving the veterinary clinic, and even for a guy like him who liked winter weather, this was getting old.

Apparently reading his mind, Apollo mrowled when he climbed back into the driver's seat. 

"I know, buddy. The weather is looking a bit iffy for my plan. What do you think? Should I still give it a go?"

It was a simple plan. Get home as quickly as he could, settle Apollo with a bowl of kibble, clean up the cat's mess--quickly--then head back into the storm with a bottle of Chianti and a package of gourmet cheese and crackers his sister had sent him. He'd stick in the box of Belgian chocolates he'd picked up at the warehouse store, just because he liked Belgian chocolate. And because Layla looked like a woman who would enjoy good chocolate. 

He hadn't even shocked himself at how quickly it had taken him to jump from ‘Dr. Spencer’ to simply ‘Layla.” Sometimes things just felt...right.

As if his body agreed, a shot of energy sizzled all the way to his fingertips. 

“Son, you’ve got it bad,” he mumbled to himself. No way he was going to let a foot of snow get in his way of getting to know Dr. Layla Spencer.


He eased the SUV to a faster pace and was nearing his neighborhood when his radio squawked to life.

“All units, BOLO for missing teen. Fifteen years old, six feet, 140 pounds, wearing hunting pants and jacket.”

The dispatcher added the teen’s name and address. The parents had come home early from a day trip to find him and his dog gone and couldn’t reach him on his cell phone. They’d been out searching several hours.

He thumbed the radio on to acknowledge, then gave the cat carrier a grimace. “Looks like I have to delay my plans, and your bowl of kibble. There’s a kid out in the snow somewhere, and I have no intention of spending Christmas Day telling a couple parents their son is still missing. Or worse.”

After swinging the vehicle in a U-turn, he headed away from civilization. He engaged the flood light and pointed it toward the shoulder of the rural highway, looking for anyone walking or signs that someone had passed—a near impossible task considering the gusting winds and drifting mounds of snow.

He’d driven no more than a quarter mile, creeping along, when Apollo started wailing.

“Not now,” he told the cat. “I’m busy. Be grateful you’re warm inside a heated vehicle, not stuck out there like that poor kid probably is. And his dog.”

In response, Apollo ratcheted up the volume and started clawing at the mesh covering on the side of the carrier.

“Seriously, buddy. I get it. You want out. I can’t deal with you right now.”

The cat kept it up until he was using both paws. Dmitri slowed the car and turned to give his cat a stern look. Apollo’s claws clung to the meshing, and spots of blood dotted the material.

“For crying out loud!” Dmitri flipped open the carrier’s locks and opened the top. “There. You happy now?”

But Apollo wasn’t happy. He stood on his hind legs, front paws on the passenger’s door, and stared fiercely out the window into the dark, his head making tiny jerks from side to side. And he was crying, a pitiful, mournful sound.

Shaking his head and muttering about crazy cats, Dmitri put the vehicle in gear and started forward again. He’d just passed a small access road locals used to get up to the hunting trails when the cat started going berserk, clawing at the faux leather padding like it was the enemy.

He stopped again and leaned over to capture the cat, and a tiny spot of red flashed in his peripheral vision. “What the…?”
 
Apollo had stopped picking but was looking straight ahead and mrowling again, like he was calling for someone. 

Wondering if he was as deranged as the cat, Dmitri backed up and hung a right onto the access road, pointing the floodlight forward. He’d traveled about a hundred yards uphill when the beam picked up a dark shape in the field of white. He eased the SUV forward until he could make out a vehicle turned sideways and plastered against a large snow bank. Blinking red taillights glowed through the storm like Rudolph’s nose.
 
Dmitri pulled the SUV as close as he could, then radioed an update and his position to dispatch. “Send a wrecker and a bus,” he added. “It looks nasty. Could be injuries.”
 
With a pat on Apollo’s head and a caution to the cat to be good, he levered himself from the SUV and jogged to the ditched vehicle, a small, older sedan pitched down at a 20-degree angle. It appeared stable but had come to rest on a sideways tilt, blocking the driver’s side doors. Someone—or something—inside was emitting a high-pitched whining. Whining like a dog.

Dmitri shined his flashlight into the interior. The airbag hadn't deployed, and the driver was moving sluggishly, trying to unbuckle the seat belt. In the back, two figures seemed melded together.
 
“Hell.” Dmitri slogged around the car, slid and caught himself on the side panel. There was an I BRAKE FOR ANIMALS sticker on the rear bumper. Another read: DON’T ARGUE WITH YOUR VET. SHE KNOWS HOW TO NEUTER.
 
A snorting laugh caught abruptly in his throat as the beautiful vet’s image flashed through his brain. Layla? What the hell would she be doing out in this storm? With passengers. And a dog?
    
His heart thundering, his brain testing the theory that he'd actually located the missing teen, he assessed how to extricate them all. He scrambled to the passenger side and tugged on the door. It didn’t budge. He stripped off a glove to rap on the window.
 
“Hey, Doc! I’m going to get you out. Hang in there!” He pointed to the handle, hoping she understood to unlock the door.
 
Nodding, she scooted to the right. After another eternity a click signaled the locks unlatching. 

It took a few minutes for Layla and her passenger to climb from the sedan. Thankfully, and miraculously, they appeared shaken up but not injured.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," she said, throwing her arms around him for a quick hug...too quick. "I was sure we were destined to become human Popsicles. But we need to hurry," she said. "I have a patient in the back seat who needs attention." She jerked her thumb toward the boy who had hunkered down by the open door. "And we need to call his parents."

After a few quick questions, Dmitri confirmed the boy's identity, and relief flooded him as he made his first happy transmission of the night.

It was another ten minutes to get Apollo back in his carrier, then transfer the dog into the SUV. By that time the EMTs had arrived and bundled the boy onto a stretcher to get checked out at the hospital where his parents would meet him. Layla climbed into the back of his SUV to take care of her patient.

"How is he?" Dmitri stood at the open door, watching as she gently worked her hands along his ribs, back and legs. After a few minutes she looked up, hope in her eyes. 

"He needs a thorough exam, but all things considered, he's in amazingly good shape."

Taking a deep breath for the first time in what felt like hours, Dmitri smiled as she finished up with the dog who had thankfully decided to take a nap. Finally, thirty minutes later, her car was packed up and hauled off.

Layla stared after the wrecker’s tail lights, then sighed. “Looks like I’ll need a new car.”
 
“Maybe try to get one that has more than a three-inch clearance from the ground? You know so you can drive in this white stuff? We tend to get a lot of it around here.”
 
She squinted at him and wrinkled her nose. “Ha ha. I’m from southern Texas. What do I know about cars for snow?”
 
“Yeah?” He ushered her into the front of the SUV, then rushed to take his seat behind the wheel. As he navigated them back onto the main roadway, he said, “You know, I could help you shop. For a new vehicle.”
 
“You could?” There was a smile in her voice that made him want to grab her and spin her around.

“Absolutely. Consider it a public service, so we don’t have to dig you out of any more snow drifts.”
 
She jabbed at his arm with her mittened fist. “Again, ha ha ha. Very funny.” After a moment of quiet she said, “Seriously, thank you for rescuing us. I was really worried. But I kept praying. Thank God you found us.”
 
“Um….” He nearly didn’t tell her, but if anyone would understand, a vet would. “I can’t take all the credit. Apollo somehow sensed you, or maybe the dog, and sort of signaled your position. I figured, what the heck…” He glanced to see if she thought he’d gone insane, but she was nodding. 

“You hear those stories every once in a while. It’s a mystery how they do it.”
 
They pulled into the lot at the clinic a few minutes later and crawled from the SUV.

“Look.” Layla pointed upward. “The snow stopped.”
 
Dmitri tilted his head and gazed into a field of stars glimmering against a velvety black sky. “I’ll be damned. No snow. Like it had never happened.”
 
They got the dog inside and settled, and Dmitri was about to say goodbye, ready to put his wine and cheese aside, along with his budding romantic intentions, when she stopped him with a hand on his arm. 
 
“It’s midnight. Officially Christmas. I have to check Baxter out, but would you and Apollo care to keep me company for a bit? You can let him out of the carrier. I’ll get him some treats and put a blanket down for him to cuddle in and rest his tail while you and I have some eggnog and cookies?” 

She gave him a hopeful smile, and his heart zinged again.
 
“There’s nothing I’d like more. Let me get my cat.”
 
He retrieved the carrier from the SUV and turned it so he could see Apollo's face. “Looks like we’re going to get our date with the beautiful vet after all. Merry Christmas to us, buddy. Merry Christmas.”

.....................

I hope you enjoyed meeting Dmitri and  Layla (and Apollo and Baxter). And I hope this story gave you a bit of a break in your busy holiday preparations. (Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here.)

Please check back tomorrow for the beginning Alicia Dean's story, "Once Upon a Brave Christmas." (I know it will be great!)

Happy holidays from my family (including Hercules) to yours!

Leah writes stories of mystery and romance, good and evil, and the power of love. Learn

more at her website, or visit her Facebook page where she occasionally posts about writing, her life, her son's cat and more.

A Critterful Christmas ~ Part 2 by Leah St. James

Layla locked up after the sexy police officer and set the alarm. Then she watched through the blinds while he secured his cat in the front seat of the police department’s vehicle before swiping his hands over the front and back windshields to clear the accumulated snow. That was a man used to the white stuff.

Predictions called for six to ten overnight on top of the six already on the ground. It would be a very white Christmas. Lord how she’d wished for that growing up in Texas. They got occasional winter frost, sometimes ice. Never anything that required knee-high boots to navigate, unless you counted waders for fishing. Neither had she ever had to stow an ice pick in her car to hack her way to the door lock. Had she realized how cold it had to be to snow, she might not have wished so hard. And she might have thought twice before moving to the middle of nowhere in Northeastern Pennsylvania where the average late spring temperatures mimicked the winter lows she was accustomed to.

A shiver worked its way from her shoulders down her spine, and she wrapped her arms more securely around her middle as she made her way toward the kennel area in the back to check on her charges.

Occupancy was light for a holiday, only four dogs. They might be small in number but were sure mighty in volume. Since taking over the veterinary practice a year and a half ago, she’d been full up only once, and that was during the fall, a perfect storm, she’d been told, of deer hunting and football season. People in these parts tended to have family nearby who would care for their pets when they traveled. 

It was a nice little area—big little area in square miles, she corrected herself, but with a friendly small-town feel. The main shopping area was a half mile to the west, home to a beauty salon, indy book store, state liquor store, grocery/pharmacy, as well as a couple convenience store/gas stations and restaurants of the mom-and-pop diner variety with one of the best bakeries she’d ever encountered. The area’s main industry came from the ski slopes ten miles to the north of town. Families flocked from the suburbs to ski the trails in the winter, and frolic in the water park/lakeside resort in the spring and summer. Most of the county’s residents worked there in one capacity or another. And in the past eighteen months, she’d met many of them and their pets. A few had become good friends even if they tended to stick by themselves, especially at holidays.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad life she’d made for herself—just solitary. 

Normally she could handle lonely, even preferred it after five long and excruciatingly boring years with her ex, a man who claimed to love her—and all her pets—to the moon, then demonstrated it by trying to get rid of her most senior cat while she was away at a conference. The creep. She’d gotten home early, just in time to discover he’d taken 15-year-old Charlie to the local shelter. She’d retrieved her cat and booted the man out on his backside, for good.

Figuring her heart had frozen with the temperature in these parts, she hadn’t thought of romance in too many moons to count. But seeing big, brawny Dmitri Jones talking baby talk to his cat had thawed something inside her, and whatever it was had gushed to the center of her heart and made her yearn for more. She’d shut her front door and locked it behind him, but a part of her had wanted to follow, to climb into the SUV with him and his tomcat.

It was a crazy thought, one that made her give herself a mental shake.

Despite that mental shake, an image of his earnestly worried blue eyes as he’d asked for help popped into her mind. Blue eyes, golden blond hair, a chiseled face and body that reminded her of a Viking warrior followed close behind. Sighing, she willed the image away, along with the tsunami of female interest it aroused.

Patting her chest in the region of her heart, she hurried toward the kennel and pushed through the double swinging doors to check on her Christmas Eve charges.

She’d just finished feeding the crew—the big German shepherd, a basset hound, a beagle and a yappie terrier—when the doorbell pealed, and pealed and pealed.

“What the…” she murmured. “Is nobody taught patience anymore?”

She flipped on the lights, hit the alarm code and pulled the door open. 

A man stood there, arms crossed over his chest and shaking like he was palsied. She peered closer. Not a man. A teen, probably 15 or 16. Still young and stupid enough to get himself into real trouble, old enough that it would count. He wore a camouflage jacket and pants, with a mud-colored cap covering muddy brown hair. 

His forehead glistened, and his eyes looked like she’d captured them in a flash—shocky. The dogs’ frenzied barking was probably giving him a massive headache to boot. 

“Ma’am? Is the vet here?” It was the voice of a kid. A scared kid.

 “I’m Dr. Spencer.” She drew her lab coat around her once more, stepped into the frigid air and squinted into the night to look for the injured animal. “Who needs a vet?”

“My dog. We were out hiking and he took off after a rabbit then fell into a hole. I found him and pulled him out but I think he broke his leg. He can’t walk and is whining like he’s in pain.”

“Did you call your parents?”

“I dropped my cell phone somewhere when I was looking for him so started walking for help. Besides, they're out of town.” He gulped. “I need you to come with me. He’s too big for me to carry. Please.”

Something smelled fishy about this kid’s story, but then kids weren’t always the most rational beings. Layla gave him a good, long look. He didn’t look crazy, or high. Just scared…and feverish. She swung the door wide so he could enter. “What’s your name? Do you live around here? I’ll bet your parents don’t know about this, do they?”

His head wagged from side to side and grimaced. “My name is Christian Johnson and I live a mile down the road. Like I said, my parents went to some thing in Philly for the day and—” He lifted his shoulders in a can’t-be-helped gesture.

“Give me their number.”

“Ma’am?” He sniffed and ran a hand under his nose

“You’re obviously a minor and I’m not taking you anywhere without letting your parents know.”

He recited the ten digits, and she placed the call. “No answer.” 

“I told you, they’re not home.”

She held his gaze for a long count, looking for signs of a lie. Kids could be such good liars. “Where is your dog?” 

“I made a shelter for him about half a mile to the north. I tied him there and told him to stay, and now I’m scared he’ll freeze. Or that another animal will get him.” His wobbly voice spurred Layla to hurry to grab her medical bag, coat and boots. She hated to leave the dogs in their crates with no one in the building, but the thought of a wounded animal lying in the cold in the middle of a storm, that was a biggie.

Several minutes later they set off in the direction he pointed. Her little car’s heater pumped out cold air like A/C in the summer while she squinted through the wipers slapping crazily at the windshield. The snow had picked up its pace, and in the back of her mind was the worry they might not make it back. The kid sat next to her, his arms wrapped around himself, teeth chattering. He’d likely been out in the cold for too long. Nothing felt right about this.

After plowing along a bumpy, uphill road, through close to a half a foot of the fluffy white stuff, she pulled to a stop where he pointed at the edge of the lane. Ahead was a rustic lean-to shelter at the edge of a copse of trees. Inside the shelter, a dark shape lay on the ground, motionless.

The boy jerked his chin toward the shelter. “There he is. Please hurry.”

Every molecule begging to stay inside the relative warmth of the vehicle, she pulled up her hood, tied the laces under her chin and stepped into the swirling snow. If she’d thought it was cold on her front porch, this was arctic. Even taking a breath hurt, so she focused on marching one step at a time through the shin-high powder. As she approached, she fumbled with her cell phone to turn on the flash light and shined it toward the figure now ten feet away. It was a large black lab, lying on his side. 

She jogged to him, dropped to her knees and opened her kit. “What’s the dog’s name?” 

“Baxter. He’s ten years old. I’ve had him since—” The boy’s voice broke.

Relief gushed through Layla when she placed the stethoscope over the dog’s chest and picked up a faint heartbeat. “I need you to go to my car. Open the trunk. There are blankets in there. Bring a couple back. Quickly.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

While the boy retrieved the blankets, she checked the lab for wounds or other signs of injury. The one leg was swollen, no protruding bones, but the boy could be right. “Come on, Baxter boy, hang in there. We’ve got you now. It’s Christmas Eve. Let’s make this a happy memory, okay?”

After they’d bundled the dog in the blankets, Layla grabbed her phone from her pocket and caught the boy’s gaze. “You’re not in trouble, but I’m calling the police.”

His eyes widened and he gulped. “Why?”

“Like I said, you’re a minor and I need to let them know what’s going on. I should have done this back at the clinic.”

After another gulp, he nodded. Layla hit 9-1-1, but nothing happened. She peered at the phone’s tiny icons. “Crud. No service.”

“Yeah, I could have told you that, Dr. Spencer. We’re at the edge of a wildlife area.” The boy had dropped to his knees and had cradled his dog who’d roused enough to lick his tongue over the tears sliding down the boy’s face.

Her heart melting, she still gave him an eye-roll. “Wise guy.” She repacked her bag. “Let’s get this big boy back to the clinic. I’m calling the police and you’re calling your parents from there. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

By the time they made it back to the car, another inch or so of snow had fallen. She used her arm to swipe it off, as she’d seen Dmitri Jones do, then slid behind the wheel. In front of her was nothing but white, no signs of the road itself. Praying the boy didn’t realize what deep doo-doo they were in, she flexed her hands to ease her death grip on the wheel and eased into the storm. 

“Dr. Spencer, you might want to put it in a lower gear going down the hill.”

“What hill?” Layla afforded herself a quick glance to the rear. Christian was pointing straight ahead.

“It’s a pretty steep pitch, and with Baxter, we’re a good 75 pounds heavier than we were heading up.”

“Right.” Long-forgotten equations involving force, mass and acceleration snarled in her head. “We’ll pick up speed faster.”

“That’s right!” The kid’s tone was half shock and half pride, and she had to smile as she eased off the gas and levered the gear from drive to second. 

For whatever reason, though, her little car didn’t seem to recognize the command. The engine revved a few times and the car jolted forward down the incline that was, indeed, pretty steep. 

Moving to first gear didn’t help. Neither did gently tapping on the brakes. Neither did a full-on foot-slam. The car picked up speed, bumping down the mountain that these people called a hill at an ever-increasing rate. “Crap! Hold on!” Layla yelled as she battled the wheel.

She’d navigated a particularly sinister curve when the car hit bottom with a crunching thud. The force catapulted them sideways, and they started to slide down another steep incline. After executing a tilt-a-whirl move, the car careened into a mountain of white.


.......................

If you missed Part 1 of A Critterful Christmas, you can find it here. I hope you'll come back tomorrow for the story's conclusion.

Leah writes stories of mystery and romance, good and evil, and the power of love. Learn more at her website, or visit her Facebook page where she occasionally posts about writing, her life, her son's cat and more.

A Critterful Christmas ~ Part 1 by Leah St. James

He peered through the snow-spattered windshield at the neon sign and hoped like hell there was room at the inn.

Dmitri Jones turned off the car’s ignition, sighed, then turned to the creature caged in the passenger seat at his side.

“It’s okay, buddy. We’ll get you fixed up good as new. I promise.” He inserted a finger tentatively through the peek-hole in the carrying case, only to snap it back a nanosecond later. 

Sucking on his finger to soothe the scratch that hadn’t quite broken the skin, he swung the SUV’s door open and pushed to his feet. Despite the sign that advertised 24-hour care, the veterinary clinic was dark as a graveyard. A single floodlight at the corner of the roof was the only sign of life, if you could ascribe that word to the dim beam that looked like it could crap out at any moment. The only thing it was lighting was the snow falling at a rate of an inch an hour on top of a single compact car at the end of the parking lot.

It was Christmas Eve in Serenity, Pennsylvania, and not a creature was stirring. That’s what he got for moving from the lively comforts of urban Philly to the boonies. And this was the booniest of the boonies, way out on the county’s rural route. Had a closer clinic been open, he wouldn’t have slipped and slid the several miles over the mountain roads. Another pitiful mewl from inside the carrier reminded him he probably would have crawled here to get care for Apollo.  

He slammed his door shut, and somewhere in the not-too-far distance, a cacophony of barking erupted.

Ice-packed snow crunched under his boots as he moved around the car to the passenger door. After another sigh, and a deep breath that was half prayer, he opened the door and lifted the pet carrier.

His action was met with frantic mrowling, some hissing, and a lot of scrambling inside the confined space, making the carrier pitch and yaw as if possessed. 


“Apollo, settle down before you hurt yourself worse.” 

With a few mutters about damn cats and their propensity for finding trouble, he marched toward the front door to the clinic. A Please Ring sign on the front had him leaning on the doorbell.

The shrill pealing did nothing to quiet the canine residents, whose barks had turned from inquisitive to frenzied, but it made him feel like he was doing something. Because if anything happened to Apollo…

The cat had only been with him for a couple months, but in that short time, he’d grown attached to the little brat. More, he’d made him forget how damned lonely he’d been for the past couple years. 

His mother had known. She’d practically forced the cat on him. A rescue, she’d told him…or a rescue to be. If Dmitri didn’t take him, he’d go to a shelter, and no one wanted that. Especially for a big, strong bruiser of a tom cat like Apollo who could clear a cluttered table with one swipe of his paw, then pounce on the detritus until it was shredded to his satisfaction.

And since Dmitri had decorated for Christmas the past weekend, the cat was in tinsel heaven.

He’d cat-proofed as much as he could before leaving for his 12-hour shift that morning, hoping for the best, but when he’d dragged his weary ass through the door that evening, it was like walking straight into a scene out of Twister. Lights securely strung at his windows just a few weeks ago now looped lazily to the floor. Garland he’d twisted up and around the banister lay shredded along the stairs like a swath of evergreen road kill. And the Christmas tree—that hurt. The 7-foot Douglas Fir lay on its side, the feet of the 18-inch tree holder braced at a 90-degree angle to the floor. Bulbs had fallen and rolled every which way, littering his brand-new hardwood flooring with splinters of gleaming gold, red and blue glass. And underneath it all, a spreading stream of water. 

It’s not like the stuff was irreplaceable, but the decorations reminded him of quiet holiday mornings with his mom, dad and sister, before he’d joined the Army—where holidays were a whole different challenge—then moved half a state away to take this job. 

He’d stood there, stunned, wondering what to do first, when a low growling caught his attention. It took him a minute, following the tortured sound, to locate the damn cat who had wedged himself in the corner behind the fallen tree. Dropping to his hands and knees, he crept forward through the puddle and across broken bulbs and ornaments to grab him. 

“What’s the matter, buddy?” Another low growl answered.

That Apollo was hunkered down instead of running was Dmitri’s second hint that all was not well with his new pet. The third was the bite he got when he lifted him and Apollo turned into a hissing, spitting, scratching, biting demon. It was only sheer strength that enabled Dmitri to keep the cat from going for his jugular.

His musings were cut short when the clinic door flung open, bounced against the interior wall and boomeranged back toward the woman who stood there, glowering. 

“Holy moly,” she yelped, wrapping a white lab coat more securely around her shivering body. “Where’s the fire?”

“Uh…” Words escaped Dmitri because standing before him was an angel. A dark angel for sure, with blue-black hair caught away from her face and eyes that, despite their scowling expression, reminded him of the richest hot fudge.

“Can I help you? Or are we going to stand here all night while I freeze to death?” 

Her southwestern twang was a rarity in this part of Pennsylvania. This angel was not from these parts.

“Sorry, I uh… are you open? My cat. I think he broke his tail. It won’t straighten. Just kind of--” He made a floppy motion with his wrist, then hefted the still fidgeting carrier and turned it so she could peer into the mesh front.

Her face softened. “Don’t tell me. Your Christmas tree is toast, right?” She  stepped back, waving him forward.

“Yeah, well. I think it’s fixable. I’m not so sure about Apollo here.”

The sudden thickness in his voice was unexpected. Truth be told, his mom was right. He had been lonely, and the cat an unexpected pleasure. He was fun. And simple, like himself. Apollo ate. He drank. He used his litter box. He even perched himself in front of the 65-inch TV screen when football was on.

“Come on back. Let’s take a look.” Walking backwards, she extended her hand. “Dr. Spencer. Layla Spencer.” 

He introduced himself and his cat as they shook hands—hers soft, silky and warm. Dmitri followed her into an examination room with lighting so bright, he wished he’d brought in his ball cap to shade his eyes.

Squinting, he set the carrier on the table and opened it, prepared for Apollo to bolt. But Dr. Spencer—Layla—had crouched down and was talking to the scared and hurting animal in some sort of language that he apparently understood. After crooning “poor baby” a few times and promising she wouldn’t hurt him, she reached into the carrier and eased Apollo onto the table. Instead of running for his life, he lay there, blinking, and staring at her as if he’d taken a couple shots from Cupid’s bow. 

Giving the cat long, soothing strokes halfway down his pelt of jet black fur with one hand, while holding him in place with the other, she turned her attention to Dmitri.

“Chances are you’re right about Apollo’s tail, but tell me about him. How old is he? Could he have eaten anything? Are there other animals in the home? Does he go outside?”

“He’s two years old. I just got him actually. He belonged to a friend of my mom’s who couldn’t keep him. I don’t know too much about his history other than he’s been healthy, has all his shots and has been fixed.” He made air quotes around that last gruesome euphemism for taking the poor cat’s manhood. 

“He eats well. Plays a lot.” An image of his trashed house flicked through his mind, and he filled her in on what had happened. She listened intently, then she leaned down to whisper a few more words to Apollo. The cat answered by purring, loudly, with squeaking punctuation marks every few seconds.

"Aren’t you a good boy?” she crooned while motioning for Dmitri to hold the cat. After gently probing the length of the tail, she finished examining him, including his eyes and mouth, heart and lungs with a tiny stethoscope hooked around her neck. 

“He’s healthy. I don’t feel a break, and I don’t see any evidence of an abscess or wound of any kind. I think it’s sprained. My guess is he  got it stuck in something when he upended the tree, then yanked to pull himself free. That could do it.”

“What’s the treatment?”

“Just rest. He should be fine in a few days. I could X-ray, but I’m pretty confident it’s not broken judging by the way the end is twitching. He just can’t lift it.” She washed her hands at the sink and turned to give him a smile over her shoulder. “No need to go to the expense just yet. Unless you insist.”

He didn’t insist, although he wouldn’t mind hanging out a bit longer. The remoteness of the place had his cop’s senses on edge, but if he were honest, he’d admit his other, more manly senses were taking more notice of the doctor herself. 

Pushing the thoughts aside, he managed to maneuver Apollo into his cage, despite more angry chatter from the cat, and followed the vet to the front desk.

“That will be $100. I take cash, check or card.”

He offered her his plastic and finally blurted the first thing on his mind. “You here all by yourself? On Christmas Eve?”

The look she gave him was bland, but her eyes were dead serious. “You here to make trouble for me? On Christmas Eve? If you are, you should know I have a loaded Colt Cobra .38 Special under this counter and I know how to use it.”

His eyebrows shot to his forehead. “Hell, no. I’m with the Serenity PD, for crying out loud. Just making sure you’ll be safe.” His eyebrows drew together. “You got a license for that .38?”

“Yes, Officer…” Her eyes dropped to his credit card. “…Jones.” A hint of humor flashed across her face as she handed it back, along with her business card. “Call me first thing tomorrow and let me know how Apollo is doing.”

“On Christmas day? No day off for you?”

“They’re my patients, my responsibility and my priority.”

“Well…thanks.” He lifted the case and headed for the door, still reluctant to head from the warmth of the clinic, and the beautiful vet. He ran his gaze around the reception area one more time, then gave her a final smile. 

“Make sure you lock up after me, Doc. Thanks for being here on Christmas Eve instead of with your family.” 

She tilted her head, a smile ghosting at her lips. “My critters are my family, Officer. Merry Christmas.”

The thought of no family sat like a lump in his gut. No one should be alone on Christmas. An idea began to germinate.

Back out in the SUV's frigid interior, Apollo gave a single mighty wail.

“I’m with you, buddy,” he said, “I don’t want to leave her either. But don’t worry, I have a plan.”


..............

I hope you enjoyed Part 1 of my holiday story. Please come back tomorrow for Part 2. 

Those of you who follow this blog might recognize Apollo as a ringer for my older son's cat Hercules. (Yeah, I kept with the mythological god naming convention.) :-)

Hercules hasn't broken or sprained his tail (yet), but he's wreaked havoc on our trees for three years straight now. (The lopsided, de-decorated tree pictured below was the aftermath of his leaping attacks in year one. I think that's him peeking from behind our TV on the lower left, preparing for another leap.)

Leah writes stories of mystery and romance, good and evil, and the power of love. Learn more at her website, or visit her Facebook page where she occasionally posts about writing, her life, her son's cat and more.