MamaPaws:Is everything okay? What does the skull mean???
Washington finally posts a link to a Google spreadsheet and I click it with a sense of dread.
Four tabs.
There are already four fucking tabs.
One labeled, "Events Calendar." Another, "Task Assignments." Another, "Budget Tracking." The fourth, "Contact Information."
It's beenone day.
Devon:SIR, I need admin rights to that spreadsheet. HELLO???
Becker changed the group name to: Pucks for Paws.
This is going to be a loooong December.
CHAPTER 5
DEVON
IF SOMEONE TOLD me three days ago that I'd be standing in an animal shelter surrounded by two dozen professional athletes who are collectively losing their shit over a three-legged cat, I would've asked what drugs they were on and where I could get some.
Yet here we are.
The shelter is absolute pandemonium. Dogs barking at a myriad of frequencies. Cats yowling like they're auditioning for a death metal band. And somehow, impossibly, the hockey team is louder than all of them combined.
"Oh my god, look at this one!" The Comedian—well, Becker; I'm slowly starting to get a hang of the names—is crouched in front of a kennel, making kissy noises at a dog that looks like it was assembled from spare parts. "He's so ugly he's cute!"
"That's a girl," Mama Paws corrects gently.
"She's so ugly she's cute!"
I'm standing next to Kayla near the entrance, watching the chaos unfold like it's a particularly unhinged nature documentary.
"This is insane," Kayla mutters.
"This is our life now, apparently." I pull out my phone, snapping a photo of Wall lying on the floor while approximately seven puppies climb all over him. "I'm documenting this for posterity. And blackmail."
The shelter is bigger than I imagined, a sprawling single-story building that's seen better days. The paint is peeling in places. There's a persistent smell of wet dog and antiseptic. The fluorescent lights flicker like they're considering giving up entirely.
But it's clean. Well-organized. And absolutely packed with animals.
Mama Paws is giving us the grand tour, or trying to. It's hard to tour anything when your tour group keeps stopping every three seconds to coo over animals.
"This is our main kennel area," she's saying, gesturing to rows of enclosures. "We have about sixty dogs right now, though that number fluctuates—"
"Can I hold one?" Petrov interrupts.
"Which one?"
"All of them."
Mama Paws laughs. "Maybe we start with one."
A man emerges from a back room, mature, maybe early seventies, with kind eyes and a slight limp. He's wearing overalls that have seen some shit, literally, and he stops dead when hesees the crowd. "Celeste, honey. Why are there giants in our shelter?"
"They're helping, Jimmy."
