This was new information.
"Sweetie, you don't have to be up this early," Bobbie-Jean said.
"I really do," I said.
I absolutely didn't. My body had made its own decisions about sleep somewhere around two in the morning, and those decisions had involved a man at a fence post considerably more than they'd involved any actual sleeping.
She poured herself a mug, kissed FiFi on the sleep bonnet, and drifted back toward the hall. I pulled up my phone and got back to work.
Cooper Ralls — Stoney's nephew, ring bearer, owner of one gerbil — arrived at a dead run six seconds later.
He was six years old and in dinosaur pajamas and an expression that said catastrophe. He skidded to a stop at the kitchen island and looked up at me with enormous eyes.
"Turbo got out," he said.
I knew who Turbo was. I had a capture list that included Turbo — and, as of yesterday, one mini donkey named Brisket. I had contingencies A through C, none of which had accounted for Turbo being out of his cage at five-twenty-two in the morning.
"Okay," I said, in the voice I use when an animal has made a decision I can't immediately reverse. "Let's go find him."
Here is the thing about a gerbil on the loose on a property with a macaw, an orange tabby with authority issues, a Pomeranian and a Chihuahua in custom carriers, and a Great Dane in a sleep bonnet: the situation escalates before you've finished processing it.
Turbo had gotten from Cooper's room, down the back stairs, and into the mudroom by the time we located him. Butterbean, eight pounds of orange tabby and no discernible governing principles, was already there, watching Turbo from the top of a feed bin with the patience of someone who'd cleared his whole morning for this. Sarge materialized in the doorway, assessed the situation, and looked at me in a way I chose to interpret as solidarity.
Then Chanel the Pomeranian appeared. Then Birkin, shaking.
I deployed the client-voice. I asked everyone to remain calm, which is a thing you can say to people and which has never once worked on a cat. Butterbean turned and looked at me with theexpression of a cat reviewing my qualifications and finding them insufficient. Turbo shot behind a boot rack.
Judge Judy started narrating from somewhere outside.
Bobbie-Jean appeared again in the robe, FiFi behind her, sleep bonnet tilted. Cooper was crouched behind the boot rack. I had my hand out flat the way you do when you're trying to convince a thirty-dollar gerbil that you're trustworthy, very still, not thinking about anything else, and for a moment it was actually working.
Then Butterbean moved.
Turbo moved. Sarge moved on instinct. Chanel and Birkin made a sound I can only describe as bilateral. In the scramble I ended up with an orange cat scaling the left side of me like a fire escape.
Butterbean reached the top of my shoulder, surveyed his new elevation, and made a decision I won't describe in detail except to say the smell was immediate, and the silk top was not going to recover. Butterbean had not been in the brief.
Butterbean looked at me, unrepentant.
I looked at Butterbean.
The mudroom had gone quiet. Turbo was sitting in the middle of the mudroom floor eating what appeared to be a piece of biscuit that had been in Cooper's pajama pocket this entire time.
"Found him," said a voice from the back doorway.
Dutch. Jeans, chambray shirt, work boots still damp from the morning grass, no hat. He took in the mudroom in one look: the small dogs, the cat on my shoulder, Turbo eating a biscuit in the middle of the floor. His expression said he had a complete picture of the sequence of events and found it satisfying.
He crossed to Turbo, crouched down, and had him cupped in both hands inside of sixty seconds. He stood and held the gerbil out to Cooper.
Cooper's face went so relieved it was almost worse than the crying.
"He had the biscuit the whole time," Dutch said, to no one in particular.
Cooper carried Turbo back upstairs in his hands, reverent and careful, the crisis resolved. I stepped back against the wall and let my camera come up: Cooper's face in the hall light, Turbo tucked between his palms, the particular seriousness of a six-year-old who has gotten his thing back. I'd know later it was one of the best frames of the weekend. Right then I just took it.
Dutch was already heading back toward the door.
"Sarge," he said, without quite looking at me, "I need you to tell this woman there's no point chasing that gerbil in those shoes."
