Page 18 of August Heat
“Nah, man.” Krys slammed down beside him on the couch. “Was trying to convince him to get the firehouse to adopt the cats.”
“You’re still going on about those cats, huh? Thought you handed them over to the vet.”
“I did, but it’s not like the vet can keep them, either. Besides, those furballs need to get fixed before they start inbreeding.” That reminded her… “Hey!” She smacked her hand against Quimby’s arm. “I’m taking up a collection to pay for their spaying and neutering. You gonna put up twenty bucks?”
“Twenty bucks? Damn. Does that pay for one of them? Do I look like I’m made out of twenties?”
“Pfft. Shoulda known you weren’t good for helping out some poor animals that were abandoned behind a barn set on fire.”
“Speaking of, did you know the fire marshal still isn’t convinced the fire was accidental? He thinks it may have been arson, but I’m not supposed to share that.”
“How did you hear that?”
Quimby shrugged. “My girl went to school with his brother. I hear things through the grapevine.”
“So it’s entirely derivative rumors.”
“Derivative? I dunno what you mean.”
Oh, my God, Quimby.That high-quality Clark High School education right there. “Basically, you’re talking out of your ass.”
“Believe it or not,” Quimby continued, dutifully ignoring Krys’s comments, “those kittens were a big part of him coming to that conclusion. They weren’t free roaming after escaping the fire. Somebody put those barn cats in a box and kept them far away from where the blaze would be. You ask me, Longfellow was pulling an insurance scam on an old, crappy building. Thing was a giant fire hazard, anyway. Next wildfire would have knocked it down. Those cats definitely wouldn’t have stood a chance then.”
“Thanks for the reminder that it’s fire season.” It had been an awfully quiet one that year. The past two or three years had been nothing but nail-biters by the time July rolled around, thanks to droughts and the drying of every tree in the vicinity. Last year alone, one of the PNW’s many wildfires came dangerously close to Paradise Valley’s city limits. A few of the rural residents had evacuated into town and were prepared to evacuate elsewhere, too. Like her fellow firefighters, Krys had been ready to join the fight elsewhere in the state, but the city made it clear that they were needed there in Paradise Valley. There were already only three of them who worked full-time. The part-timers and volunteers couldn’t make up for them if they were suddenly gone to fight fires elsewhere. Still, it had been rough sitting back and waiting, waiting,waiting.Krys had been so paranoid about fires in town that she drove around, looking for illegal burning to report.They say it’s only going to get worse as the years go by. I can believe it.
Krys shuddered. Quimby ignored it.
“Can’t believe Longfellow would burn his own barn down,” Krys said, changing the subject. “There’s no way he got a decent payout from it. You think it was a controlled burn? No way. You were there. That thing had every opportunity to spread if we didn’t get there quickly.”
“We got there quickly because Longfellow called us the ‘moment he saw it.’”
“Uh huh…” Wouldn’t be the first time the firefighters were called in to control an arson burn, but she refused to believe it happenedthatoften. “There’s still no mama cat, either. Or, at least, I didn’t see anything in the debris.”
“Could’ve been a feral cat who thought the barn was a safe enough place to put her kittens. Either way, those kittens are better off at the vet’s. Better than being left to the wilds or at the pound. You know what they do to animals there.”
“Thanks for the reminder, Quimby! What do you think I’m trying to do, if not get these guys a nice home?”
The snorting of a man rousing from his afternoon slumber startled Krys, who was too uptight for her own good. Tim Young jerked out of his chair, the PS4 controller in his lap clattering to the floor. “When did we get cats? I love cats!”
It took Krys a moment to realize what had happened. In his half-sleep, Young had misheard the incident with the kittens and assumed they were already here, ready to become firehouse cats. The man did love cats, didn’t he? He unabashedly carried cat-shaped keychains and had a picture of his own cat as his phone background. His gaming avatars were humanoid cats, and he once told Krys that he used to volunteer at a shelter before dedicating his time to firefighting. If anybody could help her figure out this predicament, it was him.
“I’m trying to get the chief to agree to take the cats in here. Don’t you think it’s time we got some furry mascots, Young?”
His eyes widened. “I never thought this day would come…”
“He hasn’t agreed to it yet. We need to…”
Young leaped up from his chair. It flung back and forth from the impact of his shifting weight, and Quimby was the first to shove his foot against the chair to steady it again. Young stood before them, flexing the fact he was the widest of the full-time crew. It was not all fat.
“How many cats?” he asked.
“Four bouncing baby tabbies.”
He looked at Krys as if she might be pulling his leg. “You bring four kittens into this place, and I might die for them.”
“Just might?” Quimby quipped. “Whenever you hear there’s a cat in a housefire, you’re the first one barging through the flaming doors. You’re the most popular guy in the calendar because you’re always posing with the cats you’ve saved.”
“I’ll die for them!”
