Page 18 of Karma Kitty Christmas
“Yeah. Anyway, she was getting all loud in the quad during lunch about some disease-ridden animal running around and how she was going to ask the custodian to make sure he ended up in the shelter.”
Isaac stared in horror at his cat, appearing self-satisfied and still very stoned after eating a tuna sandwich, having a little bit of water from Isaac’s bottle, and enjoying the drugged cat bed very much.
“Euclid?” he asked in a small voice, and Marcelle patted his shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Mr. B—you got him a box and everything. She can’t take him away from you.”
Except shecould. This was blatant defiance of Paula Lamphere and her adherence to all things school-related.
Isaac rubbed Euclid’s whiskers again and thought about dumping him outside or calling the humane society or any of the things that Todd would have insisted he do rather than bring the creature into their home.
Which was where Isaac had beenreallyexcited about Euclid ending up!
“Maybe,” he said, with a worried glance at Marcelle, “we should move his crate into the corner by my desk so, you know, if somebody comes in, they can’t see him.”
Marcelle nodded sagely. “That’s a good idea. And how about if I put the lid on it, since he seems so….” Marcelle stared at the cat and then grinned at Isaac. “Stoned, Mr. B. Did you give your cat a gummi?”
Isaac snorted. “No, I did not,” he retorted and then lowered his voice. “But the bed is laced with catnip.”
Marcelle laughed throatily and then moved to hide the cat while Isaac got everybody else started on their seatwork.
Twenty minutes later, everybody was quiet and working—although part of that was that Isaac had promised to let one or two people go visit the cat when they were done with their seatwork. He was, as he had been last week, bemused. It was one of those moments—as the week before had been—that proved to him that students could be very, very good people, and that all of the hard work and frustration was worth it, because helping very good people was what being human was all about.
Then Marcelle’s crush (yes, Marcelle had been crushing on Domingo, everybody knew it but Marcelle and Domingo, but Isaac didn’t gossip) gave an urgent stage whisper.
“You guys! It’s Ms. Lamphere!”
“Oh shit!” Marcelle burst out, and if he hadn’t been suddenly terrified for poor Euclid, still snoozing in his box, Isaac would have mourned the days when he’d hoped his students would actually fear him enough to not swear. “Mr. B! Go talk to her. I’ll sit at your desk and pretend to… to….”
“Be my TA,” Isaac said and handed him a stack of papers with an ever-present felt-tipped pen. “Put a smiley face on these if there’s any work on them.”
“Hee, hee, hee….”
Which meant Marcelle had just cracked the code of how Isaac managed to grade 150 sheets of seatwork every day, but whatever. It said in the teacher bylaws that seatwork waspractice.
So when Paula burst through the door, Isaac was walking amiably up and down rows of silent students pretending to do seatwork.
“Isaac,” she demanded imperiously, and he strolled up to her, as innocent as a lamb.
“Yes, Paula,” he replied, knowing it bothered her that he called her by her first name in front of the students. Yes, she’d done the same thing to him, but that’s what made her the Wicked Witch of the Math Department.
“Keep your eyes out for a… acatthat’s been wandering around here. If you see him, let me know. I’ve got the humane society on speed dial, and they can take him to the nearest shelter.”
Isaac nodded sagely. “How… humane,” he said, wondering if his tone of voice gave away his disgust.
“Don’t give me that shit, Isaac,” she said. “It’s unsanitary to have an animal roaming around campus, and you know it.”
Isaac snorted. “Anybody who’s walked into a high school classroom at the beginning of summer knows that a cat is the least of their problems,” he said. Poor kids. They didn’t ask for sudden onset BO, but that was what happened with adolescence, and that was God’s honest truth. “Paula, has it occurred to you that we all have better things to do than harass poor felines because they had the misfortune to wander around a high school? I mean, think about their view alone. All those feet. That’s got to be a treat.”
Paula stared at him in horror, but Marcelle and a few other students made suspicious noises, and there were a few sniffs, snorts, and coughs scattered around the room.
“Isaac, it could havefleas!”
“So could you,” he replied shortly. “But I give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“Your sense of humor is not appreciated,” she said with a delicate sniff. “It would be nice if you took these things seriously.” She glanced at his busy hands in disdain. “If nothing else, you could at least put down your knitting.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” he said blandly. “Did you have anything else you needed, Paula?”
