Page 19 of Karma Kitty Christmas
She glared at him. “I’ll be talking to the principal about this,” she warned.
“Oh no, no, not the principal,” he said flatly. “Paula, there are kids in my morning class afraid to come to school because they cut off bus service. Three-quarters of my students won’t eat if the proposed cuts to SNAP funding go through. My God, don’t we have better things to worry about than acat?”
And then he saw it—the thing that made him only dislike Paula and not loathe her entirely.
The stricken expression that told him she was fixating on the cat because fixating on anything else was an exercise in futility.
“But the cat I can control!” she burst out, her voice wavering. “I don’t want to see his… hisbodyin the parking lot because he got hit!” and he took pity on her.
“I know,” he said. “That’s why I’m taking him to the vet and taking him home. Now that you know that, can you maybe get off my case?”
The grateful, limpid look she gave him made him almost forgive her for all the sniffing, superior things she said in the staff room. “Really?”
Isaac glanced over at Marcelle, who sighed and stood up.
Euclid regarded them through half-closed eyes and purred.
“Roxy got me the crate during lunch. He wandered in and….”
“Kitty…,” she said wistfully.
“Yeah,” he said. “Kitty. I promise, he’s getting de-flead, fixed, and, if he’ll have me, homed. I understand this is how the cat distribution system works.”
And then Paula, who was in her mid-forties and groomed like a cartoon character, with stiffly sprayed hair and granny spectacles, gave him a smile that made her seem… young.
“It’s already given me four,” she said with a little hiccup. “I can’t have another one or they’ll evict me.”
“Do you want to go pet him?” Isaac asked. “He’s stoned stupid, but—”
But she was already booty bumping Marcelle out of the way to rub Euclid’s whiskers. Goddammit. Isaac might really have to knit her a sweater. She was, what? A size 2? It would take him two weeks.
SO ITwas an unexpected development in the day, and the vet’s office gave him a blessed, blessed discount for a rescue cat. When the super-extra-super-youngtechnician at the reception desk sounded out the name (Yuuuuukllllit?), he corrected her gently, telling her, “He was the father of modern geometry.”
“Oh,” said the girl. “I should remember that—I like math.” She was Black but had dyed her hair white-blond and styled it to swirl in straight flyaway bangs, and Isaac had worn a Bieber for a while (Todd had been so embarrassed) and knew the combination of vanity and determination it took to get even mildly curly hair to do things it wasn’t designed to do, and was impressed.
He felt like Euclid was in good hands, whether or not she could pronounce his name.
“I teach it,” Isaac said apologetically. He and Roxy had enjoyed long, bitter discussions about why thatshouldn’tmake them the most boring humans on planet earth but somehow did.
“Math teachers are the greatest,” she said with a smile. “We’ll make sure Mr. Yuclit here is treated right.”
Isaac gave the cat one last look through the slats in the plastic crate, and Euclid blinked still-sleepy eyes at him. “Alrighty, Mr. Yuclit,” he murmured. “You and me, we got a date at eight—don’t be late.”
He glanced at the girl again. “He’s had alotof catnip,” he admitted.
Her laugh tinkled. “Also, he’s an orange boi,” she said, and he heard theiinboi. “You understand, they’re sort of dumber than the average cat. They share three communal brain cells—you never know when your boy’s going to be using one or when they’re all out on loan.”
Isaac laughed, delighted, and decided he had to remember to tell his class that. “He wandered into my classroom when I was grading papers,” he said softly, “and proceeded to eat my lunch. I think he’s got just enough brain cells.”
Euclid purred back, and Isaac left him reluctantly.
It wasn’t until he got home and prepared a casserole to bake for an hour that he realized that the visit—and the return to pick up the cat—would put his entire evening with Luca out of whack.
Once the casserole was in the oven, he went outside to see if Luca was working on his grandparents’ place yet. What he saw was the man sitting in his truck—some sort of big, battered extra-cab wide-bed affair—with the windows down and his head tilted back, the wind ruffling his hair as he napped.
For a moment, Isaac was completely arrested.
God, he was handsome. High cheekbones, strong chin, a plush mouth still meant for smiling, and the Italian complexion that tanned so nicely, along with the toffee-colored hair. “Dumband hung” he’d called himself, but he was more than that. He was funny, he was kind, he was… well, game to try, even if he wasn’t great at yarn work yet. Maybeever. But Isaac was starting not to care. Frankly, he’d make thousands of little squares in hundreds of colors and sew them all together in whatever configuration Luca asked him to, just for his quiet companionship when they were working on their projects in the early evening.
