Page 74 of Karma Kitty Christmas
Milo’s eyes went wide, and he cast desperate glances around his once-neat little duplex in panic.
“No,” he almost whimpered, seeing the piles of dirty laundry draped on every surface of his bedroom. He was wearing his last pair of boxers, and his T-shirt was getting a little ripe. He knew without looking that the sink was piled high with dishes, hisliving room awash in a sea of takeout, and his kitchen table piled high with bills.
He was pretty sure his power was about to be turned off.
“Oh yes,” she said grimly. “You thought you could curl up and die that easy? You’ve got another goddamned thing coming. Now come open your door. We’re coming in.”
“Wait,” he said desperately, although the long habit of following Mari’s orders seemed to have morphed into an actual magical compulsion. He was walking. Wow, had his laundry actually spilled into the hallway? And what the hell was that smell coming from the bathroom? Holy jebus, when had he last eaten? The food on the dishes in the sink was… well, uncomplimentary colors.
The only clean thing in the place was Chrysanthemum’s food and water bowl on its little placemat in the corner of the kitchen, waiting for Stuart to bring him back. Milo almost paused there, but Mari squawked from the front door.
“Get out here, you coward! I’m not going anywhere!”
Which was how, through the wreckage of a life he’d once been proud of, he slogged, hating himself more with every step.
What kind of loser let his life get this disgusting in so short a time?
By the time he opened the door for Mari and hung up his phone, he was almost in tears, ready to confess to the sin of giving up completely and beg for her help to clean up his mess.
But Mari was not alone.
“Here,” she said, shoving a leash into his hand. “Go sit on the couch while I go get shit from the car.” She stood on her tiptoes and peered past his shoulder, her bright brown eyes inquisitive and judgy. “And it’s exactly as bad as I knew it would be. Jesus, Milo, you couldn’t have called me before it got this bad?”
“I didn’t know it had gotten this bad,” he said muzzily, staring at the creature on the end of the leash. Lean and muscular, with the head of a pit bull and the body of a… kind of stocky Chiweenie? The dog had short white-yellow hair with flat pit-bull eyes and Chihuahua ears.
She was staring at him quizzically from under a cat-eared headband.
“Mari?” he called to her as she hustled out to her sedan, which sat right behind his in the driveway. “What in the hell is this?”
“Your dog, Milo,” she called back. “She’s here to replace Chrysanthemum.”
Milo glanced down at the unimpressed dog wearing the cat ears. “I don’t remember asking for a dog,” he told the dog. “I don’t remember putting in an order.”
The dog nuzzled his shin, and he bent down and fondled her ears. She gave him a tentative look of “like,” and he fondled them some more, which is what he was doing when Mari hustled past him, her arms full of grocery bags—one of which was emanating a very… promising smell.
“Now sit down, Milo,” she commanded. “I’ve got your breakfast—or lunch or last night’s dinner….” She peered at the mess in the sink with a practiced eye and then squinted at the takeout containers in the living room. “Oh, Milo,” she said with a sigh, “you haven’t eaten indays,have you.”
“Maybe three,” he hazarded. He had a distant memory of somebody putting a sandwich in his hand as he sat at his desk during his one mandatory in-person appearance at work that week.
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I’m sorry I was so late. Now sit down on the couch. I’ll give you some food—you too, Julia—and we’ll have a talk before we tackle this place.”
Milo opened his mouth, and she said, “But in return you have to take a shower and brush your teeth.”
“Okay,” he said, cowed. He glanced down at the dog. “Julia?” he asked, and the dog didn’t twitch a whisker.
“That’s what the shelter named her,” Mari said cheerfully, setting the bags down before getting to work doing something bustling and organizational. “My sister’s roommate’s brother called me up to ask me if I could adopt an animal, but, as you know—”
“You have the county allotment of cats,” he said dutifully.
“I haveoverthe county allotment of cats,” she agreed. “Mostly because Georgie has snuck me a couple of extras.” A ginormous breakfast burrito, with chorizo and hot sauce and about a dozen scrambled eggs wrapped inside with tater tots, appeared in his hand, and he doggedly munched while she went back to the kitchen.
Mari worked from home too, which gave her lots of time to clean cats and feed cats and make rugs and beds for cats and generally pour all the love in her formidable soul into the apparentlymorethan five cats that had taken over her small house.
“Georgie?” he asked, lost already.
“Serena’s roommate’s brother, who is sort of a derpy hottie, and we may end up sleeping together,” she told him bluntly. It was a trait that had cost her more than one boyfriend, but then, Milo knew none of those guys were good enough anyway.
“You have two more cats—” Oh Lord, this burrito was everything that was right with the world. Every word he said was through a mouthful of eggs.
