Cats Gonna Cat

The first thing Emma noticed when she arrived at the employee entrance to Breezy’s Pet Store was that it was open.

Her heart began to race. Did the closers forget to lock up last night? Did someone burglarize the place? Was it even safe to enter?

Against her better judgement, Emma walked inside. Perhaps she should call 911 first? If there was nothing there, she’d look foolish and her employers would probably get mad. She needed this job. It didn’t pay much, just enough to cover the bills, but in this economy, she valued stability.

As she flipped on the light, she was assaulted by the mess on the floor. A display of dog toys was tipped over. Squeaky toys and rawhide bones were scattered all over the floor. Beyond that, a bag of cat litter had been ripped open; at the very least, she was going to have to sweep up all of the pellets on the floor. She sighed. Today was not starting out well.

Vandals?

A crash echoed through the room. Someone, or something, knocked something over on the other side of the store. Whoever it was, they were still here.

“Who’s there?” she asked. Stupid. Didn’t they ask that in every horror movie she’d ever seen? It never turned out well for them.

Emma felt her hands shaking. She needed her life more than she needed the job. She backed out of the store and closed the door, before they noticed she was there and could come after her.

Emma dialed her phone.

“911, what is your emergency?” a calm voice on the line answered.

Emma tried to calm her racing heart so she didn’t sound like a maniac. “Someone broke into Breezy’s Pet Store,” she blurted out. “They vandalized the place, and they’re still here!”

“What is the phone number you’re calling from?” the operator asked.

Why does that matter? I need help! The operator was probably just trying to follow a script. She took a deep breath before she yelled at her, then repeated her phone number.

She heard typing in the background. “Thank you. Please let me know exactly what is happening. Are they aware of your presence? Are you safe?”

“I left the room,” she said, “but not before I asked who was there. I heard a crash. It was my first reaction.”

More typing. “We’re sending someone out there,” the voice said. “Please stay on the line.”

“Okay.”

Mr. Brumble was not going to be happy. There was no way she was going to to open the store on time. He’d probably blame her, even though it was closing crew’s fault that the store had been left unlocked and the alarm hadn’t been turned on.

Maybe she should have applied for veterinary school after all. Worked harder to get the job at the animal hospital when she found out they needed an assistant. At the time, she thought it was too risky. The pet store job was a sure thing, she thought. But with this burglary, maybe it wasn’t so safe. Would they end up letting her go?

This was her first time calling 911. Were they going to take a long time? The sooner they evicted the vandal or burglar, the sooner she can get the store back into operation.

With her own safety probably secured, she began worrying about the animals inside. Were the cats and dogs in the adoption center okay? Did the vandals mess with the fish tanks or the bird cages? She wanted to go and check on them, but didn’t dare go back inside with God knows what kind of villain was on the loose inside.

As she waited, she walked around the building to the customer entrance in the front. More of the damage was apparent through the clear windows of the storefront. The whole place was a mess. Although there weren’t any noises coming from inside at the moment, that didn’t mean much. You couldn’t hear anything from inside the store unless it was very loud.

Emma looked at her watch. The store was supposed to open in a half hour. That was not gonna happen, even if the police arrived and nabbed the perpetrator now. Maybe she should run next door to the office supply store so she could make a sign.

Sirens blared in the distance. Two police cars pulled up to the front.

“Thank God you’re here!” she exclaimed as they got out of their vehicles. There were two officers, one a tall black man with “Braxton” on his name tag, another a blonde white guy named “Stanley”. “I’ll let you in. They came in through the back.” She unlocked the front for them.

“Stay here,” officer Braxton said. “Who knows how they’ll react.”

Emma nodded and watched them enter. “Thank you, the police are here,” she said, hanging up the phone. She needed to call her boss to let him know what was happening. Or maybe shebetter text.

“There’s been a break-in.” she wrote.

“What?!?” was his reply.

“The police are here. There’s a lot of damage, and the vandal or burglar is still in there.”

“Did you stop him?”

“Of course not!”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not the police!”

He was probably seething on the other end of the phone, safe in his apartment.

“We’re going to have a meeting about this. This is unacceptable.”

A few minutes later, they exited the building, shaking their heads. “We’re going to have to get animal control in there. Or a zookeeper,” Officer Stanley said.

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s a mountain lion in there,” Officer Braxton announced, chuckling a bit. “It’s sleeping now. Evidently, it got into the catnip. Although there’s a huge mess in there.”

“A mountain lion?” Emma hoped that the store cameras were getting a good shot of this.

Officer Stanley was on the phone. “Yeah, we need Animal Control in here. There’s a mountain lion at Breezy’s Pet store.”

At the same time, Emma texted her boss, filling him in on what the police found.

He replied with a stream of curses.

Maybe it was time to look for a new job. To follow her dreams and become a veterinarian. It always seemed so risky. When her dad lost his job as a kid, it was devastating for them. They almost lost their house. She always thought working at a pet store would be safe, and had worked her way up from being a simple cashier to the opening manager, but maybe the safe route was riskier in the long run.

Officer Stanley approached her. “I’m sorry, Animal Control said that this is too big a job for them, and they need to get a biologist out here from Fish and Wildlife. It might be a while.”

Emma sighed and looked at her watch. There was nothing to do now but wait at the door and greet customers and let them know of what was going on. It was about time for the store to open.

Almost as if on cue, her coworkers, George and Kathy, arrived in their uniforms for the workday. She filled them in on what was happening and told them to go get a coffee or something until they could reopen the store.

A few minutes later, a mom and two middle-school aged kids, a boy and a girl, approached. “I want an orange cat!” the boy exclaimed enthusiastically.

“Hi,” Emma said, stopping them at the door. “I am so sorry. There is a lovely orange cat in there, just waiting to be adopted. His name is Sammy. But we have a little problem. The store isn’t open yet, and might not be open until this afternoon, or perhaps even longer.”

“What’s the problem?” the mom said, impatience in her voice.

“A mountain lion broke into the pet store last night. Caused a mess. Evidently, it got into the catnip and is now taking a nap. Cats gonna cat, even the big ones. Unfortunately, we need a specialist to come in and retrieve it.”

The boy frowned. “I want Sammy!”

“If you want, I could call or text your mom when we reopen, then you could be the first to know when he’s available. I bet he’s scared with that big cat in there, don’t you think?”

The boy nodded silently.

Although it wasn’t normal to text customers when a cat became available, this was an extraordinary circumstance.

The mom rolled her eyes. “If that’s the best you can do.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be safe for anybody right now. Sammy included. Right now he’s safe in the adoption area.”

She took their number and wondered how many disgruntled customers she was going to have to deal with before the store was ready to reopen. People that need their dog food and squeaky toys, kids coming in for their first pet. There was nothing she could do about that though.

When Fish and Wildlife pulled up in a big van, she let them into the store. They had a tranquilizer gun and a cage to bring the animal out in. She wanted to see the cat herself, but it wouldn’t be safe, and she didn’t want to get in the way of the experts. In almost no time at all (after they arrived) they came out with the animal in the cage they had brought.

“She was easy to subdue,” one of the animal officers remarked to her while they loaded up the van. “Cat was just like any other kitten drunk on catnip.”

She thanked them, and they drove off.

Emma recalled her coworkers, and they began the task of cleaning up. But not before looking at the security footage from the night before.

They had to laugh. The cat was acting like an ordinary cat. She even got into the cat food, ripping open one of the larger bags, for her breakfast.

“We’ve got to send this to the news,” Kathy commented.

Emma smiled. “Breezy’s Pet Store will be famous.”

It took several hours to clean up the mess, and she didn’t forget to text the boy’s mom to let them know when they reopened.

On her lunch break, she began the process of applying to veterinary school. Applied to work at a vet’s office. If she could walk into a pet store with a mountain lion in it, even though it was an unknown threat at the time, she could do anything. It was time to take her own leap into the unknown.