“Do you want to sit down?” Ari asked from right in front of me, snapping me out of my thoughts.
Smiling gratefully at her, I followed her to where her overstuffed couches were and sank into the cushion of one of them as both dogs jumped around my legs, finally realizing they had a new person to harass. The second they saw I was seated, they both started trying to jump up beside me, whining when their little legs couldn’t give them the boost they needed to get up onto the cushions.
Wincing, she clapped her hands to get their attention. “Sorry about them. They just like to love on everyone.”
Helping them up, I made my own face avoidance moves to get away from excited tongues, doing my best not to shudder visibly. “Not a problem. They’re too cute to ignore.”
Glancing around the room with a frown, Ari muttered, “Jerry’s around here somewhere. He’s probably waiting for these two to calm down or fall asleep.”
Jerry—her cat, and animal I didn’t like much. A couple of years ago, when Ari had come to Piersville, she’d seen Sonya’s munchkin cat and fallen in love. There’d been an advertisement for a litter of them closer to home, so she’d gone to see them out of curiosity, wanting to know how small they were as kittens. Jerry had only been two weeks old, but he’d crawled away from his siblings and made his way to where Ariana and started chewing on her little toe. She’d put a deposit down on him within ten minutes of it, calling him Jerry after the movie Jerry Maguire because he ‘had her at hello.’
Scratching the dog wearing a gray collar, I thought about the potential complexities of owning a cat and two boisterous dogs at the same time. Weren’t the two species meant to hate each other?
“How does having cats and dogs at the same time work?”
This time when she looked at me, I realized I had her undivided attention, and I felt something in my stomach clench. Ari was one of those ‘million thoughts, one brain’ type of people. I don’t think I’d ever seen her when it wasn’t obvious her mind was working on multiple things at once, not even as a kid.
Except for now.
And it was the kind of realization that snatched the air from your lungs.
Unlike her brothers, Ari had hazel-brown colored eyes circled by a slightly darker ring of the color. They were unusual, and their uniqueness suited her perfectly. When she was pissed, they went darker brown—happy, they had a hint of green in them. Right now, they were what I knew was her content color—a warm hazel shade of brown.
“I got all three of them when they were babies,” she explained. “Hanky and Panky are brothers from the same litter, and I got them when they were thirteen weeks old. Jerry was the runt of his litter and struggled to put weight on, so I got him when he was twelve weeks old. Anyway, the boys came home three days before Jerry did, and the same chick who helped Noah out with Luna’s dog helped me settle them in together. Seeing as how he’s a cat, Jerry’s more temperamental and likes to have his own space and dictate what happens in that space. When he’s ready, he comes out and interacts with me and the boys then goes back to his comfort zone.”
“Sounds like Dale,” I snickered. “He’ll interact with you when he feels like it, but his home is his space, and he’s picky about people being in that space.”
“Exactly,” she said, snapping her fingers. “That’s exactly how Jerry is, too. On his terms. The boys get that and respect it, so there haven’t been any of the problems you’d expect between cats and dogs.”
“Ah, but how do you know they don’t fight when you’re not here?”
Raising a finger, she pointed to the corner of the room at a small white camera. “I’ve got those in every room, so I check in on them through the day. They’re attached to the base station over there, and if I see anything going on, I just hit the unmute microphone icon on my phone screen and talk to them.”
Smart!
“Have you ever caught them doing anything they shouldn’t?”
The side of her mouth tipped up in a half grin as she pointed at the couch. “That’s the third couch I’ve had since I got them. Granted, the first one I inherited from Mom and Dad, the second one was a cheap one that I bought on impulse when I saw it on Groupon. This one…” she shook her head and cringed. “It would kill me if they ruined this one.”
I could see why.
“Not a Groupon?”
“Hardly,” she laughed. “I saved forever for this couch after I saw it. The dogs know they’re not allowed on it when I’m not home and have been quite good since I got it. I was worried the smell of the leather would attract them to it, but they seem happy enough with their own one,” she pointed at where one of the dogs was now curling up.