January 17

“I might need your Reuben’s help this evening,” John told the old gentleman as he refilled the cup. The fragrant aroma expanded throughout the restaurant, and the customers felt a little less closed in.  “Anne isn’t home yet. I may need to send out a bloodhound.”

Old Ottoson looked prepared for a hunting party with his red plaid wool jacket and ear-flapped cap.  He took a deep slurp of coffee, peering at the youthful restaurateur who stood dutifully by the table, steaming pot in hand.

“Can’t expect anybody to be on time in weather like this,” he said.

John set the coffeepot down on the table as if holding it had become too burdensome.  “She’s visiting her mother out on Long View.  I don’t know how her Honda will handle that hill in snow like this.”

“Doesn’t she have a cell phone?” asked Miss Shawl, looking up from her Katherine Howe book and macchiato espresso. 

John affirmed that his dark-haired, usually sensible wife did have her cell.  There was probably no need to worry.  But in another half hour, the snow was more than a foot deep, and all downtown traffic had ceased.

While his children kept company with a despondent Jake, Ross McNeal took phone calls at his office and relayed bulletins by fax and radio.  The Golden Apple closed its doors early.  Chaos Jones lay in the restaurant’s kitchen and hoped his sister, Raspberry, had found shelter at Mooner Farm.  Even Dane Spangler had relented, allowing Dirty Burt into the house, not out of concern for the cat, but to relieve his own seclusion as the isolating snow continued to fall.

Finally, inching behind a snowplow creeping through the whiteout, Anne’s old Honda arrived at the Escher, a veritable mobile igloo. Her cheeks and nose were red and her braided hair glistened with rime.

“Wow!” she exclaimed, giving a relieved John a solid hug. “I thought I’d never get here!  Besides, I had to rescue a couple of stowaways.” She opened the cardboard box she was carrying.   Inside was an orange cat and a brown-striped kitten, both looking completely unsurprised at being delivered to the Escher.

“That’s Jake Cullin’s cat,” John recognized Beamer.  “How the heck did he get in your car?”

“No idea,” said Anne,”but we’d better call Jake—he’s probably frantic.  Do you know whose kitten this is?”

John lifted the little cat out of the box and immediately it batted his nose, knocking his glasses askew. “Well, hello to you, too,” John said, straightening his specs. “I think this little guy just hired himself on as restaurant mascot.”

“Look at the way the hair stands up on his head!  Sort of like baby bird fuzz,”  Anne laughed.

“Yeah….reminds me of the cat from that Dominic Deegan comic I used to like.  Hey, how about we call him ‘Deegan’?”

Beamer extended his four orange legs into a long, drawn-out, satisfied stretch; then he curled up next to the warm oven, pleased with another Home Office success.  And he thought Deegan was an excellent name.