What the Cat Dragged In

By Gayleen Froese

What the Cat Dragged In is a dog detective noir for older kids and adults. It's the debut of Spenser T. Dog, a German shepherd with a 100 pound imagination and time on his paws. From his office in the dining room, next to the place the balls roll under, Spenser sniffs out a case that involves a peanut butter sandwich heist and a feline femme fatale. His papillon secretary and scruffy informant next door help him in his eternal quest to prove that, in a morally complicated world, he really is a good dog.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chaise Sur Table Press
• Release date: Jul 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9780992072810

Gayleen Froese

Gayleen Froese is an LGBTQ writer of detective fiction living in Edmonton, Canada. Her novels include The Girl Whose Luck Ran Out, Touch, and Grayling Cross. Her chapter book for adults, What the Cat Dragged In, was short-listed in the International 3-Day Novel Contest and is published by The Asp, an authors’ collective based in western Canada. Gayleen has appeared on Canadian Learning Television’s A Total Write-Off, won the second season of the Three Day Novel Contest on BookTelevision, and as a singer-songwriter, showcased at festivals across Canada. She has worked as a radio writer and talk-show host, an advertising creative director, and a communications officer. A past resident of Saskatoon, Toronto, and northern Saskatchewan, Gayleen now lives in Edmonton with novelist Laird Ryan States in a home that includes dogs, geckos, snakes, monitor lizards, and Marlowe the tegu. When not writing, she can be found kayaking, photographing unsuspecting wildlife, and playing cooperative board games, viciously competitive card games, and tabletop RPGs. Gayleen can be found on: Twitter @gayleenfroese Facebook @GayleenFroeseWriting And www.gayleenfroese.com

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IT'S THE SAME NEWS MISTER

I WAS SITTING IN MY office on the dining room floor, next to the thing the balls roll under. I was waiting for something to happen. I had this idea that, someday, a ball would roll back out.

That's when the dame walked in. It was my secretary, Lily. I like her, except she bites my paws.

Lily likes to say she's descended from French royalty. Maybe she is. All I know is, whatever she descended from, she never got back up. She's one of those purse-sized girls that makes a lot of noise just so no one forgets she's in the room.

There was a line of dust lit up by the sun coming in the dirty windows. It was about as tall as the chair in the corner, the one I wasn't supposed to get up on. That told me it wasn't time for supper, so Lily wasn't looking for something in her dinner bowl. I figured maybe she just wanted to go outside and stir up trouble, and she wanted me to come with her. She gets that idea in her head, sometimes, that I ought to help her bark. But, that day, she surprised me.

Mister? she said. She was standing in front of me and shaking from her big brown ears to her curly white tail. Mister? I've got good news and bad news, Mister.

That's another thing about Lily: she calls me Mister. She calls everyone Mister. That's not my name, though. My name's Spenser, like it says on the tag. I was named after a detective. Now I am a detective. It goes to show, sooner or later, everyone winds up being what it says on the tag.  

I'll take the good news first, I told her. I kept looking at her, but I slid my front paws forward until my stomach was on the floor. I was thinking I might as well get comfortable. Conversations with Lily could take awhile.  

Lily jumped to the side to get out of my way. She'd screwed up her face until the two brown patches over her eyes met in the middle and the white strip between them disappeared.

But... it's the same news, Mister.

I should have guessed. Aside from when I get called for dinner, most news is all mixed up with good and bad.

What is it, Beans? I asked. I called her Beans like she called me Mister, except I didn't call everyone Beans. Just her. She looked like a Beans, I guess.

We've got a case. I mean, we've got a client. She wants to talk to you. About a case, maybe. Probably a case.

 If she's a client, I agreed, it's probably about a case. Who's the client?

Her big curly tail dropped. It landed on the floor and put a little more dust into the air.

That's the bad news, Mister. It's a cat.

Lily was no fan of cats. A lot of dogs weren't. Plenty of dogs have told me cats were put on this Earth to claw noses and bite tails. I'd never had a cat do either to me, so I give cats the benefit of the doubt. That's not to say I'd let a strange cat get too close to my nose.

Anyone I know? I asked.

Lily wrinkled her nose as if she were smelling pickles somewhere.

It's Ginger.

Like I said, Lily doesn't like cats in general--but she loves them compared to how she feels about Ginger. Ginger's the cat next door, or one of them, anyhow. She's a round girl with a mess of orange fur you just can't miss. She walks around that yard like she owns it, and she doesn't care how many other cats come along to make their mark on it. If you dropped her in the middle of the jungle with cats as big as me, she'd walk like she owned that place, too.

I could never get a handle on why Lily disliked Ginger in particular, but if I had to guess I'd say it was the old green-eyed monster. Ginger gets a lot of attention and that's attention Lily figures she could use for herself. Or maybe it's that Ginger and I go back a long way. Time was, she and I used to rub noses through the chain link fence between our yards.

We haven't done that in a long time. Maybe a year or more. We told ourselves for awhile that the chain link fence was keeping us apart, but we couldn't keep lying to ourselves forever. The truth was, we were just from different worlds.

Mister? Did you hear me?

I gave my head a shake and told myself to get back to business.

Yeah, Beans. I heard you. What does Ginger want?

Lily got that pickle-smelling look again.

I don't know. Steal someone's food, maybe? Claw someone's nose? She's a cat.

She's not all bad, I told Lily. She snorted a little air through a nose the size and shape of a piece of kibble. Any cat who wanted to claw it would have to have pretty good aim.

So you say. She wouldn't tell me anything. She said you were supposed to meet her at the high window with the leaves on it.

The high window was in the living room. Someone had painted leaves on it, even though there were leaves on a tree right outside. Sometimes I thought the Big Bosses who owned the house didn't like outside too much. Not the real outside, anyway.

There was a pale green chair in the corner below the window. The seat hung down between the bent legs, like when a Big Boss tries to pick up something heavy. Unlike the chair in the dining room, this was a chair I was allowed to be on. A dog could go crazy trying to remember which chairs are okay and which chairs are off limits, but the Big Bosses make the rules and I guess they have their reasons.

I stepped onto the seat of