CHAPTER ONE
A CAT ON DEATH
ROW
Our visit to the animal clinic was a disaster. The vet acted as if my cat
was possessed. I had no idea why. Duma was a perfect little thing. Well,
most of the time. He did like to scare old people and bite them every
once in a while. He was also known to poop on their vintage cars. Just
the kind of stuff cats do sometimes. But the vet and animal control did
not seem to think this was normal. Neither did they approve of us feeding
Duma human food, which we understood completely. But if we did not
share our breakfast, lunch and dinner with him, he would cry all night
and pee on us while we were asleep. And that wasn’t the worst part. At
the end of his examination, the Chief Animal Control Officer discreetly
pulled my mom, Oz, aside. Apparently whatever he had to tell her would
be unfit for the ears of a thirteen-year-old boy.
“. . . it’s unfortunate, but it must be done,” I overheard him say
outside the clinic. “You see, after the number of complaints we received
and the number of violent attacks this month, we have no choice.”
What troubled me the most was that Oz did not want to tell me a thing
when we got back to the house. She went straight to her bedroom and
shut the door. I decided to leave her alone and wandered off to my own
room, stumbling as Duma frantically shot in between my legs and
entered the room just before me. Beating me to it was a big deal for him.
Duma was pure black, with tangerine eyes and large pointy ears. He
was well built, but slender. Some intern vet thought he was a mix of an
Abyssinian and some unidentified wild animal. I had been thinking that
for years. I had wondered if Duma’s mom had actually been bred with a
bobcat. Or maybe it was a tiger. Even better, what if Duma was half-
turtle? His life expectancy would be at least a hundred years!
A familiar voice brought me back to reality. It was my mom. I must
