But she’d have to pay a whopping tax bill if she did that, so why not keep it? The overhead was manageable. It was a half-hour drive from work. And she enjoyed taking care of it. Particularly the acre and a half of yard. She did all of the outdoor work herself. Des absolutely loved riding around on her mower. Actually, it was not natural how much Des loved that Toro. She was starting to become convinced that in a previous life she had been an Iowa hog farmer.
She put down food for the girls while the coffee was brewing. Then she checked on the rest of her guests. Spinderella, Foxy Brown, Lil’ Kim and Jam Master Jay were getting along just fine in her basement, one to a padded crate. Milli Vanilli-Fab and Rob-had the garage to themselves since they could only seem to get along with each other. Those two had been full-grown adults when Des rescued them. The adult feral strays were the hardest. It took time to earn their trust. It took patience and gentleness. A lot of her new arrivals had to be kept somewhere solitary and small, like her guest bathroom, for several weeks before they were ready to venture out. Right now, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, a surly black strutter, was decompressing in her mud room. She went in and spent a couple of minutes with him on her knees, her hand stretched out to him, softly cooing, “Your father must be hydrogen, because you da bomb, Daddy.” She said that to him every morning and night, and every morning and night he hissed and swatted at her outstretched hand. He would eat her food and drink her water but he would not let her near him.
This did not deter Des, who was partial to the ungrateful badasses. She regarded them as a challenge. She loved a challenge.
The average life span of a feral stray was less than two years. They battled starvation, disease, predators and one another. But in spite of this they managed to reproduce at such an appallingly high rate that the animal shelters were unable to keep up. It was a crisis. Crises called for action. And so Des and Bella were taking action. To date, they had rescued over forty feral strays. They took them straight to the local vet, Dr. John, who promptly checked them over for worms and ear mites and vaccinated them against distemper, rabies and feline leukemia. He also neutered them-all this free of charge. Dr. John applauded Des and Bella’s concern. He was also partial to Des’s form, especially when she was in her spandex running tights.
Right now, Des could hear Bella’s garage door opening. It was time to move out. They’d gotten a tip: Donna in produce at the A amp; P on Amity Road had overheard her manager-a real dick-say that he was going to call the animal shelter people about the half-dozen adult strays that were hanging around the Dumpsters out back. The animal shelter was a kill facility. Consequently, such a pronouncement was akin to genocide.
Consequently, Des and Bella were on Dawn Patrol.
Des grabbed her coffee and headed on out into the predawn darkness with it. Bella was waiting for her behind the wheel of her Jeep Wrangler in her driveway, engine idling, the back crowded with cages, have-a-heart traps and food. The personalized license plate on Bella’s Jeep read CATS22.
“Hey, girl,” Des said as she hopped in.
“Hey back at you,” Bella exclaimed brightly, her chubby fists gripping the wheel. “Desiree, how is it that you manage to look so gorgeous at five o’clock in the morning?”
“Um, okay, you forgot to put your contact lenses in again, Bella. I’d better drive.”
“I mean it, Desiree,” she insisted, handing her a shopping bag from her lap. “Stuffed cabbage. I made it last night. Just heat it and eat it.”
“Bella, why do you keep feeding me?” Des objected, smiling at her.
“Because you’re a healthy young girl and you need to eat. I don’t want to see you turn into some little wasted thing like that Ally McBeal person.”
“That I would pay to see,” laughed Des, who was six-foot-one in her stockinged feet, broad-shouldered, high-rumped and cut with muscle.
Bella Tillis, on the other hand, was an inch under five feet tall and totally round, a feisty, silver-haired little bowling ball of a Brooklyn Jewish widow in her early seventies. Her late husband, Morris, had been on the Yale Medical School faculty. Bella had three kids scattered around the Northeast, eight grandchildren and nine million causes. Around Woodbridge she was known as the Queen of Petition drives. Lately, she had been harnessing her considerable energies toward raising money for a No Kill shelter.
“What’s up with you today?” Des asked her as they went rocketing down the sleepy lane in the Jeep. Bella drove like a demon.
“Clothing drive over at the shul later this morning,” Bella replied, chin thrust up into the air over the steering wheel. Her legs were so short that she had to shove her seat up right against it, practically squashing her breasts. “Have you got any old clothes?”
“Girl, I’m wearing them.”
“What about Brandon-did he leave anything behind?”
Des let out a laugh. “Just ill will.”
When Des was twenty-three, she and Brandon had been featured on the cover of Connecticut magazine under the headline: “Our State’s Shining Future.” She was a West Point graduate with almond-shaped pale green eyes, a wraparound smile and dimples that could melt titanium at a distance of a thousand feet. Brandon, just two years out of Yale Law School, was the state’s top young district prosecutor. Only it turned out their future was in Washington, not Connecticut. Or at least his was. He went to work for the Justice Department looking into campaign fraud by several high-ranking senators. It was just a temporary assignment, he insisted. But one investigation led to another. And then he was signing a two-year lease on an apartment there without talking to her about it.
It was right around then that Des started rescuing cats with Bella. There is an old saying in pet connection circles: People who are trying to save stray animals are really trying to save themselves.
Des knew it was over when Aretha peed in Brandon’s $395 Ferragamo loafers. Cats know about such things. That same night he told her there was another woman. For the record, she was not white. But she was the daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia congressman. Their affair had started when they were in law school together. And it had picked up heat again in D.C. In fact, it had never actually ended, not even after he married Des. Which had taught Des a most valuable lesson in life:
Don’t ever trust lawyers.
“What you need,” Bella counseled her as they drove along, “is a Jewish man.”
“Is that right?” asked Des, raising an eyebrow at her.
“Absolutely,” Bella replied with total conviction. “They don’t drink to excess, they always come home at night and, oy-yoy, do they have low self-esteem.”
“Why is that such a good thing?”
“It means they work harder to please you-morning, noon and night.”
“Um, wait a second, are you saying Jewish men make better lovers?”
“I’m saying it.”
Des let out a hoot. “Bella, you are baad.”
“Now don’t misunderstand me,” Bella cautioned. “Stallions they are not.”
“Been there, done one. Maybe two.”
“But a good Jewish man won’t sleep a wink until he is absolutely positive you are satisfied. And I mean fully. Even if it means he has to go to work in the morning with bags under his eyes and full-blown case of lockjaw.”
“Yum, sounds totally off the hook.”
“They also make excellent fathers.”
“Whoa, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Des drained her coffee and put her empty cup in the bag at her feet. “But, listen up, I thought they only went out with their own kind.”
“Not a problem. You’re one of us.”
“I am?”
“You forget, I’ve personally laid eyes on you climbing in and out of your hot tub,” Bella replied, her eyes twinkling at her with mischief. “And there’s no getting around it, Desiree-you are one of the chosen people.”
Des grinned at her. “Girl, are you alluding to my booty?”
“If bootay is another word for tuchos then the answer is yes. And you’ve got one to die for. Although what you do for a living might scare them.”
“Hey, it scares me.”
It was not yet dawn when they pulled up behind the darkened supermarket and unloaded their traps. Dog
