Pun Detectives and the Case of the Kidnapped Kitten! (Part 14)

There she was.

Finally.

Teabone.

A mechanical whir made my heart skip a beat, and I half-jumped, half-twitched in shock.

“Don’t be so jumpy,” Sheldon said, as steady and self-assured as the swelter off of summer concrete. Unperturbed, you might say. Pacific, even. Definitely not the demeanor of someone guilty of napping a cat. At least not someone who felt any remorse over it anyway. “It’s a vacuum.”

He brandished the small handheld vacuum — the source of the whir — for Lily and me to see, then started to suck the flat dull plush of the carpet. That was when I noticed the cat hair sprinkling the otherwise-clean floor. When Sheldon got to the spot where Teabone was, Teabone darted noiselessly on top of the bed, then hopped onto a basic study desk pushed up next to the window.

I bit my lip. “Stop that, Sheldon.”

“Stop what?” Sheldon said. “Vacuuming? Can’t. Someone has to clean up around here. You want to do it?”

I bit harder. From the corner of my eye I could see Lily. She wore a forlorn frown. One that told me I couldn’t lean on her to be forward. From here on out, I had the wheel. “That’s not what I meant. And you know it. Come on. Explain yourself.”

The whir of the vacuum died. Sheldon put it back down by the wall, plugged it into a charger. Without it, he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. He scratched the back of his head. He shrugged.

“Nothing to explain. It’s exactly what it looks like. You got me.”

“You catnapped Teabone? From Wednesley?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“Cut the crap.”

“Fine. But it’s not much of a story. I was tired. That’s all.” He moved to Teabone, started scratching her behind her ears, under the chin, around her neck, his hand catching whiskers soft like nothingness.

He was tired? I was tired of him speaking in riddles. Seriously, what was that supposed to mean?

Noticing either I wasn’t satisfied with his half-assed explanation or the prison shiv of a glare Lily was thrusting at him, Sheldon continued. “You’re a night owl, right? You stay up late? Playing video games?”

“Who me? Uh… yeah. I mean, what does that have to do with anything?”

“I’m not,” Sheldon said matter-of-factly. “Not a night person, I mean. In fact, I’ve gone to sleep at 10 p.m. sharp every night for years. Fridays. Saturdays. School nights. Doesn’t matter. 10 p.m. sharp.”

“Ok. So what?” I really didn’t see what he was getting at. Who cared when he went to sleep? What did it have to do with his straight-up kidnapping a cat from a freshman?

“You really don’t get it, do you? I don’t know why I’m surprised. Someone like you wouldn’t.” Sheldon sighed.

Man, our wavelengths were totally off. I wished he would just explain himself and end this stupid guessing game.

“We’re in 10th grade now, Wallace Wade. As much as ignorami like you and your stupid little C-average friends don’t care, I and my friends do. Emphasis on I. The next three years are going to go by in a blink. SATs and college are right around the bend. We need to start prepping. Now. Which means more studying. And more studying means more work. And more work means less time in the day to get it all done. Understand?”

Ignorami? Was that the plural of “ignoramus?” Now probably wasn’t the time to ask. Nor was it the time to point out that Evan actually had a D average.

“And so, as you probably can surmise” — him and his SAT words — “my self-imposed 10 p.m. bedtime just wasn’t cutting it anymore. I was finding out fast that I needed more hours in the day if I wanted to maintain my grades and the study habits ingrained in me. But far be it from me to relinquish even a single precious second of the exactly eight hours of sleep I get every single night. I’m not some common delinquent. Some people sleep for beauty. Well, my sleep is for brainpower, and sacrificing it is something I wasn’t, and still am not, willing to do. But with more daily schoolwork, homework, and college-prep work on my plate than I could possibly fit into a single day, what was I to do? The answer was simple.”

It was Lily who spoke then. “Catnaps.”

“Precisely. Spot on, lunch girl. Splitting a few hours of sleep off from the long chunk at night and into short cat naps throughout the day, then reducing the total hours I slept at night. That was my answer. It was the perfect plan to reduce my sleeping hours in total while remaining constantly energized throughout the day, short bursts of sleep supplying the energy I needed to keep studying.

“That was when my ingenious plan hit yet another snag. I’ve never been a napper. My strict, disciplined sleep and study schedules saw to that. I found that I didn’t have it in me to nap. But desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“And so you took meowters — err, matters into your own hands?”

“Exactly, Wallace Wade. Not far from here, there’s a park where owners are permitted to let their pets free from the restraints of their leashes. A park that our friend Wednesley happened to stop by with his new kitten nearly every day on their afternoon walk.”

Lily crossed her arms and pouted in my general direction.

“Ok, ok, you were right!” I admitted. “Maybe some people do take cats on walks.”

“Yes,” Sheldon confirmed. “Luckily for me, people do. And not just people. Person. In this particular case, a person by name of Wednesley Wincler, freshman. You see, each and every day, poor little Wednesley would let Teabone here off of her leash to play with the other pets. And Teabone” — he looked directly at her, the cat he had stolen — “poor little Teabone, too new to this world to realize what I was doing when I catnapped her. It was like taking candy from a baby, only easier. But still just as satisfyingly sweet.”

Yeah. Sickly sweet. This story was enough to make your stomach churn. Seriously, Sheldon. This was some messed up stuff.

The end of Pun Detectives and the Case of the Kidnapped Kitten! (Part 14)!
To be continued in Part 15!