Page 27 of Betting on the Brainiac

“Are you supposed to take it?” Madison asks. “The kitten?”

I reach up to find out, moving slowly so the mama cat can warn me if we’ve got this wrong. I pick up a gray-striped furball and Madison gasps, but as I settle it against my chest, the mama cat only watches.

“Is it okay?” Madison asks, coming closer to peer at the kitten.

It doesn’t even cover my palm and weighs about as much as a pair of balled-up crew socks, but it’s warm and breathing. I brush a finger over the dark strand extending from its abdomen about four inches. “It seems all right, but this might be the umbilical cord.”

“I’ll get the other one.” She reaches up, slow and steady like I did. As soon as she settles it, a black and white one, against her chest with a small, delighted “Oh,” the mama cat turns and jumps from the box to the gap in the ceiling tile. Then she pokes her head back out and meows.

“She had her litter in the ceiling,” I tell Madison as the mama disappears.

“That’s what she needs help with?” Madison asks, but it’s a distracted-sounding question because she’s busy studying her tiny new friend, running a finger over its head.

Before I can answer, the mama cat’s head pokes through again, this time with a dark gray kitten dangling by its scruff from her mouth as she makes a leap down to the box and deposits the kitten. She eyes me, waiting.

“You’re up again,” Madison says.

I take the floof, and mama jumps back into the ceiling to repeat this with another gray tabby kitten, which Madison takes. Mama cat stays put.

“Is she done?” Madison asks. “Is that all the kittens?”

“Could be. If I put these down, I can climb up and look.”

“I’ll hold them all, you investigate,” she says.

I bring my two over and gently set them in her arms. Madison sits right down on the ground, her legs crisscrossed, the kittens snuggled against her chest. Lucky kittens. The mama cat hops down from the boxes and pads over to watch them. None of them spare me a glance when I drag a ladder over and climb up to verify that this is the whole litter.

“We got them all,” I tell Madison when I climb down. “We should look for a box or a carrier or something until we figure out what to do with them.”

“Just get my gym bag from my office and dump everything out. It’s a good size for this.” Her voice is a soft coo as she brushes her nose against a kitten head.

I retrieve it, and even though I feel weird about going into any woman’s bag for any reason, I decide not toactweird about it. I crouch and unzip it, turn it over and give it a shake. When the bag is empty, I set it down next to a small heap that includes a stick of deodorant—not candy scented, so the mystery is unsolved—hair elastics, a bottle of moisturizer, a towel, folded socks, a small pair of shorts, a gray sports bra, and on the top of the pile, a scrap of teal blue lace that can only be underwear.

Interesting. Always good to learn new things about people.

“Are you sure you want to use this bag? It seems really nice. It might not clean that easily.” It’s made out of natural fibers, not like my nylon gym bag.

“It’s fine. I can buy another one if it gets stained.”

Ah, there’s the girl who rolls up in a Mercedes every day. I don’t hold wealth against people, but I might judge that kind of waste. Except it’s hard to judge a woman sitting on a storeroom floor with an armful of stray kittens.

“Are there clean dishtowels around this place I could put in to make a bed for them?” I ask.

Madison glances at the pile. “My stuff is all clean. Just put the towel and clothes back in and use those.”

I can’t figure her out. Is she high maintenance because everything she directs me to put back into the bag is name brand? Or low maintenance because she doesn’t care about a litter of kittens turning them into their bed? She also doesn’t seem to care that Victoria’s Secret is crowning the heap of her nice things.

A phone vibrates from the floor beside her. It’s fairly loud against the tile, and the screen flashes “Dad.” She doesn’t look at it. Instead, she glances over to the mama cat then down at her armful of bigheaded cat babies with tiny, crinkled ears. Her expression is charmed—and like everything else about her, it also charms me.

“Great,” she says. “We’ve got them all, and they have a bag.” Then her smile fades as she meets my eyes. “Now what do we do with them?”

Chapter Twelve

Oliver

“What do we dowith the kittens? I didn’t know there would be a test,” I joke, stalling for time. Madison makes me want to find the solution.

“We can’t leave them here, right?” Before I can answer, her phone vibrates. She looks at it—it’s her dad again—but doesn’t pick it up.

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