Like Cats and Dogs, Kate McMurray [miss read books .TXT] 📗

clouds, a gentle breeze rolling down the street. Lauren closed her eyes and savored it for a few minutes. Days like this were precious and rare—some years, New York seemed to skip right over spring entirely, going from winter jacket weather to unbearably hot in the blink of an eye—and she wanted to experience some of it before she had to spend the rest of the day inside.

Whitman Street was a wide east–west boulevard that made a straight line from the East River all the way to the Queens border, where the street changed names and became a service road off the highway leading into Long Island. Lauren had read somewhere that the family who owned the estate that had once taken up most of the land in the neighborhood had a matriarch who was a big reader, and a lot of the little side streets off Whitman bore the names of nineteenth-century American writers: Hawthorne, Cooper, Poe, Twain. Many of the businesses that lined Whitman Street played on its namesake, from the bars and restaurants who got their names from Whitman poems to the clothing boutique up the street called Song of Myself to the bodega on the corner called Walt’s Groceries.

Lauren had come to Manhattan for college and then lived there for a few years in a tiny closet-sized apartment until she’d gotten the job at the Cat Café and moved. Manhattan had its charms but didn’t have the same connection to its history that Brooklyn had. Rumor had it Walt Whitman had lived in a house just a few blocks from the Cat Café for a few years. That house was long gone and had been recently replaced by a sleek, modern high-rise apartment building, but Lauren liked to think he’d walked along this street before it was named for him, that she walked in his literal footsteps.

Of course, all this Whitman memorabilia was a sign of peak gentrification in this part of Brooklyn. This had been a sketchy neighborhood in the ’80s and ’90s. Monique had grown up in Brooklyn and said when she’d been a kid, she wasn’t supposed to walk alone around this neighborhood because there was so much gang activity. Now this pocket of Brooklyn, sandwiched between Downtown and the rest of the borough, was full of old brownstones and cute tree-lined streets with little mom-and-pop shops and cafés and restaurants. Many of the families like Monique’s, who had been in Brooklyn for generations, couldn’t afford it.

Lauren could only afford rent here because Diane had cut her a deal, letting her have one of the one-bedroom apartments in the building above the café, rented for a fraction of the average rent in the neighborhood. Diane often didn’t seem especially interested in turning a profit so much as helping out people she liked, which seemed like a bad business strategy, even while it benefited Lauren directly.

On the other hand, the café had been turning record-breaking profits in the weeks since the coffee shop across the street had closed. Who knew there was so much money to be made by people grabbing coffee on their way to work? Or that so many Brooklyn residents preferred to buy their coffee instead of making it at home?

With a sigh, Lauren walked into the café.

Monique and Victor were behind the counter, dealing with the coffee line. Lauren waved at them and walked through to the cat area, where Paige was petting little Chloe, who purred so loud Lauren could hear her across the room. Sadie trotted into the room behind Lauren.

“Hey,” said Paige. “Olivia called ten minutes ago to say they got the shipment of the food you wanted. But they’re really busy and she has appointments back-to-back until this afternoon, so if you want it sooner, you have to go over there.”

Sure, walk over and run right into Caleb, of course. Evan had argued that Lauren should apologize, and, okay, maybe she had overreacted. Caleb had been super rude, but Lauren could be the better person.

On the other hand, it was possible Caleb wasn’t even working today.

Still, Lauren had just gotten here. “Can you go?”

“I’m interviewing help for the adoption party. My first appointment is in, like, three minutes.”

Lauren glanced back at the counter, where Victor and Monique were busy helping customers. Lauren reasoned she could wait until the afternoon, although the clinic might stay busy, and the food supply was already low.

She sighed. “Fine, I’ll be right back.”

She walked next door, hoping Rachel or Olivia would be at the front desk, but alas, it was Caleb.

“Hello,” he said when she walked in. He looked startled. “It’s you.”

Lauren took a deep breath, willing herself not to get angry, but man, he riled her up. “Uh, hi. Olivia said you guys got the food I ordered. I’m here to pick it up.”

“Why not have it delivered straight to you?”

“It’s a special order prescription thing. One of the cats at the café is allergic to poultry, so we’re giving all the cats food that has no poultry products in it. That’s a surprising challenge.”

Caleb nodded. “You’re modifying the diet of all the cats for the sake of one cat?”

“It can’t hurt any of them.”

“I guess not. Seems expensive, though.”

“Why don’t you let that be my concern and go fetch the case of food?”

It came out more patronizing than she intended, and Caleb raised an eyebrow at her before he stood. “I’ll go ask Olivia where it is.”

He returned a moment later and then stuck his head in the doorway. “It’s in the storage room. You can come on back to fetch it.”

“Can you help carry it?”

“I have an appointment any minute now.”

“We’ll get this over with faster if we carry it together.”

“I’m a veterinarian, not a pack mule.”

“You this friendly with everyone?”

“I’m very nice to my patients. And usually, they don’t talk back to me.”

“Please?”

He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Fine. Follow me.”

Lauren huffed and followed Caleb to the storage room, where two twenty-pound bags of the cat food