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

“Did you shave my cat?”

“I had to for the ultrasound. Which is how I saw the bladder stone, by the way.”

Lauren grunted and rubbed the cat’s belly.

“Are you…mad I was right?”

“We’re not friends, you know.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, you don’t need to be this frank with me. We’re basically strangers, so you could be polite. The other vets here are far more friendly. Maybe you don’t realize the vet clinic and the Cat Café have kind of a symbiotic relationship.”

It felt like the moment when the sky suddenly got dark, minutes before the heavens opened and the thunderstorm began in earnest. Caleb spoke anyway.

“As you so aptly pointed out, I am new here, and I’m happy there’s a good relationship between the clinic and the café, but I’m also the actual veterinarian here, so I don’t need you to barge in here and tell me how to treat my patients. And I hate to point this out again, but if I’d just done what you’d said without actually examining the patient, I would have needlessly prescribed antibiotics.”

“Fine, but you don’t have to be rude about it.”

“I’m not, I’m…fine. Sorry. But still, you were arrogant enough to assume you knew what was best for your cat and tried to tell me what tests to run, so I’m not the only one who acted inappropriately here.”

Lauren scowled again. She picked up Sunday and bundled her back into the carrier. “I misjudged you.”

“How so?”

“First time we met, you were just this good-looking guy in my café who needed his morning coffee, and everyone who has met you so far says you’re this great guy, but good looks are no measure of character, and you, sir, are an arrogant prick.”

Caleb opened his mouth to respond but couldn’t come up with anything to say. She thought he was good looking. She also thought he was an arrogant prick. She was probably right on both counts, although he didn’t think he was arrogant so much as right.

“I apologize, I do,” he said. “But I try to be passionless when evaluating a patient. I can’t assume my knowledge of the animal is enough to make a diagnosis without doing a few tests to back up or refute what I think. And cats are cute and all, but I—”

“Let me guess. You’re a dog person.” Lauren rolled her eyes.

“I like cats fine, but if I had to pick one or the other to have as a pet, I’d rather have a big, friendly dog.”

Lauren snatched the cat carrier off the table as if his admission to being a dog person was the last straw. She probably lived in an apartment that had a huge cat condo in the living room with cats draped all over. He still found Lauren very attractive, but maybe he’d dodged a bullet.

He walked toward the door and opened it for her. As she stormed through it, he said, “I’m sorry if I was rude, but you have to admit you could have let me do my job.”

“Sure, fine. I shouldn’t have assumed.” The “I’m over this and you irritate me” was left unspoken. “I’ll see you later, Rach. And I’ll see you,” Lauren turned and pointed toward Caleb. “Much later, hopefully.” Then she turned on her heel and walked out of the clinic.

“You’ve got a way with the ladies,” said Rachel.

“But she… No, you know what? It doesn’t matter. Are there any appointments this afternoon?”

Rachel looked at the computer. “Nothing until seven.”

“Great. I’ve got some charts to finish up. I’ll be in the office. Holler if anyone comes in.”

“Is this like a schoolyard thing?”

Caleb paused on his way toward the back. “What?”

“Did you yank on her pigtails because you like her?”

“I’m a grown man.”

“Uh-huh.” Rachel turned back to the computer and smirked like she knew something Caleb didn’t.

Well, she could believe what she wanted. Caleb had no time for whatever flakey nonsense Lauren peddled in. Cats in cafés, and people coming to drink tea and pet them? What even was that?

He sighed and pushed through the door to the back part of the office. Okay, sure, he liked her, and he sure had enjoyed riling her up, but they clearly had nothing in common, and she would very likely never speak to him again. Right?

Chapter 4

“I hate him.”

Evan rolled his eyes. “You don’t.”

Lauren and Evan were at Pop, a bar on Whitman Street a few blocks from the Cat Café. It had become Lauren and Evan’s favorite bar in the short eight months or so it had been open, despite its absurdity. It was trying to be an upscale Manhattan cocktail bar, but this part of gentrified Brooklyn was all hipsters and young families and trust fund kids—more of a flannel-and-jeans crowd than a sparkly-cocktail-dress crowd. However, the martini page of the drink menu had twelve different options. Lauren was currently drinking something called a Deep Blue Sea, and she had no idea what was in it, but it was a blue martini garnished with a gummy shark, shoved onto the rim of the glass like an errant lemon wedge, and it tasted like cotton candy.

“I do hate Caleb,” said Lauren. “He’s such a smarmy know-it-all.”

“I hate to even point this out, but he is a veterinarian. He does know a lot.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“Yours, girl, always yours, but you doth protest too much.”

“He’s a dog person.”

Evan laughed and then covered his mouth, probably realizing Lauren didn’t find this funny. Lauren glared at him and sipped her martini.

“So you’re telling me,” Evan said, “that this isn’t some, like, love-slash-hate thing like in the movies, where you fight but only because you’re secretly into each other? Like, uh, Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You? Or Moira Kelly and…that guy in The Cutting Edge. Or Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds in The Proposal. Or Moonlighting. Or—”

“I get it.” Lauren rolled her eyes. “And please. The world doesn’t work that way.”

“I dunno. When I was twelve, I picked fights