Chapter 32

A couple of weeks after the big smoke out, I hollered at Grace.

"Gracie dear, we have a problem."

"I'll be right down," she hollered back.

I could hear her struggling with a swimsuit ... Grace was getting an allover tan.

"Need some help?" I asked.

"No," she said. "How about you, Carole Ann?"

"He asked for you, Grace. I'm not moving."

I heard the step prints of a light-footed blonde on the stairs. The telltale tracks stopped at the side door. She bent a neck around the door.

"What?"

The interior of the boathouse, for all that it was less than three months old, looked like it had been the catch-all of miscellany for fifty years. There was a small dinghy hanging from the ceiling, odd masts, spars, an old Coast Guard can buoy ... with brass gong, old license plates, watering cans, hoses, a broken sextant, lines in various stages of deterioration, shovels, the anchor with the broken fluke ... that was the result of the K5 and boathouse alliding...

Alliding: nautical term for contact between a moving object and a stationary object. Colliding: contact between two or more moving objects.

There were saws in need of sharpening and the tools to do the job. Chisels, moulding molding planes, hammers, broken pulleys, a table saw that must have come from a place with an overhead jackshaft ... general crap and three sleeping bags that could have only been from the Second World War.

Where does Daddy find this junk?

The ripped mummy bags were wadded up in a ball and stomped down in the middle ... like a nest ... with five kittens in the nest. Kittens? Kits? These were tan to grayish brown, with black streaks on the body and dark bars on the forelegs and tail. The ears were black-tipped and pointed, with short, black tufts. There is generally an off-white color on the lips, chin, and underparts. It was still summer and the fur was short, close to the body, but it was the hind legs; huge, long ... for kittens ... legs with an enormous flap of loose skin. That flap told the whole story ... that and the stubby tails.

Bobcat.

Great! Just great. Mom is around somewhere. Great!

"Oooh!" Grace exclaimed, "Cute!".

The boathouse floor is like an elongated "U" with the curved part in the shape of a "v". Docks on both sides and the bow were built more or less to the shape of a boat. The sleeping bags and kits were catty-corner from the stairway door. To get to them, Grace had to shut the door and make her way to the westside dock ... she started.

Weeou! Weeou! cried the kits.

Shit! Distress call! Mommie! Mommie!

"Grace," I said, "That's not a good idea."

Rrrrrrrrumble! Rrrrrumble! Lynx for "Fee Fi Fo Fum! My babies are in trouble! Here I come!"

And come she did.