Clyde shook a tangle of dark hair out of his eyes. "Just tell me what's wrong with the idea. The venture would be charitable. It would be fun, and it would do you good. Help you practice a little kindness, increase your community awareness."

"What do I need with community awareness?" Joe sighed, enunciating slowly and clearly, his yellow eyes wide with innocent amazement. "Let me get this straight. You want me to join a pat-the-kitty group. You want me to visit an old people's home. You are asking me to become part of show-and-tell for the doddering elderly." He regarded Clyde closely. "Are you out of your feeble human mind?"

"Dulcie thinks it's a good idea."

"Dulcie thinks it's a good idea because it was her idea." Joe dug his claws into the chaise cushion. Sometimes Dulcie lost all sense of proportion. "Do you really think that I'm going to allow a battalion of bedridden old people to prod and poke me, to call me 'ootsy wootsy kitty,' and drool all over me?"

"Come on, Joe. You're making a big deal. If you'd just give it-"

Joe's look blazed so wild that Clyde stopped speaking and retreated behind a swill of coffee. The cat treated him to an icy smile. "Would you submit yourself to such amazing indignities? Turn yourself into an object of live-animal therapy?"

Clyde settled back against the steps. "You really are a snob. What makes you think those old folks are so disgusting? You'll be old someday. A flea-bitten, broken-down bag of cat bones with a dragging belly, and who's going to be kind to you?"

"You will. Same as you're kind to those two disreputable old dogs."

"Of course I'm kind to them, they're sweet old dogs. But you-when you get old I'll probably dump you at the animal pound."

"Or gas me under the exhaust of that junk-heap Packard you insist on driving."

"That Packard is a collector's model: it's worth a bundle of cash, and it's in prime condition." Clyde regarded Joe quietly. "Those old people get lonely, Joe. I'm not asking you to dedicate the rest of your life. Just a little kindness, a few hours a week. Some of those old people don't have any family, no one to visit them, no one to talk to or to care what happens to them."

Joe washed his left front paw.

"Don't you read the papers? Animal therapy is the latest thing. If those old people can visit with a warm, healthy animal, hold a cuddly dog or cat on their lap, that kind of relationship can really ease their depression, bring a lot of happiness into their dull lives. There've been cases where-"

"Cuddly? You think I'm cuddly?"

Clyde shrugged. "I don't. But their eyesight isn't too good. You're about as cuddly as a dead cactus. But hey, those old folks aren't choosy. If you could make a few of them happy-"

"What do I care if they're happy? What possible good can their happiness do me?"

"Just a little charity, Joe. A little love." Clyde scratched his dark, stubbled chin.

"Love? You want me to love them?"

"Can't you even imagine doing something nice for others? If you'd stop thinking about yourself all the time- and stop playing detective, following that damned cat burglar. That's another thing. This whole cat burglar bit. I don't like it that you were eavesdropping on Captain Harper, listening to classified police information."

"Classified? What's classified? The burglaries were in the paper. And I wasn't eavesdropping. You and Harper were playing poker. You're afraid I'll get a line on that woman before the cops do. And who knows, maybe I will. Make Harper's secret undercover surveillance look like a parade down Main Street."

He washed his right paw. "Who knows, maybe I can pass along a little information to Harper. Would he object to that? He hasn't objected in the past; I don't remember any complaints when Dulcie and I solved the Beckwhite murder, or turned up the evidence on Janet Jeannot's killer."

Clyde's dark, sleepy eyes stared into Joe's slitted yellow ones. "I'm not going to discuss that. You go off on these big ego trips. Like you were the only one who ever solved a murder. And if I tell you that stuff's dangerous, that you and Dulcie could get yourselves killed or maimed, you go ballistic, pitch a first-class tantrum."

Clyde stared into his empty coffee cup. "Couldn't you at least volunteer a couple afternoons a week? If your best friend likes the idea, couldn't you try? Try giving something back to the community?"

Joe's eyes widened to full moons. "Give something back to the community? Talk about limp-wristed dogoodism. Why should I give anything to some community? I'm a cat, not a human. What did this village ever-"

"May I point out that Molena Point is an unusually nice place for a cat to live? That you're lucky to have landed here?" Clyde sucked at his empty cup and moved his position on the step, following the shifting path of the sun. "How many California towns can offer you a veritable cat Eden? Where else are there endless woods and hills and gardens to hunt in, and even the street traffic is in your favor. Molena Point drivers are unbelievably slow and careful. Everyone takes great pains, Joe, not to run over wandering cats. Even the tourists are thoughtful. You want to move back into San Francisco's alleys, dodging trucks, avoiding hopheads and drunks? You try living in Sacramento or downtown L.A., see how long before you end up as pressed cat meat."

Joe glared.

"You fell into paradise when you landed in Molena Point. It would seem to me you'd be anxious to pay your dues."

No comment. The gray tomcat washed his shoulder.

"To say nothing of the free gourmet food you village cats indulge in behind Jolly's Deli. Where else are you going to be served free caviar, smoked Puget Sound salmon, imported Brie? You may not have noticed, Joe, but between Jolly's gourmetic freebies and the rabbits and mice you gorge on, you're getting a sizable paunch."

"I wouldn't talk about paunch, the shape you're in." Joe looked him over coldly. His stub tail beat so hard against the cushions that Clyde imagined an invisible tail lashing: the tail that was no longer a part of the tomcat's anatomy.

"Why not give it one visit, just to see what those old people are like?"

"I don't see you visiting the feeble elderly. And since when are you so concerned about Molena Point's old folks?"

"If you'll try just one pet visiting day, I'll treat you to the best filet in Molena Point, delivered to the house sizzling hot."

"Not for all the filets in the village will I be crammed into a bus beside a bunch of yapping stink-a-poos scratching and lifting their legs, hauled away to an institution, locked inside rooms that smell like a hospital, rammed by wheelchairs, shoved into the laps of strangers to be poked and prodded, people I never saw before and don't want to see, people smelling of Vick's VapoRub and wet panties." Joe's eyes burned huge and angry. "Get them a teddy bear. Get them a stuffed cat- one of those cute furry life-size kitties you see on the shelf in the drugstore, but leave yours truly alone." He turned his back, curled up in the warm sunshine, and closed his eyes.

But Joe's reluctance would come to nothing, his stubborn negativism would soon register zero. When soft little Dulcie set her mind to it and turned that sweet green gaze on him, his blustering tomcat resolve would begin to melt. Before another two days had passed, the gray tomcat would find himself enduring with amazing patience the palsied stroking of the old folks' frail, wrinkled hands-and soon would find himself studying the Casa Capri Retirement Villa with intense interest, trying to understand what was not right within that seemingly gentle, cosseting home for aged villagers.