Two Tall Tails by Sofie Kelly Page A

the back door, almost as though he was going back out to look for Molly’s ball again. I shook my head. Elvis was a very smart cat, but not that smart. I opened the back door for him. “We’re leaving in a little while,” I said.
    A soft “Mrrr” was the only answer I got.
    A half an hour later I was back at the door. Elvis was sitting on one of the wicker chairs. When he lifted his head, I realized there were two burdocks stuck in the fur just below his left ear. The cat had come home once before with the prickly things stuck to his tail. It had taken an hour, an entire can of sardines and a lot of grumbling on both our parts to get them out.
    I sighed softly. We were going to be late getting to the shop.
    Elvis shook his head as though he was trying to shake the burdocks away. Then he lifted a paw and swatted at one of them.
    â€œNo, no, don’t do that,” I said. “Stay there.” I held up a hand, feeling a little foolish because, well, I was talking to a cat.
    However, Elvis seemed to understand. He dropped his paw and made a sound a lot like a sigh.
    I went back to the apartment and got two sardines from the can in the refrigerator, along with the wide-toothed comb I used on Elvis when something got knotted in his fur, the gardening gloves my brother Liam had given me as a joke and a little peanut butter, just in case.
    The cat hadn’t move from the chair on the veranda. I crouched down next to him and set the plate holding the little fish on the seat cushion.
    Elvis craned his neck to check out the plate of fish, whiskers twitching.
    â€œHow did you get those things in your fur?” I asked, reaching out to stroke the top of his head.
    â€œMrr,” the cat said, looking—it seemed to me—just a little sheepish.
    â€œPoking your nose in somewhere it shouldn’t have been?” I raised an eyebrow and he ducked his head almost as though he was embarrassed. He really was a beautiful animal. The long scar that cut diagonally across his nose gave him a kind of rakish, devil-may-care look that made just about every visitor to the shop want to stop and stroke his sleek black fur and fuss over him a little.
    Elvis turned his attention again to the plate with the sardines. I reached for the gardening gloves and pulled one of them on to protect my right hand. The left one was healing and I was slowly getting strength and range of motion back, but I didn’t dare take the splint off. I was going to have to do this one-handed.
    â€œYou have one of those sardines and I’m going to try to work those burdocks out of your fur,” I said.
    Elvis bent his head over the little fish and I studied the burdock closest to his ear. It was snagged firmly in his black fur. I felt the ridge of another old wound under my fingers, and wondered, once again, who or what the small cat had tangled with before he’d come to live with me and what the other guy looked like.
    Holding the burdock—which was rather like holding on to a tiny cactus ball—between two gloved fingers, I worked carefully to get the fur out of it. As if he understood what I was doing, Elvis stopped eating, head hovering over the plate when I came to an especially stubborn spot.
    The second burr was harder to remove, snagged even deeper in the cat’s thick black coat. I reached for the peanut butter and smeared a little in Elvis’s fur. Bit by bit I managed to work the spiky seedpod loose, and then used the wide-toothed comb to make sure all the tiny bits of the burdock were out. Elvis sat upright, patient and still as if this was something he’d had done before, and when I was finally satisfied, he almost seemed to smile at me before giving the area a good wash with his paw.
    I got to my feet, stretched and decided to make a quick circuit around the yard to see if I could spot the burdock plant Elvis had tangled with. The cat climbed up on the railing, looking as though he were