Leonard (My Life as a Cat) Carlie Sorosiak (free ebook reader for ipad .TXT) 📖

shore, and eating bucket after bucket of anchovies. As Olive slipped into the back to change, passing my leash to Norma, I made my way to the exhibit area, letting the scent of salt guide us.

“What, you’re not hissing at them?” Norma asked me, settling by the enclosure. A few of the penguins were pushing around a beach ball, and I couldn’t stop staring at them, with their tightly packed feathers, their speckled bellies, brightness around their eyes. “I thought all cats hissed at birds.”

It was the first time she’d spoken to me—really to me. The only thing I could think to do was rub the side of my face against her calf, my tail sky-high and jittering. This seemed the right response, because she bent down for a second, smoothing the fur of my back.

Olive and Q emerged soon after, wearing rubber boots and carrying buckets in their hands. Something about them was very much like Yellowstone rangers. They looked professional; in control of the situation. I hadn’t realized that I could read lips, but I could see Q whispering to her: “You’re doing great. Now, we’ve got a nice fishy breakfast for these fellas. All I got this morning was Frosted Flakes, but whew! They’re lucky.”

The penguins rushed over to Olive with quick waddles. She couldn’t stop smiling as she tossed them sardines, anchovies, and squid. They ate eagerly with massive gulps: a much more efficient way to consume food. (Humans should take note.)

“She’s a natural,” Norma said to the air—and she was right. Olive looked at home out there with the animals, in her overalls and rubber boots. And it occurred to me, in that flash of a moment, exactly what I could do for her—how I could make up for the worry and the stress, her fight with Norma and the nights of staying up late, mapping out possible routes to Yellowstone. I was asking so much and giving so little.

Now, I would give.

Olive had told me once: I’d do just about anything to have a conversation with a penguin. Well, I couldn’t give her that—not exactly. But I could already tell that the penguins were intrigued by me—their black eyes were flickering, wandering in my direction, and they were asking one another, A cat? One of them said: No, no.

Intelligent birds, indeed.

It didn’t take terribly long to figure it out: their system of braying and vocal communication is startlingly similar to a cat’s, if cats were crossed with the common seagull. The key was in the throat, vibrating it just so, while throwing my head back at a sharp angle.

Which I did.

“Got a hair ball?” Norma asked, giving me a once-over.

Obviously I hadn’t perfected the language quite yet. I tried again—much louder this time, with more full-throated action, my voice bouncing off the glass. And the penguins turned, away from the fish, away from Olive and Q. I had their complete attention.

It put me rather on the spot.

“What the—?” Norma said.

And I said, Huuuh-huuu-huuuun-eeeee-oooo, adding honk after extended honk until my message was clear. The penguins were resistant at first. I was a stranger, after all; we’d only just met. But it wasn’t about me, I told them. It was about the girl.

“Leonard,” Olive mouthed to me, her cheeks flushing. “What are you—?”

The penguins pivoted, circling around her, until it was just Olive in the middle of them all. And then, all at once, they bowed in her direction, each lifting a flipper into the air.

Olive’s face showed nothing.

Nothing and then—

She broke into a grin, clasped her hands over her mouth, and started to cry.

You’ll have to forgive me if I’m getting a little emotional, but I’d very much like to keep this image. This is how I’d like to remember Olive, after I say goodbye to Earth: deliriously happy, tears of joy streaming down her human face.

I know it’s just wishful thinking, though.

I won’t be able to feel those memories at all.

So much for staying under the radar. My little stunt with the penguins was incredibly noticeable. Days later, Q was still bringing it up.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said, shaking his head as he squeegeed the tank glass. “Never in all my years. It’s like . . .”

“Like . . . what?” Olive said cautiously, wringing her hands.

Then he shook his head again, brushing off the idea.

That Tuesday, Olive and I bought a gigantic paper calendar from the boogie board store. It had drawings of seashells in the corners and a shark announcing the days of the week. “This way we can count down,” she said, as if I wasn’t already numbering the hours. “I wish we could just leave now. But we have to plan the timing right. If we go too early, Norma and my mom will know I’m missing, and they’ll come get me, and then you’re toast. I’m not abandoning you with all those bears in Yellowstone. This gives us enough time to get there—and not get caught before you’re picked up.” We tacked the calendar low on the wall in Olive’s bedroom, and she circled July 18, the night we’d leave for the park. Not long ago, I’d written ALIEN in this very spot.

“I’m still working on Norma,” Olive said. “Maybe she’ll come through, once the Save the Sea Turtles event’s over. But I have some other ideas, too. You said your planet is made of helium, right? Maybe we could get a bunch of balloons, like in that movie Up, and fly them across the country? No, you’re right—that’s silly. And kind of impossible. How do you feel about the train?” After batting plans back and forth, we always returned to the same point: that we needed the help of someone who wasn’t eleven years old.

“We’ll think of something,” Olive said. “I promise.”

But she was sounding less and less sure.

My tenth evening on Earth, I learned that most alien films aren’t as kind to extraterrestrials as E.T. As we