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Scoots Pitiful and the Mystery at Green Gables by Susan McDonough Wachtman
Monday, June 27, 2016
Rated "G" by the Author.
Scoots Pitiful, cat detective, solves a mystery for Anne of Green Gables.
Scoots Pitiful was no ordinary cat. At least, that’s what he kept telling himself as his person gave him another noogie.
It wasn’t her fault. She was only a person. She couldn’t know how extra-ordinary he was.
Scoots loved books. And he was a detective. He had never actually solved a crime, but he knew he could if one came his way.
Scoots was a lean, yellow and white cat, but he considered himself a small lion. Even his person called him that – “my little lion” she said as she gave him a noogie.
The noogie actually felt pretty good.
Scoots lived in a house with many, many books. His person was a writer who loved having books around. Scoots loved having books around, too. Bookshelves were great places for napping, and Scoots loved to nap.
Scoots could nap almost anywhere, but behind the books on the biggest bookshelf was a good place to nap if you didn’t want to be disturbed.
The one most likely to disturb Scoots was Parker. Parker was a very large and furry grey and white cat who had been named after a TV show character. The TV show Parker liked to jump off of things. She usually wore a harness so she wouldn’t get hurt. The cat Parker liked to jump off of things, too, but she had four feet, a tail, and nine lives, so she didn’t worry much about getting hurt.
Scoots had seen in a book once that a Nosy Parker was someone who was annoying and inquisitive. So he called Parker “Nosy Parker!” which annoyed her and amused him.When he got tired of that, he would go to sleep behind the books on the bookcase.
Somehow spending all that time with books had rubbed off on Scoots, and he had learned books. Scoots didn’t read, exactly. He slept behind the books and he just knew the stories when he woke up. Scoots especially enjoyed stories about famous detectives like Sherlock Holmes and Miss Jane Marple and Nero Wolf. Scoots thought Nosy Parker would be perfect for the job of detective’s assistant.
He tried to tell her this.
“You should go find out facts for me,” he told her.
Parker was sitting on the kitchen counter, where she was not supposed to be. They were both looking at the garbage can. There were interesting smells coming from the garbage can, and Scoots was wondering if those smells would be worth getting into trouble for. Probably not, but it would be horrible if Parker got into the garbage and ate something good before he could. So he was waiting to see if she would try.
Parker suddenly jumped down in front of Scoots, startling him. She cat-laughed.
Cats don’t laugh like people. They make no noise. Their whiskers twitch and mostly only other cats can tell they are laughing. Parker laughed at Scoots a lot which drove him absolutely crazy.
“What’s detecting?” she asked.
“Getting information.”
“Information about what?”
That was a sticky question, because Scoots did not know of any mysteries that needed solving. “Oh, you know, just facts about things.”
Parker flicked her tail which meant, “You’re crazy.” She jumped at the garbage can, knocking it over. Scoots was startled again. Parker cat-laughed and grabbed a pizza crust. The sound of the can falling had startled their person, and as Parker streaked out one door with the pizza crust, their person came in the other.
“Oh, Scoots!” she cried. “Look at the mess you’ve made! No treats for you tonight!”
Scoots sighed. Watson didn’t do things like that to Sherlock Holmes. It was hard to be a detective with nothing to detect and only an annoying Nosy Parker who refused to detect for him and got him into trouble. It wasn’t fair.
Scoots went into the living room and did what he was known best for. He sat down on the rug and pulled himself forward with his front paws, scooting across the carpet. It was the only way he knew of to scratch an itch back there. He really didn’t understand why his person always said, “Oh, Scoots, you’re pitiful!” Nosy Parker cat-laughed whenever he scooted. She’d probably never tried it.
When Scoots had finished scooting, and his person had said, “Oh, Scoots, you’re pitiful!” Scoots went into the bedroom to take a nap. So far it was not a good day. Maybe it would be better after a nap.
Scoots jumped up onto the second shelf from the bottom, and stopped in dismay. His person had always left a gap for him here, behind Lewis Carrol and Agatha Christie and Scott Corbett and Arthur Conan Doyle and Karen Cushman. The tips of his paws usually touched Roald Dahl. But the space was gone.
His person came into the room. “Scoots, I’m sorry. I bought some great books at the rummage sale, and they took up a lot of that shelf. But look, see? I moved everything over down here and made a new space. I promise I’ll rearrange things if you don’t like it.”
Scoots looked up at her, making his big lion-yellow eyes as pitiful as he could. She needed to rearrange them “NOW” he told her.
“No, I don’t have time. I have to get to work, and cleaning up your mess in the kitchen has made me late.”
“NEOOOOOW!”
“Nope.” She got her purse and her car keys. “Later.” And she left. He couldn’t believe it. She had left without giving him a goodbye noogie. And she expected him to slink in back here? Down behind... let’s see... George MacDonald, Robert McCloskey, A.A. Milne, Lucy Maude Montgomery, Walter Moers and Brandon Mull? No mysteries?! Not one!
Some days life just wasn’t worth living. No treat, no mysteries, no goodbye noogie. Scoots was in the depths of despair.
Scoots slid in behind the books and stretched out. His nose touched Anne of Green Gables. He fell asleep.
Someone was speaking. “And so I says to her, I says, Mabel, he’ll love it, so ask for a lot!”
“Yeah, yeah,” said another voice excitedly, “and did she? And did he? Love it, I mean?”
“Oh, yeah, he loves that stuff, so she --”
Scoots looked around in surprise. This was different. Usually he experienced the books, but he wasn’t in them. This time he could smell lilacs and apple blossom, and his paws were tickled by dandelions. The sun was shining and a breeze was blowing. Scoots sat up. There was a squeak! and an eek! and two squirrels went racing off through the grass.
Scoots was not a cat who worried much about the future. He spent only a minute wondering how he had gotten there and how he would get home. He decided this was better than being behind the wrong books on the bookshelf. And the really important question was: where would he find something to eat? Squirrels were too hard to catch and tough and stringy besides.
“Hello, yellow cat! Aren’t you a handsome fellow!” cried a voice.
Scoots jumped. He lashed his tail. He hated being startled.
“Oh, I am sorry!” A girl threw herself down on the grass in front of him. “I startled you. Don’t you just hate being startled? Like having your hair pulled by someone behind you when you didn’t know anyone was behind you. I suppose you don’t know what that’s like, because you don’t have braids, but maybe it would be the same for you if some mean child came up behind you and pulled your tail. That’s bad enough when you know it’s coming, but really awful when it’s a surprise. But I’ll bet you are very fast and can avoid that kind of child if you see one coming.” The girl’s face was right in front of Scoots now, and her sparkling eyes mesmerized him as her tongue ran on: “And then there are some startles that are good, like when you come around the corner and all the cherry trees have burst into blossom overnight, and the world has turned wedding veil white all down the lane. I love being startled in that way, don’t you?”
Scoots blinked.
“What amazing eyes you have, all golden yellow and with those cat’s-eye slits in them. Why do cats have a different kind of eye than people do, I wonder? Do you see things differently than I do? I wish you could tell me.”
“How would I know?” asked Scoots. His voice startled both of them. Whether it was a good-startle or a bad-startle they weren’t sure yet. They drew away from each other, and the girl was so surprised she was quiet for a whole minute.
“You spoke!” she said. “I have never heard an animal speak before, not really, although I have imagined it many, many times. But I am pretty sure I didn’t imagine it this time, did I? Did you really and truly speak to me?”
“I think so,” said Scoots, cautiously. He didn’t feel any different. But somehow what was in his head was coming out his mouth much more clearly than usual.
The girl sat up and clasped her hands together. “Oh, how absolutely thrilling! I knew this was going to be an extraordinary day the minute I woke up this morning. The sun shone on my face with such a friendly sparkle and I felt my imagination just burgeoning with new ideas.But I am not imagining you, I am sure I’m not, because if I were, you would be saying much more interesting things. I don’t mean to criticise, but when I imagine animals talking they have the most extraordinary stories to tell, and so far you have hardly said a word. But maybe that’s because I am talking too much. People are always telling me I do. Am I? Would you like to say something?”
Scoots sat down and licked a paw thoughtfully. “I have always thought I had a lot to say. I am an extraordinary cat.”
“Oh, yes, I could see that at once! Even though I speak so much more than you do, I still think we are kindred spirits, don’t you?”
Scoots licked his other paw. He did not think he knew what a kindred spirit was. But he did know what he wanted to be. “I am a detective.”
The girl clapped her hands. This time Scoots was not startled, because he had seen her hands draw apart and he knew what that meant. His person was also in the habit of clapping her hands, usually when she wanted Nosy Parker to get off the kitchen counter.
“I knew it!” she cried. “I knew this was a fortuitous circumstance! I have a mystery to solve, and now I have a detective to solve it!”
Scoots felt just a little uneasy when he heard this. He had never, actually and really, solved a mystery. But had he not learned from the best? He sat up straight and thrust out his thin, brilliantly white chest. Of course he could solve her mystery. “Report to me the facts of the case,” he said.
“So you’ll do it? Then we must introduce ourselves properly.” She got up on her knees and held out her hand. “I am Anne Shirley. That is Anne spelled with an e.”
Scoots put his paw in her hand. “I am Pitiful. Scoots Pitiful.”
She shook his paw solemnly. “Pleased to meet you. Now I know I cannot possibly be imagining this, because if I imagined a detective, he would have a much more impressive name than yours! A French name, I think...” She looked thoughtful.
Scoots was afraid she would try to imagine a new name for him. “Give me the facts,” he said quickly.
“Oh, yes. It began yesterday, when my bosom friend, Diana Barry, and I went to the woods to have a tea party.” Anne sat down in the grass and mimed drinking from teacups. “We have the most wonderful spot we call Idlewild in among the birch trees. We have our house with some broken dishes and we play at being ladies. And Diana brought her mother’s silver sugar spoon yesterday, so we could imagine a really fancy tea party to which we had invited the queen!”
“What is a sugar spoon?” interrupted Scoots.
“Oh!” Anne came back from imagining the tea party in the woods with the queen. “Oh, I suppose cats don’t have much use for spoons. It’s a small spoon for using in a sugar bowl. This one is made of real silver, and has a beautiful molded design in the bowl like a seashell and is so shiny and polished I could easily imagine the queen using it. It is part of the silver set Mrs. Barry received when she married Mr. Barry, and so Diana really should not have borrowed it, but how could we invite the queen to tea without a sugar spoon?”
Scoots put his paw on Anne’s knee. This was often effective with his person when she became distracted and forgot important things like filling his food bowl. “What happened to the sugar spoon?” he asked.
“That’s just it! We don’t know! Mrs. Barry called us because a peddler had come with the most brilliant ribbons to sell, and we forgot all about tea with the queen, and ran up to her house and didn’t even think of the spoon. When we remembered and went back the next day, it was gone! It is the most dreadful calamity, because the minister and his wife are visiting the Barrys tomorrow, and Mrs.Barry will certainly want to use her good silver, and we don’t know what will happen when she finds her spoon is missing. Diana is in a fearful state!”
Scoots stood up. “Take me to the scene of the crime.”
Anne took him to Idlewild, a grove of trees where she and Diana kept broken dishes and other treasures which, as Anne said, gave them great “scope for imagination.” She demonstrated how they had arranged their “table” and sat on their mossy rocks to serve the queen. “The spoon was right there, in the place of honor by the little blue cup, which we pretend is the sugar bowl, and there is the jug which we pretend is a magnificent silver teapot, even more beautiful than Mrs. Barry’s.”
Anne went on describing the tea service, but Scoots was no longer listening. He was following the careful observational methods of his favorite detectives, and examining the scene closely. He realized with pleased surprise that he had an advantage over even Sherlock himself -- he had a much more sensitive sense of smell than any human. And he smelled food.
Scoots prowled in food-hunting paces to a basket at the edge of the clearing. Ahh! Cake and... cheese! “I’m hungry!”
Anne broke off her description to look at him in surprise. “I thought you were solving my mystery. But I suppose it is hard to think when you are hungry. I know I always have trouble solving geometry right before lunch, although of course, I am hopeless at geometry anyway. It leaves me in the depths of despair. Have you ever been in the depths of despair?”
“Yes.,” said Scoots, remembering the bookcase.
“I knew we were kindred spirits,” said Anne as she opened the picnic basket. “I find that people who have experienced the depths of despair are much more sensitive than people who have not.” Anne went on talking as she set out cake and cheese on little broken plates, but Scoots was too busy eating to listen to her. When he filled up on cake, and especially cheese, he looked around for a drink.
“I am so sorry,” said Anne, “but I was not anticipating guests today, and so I have no milk or tea. We can, of course, get water from Willowmere.”
“Do you always keep food here?” asked Scoots.
“Not in the winter, it would get covered with snow, but usually in spring and summer we have something to sustain us when we are playing.”
“hmm.” Scoots raised his head, then opened his mouth, sensing the air. Anne stared at him in surprise. “Do you have any nuts in that basket?” he demanded.
“Nuts?” Anne jumped up and rummaged through the basket. “We had a whole bagful of hazelnuts a while back, but...” She pulled out the cloth at the bottom of the basket. “I can only find two. Diana and I must have been dreadfully hungry one day and eaten all the rest,” she said sadly.
“hmm,” said Scoots. “Perhaps.” He had found a black feather behind the basket. “Do you have anything small and shiny? A button or a bit of mirror or --”
“A bit of glass?” asked Anne, pulling some from her pocket.”Fairy glass? This broke off that larger bit of fairy glass over there on the shelf which was very sad -- that it broke, I mean -- but I have enjoyed carrying it around and looking at it. It’s full of rainbows!”
“Perfect,” said Scoots. “Put the nuts here,” he ordered. “Just drop them, so it looks as though they fell out of the bag.” When she had dropped the nuts, he brushed a few leaves over them.
“No one will find them now!” exclaimed Anne.
“They will,” said Scoots. “Put the glass over here, behind the basket.”
“Will I get it back?” asked Anne reluctantly.
“No.”
But --”
“Do you want the spoon back, or not? You go over to that field where we met.”
“But I want to see what you’re doing! And--”
Scoots had learned that interrupting Anne was the only way to stop the flow. “If you stay, nothing will happen, and Diana will not get the spoon back and Mrs. Barry will be angry. Go away.” Anne left, pouting, and Scoots slipped into the underbrush behind the picnic basket. He lay his tail on top of the fairy glass. He had a good view of the spot where the nuts were hidden. All the forest animals would know Anne had left Idlewood, because in her temper she had stomped all the way out to the field. Scoots dozed a little as he waited.
The shadows had lengthened when the squirrels showed up. Scoots heard their rustling in the trees, and he opened one eye, tracking the descent of one as it circled down a birch tree. In a moment, both squirrels were rummaging through the leaves by the basket, hot on the trail of that delicious smell. In another moment, Scoots had one squirrel firmly by the tail and was fending off the other. “Stop it,” snarled Scoots. “I am not going to hurt you! I just need to ask you some questions!”
“Cat! Cat! Cat! Cat! Cat!” chattered the squirrel under his paw.
“Bad cat get away get away get away from Mabel!” chittered the other while it tried to scratch him.
“Be silent!” said Scoots angrily. “Or I’ll bite!” Both squirrels were immediately quiet and still. “Good,” said Scoots. “I just want to know if you’ve seen a spoon -- a silver, shiny thing.”
“We know what a spoon is, Cat!”
“Well, good. Have you seen one?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Pitiful. Scoots Pitiful.”
The squirrels looked at each other, then looked at him, then burst into titters of laughter. They looked at each other again and began rolling on the ground, squealing hysterically.
Scoots gritted his incisors and waited for them to calm down. “Have you or not?’
“Yes, yes,” gasped one. “Mabel gave it to Raven.”
“Yes, yes,” gasped the other. “I traded it to Raven for a bag of nuts!”
“As I surmised,” said Scoots with satisfaction. “Please tell Raven to come see me.”
The squirrels stopped laughing, and Mabel stared at him with her mouth open. The other squirrel said, “Raven ain’t gonna come talk to you. You’re a CAT!”
“Yes. I know I’m a cat.”Scoots took a deep breath. He pushed the fairy glass out from behind the basket with his paw. “Tell Raven I have this.”
“OOOOOOOOOOOOh,” said both squirrels, and without another word, they ran off.
It wasn’t long before Raven flew into the clearing and circled down to a landing a safe distance away from Scoots. Raven cocked his head and focused one bright beady eye on Scoots, and then eyed the fairy glass. Scoots gave the glass a little push with his paw, so that it flashed in the late afternoon sun. “I imagine,” said Scoots, “that you have noticed that larger piece of glass over there -- much too large for you to carry, isn’t it?”
Raven ruffled up his feathers and settled them down again. “I could. If I wanted it badly enough.”
Scoots knew this was a lie. He had observed ravens many times, and knew how much they could carry. “Well, then,” said Scoots cleverly, “I guess you won’t be interested in this much smaller, nest-sized piece of sparkly glass...”
Raven shifted from one foot to the other. “I didn’t say that. What do you want for it? Assuming I don’t just take it from you?”
Scoots lashed his tail. “You’ll lose a few feathers if you try, birdbrain. I want the spoon.”
“What spoon?” asked Raven innocently.
Scoots hissed at him. “Don’t be stupid. The spoon you got from those idiot squirrels. You traded them a bag of nuts.”
“Oh, that spoon. Why do you want it?”
“What difference does it make? Bring it to me, and I will give you this piece of glass.”
“How do I know you’ll keep the bargain?”
Scoots hissed again. “I am a cat of my word!”
Raven clacked his beak together a few times thoughtfully. “All right,” he said, and flew away.
In a very short time, because Raven really was very eager to have the glass, Scoots was in possession of a spoon which he could barely carry in his mouth. He took it with some difficulty through the woods and into the field. He did not dare leave it in the clearing for fear it would get stolen again.
Anne was delighted. “You are my hero!” she said to Scoots, clapping her hands. “You are the most extra-ordinarily clever cat in the world!”
“I know,” said Scoots.
“I must take this straight to Diana so she will no longer be in the depths of despair!” cried Anne. “You wait here and I’ll be right back.” She ran off, her bright braids flying behind her.
Scoots curled up on a soft patch of moss and fell asleep.
He woke when he heard his person say, “Scoots! Wake up, Scoots! I brought you a treat!”
He was behind the books on the bookshelf again, and the smell of Tuna Treats wafted to his twitching nose. Scoots emerged from the books.
“I am sorry I had to leave you in the wrong spot,” said his person. “I will rearrange the books immediately.” She put the treat dish on the floor, and Scoots jumped down from the bookshelf eagerly.
As he munched his Tuna Treats, she recreated his favorite spot on the bookshelf. It had turned out to be a good day after all. A little nap worked wonders when one was in the depths of despair.
As an adult, I found the reading in the beginning to be a bit uninteresting, but I can see where this might be quite delightful for a child. You are most creative and I have to wonder if you dreamed this while taking a catnap. ;-) Hence the twist at the end… A nice touch. I like the naming, too. Scoots Pitiful matched his behavior perfectly.
Very well written as well. inviting children to read good books.
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