Val ALMOST Had a Murder Mystery to Solve

Remember when my sweet, sweet Juno lost all interest in her cat kibble treat due to mourning for her dear departed frenemy, poor dumb Ann? Maybe Juno was not really in mourning.

I thought it strange, shortly after Ann's disappearance, that Juno would come running to greet me after work, prance around for her cat kibble treat after our lovefest petered out, and then turn up her nose and run back to her house. At first I believed that Juno could not remember that Ann was gone, and with Ann not crowding around for her share of cat kibble, Juno assumed Ann was stealing her house. Now I am questioning that theory.

Our cats have been acting strange too. That tan tiger-striped one, Simba, who had his eye almost gouged out in a fight, went nuts. It was bad enough that he used to sit on the rail and claw at my hand when I walked by and petted him, pulling it to his mouth to bite the hand that sometimes fed him. Don't tell me about love bites. That cat is evil. So, while I did not take pleasure in his swollen runny eye, I did not feel a lot of sympathy, either. Hick and The Pony squirted medicine powder at him, sometimes hitting their target. The eye eventually got better. But not Simba. He grew thinner and thinner. His fur was lackluster. Frankly, he looked like he was knocking on the Death family's door. Or getting ready to run in unannounced.

A few weeks ago, Simba ran into the kitchen while I had the door open. He's never done that. I screamed and scared him out. "Get out of here, you runny-eyed devil! I don't like you!" But then he took to running at me every time I opened the door. When I put treats out for my sweet, sweet Juno, Simba ran up to grab some. A chicken wing bone here, an odd piece of meatloaf there. Very aggressive.

Stockings, the tuxedo cat who weighed about 25 pounds, lost weight. He was almost normal size! And Dusty, the mostly-gray calico, ran into the garage and yowled and meowed like a nagging fishwife whenever I was outside.

The last straw was Saturday morning, when I put out some leftover BBQ hot dogs and sausages for my sweet, sweet Juno. I put them in her pan, because Hick frowns upon greasy spots on the wood porch. Juno did not come running, no doubt because she was running ahead of Hick in the Gator. The minute I stepped out the laundry room door, those three cats came barreling along the porch rail, yowling like banshees. I bent over and dumped the feast into Juno's pan.

Simba grabbed a bratwurst and jumped back up on the rail and then down to the pool deck. He had that thing broken in half, chowing down, before Dusty dragged another one out of the pan onto the porch wood. Stockings climbed into the food pan and started eating a hot dog from the middle. Those cats ate ALL of Juno's treats before she got back to the house!

So then I started thinking. Maybe Hick WASN'T overfeeding those cats. I accuse him of it when their black-with-white-speckles large roasting pan is still full of cat food when I get home. So maybe they were not eating it at all! And Juno wouldn't eat it, either. With that light bulb still shining over my head, I asked Hick what kind of food he'd been giving them.

"Just Diamond. Like I always do."

Well. Something was very very wrong with that food, methinks. The Pony told Hick to get them another kind. That MOM SAID. So while they were out driving Saturday afternoon, Hick did. And do you know what? Simba looks like a new cat. Like he's not even living in the same neighborhood as Death. And my sweet, sweet Juno heartily gobbled her cat kibble treat.

Beware of Diamond, my friends. My fleabags unanimously recommend

I never heard of it, they need to spend more money on an artist for the packaging, and it's probably cheap. But my furry friends (and enemy) are thriving on it, after only a few days.

Yep. Hick was almost a murder. Thank goodness Val was on the case.