Be My Neat-Heart by Judy Baer Page B

writhing in bliss, her gigantic ears quivering with pleasure. To the uninitiated in the world of hairless cats, it must have been a sight to behold.
    â€œThat’s my cat, Zelda. She’s a sphynx. We’re playing spa night. I just gave her a bath and cleaned her ears with oil. She’s feeling frisky.”
    Wrinkled skin is highly desirable in the sphynx breed and Zelda is show-cat perfect. Her little muzzle is exceptionally wrinkled, as is the skin between and around her shoulders. Her head is longer than it is wide, her skull rounded but with a flat forehead and prominent cheekbones. Of course, if one didn’t know the breed, that might seem a little creepy. She also has very large ears, startling, wide-set lemon-shaped eyes and a whip of a tail. Her hind legs are slightly longer than her front so she always looks like she’s walking downhill. What’s more, a sphynx’s paw pads are very thick and their toes long and slender so Zelda appears to be walking on air cushions. A large female, Zelda is almost ten pounds of luxurious, exotic, alien-looking feline.
    Jared gawked at her, dumbstruck. Zelda stared back at Jared with disdain. He had no distinguishing features whatsoever to make him interesting to her, no catnip mouse on his lapel, not even a large, semitransparent set of ears. She turned to give him a full view of her bony behind, flicked her tail and, ignoring us both, sat down to bathe herself.
    â€œIs it supposed to look like that? What happened to its hair?”
    â€œShhhh.” I put a finger to my lips. “Don’t say anything to hurt her feelings. Besides, I don’t think she sees any blue ribbons on you, either.”
    He glanced around the room as if looking for someone or something sane or normal. Finding no one, his gaze came back to me.
    â€œIs that really a cat?” His brows furrowed. He looked particularly handsome when he was perplexed.
    â€œWhat else could it be?” Hopping on one foot and then the other, I pulled the sponges from between my toes.
    â€œA cross between a fruit bat and a Chihuahua? A chemistry experiment gone wrong? Doctor Frankenstein’s dirty little secret?”
    â€œWould you like to pet her?”
    He recoiled slightly. “What does it feel like?”
    â€œ She feels like the chamois you use to wash your car, only she’s nice and warm.” I moved toward Zelda and bent to pick her up. She immediately began to purr and knead her paws into my arm.
    Jared put out a tentative hand to touch her and drew back quickly. “She feels like a suede jacket that’s been lying in the sun.”
    â€œGood analogy.” I scratched Zelda behind the ears. “Hear that, sweetie?”
    Zelda yawned so widely that I believed that had Jared looked, he could have seen the inside of the tip of her tail.
    At that moment, Imelda came trotting out of my room with the decimated Manolo Blahnik in her mouth. She went right to Jared, put her paws on his chest as if to show him the doggie pedicure I’d just given her, hot pink and purple nails, faux rhinestones and all.
    â€œWhat kind of a zoo do you have here, anyway?”
    â€œYours truly included?” I asked sweetly, knowing that at the moment I was looking every bit as weird as my beloved pets.
    â€œNo, I didn’t mean…I…” Jared looked to me for help.
    I thrust Zelda into his arms. “I’ll be back in a minute. I have to brush my teeth. I think I have chips of that facial in my mouth.”
    It was actually closer to five minutes by the time I’d rinsed my mouth and pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. When I returned to the living room both Zelda and Imelda were on Jared’s lap.
    â€œYou got their Good Housekeeping seal of approval, I see. That’s not easy. Good going.” I dropped into the chair across from him.
    â€œThanks. I think.” He looked at me, puzzled. “Somehow I never thought of you…like