Content Preview

 Contents  Title Page Table of Contents Chapter 1: The World’s Longest Cat Chapter 2: Cat Count Chapter 3: The Odd Couple Chapter 4: Mysteries and Microchips Chapter 5: Spiders and Sisters Chapter 6: Biscuits and Baths Chapter 7: Friends Fur-ever Copyright    Guide  Cover Title Page Contents Chapter 1: The World’s Longest Cat Copyright Start Content    Pagebreaks of the print version  Cover Page iii v 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 115 iv                Title Page Chapter 1: The World’s Longest Cat Chapter 2: Cat Count Chapter 3: The Odd Couple Chapter 4: Mysteries and Microchips Chapter 5: Spiders and Sisters Chapter 6: Biscuits and Baths Chapter 7: Friends Fur-ever Copyright       “Welcome to The Purrfect Cup, the best and only cat café in town! Can I interest you in a cap-purr-ccino?” The customer standing in front of me looks confused and nervous. Probably because our family’s cat, Pepper, is sitting on the counter staring at him. Her tail is perfectly still and her eyes don’t blink. Pepper lifts her paw and licks her claws slowly, never taking her eyes off the customer. “Um, can I just get a cup of water?” he asks. “Sure, I guess,” I say. “But if you change your mind, we also have hot chocolate with marsh-meow-lows. Or I could make you some purr-itos and avo-cat-o toast.” “Kira Parker,” Mama says sternly. “What are you going on about?” Mama finishes wiping down one of the tables in the café and joins me behind the register. She pours a cup of water for the customer. “Sorry about that. We’re actually all out of our homemade marshmallows. And we’ve never served burritos or avocado toast,” she says. Then she turns to me. “Kira, why don’t you go help your father in the kitchen?” “I was helping him, but he sent me back out here because I put too many chocolate chips in the cookie dough.” He also said I put too many chocolate chips in my mouth, but Mama doesn’t need to know that. “Well, go ask him if you can help again. And take it slow this time.” I don’t know if I can take it slow. I feel as restless as a kitten who hasn’t learned the difference between day and night, and stays up all night pouncing on your toes. We haven’t had school in three days! Our principal closed the school so our teachers could listen to some people talk about how to teach. I thought they already knew! I’m not sure what more there is to learn. Teaching kids is probably way easier than taking care of cats, which is what I’ve been doing all week. I love hanging out with the cats that live in our family’s cat café, The Purrfect Cup. It’s the most wonderful and cozy place in the world. The cats stay here with us until we can find them the perfect fur-ever homes. They climb on the shelves lining the walls and play with all the toys we leave around the café. Usually the cats love watching the customers and walking up to them to ask for belly rubs. But today, even the cats seem bored!  They’re lying on top of tables and chairs with their legs all the way stretched out, like they’re trying to take up as much space as they can. I see a cat lie down on top of a customer’s laptop and refuse to move. Another one dips its paw in a customer’s glass of iced tea. I think it must be about to rain or something. My best human friend, Alex Patel, told me that cats can tell when it’s about to rain, and they also get restless. It’s too bad Alex isn’t around to tell me more cool facts. She and her mom went on vacation while school’s closed. I turn to my best nonhuman friend, Pepper. She stops licking her paw when she sees me looking at her. “Want to go back to the kitchen?” I ask. In response, she rolls over onto her back and sticks her legs straight up in the air. I think she’s tired of going back and forth between the kitchen and the café too. My brain is usually full of great ideas for things to do when I don’t have school. Sometimes I even have great ideas when I’m at school, which gets me into trouble, like that time I decided the school library needed more books about cats, so I wrote my own. I probably shouldn’t have thrown the other books away, but I needed space for mine! Right now, I can’t think of any great ideas! My brain is as empty as the library shelves after my teacher took my cat books down. Pepper follows me into the kitchen behind the café, where Dad is making coffee cake for the afternoon crowd of customers. His coffee cake is perfectly buttery and cinnamony, and it has a layer of brown sugar streusel that’s as thick as the cake. Just how I like it. “Hey, Dad,” I say. “Mama sent me back here to help you. Is there anything I can do? I’ll be more careful this time.” “Can you hand me that bag of powdered sugar? You