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  The Bad Hat was pretty proud of how sleek his fur was, although he wasn’t about to admit it. And, of course, he wasn’t what you’d call a Ribbon Guy.

  Benjamin had been busy washing his face, pretending that he had not cried at all, but now, he cleared his throat. “Enough with the nostalgia already. Let’s watch It’s a Wonderful Life.”

  There was general agreement about this, and the Bad Hat settled back to enjoy the show. And—just like always—they laughed, and they cried, and they were on the edge of their seats. In fact, they liked it so much that they watched it twice. Jimmy Stewart, the star, was maybe even more cool than Alan Ladd in Shane. The Bad Hat would have to find out if Jimmy Stewart had ever been in a cowboy movie, because that would be really fun to see.

  As dawn approached, he was surprised to feel a sense of dread about having to leave. Maybe he, um, wanted to stay here? And let his colleagues be his friends, once and for all, and—

  “Bad Hat, I need to talk to you,” Florence said quietly.

  Good. He would pretend he wanted to go off into the big, scary world, but then let her talk him into changing his mind, and that would preserve his dignity.

  “Come on,” she said, and walked him to the door.

  So, maybe she was going to make a last-minute effort to get him to stay? Unless she wanted him to leave? Maybe that was it. He followed her, feeling his tail droop a little.

  “Um, look. I kind of, maybe—” he started. “I mean, I’m not sure if—”

  “You have an important job today, Bad Hat,” she said.

  What? He cocked his head. Did she want him to do chores, or something?

  “You need to find their mother,” Florence said, looking very serious. “Owners who would simply discard kittens that way won’t be taking good care of their mother, either. I’m very concerned that she’s in danger, so you need to bring her here, where we can take care of her.”

  Oh. Okay. Looked like he wasn’t going to be staying, after all. “I think you’re probably right,” he said, “but how am I going to do that? When I asked the kittens where they lived, all they could tell me was that there was a house, with some grass, and that there might be a tree.” Dirt, also.

  Which was sort of beyond vague.

  “You’ll find her,” Florence said. “I have great faith in you.”

  The Bad Hat blinked, caught off guard by that. “You do?”

  Florence nodded. “Yes, I most certainly do. I wasn’t really sure about you, at first, but you have become a wonderful friend, and a credit to all of us. I’m so very fond of you.”

  Hearing that, the Bad Hat actually felt tears in his eyes. “Really?” he said. “No one has ever been fond of me before.”

  Florence reached a shaky paw out, and touched his front leg for a moment. “Oh, I think your mother was extremely fond of you. You are a very good dog, in spite of your best efforts.”

  He hoped so. He hoped so very much. He had to blink some more, fighting the tears, all sorts of unexpected emotions welling up in his heart.

  “There’s a lot of ground to cover, so I’ve put together a team, to work with you,” she said. “All of the dogs volunteered, but I assigned the ones who will be the most helpful.” Florence paused. “And Jack’s coming, too.”

  A team. He had never been part of a team before.

  “You can do it,” she said. “I’ll see you back here soon.”

  The Bad Hat nodded without another word, and trotted outside. It took him three tries to make it over the tall fence. When he finally landed on the other side, Jack, MacNulty, Matilda, Duke, Lancelot, and Rachel were all waiting for him.

  “How did you guys make it out here so quickly?” he asked, as he picked himself up. Especially Jack. How on earth could he scramble over such a high fence?

  The other dogs exchanged glances, and snickered.

  “We’re magic, dude,” Lancelot drawled. “Pure magic.”

  The other dogs all nodded, and laughed again.

  Clearly, the Bad Had was missing something here. “Seriously. How did you get out here so fast?”

  Jack laughed some more. “You are such a bozo. We have a tun—”

  “Shhh!” MacNulty said.

  “—nel,” Jack finished more softly.

  The Bad Hat was still lost. Tun? Nel? What were a “tun” and—wait, he meant a tunnel. A tunnel! Well, okay, that would explain everything. “Where is it?” he asked.

  Jack started to say something, but MacNulty promptly head-butted him to the ground.

  “I don’t think we should be wasting time,” Rachel said mildly. “The mother cat needs our help.”

  Right. They needed to focus. “Okay, fine. I know this is a team,” the Bad Hat said, “but Florence put me in charge. So, that makes me the captain.”

  “Then, I’m a colonel,” Jack said. “You can call me Colonel Jack.”

  “And I’m a brigadier general,” Matilda, the Spaniel mix, said.

  “Since I’m a police dog, I must be a chief,” Duke said.

  MacNulty decided that he was a major general, Lancelot proclaimed that he was a rear admiral, and Rachel dubbed herself a lieutenant general.

  The Bad Hat had only seen a couple of war movies, so he had to think for a minute, to digest all of those ranks. “Wait, does that mean that I’m suddenly the lowest-ranking officer here?” he asked.

  The other dogs nodded.

  “If you do well,” Duke said kindly, “you can work your way up to major.”

  What exciting news.

  “What’s the plan?” Jack asked, bouncing up and down with excitement. “It’s so cool to be part of a rescue mission!”

  Everyone looked at the Bad Hat.

  Ah, so he had a lower rank, but was apparently still in charge. “The kittens didn’t have much information,” he said. “They told me that there was grass, and a house, and some dirt, and maybe a tree. They didn’t say anything about the lake, so the house probably isn’t right on the water.”

  The other dogs waited expectantly for more information.

  “Sorry,” the Bad Hat said. “That’s all I have.”

  “So, I guess we probably need to check every single house in town,” MacNulty said. “Eventually, we’ll find the right one.”

  The Bad Hat nodded. It wasn’t a great plan, but at least, it was a plan.

  And he was absolutely determined that they were going to find the mother cat!

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  So, they started searching. The town might not have been huge, but it covered a pretty wide area. It occurred to the Bad Hat that the cruel owners of the mother cat might not even live in this town—they could have driven over from some other village.

  Which he decided not to mention just yet, since it was a little demoralizing to think that they could end up walking all over the entire state of New Hampshire for weeks, and never find her.

  He also didn’t make any jokes about looking for a needle in a haystack, because almost every farm they passed actually had at least one haystack.

  Did cats like hay? Probably not. But, if the mother cat was scared, and hiding, she could be almost anywhere.

  They could rule out any house with no trees in the yard—but so far, they hadn’t come across a single house like that.

  After searching for a couple of hours with no luck at all, the dogs decided to stop and rest. Rachel found a small wooded clearing, with cool green moss on the ground, and they all flopped down on their sides and panted.

  “We’re never going to find her,” Matilda said. “This is a waste of time.”

  Probably, but they still had to try. And the stupid truck really could have been from anywhere, so they might have to—the Bad Hat lifted his head up from the moss.

  “Wait a minute, hold the phone,” he said. “We don’t have to find the house. We have to find the truck.”

  “And you got a good look at the truck, right, dude?” Lancelot asked.

  Well, he’d been diving into the bushes
to get out of the way, so it had been more of a glimpse—but, that was close enough.

  “What do you remember?” Matilda asked eagerly.

  “Let’s hypnotize him!” Jack said, and snatched a stick from the ground. Then, he stood right front of the Bad Hat and swung his head back and forth. “Just follow the stick with your eyes, Bad Hat. You are getting very, very sleepy.”

  He was kind of sleepy, but it had nothing to do with the silly stick. The Bad Hat yawned. “Give me a break, little man. I’m trying to think.”

  “But, it’s working,” Jack said. “You’re nodding off.”

  “I’m tired,” the Bad Hat said. “So, please don’t make me more tired.”

  Jack shrugged, plopped down on the moss, and began to chew the stick.

  The Bad Hat closed his eyes, so he could concentrate. Then, he took a few deep breaths, hoping that the refreshing smell of pine trees would clear his mind.

  “It was navy blue,” he said. “Not new, but not ancient, either. Just, you know, a regular truck. And there was a lot of dried mud and dust and all on the sides, and on the wheels, like they never bothered washing it.”

  “Someone needs to take mental notes,” Rachel said. “Can anyone take notes?”

  “I will,” MacNulty said. “I have a very good memory.” He winced. “But, remind me to erase sheep from it, okay?”

  The Bad Hat closed his eyes more tightly, trying to bring up a clear image of the speeding truck in his mind. “There was a dent,” he said. “On the back right bumper. And—” Was there anything else? Anything at all? He thought as hard as he could, and remembered—flapping. What could have been flapping? He opened his eyes. “Rope! There was like, a light blue covering over the truck bed, and it was tied down with old yellow rope. That awful plastic kind, that hurts your teeth.”

  All of the other dogs shuddered.

  “But, it wasn’t tied very well, so it was blowing around in the wind,” the Bad Hat said. He thought some more and shook his head. “That’s it. I don’t remember anything else.”

  “Actually, that’s really good,” Matilda said. “We can narrow things down a lot that way.”

  Duke nodded. “Nice police work, Mad Cap. You’ll make detective one of these days!”

  That didn’t sound very enticing, so the dog just shrugged.

  They decided to start from the road where he had found the bag of kittens. Then, they could work their way out from there.

  The Bad Hat figured that people who threw kittens away couldn’t be very smart—and were obviously too lazy to try and do the right thing, and at least drop them off at an animal shelter or the police station or something. So, they were probably also not ambitious enough to drive miles out of their way to commit their rat-fink form of animal abuse.

  His best guess was that the people had driven to the nearest deserted road, just far enough away from their house, so that if anyone found the kittens, they couldn’t be traced back to them. It was a crime of opportunity—not, like, a crime of intellect.

  They made their search as methodical and logical as possible. Up one street, down the next, checking each side street and all of the little dead-end roads that seemed to appear in the most unexpected wooded spots. They checked garages, too, in case the bad people had parked their truck inside. Then, once they had completely explored an area, they would move one street over and start the process all over again.

  Every so often, the Bad Hat would see a truck parked in a driveway or something, and get excited, but it would turn out to be black, or dark green, or too new, or too old, or some other disqualifying factor.

  A couple of times, they even came across trucks with dented bumpers, and the Bad Hat would go over and study the vehicle carefully, but it was never the right one.

  After a while, they had looked at so many houses and barns and other properties, that the buildings were all starting to blur together. The Bad Hat started worrying that maybe they had already passed the right house, and the people just hadn’t been home, so the truck wasn’t there.

  Which meant that they might have to do all of this again later.

  “Gotta rest,” Lancelot said, at one point, breathing hard.

  Everyone was worn out, even Rachel and her long Greyhound legs, so they all dropped in their tracks. The Bad Hat didn’t even notice that he had landed right in the middle of a mud puddle—until he had already gotten wet. But, he was too tired to move, so he just stayed there and panted for a while.

  Finally, they dragged themselves to their feet, and resumed the search. Up streets, down streets, around corners, and then, on to the next section of town. Pickup trucks, full-size vans, minivans, SUVs, small wagons, hybrids, motorcycles, bicycles, skateboards, tractors—lots of forms of transportation, in lots of different driveways.

  Many of the houses and cottages were clearly closed up for the season, but they were careful, and checked them, too. Just in case.

  The sun was beating down, and it felt very hot. The Bad Hat was hungry, of course—because he was always hungry—but, he was also thirsty, and the water in mud puddles tasted terrible. Maybe they should take a detour over to the lake, and drink from it? But, he was too tuckered out even to make the suggestion to the others.

  They turned down yet another street. More houses. Big houses. Small houses. Ramshackle houses, which looked more like—

  “Hey!” MacNulty said suddenly. “Check it out!”

  Just up the road, there was a beat-up old house, with tilted shingles, and an unmown lawn. But, parked in the rutted dirt driveway was a navy-blue truck, with a dented fender, a hanging piece of yellow rope, and a blue tarpaulin draped over the back.

  “Wow, my hypnosis was excellent,” Jack said. “Look how well I made you remember, Bad Hat!”

  It was because of dumb luck, not hypnosis, but yes! They had found the house!

  The Bad Hat wanted to run down the driveway, barking his head off, but he held back for a second to think.

  “Let’s charge the house!” Jack said.

  Which sounded like a good idea to the Bad Hat, too. But, if bad, thoughtless people lived here, it might make more sense to be sneaky.

  “We should take it a little slow,” the Bad Hat said. “Get a feel for things, first.”

  “Reconnaissance!” MacNulty said happily.

  Yes, they should do recon first. And it was such a totally cool word, too. The Bad Hat nodded, and followed the others as they retreated into the bushes and observed the house for a while.

  There were no signs of activity, although they could hear a television blaring inside somewhere. The house needed a fresh coat of paint, and none of the windows had curtains, although a few had broken shades, all of which were pulled down most of the way. One of the windows was broken, and had been patched with some duct tape and a piece of cardboard.

  There was a mildewed old woodpile next to one side of the house, and what looked like a propane gas tank on the other side. There was a weather-beaten porch in the front, with a missing step, and some crooked wooden lattice pieces propped up along the bottom.

  The Bad Hat was going to sniff the air, carefully, to catch a whiff of cat or kitten—but, before he could, he heard the sound of a cat crying miserably to herself, from—where?

  “I hear a cat,” he said. “Does anyone else hear a cat?”

  They all listened intently, with their noses pointed in the air, in case they could pinpoint the scent, too.

  They listened, until they located the sound under the porch.

  What an awful thing to hear. She sounded so desolate.

  “Since I’m the captain, I’ll go up ahead, and check things out,” the Bad Hat said, and the others nodded.

  “Don’t get caught!” Rachel warned him.

  Which would never happen, of course. The Bad Hat crept out from the bushes, and made his way slowly across the unkempt yard, to the porch. He poked his head through one of the openings in the boards and was greeted by a loud hiss.

  “Get
away from me!” the animal said.

  It took a moment for the Bad Hat’s eyes to adjust to the dim light, but then he saw a black-and-white cat, who had obviously given birth recently, lying on her side in the dirt.

  “Hello,” he said, with a big smile. “We came to rescue you!”

  With an effort, she turned away from him. “Leave me alone,” she said, still crying. “I don’t want to be rescued.”

  Wait, that wasn’t part of the program. Maybe she was kidding. “What?” the Bad Hat said. “But—I mean, we looked for you for hours.”

  “So?” She slumped down into the dirt. “Go away.”

  Okay, she had thrown him a real curveball here. The Bad Hat sat and panted for a few seconds. There was probably like, clever psychology he should be using right now, but he didn’t know any.

  “Are they feeding you?” he asked. “And giving you fresh water? And a soft place to sleep?”

  The cat shrugged without lifting her head from the ground. “I don’t care what happens to me.”

  Should he maybe run back to the bushes, and ask the others for advice? Surely, one of them would know what to do. But, he didn’t want to risk alerting anyone inside by making any unnecessary noise. “Are, um, the people here nice to you?” he asked. “Is that why you want to stay?”

  “No,” she said vehemently. “I hate it here. But, I’ll never leave. I have to stay right in this spot, in case my babies come back.”

  Whew. That meant that this wasn’t possibly beyond him, and he could actually fix this. “Any chance you have, say, six babies?” he asked.

  The cat raised her head slightly.

  Score! “Including one named Harold?” he asked. “Who faints a lot?”

  The cat burst into the hardest animal tears he had ever seen—or heard, and he had certainly been around a lot of animal tears. “My sweet delicate little Harold!” she said. “And Joyce, and Kermit, and Lola, and Mavis, and Ivan! Have you seen them? Are they all right? Do you know where they are?”

  As Duke would say, wow, what a lot of questions, and what a lot of names to remember. The Bad Hat nodded. “I found them yesterday, when those creeps”—he motioned towards the house with his head—“threw the bag into the road. And I brought them all to the Green Meadows Rescue Farm. So, they’re safe now.”