LOLA CAME THROUGH her surgery with flying colors, thank goodness. Sure enough, she’d dragged one of my dirty, stinky socks out of the hamper and eaten it, most likely while Mackenzie had been napping due to being sick herself.
The little stinker.
I hoped Lola would learn her lesson from this, but something told me she wouldn’t connect the dots. Besides, she was always pushing boundaries, always testing limits. Apparently that even applied to testing her own limits, not just mine and Mackenzie’s.
Either way, Mackenzie still blamed herself, of course. My wife had a bad habit of thinking she was to blame for everything, and particularly when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
It was something I kept hoping she’d get past, but it might be too ingrained in her personality to change at this point in the game. I might just have to get used to it.
Regardless, I loved her. I loved her more than I knew how to handle, which this road trip had proved better than anything else could have. I couldn’t wait to get home to my wife and my dogs, and the first thing I wanted to do when I got home was talk to Mackenzie about starting a family.
Well, right after telling her I loved her. I still hadn’t done that, and it seemed like a huge failing on my part. But she deserved to hear it in person for the first time, not over the phone. So it’d have to wait at least a few more days.
It turned out that Anne hadn’t answered her phone because she’d been holed up in a production meeting for Eye of the Storm. As soon as she got the frantic messages, she’d rushed over to my house, where a small-but-growing congregation of WAGs and children had already gathered to distract Mackenzie and spoil Max rotten. Not that he wasn’t already rotten, but they were determined to make him even rottener than before. And of course, he was lapping up all the attention.
He and Lola were typically inseparable, but that didn’t mean they didn’t each enjoy being the center of attention when given the opportunity. And since Lola was having surgery, she would undoubtedly be the attention hog as soon as she came home again.
Grady dropped in that afternoon, too, just to be sure Mackenzie had gotten everything sorted out and she didn’t need any more help. He didn’t stick around long. Couldn’t say I blamed him since my house had turned into Estrogen Central once again.
He gave Max a new rope toy to play tug with and a good belly rub, and then he left Mackenzie with a bag of Lola’s favorite treats. “For when she’s home and feeling better,” he said.
They opted to keep Lola in the veterinary hospital overnight for observation. If everything went well, Mackenzie could take Max and pick up my girl tomorrow around lunchtime. Anne and Brie both said they’d go with her, just in case there were any problems, not that anyone expected there would be.
With everything at home starting to calm down, I shifted my focus to hockey, because the doctors and trainers had finally cleared me to play.
I’d be getting into the game tonight, actually.
About fucking time.
I was so ready to play that I felt like I was going to bust out of my skin before the puck finally dropped.
Bergy sent me out to take the opening face-off. “Get it out of your system,” he said. “You’re too amped up. You won’t calm down until your stick touches the puck, so go on and get it over with.”
There was nothing I’d rather do.
We took the ice against the Stars. I lined up across from Tyler Seguin. The guy was dangerous out there, no doubt about it—but throughout our careers, I’d always had the better of him at the face-off dot.
He gave me a cocky look that made me want to shove my stick up his ass, but the better revenge would be to beat him.
“Let’s have a good, clean game, boys,” the ref said just before dropping the puck.
My stick hit the ice first. The puck slipped onto the tape covering my blade like that was where it was meant to be, and I jerked, sending the puck sailing back to Burnzie before Seguin could manage to tie up my stick.
“Son of a bitch,” he shouted, but I was already skating away from him and heading toward the offensive zone, with Ghost and Babs quickly getting free from their guys and doing the same.
Yeah, I still had it.
Game. Fucking. On.
“Mrs. Jezek,” the receptionist said with a smile when Anne, Brie, and I entered the lobby at Multnomah Animal Clinic, along with Max. He’d been antsy ever since Lola had left with Dr. Morganstern yesterday, so I couldn’t leave him behind. The receptionist was the same one who’d been here yesterday afternoon, when I’d stopped by to check on Lola for myself, not ready to take their word for it that the dog was doing all right. “Good to see you again.”
I smiled in return. It was slightly easier to do that today than it had been yesterday. “How’s Lola doing?”
“Really well, but there’s been a bit of a development,” she said.
“A development?” That couldn’t be good. If it was anything good, she would have just come right out and said whatever it was.
“Yeah. I think I’d better just let you see for yourself.” She glanced at Anne and Brie before looking down at Max. “You can all come if you want.”
I turned my head to see a questioning expression on both Brie’s and Anne’s faces, which must match my own. They were just as much at a loss as I was. I shrugged. “All right. Let’s go. Can Max come, too?”
“Actually, I think it’d be for the best,” the receptionist said, which only piqued my curiosity more than it already had been. “Although the sounds in here might bother him. But we need to see how he’ll do with…” She trailed off without finishing that thought.
“We’ll take him out if he needs to go,” Brie suggested, nodding to indicate Anne.
“Sounds good to me,” the receptionist replied. She opened a door that led back into a room I could only describe as a holding pen. There were any number of stainless steel cages of varying sizes, most of them containing dogs and cats. Some of the animals were asleep and hooked up to IVs. Others were either barking or crying. It was a total cacophony of echoing animal noises, so many at once that it would drive me bonkers if we had to stay back here for too long.
The barking, in particular, had me feeling jumpy. I reminded myself that all of the dogs were in cages, so I’d be fine. But then another one barked, and I nearly leapt out of my skin.
“They get agitated when they’re coming out of anesthesia,” the receptionist explained, surely recognizing my unease.
I nodded. Trying to speak would be pressing my luck. Yeah, I might be all right with Max and Lola these days, but that didn’t mean I was even remotely comfortable with dogs I didn’t know.
She took us to one of the larger cages off to the side, and I immediately recognized Lola. Even if I hadn’t spotted her right away, Max did. He rushed over to the cage and pawed at it with an excited bark.
What I hadn’t been prepared for was the tiny black kitten curled up by Lola’s neck, tucked away under her chin, sleeping inside the cone Lola was being forced to wear to prevent her from licking or biting her sutures.
I couldn’t stop myself from laughing in surprise. “What on earth?”
“That was what I thought at first, too,” Dr. Morganstern said, coming around the corner. “We all thought it was crazy. But it’s working.”
“A woman found this kitten last night on the street. The mama cat and the siblings had been run over. She brought her in to us first thing this morning,” the receptionist said. “She still had a bit of the afterbirth covering her when they found her, but the woman took her in and cleaned her up. She couldn’t keep the kitten herself, so she brought her here and hoped we could find a foster.”
“Usually,” Dr. Morganstern said, “the goal is to put abandoned kittens in with female cats who’ve recently had a litter, hopefully recently enough that she still has milk, but we didn’t have any new mothers in the hospital right now. We put out a call to some of the foster homes in the area, trying to find someone who could take this little girl in. But in the meantime, Lola was going crazy, banging against her cage and trying to get to the crying kitten. We were afraid she was going to hurt herself and rip out her stitches trying to get to this kitten.”
“So, we took a chance and put the baby in with Lola,” the receptionist said.
“And sure enough, that immediately calmed Lola down.”
“So Lola has a baby kitten?” I asked. “That’s what you’re telling me, right? I’ve apparently just adopted a kitten?”
“Well, we were hoping you would,” Dr. Morganstern said. “As long as you’re all right with it, we can get you set up with the supplies and kitten formula you need, and we’ll take care of her spay and first year of vaccines when it’s time.”
“But it’ll still be a big job for you,” the receptionist said. “Because the kitten can’t nurse from Lola. You’ll have to bottle-feed her. It’s every two hours around the clock for the first couple of weeks and then gradually spacing the feedings out. You won’t be able to wean her onto soft foods until she’s probably four to five weeks old, maybe a bit longer than that. That’s a big commitment for anyone, so we can—”
“I’ll take her,” I cut in before she said something that would talk me out of it. “As long as I think Max will be okay with her, too, at least.”
Because I couldn’t handle it if Max attacked such a tiny kitten. I didn’t think he would, based on how he was with kids and with other animals at the dog park, but I needed to know. If he killed the kitten, then Lola and Max might fight with each other.
I couldn’t deal with any of the above.
The receptionist grinned. “Which is exactly why I thought you should bring him back, too. Why don’t we get Lola and her baby out of the cage so Max can give them both the sniff test?”
I nodded my consent, but I asked, “Why does he need to give Lola a sniff test? The kitten, sure, but Lola?”
“She had surgery. She smells like antiseptic and the animal hospital and maybe some of the other animals that are in here. A bit of the kitten’s smell is probably on her now, too. They just need to get reacquainted with each other.”
“It’s normal,” Brie said. “All of our animals go through this every time any of them leave to spend any amount of time at the vet or anywhere else, if they weren’t all there.”
“And I think Brie’s animals are proof that you can have dogs and cats happily living together under one roof,” Anne put in.
“Not sure they’re always happy about it, but none of them have killed any of the others.”
“You guys aren’t instilling a lot of confidence in me right now,” I teased.
But by then, the doctor had opened Lola’s cage and Max was shoving his head through the door, sniffing up a storm.
When his nose got too close to the kitten, Lola reached up with one paw and took a halfhearted swipe at his head. He batted her paw away and sniffed the kitten, his nose working overtime. Then he gave the baby a sloppy, wet lick, covering the poor thing in doggy drool.
For her part, Lola seemed to approve of Max’s behavior. Not that she had any intention of letting her baby go anywhere without her permission and approval.
“Looks pretty good to me,” Dr. Morganstern said. “What do you think, Mom?” He looked over his shoulder at me, which was my only clue that he was asking me and not someone else. Yeah… Apparently I was the mom in this situation.
“I guess we have a baby,” I said.
“Great!” the receptionist said. “I’ll start putting together all the supplies you’ll need while the doctor shows you how to feed the kitten and whatnot.”
I just hoped Riley would be okay with this. We’d never talked about growing our family or bringing any more pets into the house, let alone a cat. What if he was allergic to cats? Or just plain didn’t like them? Would he make me get rid of her?
Probably not, if I was honest with myself. That didn’t fit with the Riley I knew. He’d just suggest we find a way to make it work out.
My family sure was growing fast all of a sudden. I’d gone from being entirely on my own to having a husband, two dogs, and a cat, seemingly overnight.
I could get used to this. If I allowed myself.
To my surprise, I really wanted to allow myself.