Page 23

TWENTY-THREE

Being friends with the bird had not been on the agenda.

Danielle and May loved everything about the beef soup, although they needed a hundred and one reminders to chew so they wouldn’t choke. As Vincent guessed, the meal did a good job of making them sleepy. I carried May, Madelyn took Danielle, and we made it to the animal shelter without incident.

Once there, I learned the truth about such places.

It hurt to see so many animals whining and crying in cages, and I proved to be the most problematic person on the venture. If allowed, I would adopt them all, resulting in the palace being overrun with dogs, cats, rabbits, and other animals.

A parrot, one with an odd face reminding me somewhat of an owl, had stress plucked her own feathers and bobbed in her cage. I couldn’t even tell what type of parrot she was supposed to be, which broke my heart in more ways than I wanted to dwell on.

Rather than accompany the girls throughout the cat room, I did my best to make friends with the bird, armed with a few choice pieces of fruit.

Thus far, the parrot had rejected any attempts to be friends with anyone.

Her owner had died in a car crash, and they had been a bonded pair.

Friends or not, the bird would get a forever home in the palace, and I’d work to find her some other parrots to keep her company. As she couldn’t fly, I was permitted to open the cage, warned I might get bitten for daring to enter her territory, and to not bring her curved beak anywhere near my face.

Before I had a chance to even attempt to reach inside the cage to offer the piece of mango, the parrot jumped for freedom, landed on my wrist, and hopped towards my shoulder, continuing to bob and squawk a storm.

As being friends with the bird had not been on the agenda, and she’d gotten in range of my face of her own volition, I offered the piece of fruit.

It vanished with alarming speed.

The parrot made an odd booming sound before screeching at me. I assumed she wanted more food, so I accepted another piece of mango from the shelter’s volunteer, offering it.

It, too, disappeared. Fortunately for my ears, the parrot refrained against screaming again, ruffled what remained of her feathers, and settled on my shoulder.

“Monty?” I called, aware the poor RPS agent drove himself crazy trying to keep an eye on me and my young charges at the same time.

He came over, caught sight of the bird on my shoulder, and laughed. “I’ll warn the palace we have a parrot incoming. Will it be going to California with us?”

I eyed the shelter volunteer, who also happened to be a vet with over thirty years of experience making sure animals found their new forever homes. “Can she handle a flight to California?”

“She does not have any known diseases, and outside of anxiety and stress due to having lost her bonded human, she is healthy. Once she settles, her feathers will grow back; we’ve been taking precautions and giving her a mix of medication and magic to prevent the permanent loss of her plumage. Now is the time to warn you that this bird is going to be your companion for the rest of your life. She might even outlive you, though honestly, by the time you’re old, she’ll also be old, and she won’t survive such grief again. She’s still pretty young, but losing her owner has been difficult for her.”

I could tell. I risked my fingers and rubbed the bird’s chest, which had a scattering of feathers here and there. “What type of parrot is she? I’ll need to get another one or two so she isn’t alone.”

“That is going to be a problem,” the vet informed me.

I heaved a sigh, checked the man’s name tag, and decided to go with informal in the hopes of making the exchange more pleasant for both of us. “Hit me with it, Domingo. What’s the problem?”

“Isla is a kākāpō, which is an endangered species. She was smuggled into the Royal States as a hatchling, stolen from a conservatory. We’ve been in talks with the conservatory about her case, and we notified them that you would be coming to see our animals. Due to her status and condition, they don’t want to fly her back to New Zealand until she is more recovered, and she’s adapted to captivity. If you want her, you can have her, but finding her a partner would be difficult at best.”

Right. “Can you contact New Zealand about loaning a male to us? Losing a breeding female if they’re endangered is a big deal.”

Domingo smiled. “I am sure we can make an arrangement of some sort to help preservation of the species, although you will have to go to New Zealand to breed her. These birds have, ah, communal breeding practices, so the males all gather and perform for interested females, and the females then decide which lucky male gets a chance to procreate. Of course, I was not expecting Isla to take to you right away, but I had given you her favorite treat.”

“We have something in common, Isla. We both like mango,” I informed the bird, and I took care with giving her another petting. “Is she a talking parrot?”

“No, kākāpō can’t talk. She’ll never be able to fly, although she can glide for short distances at a rather steep angle. Her breed has evolved to be strong runners, and she has powerful legs as a result. I’ll give you the contact information for the conservatory in New Zealand, that way you can talk to them directly about her care. She is overly used to being caged, so you’ll have to teach her to be more willing to be out and about. She is not a fan of larger cages, which is unfortunate. I recommend a mid-sized parrot cage for your bedroom and an aviary within the palace so she can have room to play in her native environment. I am certain you’ll be able to import some plants and things native to New Zealand for the effort. They’ll help. The conservatory is keen on New York becoming involved with conservation, although them being lek breeders is a problem in terms of breeding Isla.”

Right. My sister had a reputation, and I would earn one in short order. “We’re going to be as bad as Texas within a year.”

“It could be worse. I’ll call the royal vet and lay the groundwork for Isla’s care. For the most part, she’s an easy keeper, but she’ll need daily visits with a veterinarian until she stops stress plucking her feathers.” Domingo pointed at a part of her cage, which had tufts of gray-green feathers on it. “She’ll rub her head against the bars when upset as well.”

What was one more traumatized being in the palace? “How do I transport her safely?”

“We’ll provide a box. Just carry her on your shoulder until it’s time to leave, and then you’ll put her in the box with her blanket for short transport. I’ll give the royal vet instructions for standard transport, but for the trip back to the palace, having her in a box on your lap will be fine.” Domingo gestured for me to follow him, and he guided me through the shelter back to the cat room.

Isla resumed bobbing, making a variety of mid to high pitched sounds.

“Those are happy Isla sounds,” he informed me. “She likes watching cats, and she has no concept they are predators and she is prey. While she was smuggled into the Royal States, we believe she was treated exceptionally well. She has no idea what fear is, and she enjoys interacting with humans. While she is a nocturnal species, it does seem she has adapted to diurnal life. If she can tolerate the aviary at night, that might save you from many odd noises at night.”

“The palace will have cats aplenty for her to interact with, and we’ll be making use of animal empaths to make certain all cats in our household know Isla is not part of their diet.” That would drive me to the brink of my sanity, especially as I wanted to entice Madelyn into considering my suite as a possible home. That would take time, assuming I could figure out how to get her attention.

Caring for an endangered parrot, two little girls, more cats than I could shake a stick at, and quite possibly an entire pack of service puppies would keep me busy and distract me from my various failures when it came to the woman. For the moment, she was safe within the palace, and that was all that truly mattered.

In the cat room, May and Danielle were on the floor meeting the candidates. The toddler had a rather large and fluffy cat on her lap, and the pair appeared on the verge of taking a nap together. May did her best to convince a scraggly white and black cat to give her the time of day. “What’s wrong with that cat?”

“Old age,” Domingo said, and he sighed. “Her owner, like Isla’s, passed away.”

Well, the old animal wouldn’t be living out the rest of her life in a shelter on my watch—nor would any of the other old cats. I’d sacrifice a room in the palace to be a cat suite, and I’d fight my sister over it. “How many elderly cats do you have right now?”

“Ten. We usually keep them together in one of the smaller cat rooms.”

I dug out my phone and dialed my sister.

“Is something wrong?” Rachel answered.

“Only if you don’t like what I’m about to ask you. Can we set up a room in the palace somewhere for a bunch of old cats? There are ten of them, and I don’t want to leave them here. I’m pretty sure I can afford some feline freeloaders.”

My sister snickered. “Sucker.”

“Wait until you meet my new pet. I’m pretty sure I was chosen and didn’t actually get a say in this adoption.”

“Cat, dog, or other?”

“I am joining the endangered species club, but mine is a bird. She likes mango, Rachel.”

“I see. The mango lovers have united. All right. Yes, I’m sure we can make a room for the old cats and introduce them to the palace staff for play and enrichment time. We have Jacob on staff, so it’s not like we’re doing anything more than adding work. How goes the puppy project?”

“I don’t know. I left everyone unattended to meet Isla.”

Isla squawked and made a bunch of other sounds, loud enough my sister laughed at the bird’s antics. “Isla is a parrot of some sort, I take it?”

“She is a fancy parrot from New Zealand, and if you need something to do while I’m adding to the palace residency numbers, you can contact them about what we need to do to care for her. The shelter has been talking with them, but you’ll probably want to get involved.”

“I can do that. I’m grounded for the next month, by the way.”

I chuckled. “The physicians want to make sure you’re in a quiet and stable environment?”

“Yep. I have been told if I try to step foot on a plane to California except in case of an actual emergency, I will pay for it in creative fashions. Melody is going to stay here to keep an eye on me, and you’ll have Dr. Stanton and His Royal Majesty for the first part of the trip. Ethan has decided I am not leaving his sight unless absolutely unavoidable.”

“That seems reasonable and wise of him. I’m sure I can handle some Californians without much in the way of supervision. Danielle seems to have found a napping buddy for herself, and May likes one of the senior cats.”

“Obviously, you must bring those kitties home for them. Try to introduce May to a kitten. If she only has a senior cat, she’s going to be heartbroken when the poor thing passes.” My sister heaved a sigh. “For fuck’s sake, I’m on the phone. Can’t you see I’m on the fucking phone? Bring another goddamned needle near me and I’m going to shove it up your ass!”

I covered my mouth so I wouldn’t crack up laughing and disturb the animals. “On that note, I’m going to let you go. We should be headed back sooner than later. I’m going to ask them to help us blitz through the adoption paperwork.”

I hung up before Rachel could turn her temper onto me. I returned my phone to its pocket and gave Isla another round of petting. “Domingo, are there any younger cats that get on with the older one?”

“Yes, we have one that gets along with just about every other cat, and she tolerates children.” He pointed at a fluffy gray cat in a cage. “That’s the one. She loves playing with other cats, so we let her into the senior cat room to socialize and play with them.”

“I’ll take her.” I sought out Monty, who was crouched by a cage, where a white kitty was hard at work trying to meld with his fingers. “I think you’ve been chosen, Monty.”

“My wife is going to kill me when I come home with a cat.”

“Use hand sanitizer before you open the cage,” Domingo requested, pointing at a nearby sanitizer station.

Monty did as told, and the instant he had the cage door open, the white cat rubbed against his legs, purred, and left fur on his slacks. When he picked her up, she did her best to merge with him, purring her little head off.

I retrieved my phone and took a few photos and a short video as evidence that Monty had been chosen and couldn’t leave the cat behind.

Had I been the one receiving the love, I wouldn’t have been able to put her back in the cage, either.

“I feel like we’re going to pick your shelter clean of pets, and I’m not even sorry about it,” I admitted. “If I thought I could get away with clearing you out of cats, I would. But all your senior cats are going home with me, and I’m going to ask that you give us a call whenever you get a senior cat in. We’ll make room at the palace for their retirements.”

“You are signing yourself up for a great deal of grief,” Domingo warned.

“I know. But they will have the hardest time finding a home, and we don’t use our exotic animal wing. We can make a large cat room for them without issue. Outside of the tigers and Isla, we haven’t needed it. I honestly don’t know why the palace even has that wing. It’s never been used until now—and while the tigers have a big room in it, they’re almost never in it.” I shrugged. “We’ll figure it out. My sister can handle the project while I’m in California. I’ll save you from your wife, Monty, but you might need to save me from your wife.”

“You’re much easier to save from my wife than I am to save from my wife, so I’m accepting that offer.”

As I had the wives of all the lead agents in my phone, I sent her a text first, telling her I had a trivial matter to discuss and that everything was fine, waited until she saw the message, and then dialed her number.

“Your Royal Highness,” Sophia greeted. “What’s wrong?”

I rolled my eyes. “Please, call me Ian. There’s going to be something wrong when you get your hands on me, I’m afraid. I took everyone to the animal shelter to pick pets for Danielle and May, and your husband was chosen.”

“Oh dear,” she replied, and a moment later, she giggled. “Who chose him?”

“There was a white kitty that was trying to smoosh her face through her cage to get to his fingers. He made the mistake of releasing the beast. She is currently attempting to merge into his chest, purring to convince him she loves him the best. He is not going to relinquish his kitty. As I’m the party to blame for this, I get to notify you of the situation.”

“I suppose I’ll let you off the hook this time. Are your girls doing okay?”

I checked on Danielle to discover she’d passed out with her cat, and I smiled at the pair. “Danielle is sleeping with her new cat. They’re in the middle of the floor, absolutely in the way, not that anyone cares. May is trying her best to convince an old cat to be friends with her. I selected a friend for May to keep her old cat company. We might make it out alive, although we’re getting a bunch of senior cat hitchhikers. I’m afraid to look in the dog area. If I see any old dogs, they’re coming home with me, and I’m going to have to hire people to help take care of my old dogs.”

“We have five senior dogs that have no real hope of adoption due to health problems,” the vet informed me.

Damn it. “And I’ve been told I’m adopting five senior dogs unlikely to find homes due to health problems. Is that penance enough for the new member of your family?”

“I’ll accept it. Ask if they have any puppies with behavioral problems. I train dogs, and I can handle a problem puppy.”

“I need your most problematic puppy with behavioral problems. Unbeknownst to me, Monty’s wife is a dog trainer, and she wants to take a problem off your hands.”

“I have a bonded pair of puppies.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to take two. The puppies are bonded.”

“That’s fine. Tell Monty he has to deal with the food bill because he got charmed by a cat. I’ll get the kennels ready and dig out the cat supplies he’s been hiding in the closet because he really wanted a cat and wasn’t brave enough to ask for one because I have twenty million dogs.”

Someday soon, I would need to meet Monty’s wife in person, as I got the feeling we’d get along quite well—and she might be able to help with the service puppy situation. “I’ll do that. Thanks. I’ll call you if he gets into any additional trouble tonight.”

“Thanks.” She hung up, which spared me from having to do the verbal dance that often irritated me. “You’re busted, Monty. Your stash of cat supplies is known, and she’s preparing for your new arrival.”

“Crap. I really thought I’d hidden that from her.”

“You can’t hide anything from women, Monty. Even I know that.” I checked on May, pleased to see she’d earned enough trust to be able to pet the old cat. “Domingo, how fast can you get us out of here?”

“We’ll register which animals are going to the palace, and I’ll send someone over tomorrow to handle the paperwork. If you won’t be available, I’ll deal with the queen. I can handle her.”

I wished him the best of luck with handling my sister. “That works. I guess we need to see the candidates for the service dogs. I have a palace full of trauma, and the dogs that don’t get assigned someone in the palace will surely be donated to a family in need. If they can’t be used as medical alert dogs, we’ll train for emotional support and basic service tasks.”

“You’re going to end up with a lot of dogs,” he warned. “I know of ten that have the potential to be good service dogs, at least twenty that could be trained for emotional support and a few additional tasks, and three entire litters of puppies that are bred specifically to be service dogs. The organization that trained the dogs closed because the owner and trainer passed away, and they had nobody to take over.”

I frowned. “A lot of animals end up in the shelter because their owners pass?”

Domingo nodded. “We get a higher percentage than normal because we only euthanize animals that cannot be saved or are deemed to be a high danger to people after we’ve tried rehabilitation. We have two or three dogs and cats that fall into that category a year, which is low for the number of aggressive animals we have come through here. We euthanize less than half a percent of all animals to enter our shelter. If we can save them, we do—and we don’t particularly care if it costs a lot in treatments. If we can reasonably save the animal, we do.”

I foresaw the palace helping to home the animals through some program or another I’d spearhead if my sister didn’t beat me to it. “If you ever get any horses coming through here, give me a call. I know numerous monarchs who will not be able to look the horse in the eyes and tell me no.”

Domingo laughed. “If we get a horse through here, we’re going to panic because we do not have the facilities for equines. I’ll definitely give you a call, though, because we’ll need all the help we can get in that instance. It’s bad enough we have a bunch of ferrets we aren’t supposed to have because they’re illegal in New York.”

I frowned. “Ferrets are illegal here?”

“They are when they’re black footed.”

What the hell was going on at the shelter? “Where did you get those ?”

“Smugglers,” he spat. “We’re trying to figure out how to legally deal with them.”

I sighed, as the palace had rights to house any endangered species and a vet capable of caring for just about anything. “Throw them in a box. I’ll surprise my sister with them. How many do you have?”

“We have thirteen.”

I stared at him with wide eyes, as did Monty. “You have thirteen critically endangered ferrets?”

“That’s what we said this morning when they arrived. The only thing I can tell you for certain is that they’re healthy and have been extensively handled by people. But they were dumped this morning with a note that they’d been stolen from smugglers.”

Great. Just great. “My sister is going to love knowing there is an endangered animal smuggling operation going on right under her nose. Just give it to me straight. Are there any other endangered animals hiding in this place we should know about?”

“We may have a pair of Amur leopards.”

I stared at him, wondering how the hell an animal shelter had gotten two large cats. “How? Just how?”

“They came from a large cat sanctuary about an hour from here; their holding facility broke, and they couldn’t care for the cats. We offered to take them. Before I volunteered here, I worked for a zoo, so I’m qualified to care for them. They’re an unrelated male and female, young. They were legally imported from Russia, and they’ve been heavily domesticated. They aren’t quite as trustworthy as the tigers, but you can walk them to the palace on leashes without problems. I can help you set up their habitat.”

As my sister’s cheetahs would be joining the palace menagerie sooner than later, integrating a pair of leopards wouldn’t be much of a problem. “All right. Introduce me to the leopards. Monty, wrangle the girls with Madelyn, please. I’m going to have my hands full with my new cats. The leopards are mine .”

If I was going to go off the deep end, I’d go in style and with no reservations.