A dog would have brought it back so I could throw it again. A cat wouldn’t dream of it. “Good job,” I said, and crumpled a fresh sheet, and he made another clean kill. I congratulated him again, prepared a third paper ball, and tossed it gently into the open cat carrier.

He looked at it. Then he looked at me, and then he looked at the floor.

A few minutes later there was a knock on my door. “We’re closed,” I called out without looking. My eyes were on Raffles, who had removed himself to an open spot in the Philosophy amp; Religion section, on the same high shelf with the bust of Immanuel Kant.

The knock was repeated, and so was my response. “Closed for the weekend!” I sang out. “Sorry!”

“Bernie, open the door.”

So I looked, and of course it was Carolyn, looking larger than life in a down-filled parka. There was a suitcase at her feet and a frown on her brow. I let her in and she blew on her hands and rubbed them together. “I thought you’d be ready by now,” she said. “We’ve got a train to catch, remember?”

“It’s Raffles,” I said.

“What about him?”

“He won’t get in the cat carrier.”

She looked at me, then at the cat carrier, then bent over to retrieve two paper balls from it.

“I thought maybe I could get him to jump in after them,” I said.

“You thought that, huh?”

“Well, it was just an idea,” I said.

“You’ve had better ones, Bern. Where’d he go?”

“He’s sitting up there with the father of the categorical imperative,” I said. “Which figures, because it’s imperative that he get in the cat carrier, and he’s categorically opposed to it. I don’t know, Carolyn, maybe it’s a mistake to take him. We’re only going to be gone three nights. If I put out plenty of food and water for him, and leave the radio on to keep him company…”

She gave me a look, shook her head, sighed, and clapped her hands fiercely together, calling the cat’s name in a loud voice. Raffles sprang down from his perch and flattened himself against the floor. If he’d lowered his center of gravity one more inch he’d have been in the basement.