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CHAPTER ONE

Things were falling apart at the nursing home in Pondville, a small town in the armpit of Massachusetts. There was a leak in the roof in the left wing, and water came down the walls when it rained. The food was terrible, but that wasn't new. The staff kept quitting. The pay was shit. People were dying, all the time, but that was to be expected in this line of work. And just that morning, Dr. Gust found the resident nursing-home cat in his office, curled up on the keyboard like a fat loaf of bread. "Shoo," Dr. Gust said, but the cat would not budge. "I'm fifty-seven," he told Pancakes. Pancakes was the hospital's therapy cat. He was supposed to be in one of the rooms of the nursing-home residents, comforting them. That was his job. To comfort people at their end.

But Pancakes was not comforting the elderly residents, some of whom were quite sick, not long to go. No, the cat was in Dr. Gust's office, and he would not budge from the keyboard. Dr. Gust had to answer emails and think about the budget. Pancakes was purring along with the whirr of the computer monitor. Perhaps he likes the heat from the computer, Dr. Gust reasoned. That must be it. "I'm fifty-seven," he said again. Dr. Gust was a short man, with very bushy eyebrows and no hair left on his head. He wore a Saint Michael pendant around his neck, which was supposed to protect him.

Pancakes kept purring. A bit of drool fell onto the keyboard; Pancakes drooled when he was content. That was enough for Dr. Gust, who picked up Pancakes by the middle and carried him down the hall, arms straight, trying to keep the cat as far away from his body as possible. He marched the cat to the common room, where an arts-and-crafts class was under way. The residents were making butterflies out of markers, clothespins, and coffee filters. "Here," Dr. Gust said, dropping Pancakes in the middle of the room. "Have your pick." He gestured at the room full of residents, all of them over eighty. Instead, Pancakes scaled the bookshelf, and once on top, turned and hissed.

"I'm glad you're mad," said Dr. Gust, hands on his hips. "Because I hate you too."

Actually, Dr. Gust loved the cat. He was the one who'd bought Pancakes from a box of kittens outside the supermarket; he was the one who had made him a valued member of the nursing-home staff. He made Pancakes employee of the month more than a few times. But Dr. Gust still didn't want Pancakes hanging around his office, didn't want him lingering in his lap, because the cat had a remarkable talent.

It was Maribeth on the housekeeping staff who had noticed the pattern. Maribeth was in charge of stripping the beds, cleaning and dusting and sanitizing, and after a resident died, she noticed there was always orange cat hair everywhere, much more than in any other room. She pointed it out to Dr. Gust. She said she had heard there was another cat like that, a therapy cat over at a Rhode Island hospital. It wasn't a completely unknown phenomenon.

"Curious," Dr. Gust had said, and he agreed to look into it. In the morning, the cat was found on the chest of another patient, who had died overnight. Soon Dr. Gust was obsessed with the cat's movements. First, Pancakes spent all his time in Mrs. Monty's room. Dead in three days. Then on to Mr. Broomfield's room down the hall. Dead in a week. Upstairs to Mrs. Anderson's corner room. Mrs. Anderson lived another two weeks. One time, Pancakes snuggled with a patient for three months, but the woman was still the next one in the home to die. And so on, and so on, Pancakes made his choices. And the cat was never wrong. Dr. Gust was so excited, he called the reporter for The South Coast Daily Sun. The headline read: NURSING HOME CAT PREDICTS DEATH, PROVIDES COMFORT AT END. Dr. Gust planned to frame it for his office.

But after the article ran, there was no more comfort in the Pondville nursing home. Before, no one except Dr. Gust and a few members of the staff had known about Pancakes's knack for prediction. After the article, the residents were in hysterics. Here was a four-legged and -pawed Grim Reaper, walking in their midst! Stalking the halls and picking them off, one by one. One of the patients died jumping out the window, just because the cat had sauntered in.

"Get rid of the cat," the nursing-home patients demanded.

"Get rid of the cat," the nurses said at the next meeting.

But Dr. Gust didn't believe in getting rid of animals. He knew shelter animals were treated like they were disposable. He wished they could euthanize some of the patients in the Pondville nursing home instead. He didn't want to get rid of the cat. But now Pancakes was in his office and Dr. Gust didn't want to die either. He was fifty-seven, and he was newly divorced, and he was having some luck on the dating apps. He had just gone on a date with a woman he'd really clicked with; she was newly divorced too. They'd had a great dinner at Applebee's, and a nice time at Dr. Gust's place after. Her name was Linda. She was into bondage.