The Kitty Cat Caper

By Ellie Oberth

Zeolinda (Zee) Darling is an imaginative 11 year old living in small town USA. It’s a week before Halloween and preparations are under way for the spooky holiday. Suddenly, peoples’ pet cats are disappearing and reappearing and along with her best friend, Ivy, and the new kid in town, Trick, Zee dons her detective gear to solve the mystery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ellie Oberth
• Release date: Aug 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215000229

Ellie Oberth

A Chicago resident, Ellie Oberth’s love of mysteries began at an early age with an introduction to the works of Agatha Christie.She’s a life-long member of Sisters-In-Crime National and also a member of the Chicagoland Chapter where she served as Secretary in 2009 and served as Treasurer from 2010-2011 and 2017-2019..These days, when she’s not busy writing, she’s travelling. Ellie pops up in the most unusual places. She’s been known to scour the beach at midnight with a flashlight, looking for a place to bury the body or tramping through the deserted woods with the same goal in mind or...For more current activities, visit her blog at www.ellieoberth.blogspot.com

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Chapter 1

Zeolinda Darling was eleven years old. Daddy called her Zee. When Mommy protested, Daddy just laughed and said Zeolinda was a really big name for such a little girl. Zee felt like a grown-up—after all she was in the fifth grade and a big sister to the new baby—but she imagined she’d always be a little girl to Daddy.

The Darling family lived in a two-story house in the small town of Bridge Creek. Daddy had been born in this very house, but Mommy grew up in a big city. She’d told Zee the houses in the city were so close to each other, there wasn’t much room to breathe. When Zee was three years old, Daddy and Mommy decided Bridge Creek would be a good place to raise their family so they’d all moved in with Gramma and Grampa Darling. Here they had a big home and a spacious yard and the neighbors weren’t on top of each other. These days they had even more room since Gramma and Grampa were busy travelling.

Halloween was a week away—next Sunday—so Daddy and Zee spent the whole morning decorating the house hanging witches and ghosts and bats and spreading lots of carved jack-o-lanterns everywhere.

After lunch, Daddy had gone into the den to work.

Daddy! Zee yelled. Cheddar scratched me again!

Daddy joined her in the kitchen. Let’s see how bad it is.

Zee sniffled as Daddy cleaned the scratch on her arm. Being a veterinarian isn’t working out like I thought.

Zee’s favorite game was imagining herself as different characters. Daddy wrote comic books about a teen-age superhero—Invisible Ivan—and Mommy called him a big boy at heart. He loved helping Zee dress up and they’d accumulated a wide assortment of items, keeping them in a treasure box upstairs ready to be dug through whenever Zee came up with a new adventure.

To be a vet, Mommy had fashioned Zee’s hair into a bun and Daddy had found an old artist smock which resembled a doctor’s scrubs. Then he’d removed the lenses from an old pair of glasses claiming the frames over her brown eyes made her look serious and professional. He’d also found a toy stethoscope to hang around her neck.

When Ivy’s dad showed me how to wrap a bandage around Jacko’s paw, it looked so easy, Zee complained. Jacko cooperated and it took Dr. Morton only a minute or two to put on the wrapping.

Ivy was Zee’s best friend and her dad was a veterinarian. Last weekend, Dr. Morton had been happy to show off his skills on the Mortons’ family cat, Jacko. Zee’s attempts hadn’t fared so well and Dr. Morton had assured her it just took practice and patience, which Zee was in short supply of. At home, she’d attempted to practice on Cheddar, her orange-colored kitty, but he wasn’t so enamored of the veterinarian game and raced off every time she’d tried to wrap him in bandages.

Today when she’d cornered Cheddar in the kitchen, he’d swiped at her arm before bolting from the room.

I don’t think I’m cut out to be a vet. Zee grabbed a crisp Granny Smith apple from the bowl on the counter and sat down at the table. She enjoyed the tart taste on her tongue as she wiped juice from her chin.

Daddy chuckled. You can’t compare yourself to Dr. Morton, Zee. I bet he got scratched a lot when he first started.

I suppose so, Zee admitted.

And cats are not the most cooperative animals, Daddy added with a grin.

Zee giggled. That’s for sure.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Daddy frowned. Zee dropped her half-eaten apple and raced to the front door. Passing by the window, she spotted her best friend standing on the porch. Giselle was asleep and Daddy wouldn’t like