I won't conceal the fact that when I found that inflatable pool in my backyard I was surprised to a degree. Inflatable pools, as a rule, contain water, you see, and everyone knows that cats don't like water all that much. In fact we hate it. But Odelia had sworn she'd teach us how to swim, and she was keeping that promise, come hell or high... water.

As if that wasn't enough, Dooley and I were suddenly set upon by an irate pigeon, dive-bombing us each time he caught us in his crosshairs. And it wasn't as if we could afford the distraction, as Odelia had taken on a new case, this one relating to a woman who went missing twenty years ago, and whose exact lookalike had suddenly turned up murdered in a local farmer's field. Was the dead woman the missing woman? But then why did she look exactly like she did when she disappeared twenty years ago, not having aged one bit? It was a mystery Odelia found hard to resist.

So there you have it: in between attacks from an angry bird, a mysterious cold case, strange messages found inside a goatherd figurine, a few instances of near-drowning, and an embarrassing mishap causing me to lose a large swath of fur around my midsection, it was all I could do to stay afloat, as it were, and assist my human. And just to put your mind at ease, I can assure you that no animals were harmed in the making of this book, except yours truly. Then again, I have no one to blame but myself, and in the end all's well that ended well, and I will live to narrate another book.