![]() "Grrrr," said the dog who obviously hated cats as much as his mistress did. If it kills one bird, I'll send it straight to the pound!" "You take that creature upstairs right now and don't ever let me see it in the yard. He was black and not very big, but he had a sharp, pointed nose and a mean look around the eyes. "Certainly not!" Miss Cooper levered herself up from her rocking chair, and the old dog sleeping beside her got up too and growled. ![]() So, hoping to soften the old woman's heart, I smiled politely at her. The real estate agent who'd helped us rind a place we could afford had warned Mom and me that Miss Cooper wasn't very friendly and didn't particularly like children. The hand grasping her cane was knotted with veins, and her collarbones stuck out above the loose neckline of her flowered dress. Her face was furrowed with wrinkles, and her nose jutted out like a hawk's beak, sharp and cruel. Miss Cooper was the oldest human being I'd ever seen. ![]() ![]() "It's my cat Oscar," I said, trying hard not to stare at her. She was speaking to me, but she was looking at the plastic cat carrier I was toting. She watched us walk up the sidewalk toward the house, and the first thing she said was, "What's in there?" My mother and I were renting the top floor of what had once been a big single-family house, and the owner, Miss Cooper, was sitting on the front porch when we arrived in our rented truck. THE DAY WE MOVED into Monkton Mills, I made an enemy of our new landlady. ![]()
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