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broken her hip the winter before, Mudshark's mother had volunteered him to do her grocery shopping. He looked in Mrs. Downside's cart. Aha! Cat treats. From the looks of her new grocery shopping habits, Toby had found himself a new home. Mrs. Downside hadn't had any pets last winter.
    Mudshark volunteered to help Mrs. Downside home with her groceries. When they got to her house, Mudshark sat on the front porch with her, drinking lemonade. He watched Toby eat sirloin that she hand-fed to him while he reclined on a purple satin cushion that had his new name, Mr. Cuddles, embroidered on it in gold letters. Then Mrs. Downside brushed Toby's coat with a soft-bristled brush.
    “I special-ordered this from the Precious and Pampered Pet Web site for Mr. Cuddles. He enjoys a good brushing. Poor thing; he obviously never had a loving home before.”
    “He's a really nice cat, Mrs. Downside.” Mudshark got up. “Thanks for the lemonade.”
    “Thank you, Lyle, for helping me with mygroceries,” she said, brushing the surprisingly docile Mr. Cuddles.
    Mudshark trotted down the street to Helen's house to report his findings.
    “You might get him back,” Mudshark told Helen, “but it would be an uphill fight to keep him. Mrs. Downside has time to sit with him, but you have school. You could bring him home by force, but the first time he got out … They seem like they belong together, actually; they were both bor—I mean, lonely.”
    Helen nodded. “You know, Mudshark,” she said, “actually, I'm just as glad that he's found another home. I mean, I love him and all, but, well, have you noticed that he's kind of mean?” She absentmindedly patted the scratches on her arms. “But I need him for a science project that Betty Crimper and I are doing in lab tomorrow. She was working on building a better mousetrap. Or, wait, no, was it creating a new kind of catnip? I'm not very good at science and so I haven't really paid attention. Bringing Toby as a visual aid for our oral presentation was myonly responsibility for the project we're doing tomorrow. Can you believe I had to get special permission from the principal to bring an animal onto school property? I mean, we had crayfish in every classroom and now a gerbil on the loose and that weird parrot in the library and … what is it?”
    Mudshark had leapt to his feet. “That's it!” He beamed at Helen. “Don't worry about bringing the cat to school for your science project; I'll speak to Mrs. Downside about borrowing him. Kyle and I need to use Toby for a little while after school, too. And then—could you and Betty help me out? I'm working on an experiment of my own.”

This is the principal . Please refrain from distracting the hazmat crew the government has sent in. They are working to contain the dangerous material in the faculty restroom, sealing it in lead-lined containers before sending it to appropriate government agencies for classification and neutralizing. Oh, and Mr. Patterson was last seen heading up into the overhead heating and air-conditioning ducts in pursuit of the gerbil, so refrain from becoming distracted by the thumping and banging overhead. Thank you .
    Mudshark sat at the library table the next day, looking at the parrot and listening to the low buzz aroundhim; everyone was talking about the missing erasers, the art posters that had suddenly started to appear all over the school and the classical music wafting out of the custodian's room.
    Mudshark noticed that the parrot, like him, seemed to listen to
everything
, cocking his head and closing his eyes, almost as if he were filing the words away. Like some sort of feather-covered computer.
    “Hmmm …,” Mudshark said aloud, “feathers.” He closed his own eyes, remembering. A few tiny green feathers in the boys' room, a stray feather fluttering down the hallway … He opened his eyes, homing in on the open transom above the library door. He reached out and jiggled the door of the birdcage. It popped