The bookstore's cat is a strange one -- too intelligent, even for a cat, always patrolling the stacks instead of resting in the sunlight, always appearing at the right time to hiss at shoplifters and people who are about to do damage to books. The owner talks to him as if he can understand, and some of the children say that when nobody saw them standing there, the cat talked back.

All Dani Dennison will say is that he's a very special cat, and they look at her secret smile and the cat glaring at them from under her hand, and most people don't ask twice.