With the beginnings of a plan for dealing with finding an appropriate obstetrician to look after Molly while she was pregnant, things moved quietly forward. There was no emergency that required me to go in to work on New Years Day, which had been a good thing, and allowed me to relax with Molly. The two of us enjoyed the college football games that had been on, and we used that quiet day to hammer out the plan that we would be following to find an obstetrician for Molly.
Of course the next day was a work day for me. And so, I was up early on the second to prepare for work. I did my best to keep any and all noise down so Molly could sleep, but it didn't appear that I was successful. Molly came down the stairs just as I was getting my breakfast into the oven.
"Trying to sneak out on me?" Molly teased as she came in.
"Not sneaking out," I tried to defend myself, "letting you sleep. I have a day of patrol today, and you aren't assigned to go back into school till tomorrow."
"I'll probably be going in some time today anyway," Molly answered with a shrug.
"Huh? What for?" I wondered. The school was on a break. I figured they wouldn't make her come in while they were on break.
"To make sure things are ready," Molly explained as she moved toward the passageway between our laundry room and our garage, "the students may be on break, but I still need to make sure all my lesson plans for at least the first week of January are in order. I don't necessarily HAVE to do it, but it'd be better then going in tomorrow morning unprepared."
"Oh..."
"It's no big deal," Molly shrugged, "It shouldn't take too long to have things ready, and besides, it'd be good exercise. Since I'll be getting rather fat in the next few months anyway, it'd be best to keep in some shape."
"Pregnant, not fat," I corrected, "Fat is fat... you have life growing inside you."
"Thank you for being so polite, George," Molly gave a soft smile.
"You're welcome," I smiled back.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The course of the day went quietly. Just as many of the days had gone recently, which was a good thing. After all the "exciting" cases that Officer Barnes and I had had to deal with earlier on, simply having some "routine" calls was a relief. Of course, a lot of that may have merely been the assignment given to us. Since we were still scheduled to continue with the DARE program in the immediate future, it was entirely possible that Officer Barnes and I were not being given any calls that had the potential to lead to a lengthy investigation. That way, Officer Howard wouldn't need to transfer authority on the case between us and another officer or suspend the investigation entirely while waiting for a permanent DARE officer to be hired.
All the same, Officer Barnes and I carried out our patrols and handled the small "routine" calls that came our way. The worst thing we'd had to deal with was a one car "accident" on one of the roads heading out of Columbia Falls. The driver was the wife of a local rancher who had come into town for some errand and had been on her way home when she hit a patch of ice on a curve. Her truck skidded and because of the tightness of the turn spun around. It didn't flip and didn't even suffer serious damage, but the vehicle had knocked over a metal reflector post that let people know where the edge of the road was and freaked the driver out plenty. Half of our time with her was spent calming her down as she hugged Officer Barnes as if looking for reassurance.
Once that was done, I made my way back home. That was a fairly routine task that never changed. In the mornings, I walked in to work, and in the afternoon or evening, depending on whether it was a patrol or DARE day, I walked home. As I did so, I sort of day dreamed a bit about the future. Picturing Molly in a maternity dress, her womb large and round and holding our cubs with in. I pictured her holding them in the air, nuzzling them. I pictured myself holding a young female White Tiger with her looking up at me with bright blue eyes and sucking on one of my fingers like it was a bottle. Of course a lot of that was merely imagination on my part. It was too early to know the gender of our cubs, and there was still a fair amount of time before we could medically confirm that Molly was pregnant. I also had to remind myself that White Tigers were also the result of recessive genes, and since Molly and I carried the normal coat pattern for a Bengal Tiger, we each had to have at least one dominant gene. But it was still fairly nice daydream.
"Hello, Molly, are you home?" I asked aloud when I made it back to our Cabin.
"I'm upstairs!" Molly called down, "I just got out of the shower!"
"How was your day?" I asked as I approached the stairs, knowing that Molly could hear me.
"Good, all is in order and ready to go for tomorrow," Molly answered, "Unfortunately, none of the other teachers that were there when I went in know if Columbia Falls' clinic has an obstetrician."
"My appointment for my booster shots is tomorrow at lunch time," I answered as I made it to the top of the stairs and moved to get changed into something more comfortable and less itchy then my uniform.
"Hopefully he knows then," Molly shrugged a few moments later as she came in and sat beside me as I was pulling up a pair of shorts to wear.
I nodded in agreement, as this would determine a lot of things that would be done. If the clinic in Columbia Falls did carry an obstetrician, Molly and I could walk there. If not, we'd need to buy a new vehicle that we could both fit in, even if it was laying across its back seats. I'd just gotten up to stretch a bit when there was a knock at our door.
"I wonder who that is?" Molly spoke as she got up from where she was sitting.
"Only one way to find out," I shrugged and made my way back toward the stairs.
It turned out to be a very tired looking Joseph Patten. Molly was quick to gasp as she arrived at the door after I did.
"Oh... dear... are you okay, Joseph?" Molly asked him, addressing him by his first name, which I understood. They were coworkers and all, and I figured teaching didn't carry some of the formalities that police work did.
"I'm okay, don't worry," Patten gave a slow nod, "today has been a long day."
"I trust you had a good Christmas?" I asked him.
"Yes, yes," He nodded, "It was good to see Clemens and all that. His present girlfriend also seems to be very nice."
"Hopefully they're very happy together," Molly smiled from beside me, "can we get you anything? Or give you a chair to sit in? You look in need of a good nap."
"I probably do, flying through three time zones, counting the Eastern time zone I started in and the Mountain time zone we're in now... then driving back up here from Helena," Patten shrugged, "but the roads have been quite good and I left Florida early enough that all I'll need is a good night's sleep."
"We have guest beds if you don't think you can make it into town," Molly told him as I nodded beside her.
"Oh... I can make it into town, don't worry about me," Patten gave a slight chuckle, "I'm merely here to run an errand for Clemens. Both he and his girlfriend have their congratulations for you both and your growing family... I'd assume you were successful?"
"I think we achieved conception on Christmas morning," Molly told him.
"Hopefully we didn't disturb you before you left for Florida," I told him, as our roars could be heard for miles.
"My home is just far enough in town that your mating didn't disturb me," Patten replied, "For the moment, I'm here to drop this off for Clemens."
He then presented Molly and I with a small wrapped package.
"He gave this to me to give to you," Patten explained, "I'm afraid I can't give you any clues as to what it is."
"We'll be sure to send a thank you to Clemens for this," Molly spoke, "He's already been so helpful to us with all of this."
"Go on and open it," Patten urged with a smile.
I was fairly curious about the gift as well, as I hadn't expected Clemens to give us a gift. We had only just met him over the past summer while Joseph Patten and I were settling the issues between us. Yet, there it was, a gift wrapped in colorful paper. Accepting Patten's urge, Molly gave a short smile and set to work on unwrapping it, using her claws to get through tape as necessary. The paper was wrapped around a box. As Molly opened it, she pulled out a note that was inside it.
The note read: "I thought of this after receiving my cousin's Email about your desire for a family of your own. First of all, congratulations. You've both seemed to me like good people and I am overjoyed that you and my cousin are getting along now. Joseph was always there for me when I needed him, and so long as you do well, he'll probably always be there for you. Enclosed in this gift is a bit of help for the coming years for the two of you and some moments of appropriate "fluff"... Clemens Patten."
"What does that mean?" I wondered aloud.
Molly only shrugged and returned her attention to the box. She then gave an excited gasp at what she pulled out. One was a small paperback book with the image of a zoo worker cradling a tiger cub and feeding it from a bottle while a lion and leopard cub pawed at his knees. The book was titled, "Raising the Children of Kings: Working With Big Cat Cubs at the Tallahassee Zoo."
"Cute," Molly said looking at it and displaying the book's cover.
"I think I saw a copy of that at the gift shop for the zoo Clemens works at," Patten commented remembering the tour his Cousin had given him and Jennifer, Clemens' girlfriend, "It's not quite a textbook for raising the cubs of the various big cat species, but it includes a lot of information on how they raise cubs in the zoos."
"It'd be helpful then," I commented, "though when it'd be time to switch from breast feeding to a bottle we'll probably find out when their teeth start coming in..."
"I only glanced at the cover and the back of the book when I saw it," Patten replied, "He might talk on that in there. I'm sure it'd probably help you both with the "animal side" that your cubs will surely have."
"They won't have an animal or human side," I sighed, "they will be born tiger cubs and will not know being anything other then tiger cubs."
"They won't be mundane tiger cubs," Patten pointed out, "Just as you two aren't mundane tigers. That's what I was getting at."
"We understand," Molly answered and then looked into box while handing me the book. It appeared that there was something else in there.
She reached in and pulled out a small box set of DVDs. On the small box around the DVDs themselves was the title "Growing Up..." and the symbol for television network: Animal Planet. The three DVDs in the set included: "Growing Up Tiger", "Growing Up Seal", and "Growing Up Deer".
"And the cuteness is doubled," I gave a slight chuckle.
Molly nodded to that and turned to Patten.
"Oh these are all lovely," Molly said with a smile, "we'll be sending him our own thank you note... probably online... unless you could give us his mailing address... but save that for tomorrow... but you will let him know that we love the gifts?"
"Of course," Patten said simply and stuck out his hand to shake Molly's, "and again congratulations on your new family."
Molly didn't shake his hand. She set the box, wrapping paper, and DVD set down and pulled him into a hug, giving the low rumble that was the closest Molly and I could do to purring as she did so. Once released, Patten made his way back to his car and we watched him drive down the dirt road back toward town.
"That was so nice of him," Molly said to me as Patten's car's tail-lights vanished over the horizon.
"Yes, yes it was," I nodded back.