Detective John Sterling waits at a wooden table in Interrogation Room B, located in the darkest and most depressing corner of the Raleigh police department.
He’s feeling restless and relies on cigarettes to calm his nerves. He takes a full-flavored cigarette from a soft pack and retrieves a box of matches from the inside pocket of his long coat, which is hanging on the metal chair where he’s sitting.
He strikes a match and brings the flame to the cigarette dangling from his mouth, just below his bushy black moustache. The cigarette ignites, and the room quickly fills up with smoke.
There’s a no-smoking sign on the wall that he notices after several long drags.
“Damn! When did that go up?” Sterling says. “Where’s the ashtray?” He looks at the table, but the only thing there is an audio recording device.
But there isn’t an ashtray! They removed all ashtrays once the building became smoke-free. Sterling jumps up, tosses the lit cigarette onto the concrete floor, and smashes it out with the bottom of his cheap brown leather shoe.
There’s a loud knock on the door. “Detective Sterling, are you in there?” a woman’s voice calls from the hallway.
Sterling has been waiting for that knock.
He remembers the smoky room. He tells the person at the door to hold on a minute. In a panic, he searches for a window to open to let the smoke out, but there isn’t one. He’s in an institutional concrete block room after all.
Police Officer Rivers opens the door and recoils at the strong smell of smoke. She’s in the hallway with another woman and carrying a cat in a pet carrier. They see Sterling inside the room, vigorously fanning a cloud of smoke with a file folder, which looks ineffective to them. The motion is just swirling the smoke around the room.
Rivers laughs at how absurd the Detective looks. “We’re going to need another room,” she jokes.
The three humans and the cat move to Interrogation Room D, which is nearly as small and plain as Room B. They’re sitting around a cold, metal table designed for six people. Rivers unzips the pet carrier she placed on top of the table next to the recording device. A tuxedo cat pokes her black-and-white head out of the carrier, looking like a curious turtle.
“Meow.” They can now start with the purpose of their gathering.
Sterling cuts on the recording device to begin recording.
“Test. Test,” Sterling speaks into the recording device’s microphone to ensure the machine is recording. He checks his watch and starts the official police recording.
“The time is 5:34 PM. Today’s date is December 10, 2004. We are in Interrogation Room D at the downtown Raleigh Police Department, located at 218 W Cabarrus Street. We are about to conduct a highly unconventional witness interview. This type of pet interview is a first time for me. Today, we will be interviewing Dolly the cat, who was at the green split-level residence of Mr. Jack Rhombus, located at 1245 Pisgah Branch Road, the night of the owner’s murder. Present for the interview are myself, Raleigh PD Detective John Sterling; Raleigh PD Officer, Mia Rivers; and professional cat communicator, Edna Eden–“
“And Dolly Rhombus, the cat we’re interviewing today,” Rivers interrupted with a smirk. Sterling shot her an irritated look, not because she disrupted him, but because he’s about to interview a cat (for the first time) who his wacky superiors consider a potential star witness in the Rhombus case. He thinks the whole experiment is bonkers.
Dolly is rubbing her face on the pet carrier.
“Edna is about to ask Dolly a series of questions that we discussed before this interview that are pertinent to that night. Hopefully, we will get some answers,” Sterling explained. “Edna, please start when you’re ready.”
Dolly takes a few steps away from the pet carrier and transforms into a cat loaf on the hard metal table in front of Sterling.
Edna makes noises that sound like cat chirps. “I just asked Dolly if she was with her owner on the night of the murder,” Edna translates.
Dolly meows, and Edna informs the officers that she was there that night.
The cat sits up straight and stares at Sterling with her mouth open and tail swaying.
Sterling avoids eye contact with the cute animal and watches Edna speak “cat” again. He thinks the cat communicator looks ridiculous.
Dolly meows again, and Edna shares that the cat doesn’t know who killed her owner, but apparently, Dolly tried numerous times to do that herself.
Sterling realizes that the black and white cat moved on the edge of the table, and is head-butting his stomach. “What is this creature doing?” he cringes.
“She likes you,” Rivers says, “I think she wants you to scratch her.”
The police detective awkwardly pats Dolly’s head. The cat purrs now and lets out a meow that sounds a bit demanding.
Edna relays Dolly’s message to Sterling: “I’m about to lie on my back and expect you to scratch my belly,” which happens exactly as the cat wanted.
“It is now 5:49 PM, and we are concluding our interview with Dolly the cat. During this intriguing experience, we learned that Dolly does not know who murdered her previous owner. I also learned that I am a cat person.” Sterling stops the recording device with his left hand and continues to scratch Dolly’s stomach with his right.
Three weeks later, the Raleigh Police Department charged a man with the murder of Jack Rhombus. The man worked with Rhombus and accidentally killed him during a failed robbery attempt. Additionally, the police department also promoted Rivers for her exceptional work on the case.
Two months later, Detective Sterling rescued two of Dolly’s kittens, named Scottie and Pippen, from the Rhombus House.
A cable network got word of Edna Eden, and she is now the co-host of a pet psychic reality television program.
From that day on, the City of Raleigh Police Department never again interviewed another animal that witnessed a crime.
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