AUTHOR’S NOTE: The Draws for the August 2026 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were: A Whodunnit, set at the Bottom Of the Ocean involving a Cat. Perfect case for my hardboiled cat-detective Manx Hoffman. —-jeff

The Cat Who Slept With the Fishes

by Jeff Baker

Cornelius Blue was rich and pedigreed and good-looking. He was one of the Norwegian Blue Cat family, he’d inherited his family money and he was also overweight. He was a fat cat in every sense of the word.

He was also dead,which didn’t help him much.

Blue liked to indulge his whims and one of them was personally trying out the new diving bell he was financing. He’d gone down alone and had come back up in the aforementioned dead condition.

I was there because I’d done some work for Blue, but I was there on the docks because I was curious to see how the diving bell would perform. All the cats standing there in their suits and ties. Not the sort of outfits usually worn by people who frequent the waterfront.

Mt name is Manx Hoffman. Private Investigator. Licensed, just check my collar.

And not a fancy collar either, I don’t get paid that much. Not as much money as Blue spent in a day, but I was still breathing and so I would settle for that. I’d done some investigating for Blue and I was curious. Cats don’t go underwater every day of the week.

And you know what they say about curiosity and cats.

Blue’s curiosity had bought him nothing but becoming a dead rich cat joke. They’d brought the bell up, fixed it to the dock and Blue’s partner had opened the hatch and stepped in and started howling like someone had stepped on his tail.

After a while the cops investigated the diving bell and they knew me so they let me have a look inside. After admonishing me to “keep your tail out of our way and don’t touch anything!”

The diving bell was about as big as a Saint Bernard’s doghouse I’d been in once. Still, not much more room to swing a…well, you know.

I glanced at the officer in the bell’s doorway and asked what the smell was that was wrinkling my nose like a prune.

“Cleaner.” The cop answered. “Blue’s own concoction. You know how he was about germs.”

Maybe it was my suspicious nature. Maybe it was all that money Blue had. Anyway, when the cop looked the other way I did what I wasn’t supposed to do and lifted the edge of the litter box on the floor and ganced under it.

I called for the Officer.

“Take a look at that,” I said pointing at the floor with one claw. “More than just crumbs.”

The cops looked. Then they arrested Blue’s partner who was still standing there on the dock. I found out later due to their partnership agreement, the partner stood to make a killing if anything happened to Blue. Which it conveniently had.

Blue never missed a meal. He was a notorious glutton and he looked the part from tail to whiskers. His partner must have mixed chunks of chocolate and onion in with the food in his bowl in the diving bell. Toxic to cats. When his partner entered the diving bell after they brought it up he must have kicked the remaining chunks under the cat box, hoping it would go undiscovered.

He was hoping he’d be able to toss the stuff into the water. Food for the fishes and he’d be rich.

Instead he bought himself a one way trip in a kitty carrier to someplace smaller than a diving bell…

—end—

AUTHOR’S OTHER NOTE: Manx Hoffman was created for a story in the Dick Stodghill Memorial Anthology which never came out. —-jeff