I stared out the kitchen window into the backyard for a few seconds, calming myself. I turned back. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a hurricane. Just a minor tropical disturbance. I was not one of those neat freaks who hyperventilated at the first sign of a mess.

Like most men, I can be messy—but I’m happier when things are clean and well kept. I really shouldn’t let myself feel so annoyed over something so trivial.

Maybe Justin was in a hurry to make his first class, but the Athena College campus was only three blocks away. He could sprint there in five minutes tops.

He was acting out of character, and that’s what was really bothering me. The eighteen-year-old had been boarding with me for a couple of months and usually was careful to pick up after himself. The past few days, however, he had become increasingly careless about leaving his things lying around the house and not cleaning up in the kitchen after his meals.

Perhaps I should have expected something like this when I relaxed my rule about accepting only older students, preferably those in graduate school, as boarders. They were generally much too focused on their work to cause any disturbances, and I valued the quiet, orderly life I had created for myself these past three years.

But I had accepted Justin as a favor to an old friend. His mother, Julia Wardlaw, and I had known each other since high school and all the way through college. Justin, an only child, wasn’t ready for the rough and tumble of dorm life, she said. She wanted him to have a quieter, more homelike atmosphere for his first year in college. After the grilling Julia had put me through, I felt almost honored that she was entrusting her precious chick to my care.

A large paw pushed against my leg. Diesel, my two-year-old Maine coon cat, chirped in sympathy when I looked down at him. He withdrew his paw and stared up at me.

“I know, Diesel.” I shook my head. “Justin has a problem, or he wouldn’t be acting this way.”

Diesel responded with another chirp—many Maine coons don’t meow like other cats—and I reached down to rub his head. He still had his lighter summer coat, soft as down. His neck ruff and tail were less bushy than they would be during the colder months ahead. The tufts on the tips of his ears stood out as he stared up at me, a patient expression on his face. He was a gray tabby with dark markings, and at the age of two hadn’t reached full maturity yet, weighing in at twenty-five to thirty pounds. With their broad chests and muscular bodies, Maine coons are the defensive tackles of the cat world.