The Cat Who Brought Down The House by Lilian Jackson Braun

There's a lot going on in Pickax these days - a new film club has been founded, Koko the Siamese cat is making his stage debut in a musical revue to benefit animal rescue and five Amazon parrots have been abducted. To say nothing of a suspicious compulsive gambler lurking in the background.

Childhood is a stage in the process of that continual remanufacture of the Life Stuff by which the human race is perpetuated. The Life Force either will not or cannot achieve immortality except in very low organisms: indeed it is by no means ascertained that even the amoeba is immortal. Human beings visibly wear out, though they last longer than their friends the dogs. Turtles, parrots, and elephants are believed to be capable of outliving the memory of the oldest human inhabitant. But the fact that new ones are born conclusively proves that they are not immortal.