Cat Shout for Joy (2016)

Shirley Rousseau Murphy's 2016 novel returns to Molena Point, California, where the speaking cats Joe Grey and Dulcie help the police from the rooftops, this time against someone who is knocking down the village's elderly and frail. One victim, Merle Rodin, says later that it was his wristwatch that put him in the hospital. (Open Library)

Watches

Victorinox Swiss Army (unidentified model): Merle tears his worn leather watchband on a vise, spills turpentine on it and drives into the village on a foggy morning to have it replaced, because the watch is the only kind he can still read: a good, reliable Swiss Army with a big plain dial and big black numbers. Crossing a courtyard on his crutches toward the jeweler's door he is struck from behind, and the loose watch is lost in a flower bed. Joe Grey and Dulcie find it after the police have gone, and the turpentine on it gives them the attacker's scent as far as the curb. The text says only "Swiss Army watch".

Source text: He didn't know, and never would know, how the Swiss Army watch was found, that two cats found it lying in the flower bed deep beneath the cyclamens. (Shirley Rousseau Murphy, Cat Shout for Joy, scan cataloged as William Morrow, 2016, p. 18; the watch is described on p. 16, where the OCR garbles the chapter's opening capitals, and its owner is named on pp. 18 to 19; Internet Archive scan OCR)