Forever Odd (Odd Thomas, #2)

by Dean Koontz

“I’ve considered,” he said, “starting a series about a detective who is a pet communicator.”

Like The Cat Who... series by Jackson Braun

“The tree in their backyard…” “The brugmansia. It’s a magnificent specimen.”

Also called the Angel Trumpet, it is, as of 2021, extinct in the wild. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brugmansia

Had I lived a century earlier, I might have fiddled with scraps of this and that until, in the can-do spirit, I jury-rigged a nifty communications device,

Or if Odd was MacGyver

the ti bon ange, the “little good angel.”

Actually, this is a French phrase meaning "your little angel."