Кэрол Дуглас: Cat In An Alien X-Ray

I am surprised to find my shivs still stretching and contracting, as if yet in that state of running for my life. I must admit I keep them highly honed.

They have never run so much as a nylon stocking (although women and particularly my Miss Temple do not much wear such things anymore) in my interaction with the human female population.

And I have never been kicked out of bed before. Is that a blow to a guy’s ego.

And I have never been so sure I was one dead mallard as I was a couple minutes before.

What a nightmare!

I shake my head. I must be slipping. Speaking of that, I decide to slip through the French doors to the small three-sided patio Miss Temple’s condominium offers. Perhaps the cool night air will soothe my ruffled feelings.

I stretch my frame full up to work the lever-style handle with my usual light-shivved touch and fall through to the stone patio beyond, turning to push the door gently shut behind me.

I turn to breathe in night air as warm as cream of potato soup. We are heading into a Vegas summer, when the temperature never goes on vacation, particularly during these global warming times.

The palm fronds fan across a bit of full moon, making a splendid postcard shot. The neighborhood is as quiet as a harried cat could wish. No dogs barking, at the moment. No tires peeling asphalt. At the moment.

I yawn.

And then the hairs along my spine stand up and salute.

Looking up through the palm’s fancy fans, I sense something hovering high above the scene. Some alert intelligence observing all, knowing all.

It is calling my name.

Louie.

My back twitches.

Louie. Come here.

No way.

Rise and climb.

It is not morning, and even if it was, I do not then rise and do anything except stretch and scratch my hard-to-reach places, which are none of anyone’s business.

I stare upward anyway. Perhaps I will spot a lazy fly to take down. I need to restore my Great Black Hunter reputation after undergoing that craven dream sequence.

Yet, all my fly-catching instincts are telling me that something big is up, and not only up, but up there, in the vast Midnight Blue yonder.

Louie, do not fight my influence.

I cannot shake that unspoken “voice” in my head. This is more disturbing than any nightmare.

Or … am I hearing the moon?

That is not such a crazy notion. My kind are creatures of the night. We court and sing by the light of the moon. And hunt. Some writers have fancied that all of us leap up to the moon every night. (I do not know why we would. If it is indeed made of green cheese, it would attract taste bud–challenged rats, not cats. On the other hand, a planet-wide rat-chasing is an excellent fitness routine.)

Louie. Come up.

Manx, that moon is insistent! You would think it is Miss Midnight Louise, my liberated and obviously misbegotten (by somebody else other than me) would-be daughter.

The light dawns. That phrase is a metaphor, not a descriptive fact. A metaphor is a … sort of alias.

I leap to the palm tree trunk and ratchet up its scabrous curving height until I can leap to the frond that brushes the Circle Ritz roof. I slide down its bendable length, using my weight, and leap onto the patio three stories above my Miss Temple’s place, a perfect four-shiv-point landing.

This equally small space puts me face-to-kisser with two round blue moon-shaped orbs, the slightly crossed eyes of Miss Electra Lark’s reclusive, exclusive so-called sacred cat of Burma.

Her name is Karma, and she likes to play with everything from past lives to future predictions.

To add to my annoyance after climbing up to the penthouse level to join Miss Mystic Muse on her Juliet balcony, she does not even invite me in.

“You must stay out here, Louie. Miss Electra Lark has insomnia and just now fell asleep,” she explains. “It was bad enough that I was drawn outside by the moon tides. I had to ease the door shut one toe at a time.”

Insomnia is an inexplicable malady to me. I can fit in a catnap anytime, anywhere, and am about to doze off right here and now from boredom while Karma proceeds to extol the glories of the night sky.

“I know you are at home in the moonlight, Louie, but do you ever look up from your crude expeditions for prey and playmates to contemplate the vast clockwork motions of our universe?”

I am usually too busy looking down to make sure I do not lose my footing on whatever wall I am using for a serenading stage.

“Do you never sense, Louie, the presence of some thing, some entity, far larger than our petty struggles to survive?”

Uh, yeah. Like Animal Control.

And what is this “our” petty struggle to survive? I doubt Karma has ever set one of her sacred white-tipped feet out of the penthouse apartment, other than onto this tiny balcony.

“Do you not think sometimes, Louie…”

The long pause after that sentence is getting to be insulting.

“… that an entire universe of wondrous entities hovers just outside the reach of our hearts and minds?”

And with the defunding of the NASA programs, they can just stay out there hovering undiscovered to their hearts’ content.

“Have you heard of astral projection, Louie?”

Her baby blue gaze leaves the heavens to finally focus again on my lowly self.

“Uh, yeah.” Hey. I am the quintessential dude on the street and the Strip, supposed to be a hip cat up on every new wrinkle in this old town. I need to step up to protect my rep. “I hear that some venues are using holograms of dead superstars like Elvis as tourist attractions. Boogie with Bogey. Get down with James Dean. Mambo with Marilyn.”

“Not holograms, Louie! You have such an impossibly material soul.”

“Holograms are not material. You cannot get more ethereal than being a projected image of yourself.”

“Actually, these crass entertainment technologies do touch on the magic of astral projection. I never need to leave my simple home here at the Circle Ritz—”

Hey! It is a penthouse. And you are the landlady’s prize trust fund baby. I decide to tell her a thing or two for making me sit here to get drenched in mystical mumbo-jumbo.

“I hear Miss Electra Lark,” I say, “has endowed an entire cat shelter to ensure you have ‘most favored nation’ status there should she exit for eternity before you do.”

Karma sighs. Yes. Like a dog. “That is a sweet but useless gesture. I am the result of a thousand reincarnations. My heart will go on.”

Apparently, the ditsy New Age brain too.

Karma is now subtly swaying as a deep purr vibrates her entire body to the ends of the long fine hairs in her ears.

I long to tell her that humans have clever battery-run devices to clear that clutter.

“Before many days are past,” Karma warns in her lowest, most annoying tone of superior knowledge, “you will see signs and portents in the Las Vegas night sky.”