Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A White Tie And Tails

Temple was reminded of The Magnificent Seven mounting up for an assault on the bandits terrifying the Mexican villagers.

“Ready,” she said. “Maybe Krys would like to carry Louie. It’s good exercise for the biceps and pecs. And you have all us ladies to shepherd to the car.”

But when Krys hefted the carrier, she stuttered backwards in surprise, having overcompensated. “Either your cat has lost a lot of weight, or it’s empty. What is he? The Cheshire cat, all teeth and no body?”

Temple hastened over to shake the bag. Empty. “ Hmm. The zipper’s open. Louie will do that,” she told the two hovering females. “He, uh, makes his druthers known.”

“And he has a way with zippers?” Krys asked, skeptical.

Matt answered for Temple. “He’s the Houdini of the cat world. Nothing can cage him if he doesn’t want to be confined.”

“He’s loose in here?” Mira asked, looking around in alarm.

A good question. The apartment was only on the sixth floor, but Temple wanted to check all the windows. Every one was locked. They surveyed each room, hunting high and low and finding no trace of hide or black hair nor dashing white whisker.

“Will we ever find him?” Mira fretted.

“Not until he wants to be found,” Temple said. “He can pull this vanishing act in my tiny two-bedroom condo in Las Vegas.”

Privately, Temple was glad to have Louie confined to quarters by his own choice than pulling a stunt like this in a whole strange house, which was exactly where they were headed. Maybe this was a protest move on Louie’s part. Everything in Chicago would be strange or even risky to out-of-towners like Louie and her.

“This trip has been a huge break in Louie’s routine.” Temple told the puzzled non-cat associates, “I’m sure he’s hiding away somewhere to soothe his frazzled nerves.”

“So he’s high-stung?” Krys sounded disdainful.

“Willful,” Temple answered. “Like all cats, he often knows better than we feeble humans do.” She exchanged a glance with Matt.

They both knew that Louie was opting out of the highly charged family reunion coming up. Too bad they weren’t cats and easy to hide.

Chapter 16

Search and Unexpected Seizure

Alone at last.

My ears had been burning up a bonfire overhearing all the speculation about my druthers and whereabouts.

I had done the Houdini trick of hiding in plain sight. Well, for one of my species.

I had been lounging in a hammock … the canvas sling at the bottom of the kitchen laundry bag, inhaling the comforting, homelike scents of antiperspirant, cosmetics, and shampoo. After all, my current roommate enjoys being a girl.

How wonderful to have all the social murmurs and palavers reduced to the hum of the refrigerator. Actually, refrigerators mimic major digestive upsets nowadays, have you noticed that? They do so many tricks with ice and water and defrosting and burping like Tupperware that one is tempted to throw Pepto-Bismol at their stainless steel faces. That would be like topping the Taj Mahal with strawberry sauce.

Anyway, I am in official search and seizure mode, accompanied by a canny glaze of lying-in-wait.

No one here had noticed that I noticed that Miss Matt Mama had kept the noxious threatening notes in a folder in her bottom dresser drawer, so as to keep Miss Krys’s nosy nose out of them.

Drawers might be an obstacle for one of my limited digital dexterity, but my primal brain knows how they work, so off to work I go.

First I flip onto my back. Then I drag my muscular torso beneath the drawer under siege by planting all sixteen of my built-in pitons in the feeble wallboard people use as mass-produced furniture these days.

No way would I have been able to perform this feat on, say, Sam Spade’s desk. Those days produced men and file cabinets of steel and noggins and drawers of walnut, as in “hard walnut to crack.”

Now, my motions as I shimmy under the drawer bottom might be adult-rated but we are all friends here. Once in position, I start driving my leg pitons into the wall-to-wall carpet, pushing with my mitts. The resulting push-pull action inches the drawer forward. In a thrice—well, after several full body rolls—I can wriggle out from under the dresser, snag a few shivs inside the drawer’s now-ajar gap and wrestle the insert out.

Okay. It takes me about five times longer than some light-fingered career criminal to open a drawer, but they have the weight and opposable thumb advantage.

Once in, working out the papers in question is kit’s play, nothing any curious puppy could not accomplish with three brain cells. Leaving them unchewed, priceless.

I use my main four-finger shiv to spread the missives out like a hand of playing cards.

I have been known to decipher printed matter, but human handwriting is a tougher problem. I recognize the messages are formed of that old crime story staple, individual letters in different type fonts cut out from that disappearing artifact of contemporary life, the daily newspaper.

I may not be able to read the tortured text, but my eyes and nose tell me two suspicious facts: I do not pick up the odor of ink on pulpwood paper, a scent I have been known to shower with my ill will on the few occasions I have been incarcerated. Newsprint is a favorite litter box filler for the group homes that shelter many of my kind at a time.

There is no such fulsome scent on these missives, only the faintest whisper of toner power, which means they were computer generated. Now, what kind of degenerate stalker is computer literate?

I recognize key words from my long list of oldie movies viewed on cable TV when my Miss Temple is out gallivanting, or at home gallivanting in a manner that ejects me from my own bed.

You will recognize such cherished turns of phrase as: “We know you know.” “We mean business.” “Or else.” “Comply or die.” And I read the same ugly words I saw in tiny print in a tiny news story on Miss Temple’s coffee table copy of the Las Vegas Review-Journal: Clifford Effinger. Along with the also corny phrase of “mysteriously found dead.”

A fancy computer font combined with corny vintage clichés? Who do these bozos think they are intimidating? Obviously, they think they are scaring Miss Matt Mama and Mr. Matt, by means of the ghost of her crummy husband and his stupid-mean stepfather.

At this moment of deep cogitation, which must be accompanied by a trancelike state often mistaken for a nap, I hear a door creak in the living room.

Doors do not creak except in scary movies, folks.

Has someone in the Sunday dinner party forgotten a crucial something … such as breath mints or Tums or gas pills? From what I have been hearing about the joys of Polish cooking and beer drinking I am sure that they would be the least required.

So I scramble to push the threatening missives into a pile, prong them back into the drawer, and reverse my physical exertions of the past ten minutes in two, trying not to make any noise. I will not bore you with the details except to say I am fairly twisted into a knot when I leave the dresser closed and shimmy under the bed.

Footsteps—large careless stepping-on-tail footsteps—clomp onto the bedroom carpeting.

“I heard something in here,” a deep male voice says.