Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Topaz Tango

We bound as one into the limelight, the bright open sunshine of a Las Vegas spring day.

“There is a couple more!” BO cries, delighted at my quandary.

Officer Shrimp Combo goes from a squat to a looming position. “Yeah. A couple more members of the Off-Strip Clodders, right? One pretty tough-looking gang.”

“Oh, those poor cats. They look so ragged and hungry.”

I beg your pardon, ma’am! I am sleek, well-fed, and well able to see to it that I remain so. Ma may be a bit ragged from her fight-to-the-death with the raccoon, but I am as smooth as George Clooney in a black dinner jacket for the Oscars.

“Come on, kitties.”

I have not fallen for that con game since I was six weeks old, but Ma Barker inches forward, doing a pretty good imitation of Gimpy’s pathetic gait.

Officer Shrimp Combo is galvanized into action. “I better see what other tidbits the crew has. That is one skinny old raggedy cat.”

Ma Barker looks over her sharp-boned shoulder to shoot me a triumphant wink with one still half-swollen-shut green peeper.

I shake my head and disappear back into the scratchy brush.

How could any self-respecting feline give up the moderne comforts of the Circle Ritz under my protection to put her gang’s lot in with a bunch of beat cops?

She gets up and lurches back to the bushes and me for a farewell.

“This is a superior setup for us. We are used to fast food, in fact, we prefer it. So you can continue running your fancy P.I. firm from the fancy-schmancy Circle Ritz, and we street cats will hang with the street cops. I am sure we will be able to pick up a lot of hot tips for you about nefarious goings-on, and we can help these folks in beige keep crime down. Now that we are all fixed, we need a hobby.”

It is considered bad form among all species to talk back to one’s mother and I am speechless anyway.

I nod and slink off, returning home to a bowl full of Free-to-Be-Feline. I must summon all my energy to perform the daily scam job that gets my Miss Temple to slather edible little nothings on top of that noxious base so a guy can eat.

Somehow, I fear that the feral crew I hoped to help has helped themselves to the better cuisine. Life is not fair.

Midnight Louie

Mulls Many Matters

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is an ungrateful parent.

I know, I know. That line was originally aimed at ungrateful offspring.

But these relationships work both ways and I am both amazed and peeved that my grand plan to relocate Ma Barker’s gang to the Circle Ritz has ended in a mass desertion.

Not that I am merely taking this personally. I am also deeply concerned that the whole clodder will now be subsisting on the worst of junk food fresh from the fast-food joints. Every day. Greasy burgers and fries. Chicken wings. Barbequed beef. All those treats that help our law enforcement personnel beef up for the job.

I have to say that the buffet at the Oasis offered a better balanced diet, when no one was slipping e. coli into the celebrity chef’s private trays. I hope to sample its wares on later visits to the resident mascot. Topaz is a delightful hostess and I foresee an excellent collaboration. I am done with those snooty long-haired Persian dames. Topaz is a shorthair like me, albeit purebred.

On the human side, I must say that I have never been included on a family outing before and it was an interesting experience, to say the least. No wonder our kits are out of there in three months. These twenty-year parent-child associations can get very complicated. Perhaps soon there will be a meeting of the minds on whether and when little Miss Mariah should be told she has a long-lost father in the neighborhood.

I look upon the retirement of Miss Zoe Chloe Ozone from the public eye again with massive relief and huzzahs. Although the Goth girl’s wardrobe of fishnet hose and patterned tights and fingerless gloves offer a guy like me much opportunity for ripping and scaling, one tires easily of the bizarre for the sake of it.

I am not sure which major man in my Miss Temple’s life has won the sexiest man alive sweepstakes. Mr. Matt stepped out and up quite literally in the Latin dance moves department, but Mr. Max is no slouch in the romance department even on the run. Call me prejudiced, but I do not consider amnesia sufficient excuse for canoodling with a woman who is not Miss Temple.

On the other hand, a little amnesia might come in handy to a dude.

Imagine my forgetting Miss Midnight Louise. I have indeed hit my head while pursuing a criminal more than once. In fact, I took several head and body blows during the course of saving my Circle Ritz friends’ hides in this latest case.

In fact . . . now that I think about it, I am having trouble pulling much out of the old memory bank, like certain feline dames I may or may not be related to, who hang out at a certain Vegas hotel and also a nearby police substation.

Sometimes forgetting family is the best way of dealing with them.

There was an exciting new development on my Vegas turf. A mystery bookstore opened in nearby Henderson that offered a vintage-flavored atmosphere and food for the body as well as the reader’s soul. The enterprising couple behind Cheesecake and Crime—he whips up the many varieties of cheesecake, including jalapeño, which sets my collaborator’s tastebuds tingling—hoped to make it an institution.

Since Miss Carole has had the good taste to set not one but two mystery series in my backyard, I wished it well, but the brick-and-mortar bookstore part folded soon after the 2008 economic swoon. Independent mystery bookstores are a dying breed (no matter how appropriate the phrase is to the genre), so it is a truly lamentable turn of events.

And the clerks wore vintage clothing! My Miss Temple is distraught.

You may still order their baked goods virtually at www.cheesecakeandcrime.com. (You can also grab and/or order my books wheresoever you may find them so that I do not end up as mouse cheesecake!)

Lastly, we received a flurry of excited mail in the fall of 2007 about a new television series, Viva Laughlin, set in the rising shadow city south of Las Vegas visited herein.

Why was producer Hugh Jackman playing a key hotel-casino owner named “Nicky Fontana”? Were my books now a TV series? Alas, no. ’Twould have been far better if that was the case. In fact, Viva Laughlin aired only two of its three filmed episodes, one of the fastest flash in the pans of that TV season or many others.

How did “Nicky Fontana,” owner of the Crystal Phoenix Hotel in my series and in manuscript since 1985 and in print since 1990, become a character in VL ? (Note that the initials are the reverse of Las Vegas’s.) Miss Carole suspects some script researcher came across one of my books and liked the name.

Miss Carole also avers that if they had used my series for TV, with the hunky Mr. Hugh Jackman playing Mr. Max Kinsella, it would have been a hit. Several readers of the female persuasion reacted to that scenario with sighs and swoons, but, alas, it was not to be.

Very Best Fishes,

Midnight Louie, Esq.

If you’d like information about getting Midnight Louie’s free Scratching Post-Intelligencer newsletter and/or buying his custom T-shirt and other cool things, contact Carole Nelson Douglas at P.O. Box 331555, Fort Worth, TX 76163-1555 or at www.carolenelsondouglas.com. E-mail: cdouglas@catwriter.com.

Carole Nelson Douglas

Plays the Dance Card

How splendid to see you getting out of your couch potato rut, Louie, to cut a few crooks on the dance floor.

The reality TV dance show craze might look like it inspired Louie’s latest adventure, and, in fact, I’m a fan of two of them, although dancing doesn’t come naturally to me. My creative right brain isn’t geared to the left-brain elements of complicated steps and music.