Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

However, it is cool under there, and quiet.

“You are sure this Circle Ritz place we are headed for has lots of sheltering shrubbery?” she asks me for the fourth time.

“And even more soft-touch humans.”

“Hmph . I am not fond of a parking lot view.”

“Very low traffic, and the vehicles are mostly late models with few oil drips.”

“It is taking a lot of my street cred to herd this group uptown. It had better be worth it.”

“I will be able to keep an eye on you there.”

“Not a plus. On the other hand, I will be able to keep an eye on you.”

I give Ma a good onceover. She has recovered somewhat from her solo match with a marauding raccoon, but one eye is still swollen half shut and her black coat is full of claw tracks. She licks her ragged bib into shape and sinks back against the spewing stuffing, half sitting, half reclining like a sultan.

“So what advice do you need, grasshopper, other than to not make a fine point of it with my guards?”

I smooth my whiskers and satin lapels, both of which her boys had mussed. But not much. “It is about the human species.”

“You ask me? Who has had as little to do with them as possible?”

“It is about the female of the species.”

“Anyone I know?”

“My associate.”

“You mean your sugar mama.”

“Please! I give Miss Temple so much more than she gives me.”

“That is always the way with our kind, and what do we get for it?”

I am not about to go into a Us and Them riff with her. “They have strange mating habits.”

“You noticed?”

“Although the females are ever capable of being in heat, they attempt to ignore the fact.”

“Which the males do not.”

“No. This creates a certain tension.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Anyway, the humans aim at solo long-term mating.”

“Like some birds. Dodo birds.”

“And wolves.”

“Wild dogs! They are no role model for the superior species.”

“Right. Anyway, my roomie has found herself in a perplexing situation for the breed.”

“She is with litter?”

“No!”

“Then you have no rivals in the offing, at least.”

“This is not about me, Ma. It is about understanding her. Which seems to be the goal of the human males around her too. Mr. Max was her long-term squeeze, but now it looks like Mr. Matt is edging him out.”

“Sounds like a horse race rather than a romantic quandary. At least she gets to choose. I had to take all comers, which is why you had a calico sister and a gray brother.”

“Had?” I ask gingerly.

Normally, we street kits are cut out from the litter so fast by chance, death, and animal control that we would not recognize a sibling if it stood up and sang “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” right in front of us. I am one cat in a million for knowing who my ma and pa are, but I am one cat in a million anyway, just for being alive after a street birth. That is without mentioning my entrepreneurial success with an investigative operation.

“I do not know where they go,” she agrees, “or even when sometimes. Motherhood is way overrated. It was a boon when the Cage Ladies arranged for a tubal ligation.”

I do not ask what this “tubal ligation” is. It sounds like doctor or lawyer language, and one usually does not wish to decipher what they are talking about, which is why they end up with all the money and yachts on Lake Mead.

But I do wonder if a “tubal ligation” might be the answer for Miss Temple.

I ask Ma. Who laughs.

“She does not have my problem. Tomcats do not tiptoe around what they wish to be up to, like your roommate’s suitors. One would think that she could easily accommodate only two, but humans are a mystery.”

I cannot help sounding a bit whiny as I lay out my case to my esteemed dam, known as a “queen” in fancy cat breeding circles. Which are where they matchmake pedigrees and put dudes and dudettes into forced breeding arenas. Barbaric!

“I am afraid I am a wee bit selfish at this point,” I admit. “I favor Mr. Max because his various mysterious ways keep him from coming around too often, and I get full bed privileges in his absence. On the other hand, Mr. Matt offers Miss Temple more constant attention, but I fear he will boot me out of both bed and bedroom, and where will I find another roomie as attentive and even-tempered as my Miss Temple?”

Ma Barker shakes her venerable, raccoon-scabbed head. She is one tough cookie.

“You have become the fourth leg in a love triangle involving two alien species, Louie. Face it, you will never win. You have been trying to live in two worlds: wild and domestic. You will have to make a choice.”

“That is just it! I can tip the balance, if I feel like it. That is a lot of responsibility. I lean toward Mr. Max. He is wild and free and wily and noble. But Mr. Matt really needs a good home. Mr. Max and I know we are two of kind, and there is no love lost between us, but there is the kind of wary respect we both crave. Mr. Matt would not shove me aside on purpose, but he is a domestic born, loyal and true, and I share his quest to find a safe place in the world.”

“Louie, Louie, Louie.” Ma shakes her head. “I blame it on your coming from a broken home, but then most of us do. You have been a good boy. I realize that you want my gang moved uptown so we can live out our declining years under the watchful eyes of you and your humans. What you worry about is that your humans have feet of clay. They are not as stable as you had hoped. You will just have to see that they do the right thing, and then everybody will be happy.”

Argh! Seeing that everybody does the right thing so that everybody is happy is the one thing that does not make this world go round. In fact, reality is just the opposite.

I bid Ma Barker adieu and move on.

Miss Midnight Louise is sunning herself in front of the canna lilies that fringe the koi pond that used to be my office view and private fishing hole.

The koi are as fat and wet as ever, and come pucker-lipped up to the pond edge trolling for tourist bread crumbs, as if Midnight the Merciless had not suddenly cast his shadow in their sunshine once again.

I plough a paw through the water just to make my presence known.

“Be nice,” Miss Louise admonishes.

“Why?”

“This is my territory now, and I get plenty of legal fish and lobster from the house chef. You must learn the difference between game and decorative fish.”

“They are all game to me,” I announce, sitting on the water-dewed stones and curling my longest extremity around my toes.

“You are a girl,” I tell her.

“Obviously.”

“You have had the operation that makes this condition moot.”

“Obviously.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Miss what?”

“Being the object of male attention?”

“Not a bit,” she says. “That was always a nuisance. It is such a relief that a small surgical procedure can put an end to tomcats harassing one. A puss needs a tomcat like a fish needs a bicycle.”

I frown. “Fish have nothing to peddle with but fins.”

“Tomcats have nothing to peddle but fishy lines.”

“So, why does a modern woman need a man?”

“She does not.” Louise’s yellow eyes squint into gleaming slits. “Ah. You inquire about that human hussy you are shacked up with.”

“Miss Temple is not a hussy! That is the problem. She is only able to deal with one dude at a time. I do not understand.”

Miss Louise sits up and actually smoothes my agitated ears with her tongue. It is a daughterly gesture, which I know by the fact that she is fixed and has no reason at all to give me more than five in the face.