Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

“Poor Louie. They are a strange breed. It is always a risk to try to depend upon such a fickle kind. I know you thought you had a permanent arrangement—”

“It still is!” But I am no longer so sure.

“Yet,” says Miss Louise, patting the tip of my tail in a most patronizing way, “they will go off and leave us without a thought. Move. Advertise for new homes because of . . . change of address. Change of circumstance. Babies. Is that it?”

“No! No babies. Yet. It is just that I sense she is having a change of heart. That is a very mysterious process and alien to our kind.”

“Yes. We do not give our hearts lightly, but when we do it is eternal. That is why I will never consent to being owned.’ ”

“I am not owned! I own. I am in a position to bestow favor on one or another of Miss Temple’s suitors. I lean to picking the one who suits my habits best, but realize that is perhaps not as noble as I could be.”

“The way to be noble, Louie, is to let others be as noble as they can be.”

I gaze into Louise’s gilt eyes. She is not quite my spitting image (except when she is mad, often at me) but she is a sassy little kit and I would not be loath to call her my daughter. If she was my daughter. Which is still up for grabs. Like my Miss Temple.

I move on.

I return to the Circle Ritz (because it is en route to the last way station) and I am loath to confront the most iffy female on my list.

Karma crowns the Circle Ritz like an invisible diadem of New Age mumbo jumbo. The penthouse is her territory, and the ambiguously phrased declaration is her bread and butter. But she is female and deserves consultation.

I claw my way up the old palm tree onto the high patio, and then through the French doors into the shrouded environment.

Miss Electra Lark is away, so I have full interrogation rights here.

First, I have to find Karma, who usually hides.

She is not under the couch. Or the chairs. Or the bed.

She is under the sink, in an area reeking of wet wood and lemon wax.

Her blue Birman eyes shine red in the dark. She was made for color-correcting cameras.

“Pssst!” her voice warns me.

“Chill,” I tell her. “I am conducting a survey.”

“You? A census taker?” The shock draws her out onto the kitchen parquet.

“A personal survey,” I say.

“And?”

“If you had your druthers, would you rather live with a human with a devoted roomie of the opposite sex, or a come-and-go boyfriend with interests abroad?”

“Are you working for Cosmo now, Louie?”

“Naw. This is a private poll.”

Karma slinks all the way out from under the pipes.

“An interesting question. Does it behoove us felines to have domestic stability or romantic uncertainty in our own love lives?”

“Uh, I am not talking about my love life. I am talking about my domestic situation, which is another kettle of fish entirely.”

“Your roomie is a mermaid?”

“No. She has two legs and no scales, except in her bathroom. I am just wondering which dude to encourage her to glom on to. In a way that would benefit her. And me.”

“Are you sure that your interests are matching?”

“No. That is why I am conducting this poll. Look. I know that a girl has gotta do what a girl has gotta do. I just wonder how I come out in all this. I have certain needs.”

“Like what?”

“Um, to come and go as I please.”

“Check.”

“To have a litter box on the premises, even if I do not deign to use it.”

“Check.”

“To be consulted as to my position on the bed.”

“Aha! That is where your territory overlaps with the men in question.”

“Right.”

“And you have been her main squeeze of late?”

“Pretty much.”

“Then you are obligated to claim lounging rights no matter who has been or is sleeping in her bed. Assert yourself!”

“I can handle keeping my claim in the current digs. But what if she moves in with the guy upstairs? Or they buy a house? Then it will be a free-for-all in claiming territory. And I may not want to move and leave the Circle Ritz. It is an ideal location and I am just now engineering moving my aged mother into an adjacent situation.”

“Louie! No wonder you are troubled. I was not aware that you actually knew your mother, and I am most impressed by your loyalty to her.”

Karma, being full of slightly schizty psychic cheer, cannot yet grasp what kind of cat dear old Ma Barker is.

“Do you see any glimmers of who my Miss Temple would be best off with?”

“And she is—?”

“Cute little redhead, now temporarily blond. Feisty. Her main job is public relations but she is a darn good gumshoe too.”

“Ah, she has visited my retreat on occasion. My companion person, Electra Lark, tries to keep intruders out so that my delicate sensory apparati are not clouded, but she is not always successful. I do pick up vibes from humans who haunt the Circle Ritz. But they seem vague, like spirits to me.”

Karma seems vague to me !

“Tell me of the rivals for her love.”

“One is long, dark, and sleek like me.”

“Him! I have sensed him before. He is a creature of air and high places, an overseer, a guardian, like myself. He is wise but troubled by a past he cannot elude. Your redheaded miss is a fire spirit, a spark of energy and ability. The air spirit will fan her flames, but will also exhaust her emotions.”

Okay. This does not sound too far out. For once, something Karma says makes sense.

“And the other man?”

“He lives here too. He’s got looks to rent out and still win a pageant. He has been stuck on meaning well for so long he can hardly move sometimes, but he is getting over it.”

“Ah, yellow haired?

“Right. Blond, the humans call it.”

Karma nods her head, which is also masked in darker fur like the Siamese sisters, only her dark hose end in white satin gloves and spats.

“I have seen him.”

“How?”

“Sometimes my mystical communion with the stars and moon require me to emerge onto the balcony. He is a water spirit, that one. I have seen him drawing himself powerfully through the deep blue pool below. His life has been struggle, but he has become good at it. I sense a new lightness in his dogged laps to and fro, as if he has sprouted wings that lift him above what that weighs him down in the water.”

“Water and fire, not a good match, right?”

“To the contrary, Louie. They balance each other’s destructiveness. Water needs fire to produce steam heat, you know.”

I gulp. I think I do know. And, worse, I think that Miss Temple and Mr. Matt know now too.

A lot of help Karma has been.

But I cannot help asking, “Which element am I?”

Her Lieutenant Molina blue eyes, which is to say a body-armorpiercing shade of electric blue, nail me to the wooden floor.

“Earth,” she says. “You are a creature of the streets who trusts your pad leather and your eyes and ears only. A born loner, you are, plodding and practical, and you always get your man. Or woman. You are not airy, or fiery, or even misty, but you are not one to leave any job undone. As for your own love life, I see many options, none of them very immediately rewarding. For now, you are better off meddling in human matters. You seem to have some minor gift for it.”

On that unhappy prediction, Karma makes the royal circling wave of dismissal with her foreleg.

I back out, careful not to salaam, and run my rear into the side of a mohair sofa in the main room. Dude, but those buzz-cut bristles sting like a radiator brush!

I cannot wait to escape onto the balcony and then piton my way down the rough trunk of my faithful palm-tree bridge to the Circle Ritz’s various floors.