Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

This last statement wins the applause of a feline hiss. I gaze at the empty carrel of the two black leopards and find a pair of old gold eyes with green backlights gazing back.

“Louise!”

“Moonlighting again,” she says, “without a net. When will you wake up to reality, Pops? Who is the caramel-cream popcorn?”

“Ah, Squeaker, this is my partner in crime solving, Miss Midnight Louise.”

“Oh, I see the family resemblance. You must be Mr. Midnight’s sister.”

What a ditz! I hear Miss Louise purring while I smother a growl of protest.

“I had heard,” Louise goes on, “that my pals Lucky and Kahlúa were performing marvels of levitation at the New Millennium, so I decided to drop in on the proceedings. Little did I know that others of my acquaintance would have the same idea.”

Miss Midnight Louise, of course, is quite familiar with the onstage shenanigans of Mr. Max Kinsella. At all costs, she must not mention this to Squeaker because the fewer beings, four- or two-footed, who know about his brief but spectacular presence here, the better.

“We have a more immediate problem, Louise,” I say.

“Yes, I see my former sparring partner is hanging by a hair, what little of it she has.”

The antipathy between the longhairs and the shorthairs of the cat kingdom rivals that between the Gelphs and Merovingians. I do not quite know who these funny-named dudes were, but I have heard their names mentioned on PBS, along with other individuals of supposedly liberal biases, so maybe they are libertarians or librarians or something.

“We cannot leave one of our kind just hanging,” I venture.

“Speak for yourself, Johnny Snappleseed,” Louise retorts. “I cannot wait to watch the scrawny little witch drop. Considering her attempts to end your life, liberty, and pursuit of haplessness, I would think you would be counting down the seconds too.”

“Oooh!” Squeaker’s eyes could not be rounder. “Your sister is most outspoken.”

“She is not my sister, and she is right in that Hyacinth has been a bad girl.”

I look down at the cat in question’s long dangling gams in their plush gray stockings. Bad girls are minor failings of mine. Those long, painted showgirl nails won’t stick to hardwood for long.

“So,” says Louise from her higher perch, “it is decided. We all have suffered at the claws of Hyacinth and hate her arrogant, destructive guts. Who wants to go down and peel her treacherous claws off the board, and who wants to stay up here and make sure we all get back up safely?”

“I will go down,” Squeaker says promptly. “I am her body double and have been rehearsing acrobatics on these fallen pedestals.”

“And we are the lightest,” Louise concurs, joining the rescue party.

“What is left for me to do?” I ask.

“We need a reliable counterweight, Daddy-o, to pull us all up. Now, I will hop onto this snarl of cable that the Mysti . . . that the mysterious stranger in black used to disable and save the Cloaked Conjuror earlier. We should go down like an elevator. You hop on as I pass your perch, Miss Caramel Cream. And you, Big Boy, grab on to the trailing rope as we swing low enough to reach that piece of traitorous feline fur.”

“I can slow and stop you two girls,” I protest, “but once you have Hyacinth on that cable netting, you three will outweigh me.”

Louise is now head rescuer and not to be gainsaid. “Hopefully, we can all scrabble back up the rope while you hold everything steady. You do know how to hold the rope steady? You just clamp your two paws together on it and pray.”

Before I can get out a quick ejaculation to my favorite Egyptian goddess, Bast, the impetuous Louise has extended shivs on every limb and leaped onto the pile of limp cable, pushing it and herself out over the looming gulf that is now dark and empty, although cordoned off with crime scene tape.

If this does not work, there will be much speculation in the Las Vegas papers tomorrow about how and why four formerly cool cats should choose to leap to their deaths like lemmings, a vastly inferior species.

Before I can blink or get a go-ahead from Bast, the disabled snarl of rope and Miss Midnight Louise flash past my puss. Squeaker leaps aboard, grappling hook shivs sinking into the cable.

So far, so good. We now have three ladies in dire peril.

I throw a full body slam at the long rope rising up as they sink down and pin it to the mat . . . or to the platform that supports me. If this thing goes, we are all pancakes.

My move was made just in time. The falling cage of cable jerks to a halt opposite Hyacinth’s clinging spot.

I feel the rope fibers fighting to slip through my shivs but tighten everything I have, and it holds.

I watch while Squeaker leans out and prods Hyacinth with a delicate shiv. Shangri-La’s partner seems dazed and lethargic. I guess seeing your main human go smash on a marble floor is not a life-instilling experience, even if Shangri-La was bad to the bone from the word “Shazam.”

Maybe this rescue attempt is misguided.

Squeaker has overcome her timidity to reach out even farther and sting Hyacinth’s long, lean dangling form with a spurful of shivs. Getting her own back, in a way, prodding the other cat to a life-affirming leap onto the already hefty mass of rope I am anchoring.

Louise and Squeaker have started clambering up, making the whole rope quiver like a bowlful of Santa Claus belly. This is not helping me maintain my grasp. And Hyacinth is still playing the swooning southern belle. In moments, the whole kit and caboodle will plummet down, unstoppable, and I will be the sole survivor. Or the counterweight.

It is not in my code to let the women and children sink with the ship.

Belle. Hmmm . Bell!

I embrace my rope and swing out over the abyss.

Whomp!

I descend like a dude who has been presented with custom-fit concrete booties.

My move works like a charm. The Medusa-mass of entwined rope and feline hitchhikers snaps right up to the ceiling pulley, allowing Louise and Squeaker and Hyacinth to drop off on a secure platform and lay there preening their nails.

It does, however, also leave me swinging out over the abyss like that ugly bell-ringer guy from France. Not my favorite position in front of the ladies.

“Louie!” Miss Squeaker cries in heart-rending fashion.

Miss Midnight Louise is mum, and I can see that Miss Hyacinth is still comatose and that she is the only one not licking her ravaged nails, which might give some credence to that curare-nail-polish boast, which means my Miss Temple’s Mr. Max is in dire danger of blood poisoning.

But it does not behoove me to reflect on the imminent danger other dudes may be facing. I have done my survival of the species thing and saved the ladies.

Who will save Midnight Louie?

You can bet it is not going to be the ASPCA.

I take a deep breath and suck in my gut.

Someone has to reach for the falling star; I guess it is up to me.

First I go limp. Second, I let go.

A chorus of wailing disbelief from above cannot stop me.

I swing down onto the platform that Hyacinth claimed and snap my shivs out so I slide down it. It gives under my flailing weight and sinks like an elevator. As the momentum gets suicidal, I release every shiv, and catch hold of the thin bungee cord that Shangri-La fell from before Mr. Max made a superhuman effort and caught her by one wrist.

I am hanging by two nail sheaths, but the bungee cord has enough elastic left to stretch gently under my slighter feline weight. I am still downward bound and can see only the furtive glimmer of security lamps on the geography below.

The bungee cord is getting tired of the down escalator and is tensing its fibers to rebound up again.