Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Leopard Spot

“Maybe not in this case. Louie has made several national TV commercials for Á La Cat.”

“Reelly!” She peeked and perked at the same time. “Oh, what a fam-ous little boy. Mr. Louis.”

Temple held her tongue, also her tote bag close in her hands. That would keep her from strangling Ms. Perkiness.

A hustle and rustle across the cavern drew everyone’s attention.

The clatter like hail on a tin roof announced the arrival of Savannah Ashleigh on stiletto Frederick’s of Hollywood heels, a pink canvas bag bouncing against her lean hip: one word emblazoned in white embroidery on its side: Yvette.

Temple eyed her opponent with satisfaction. Savannah Ashleigh was wearing the usual overshrunk clingy top and the latest designer pants cut high on the calf and low on the torso, the better to show her belly button pierced by a tiny tinkling temple bell.

Egad, temple bell sounded almost like her own name.

Unlike Ms. Ashleigh, Temple’s belly button’s condition was kept secret behind an aqua linen suit whose skirt brushed her kneecaps and whose collar closed decorously at her throat.

Looking like the original Hollywood Barbie Tart certainly wouldn’t help Ms. Ashleigh in Judge Geraldine Jones’s court.

Savannah observed the stir her entrance had caused with satisfaction of her own and settled onto a folding chair. Yvette’s carrier rested by her hyperarched insteps.

At Temple’s feet, the hard-shelled plastic carrier containing Midnight Louie began to rock and roll as its tenant whiffed the pheromone-filled presence of his Persian co-star. Savannah Ashleigh’s vengeful actions a few months ago may have rendered Louie sterile, but he was by no means “fixed.”

Temple’s blood began to percolate all over again when she remembered how the actress had jumped to the wrong conclusions about Louie and Yvette. How she had kidnapped the unsuspecting tomcat and delivered him into the hands of the surgeon. How she had returned him in sadly altered state to Temple’s apartment door, wrapped like a mummy, just like poor Jimmy Cagney’s body in that famous gangster-movie scene.

“This is one mummy that walks again,” Temple muttered under her breath, completely caught up in 1930s film history.

While Savannah crossed her legs impossibly high on her bare, tan thighs and balanced her clipboard on her bony knees like a mortarboard poised on a pinhead, Temple slung her red canvas tote bag front and center. It was not embroidered with a prissy name like Yvette, but it bulged with incriminating evidence to help Temple make her case, including the —ta-dah!— sinister bloody satin pillowcase bearing the suggestively embroidered initials.

Chapter 14

Heaven Scent

I cannot believe that a day that started out so foul has turned so fair.

From across the huge chamber naked of any amenities wafts the sublime scent of my lost ladylove, the Divine Yvette.

I forgive Miss Temple for her cruel and unusual act of incarcerating me in a lowly cat carrier in an instant. No means of transportation is too humiliating or humble when it whisks me into the presence of such a unique and adorable example of feline beauty and breeding.

What can I say that would do justice to the Divine Yvette?

How could a collar, a bone, and a halo of hair manage to turn a cattle barn into a cow palace? Wait. Maybe I have not put that right. What I mean is that this huge, brutal space has suddenly been visited by a breath of spring, by the dainty passing of a goddess, by a presence so ephemeral, yet striking, that it seems the surrounding humans, affected, should break out in joyous mews at the phenomenon.

But they are blind, deaf, dumb and—most important—scent-challenged at the way in which our very atmosphere has been honored. In fact, while there are words to describe a human bereft of sight, hearing, and speech, there are none to describe a human defrauded of the sense of smell. This just goes to show how low the species really is on the ladder of evolution.

Scent is truly the prime and primordial sense, and look at humans! Forced to douse themselves in aromas borrowed from the plant and animal kingdoms even to experience one good, uplifting whiff.

No wonder they have not noticed the advent of the Divine Yvette, although my Miss Temple, being a superior sort of human, has. That is why she is such a super sleuth. She is attuned to the animal world. I manage to peer through the air slots in the top of my loathed carrier. Even now Miss Temple is gazing toward the Divine Yvette hidden in her portable boudoir.

No doubt she is longing as much as I am to see the lovely form lifted from her temporary prison and shown to the whole wide world.

Then I notice that Miss Temple’s expression is not the rhapsodic one I expect. It is quite something else indeed. In fact, it is rather deadly. And it is directed far above the Divine Yvette’s carrier, directly at the puzzled profile of Miss Savannah Ashleigh, who is agonizing over some entry on a piece of paper she is filling out.

No doubt it is the line asking her age, or perhaps her name.

I hope this is not going to turn into a crime scene, or worse, a catfight of the human sort. That would be so upsetting to the Divine Yvette.

Chapter 15

Hussy Fit

Temple lumbered onto the courtroom set when the announcer called her name. She felt like a gunslinger toting a pair of howitzers. Louie’s clumsy carrier bruised one hip, her overloaded tote bag banged into the other.

Savannah Ashleigh had been summoned first, so hers was among the craning faces screwed over their shoulders like Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist to watch Temple’s overburdened progress down the aisle.

It felt a little like a wedding day, only there was no groom looking expectantly for Temple’s arrival.

There was only Judge Geraldine Jones, and she was looking annoyed. But then, she always did in court and on camera. No doubt that was why her ratings were so high.

She was the third wave of TV judges: first came Judge Wapner, a WOM (white old man). Then came Judge Judy, a JOW (Jewish old woman). Now it was open season for judges of both genders and every ethnic background, although they all tended to be in the sunset of their careers. Judge Geraldine Jones was half-black, half-Asian, and all cranky. Of course the number-one qualification for the job was disposition. TV judges had to be traffic cops of the personal relationship highways: ever ready to overtake, lecture, and punish offenders against common sense.

People watched live courtroom shows for the same reason they kept The Jerry Springer Show in the talk-show top three: they loved to see somebody else get chewed out.

The announcer had already blared out the opposing position:

“Temple Barr is a Las Vegas publicist who says her cat, Midnight Louie, was abducted and forcibly sterilized by Savannah Ashleigh, star of stage, screen, and a major cable shopping network, the owner of a female Persian cat named Yvette making a television cat food commercial with her tomcat. The Hollywood actress says that the Las Vegas publicist’s cat got her cat pregnant against her will. The publicist says the actress “fixed” her cat against his and her will. Who will win The Case of the Castrated Cat? .”

So many thumps came from inside Louie’s carrier at the end of this public announcement that the container sounded like it was demon possessed, to carry the Exorcist analogy even further.

“This case is an exploration of the fine points of the civil law,” the judge pronounced, staring over her reading glasses at Temple’s hip-hugging luggage. “Not an expedition to the far Himalayas. Do you need help from the bailiff?”