Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Leopard Spot

The diminutive dogs are sniffing circles, confused by the profusion of animal life, and the overwhelming scent of fresh water.

I give up and let them lead us to the water bowls first.

In minutes our three lips and tongues are plunged nostril-deep in an ample pond of fresh water.

In only another minute, we sense a large engulfing cloud that has shadowed our private pond. I look up.

Amazing how clouds will take on the shape of earthly beings. I could swear the Lion King himself is looming over us.

Oh.

“Hello, Mon Majesté .” I salute. “We are weary travelers from afar and athirst, seeking succor at your royal claws. Er, paws.”

Leo lays himself down, almost crushing the Yorkshire constabulary. They yip and dance away, their whiskers dripping purloined water.

Leo yawns, displaying a feline Himalayas of dental peaks. “Are these sand fleas?” he asks me.

“Compared to Your Royalness, yes.”

“And you are—?”

“The name is Louie. Midnight Louie. I am an investigator out of Vegas.”

Leo laps lazily at the pond that has been our salvation, almost licking up the Yorkies in the backwash.

“What can I do for you?” the lion asks politely.

Well. The Yorkies flutter to my side while I sit down, wring my whiskers free of excess water and make my presentation.

“We are on the trail of a dude who has something to do with the murder at the hunt club over yonder.”

“Hunt club?” Leo looks cross-eyed at a fly on his majestic nose, frowns, and swats it to Kingdome come. His flyswatter is the size of a pizza pan.

I decide right then and there not to tell him too many of the nefarious goings-on next door, so to speak. Might agitate the local wildlife.

“Murder?” Leo repeats again, yawning while the dislodged fly darts into his maw by mistake. “What is murder?”

I forget that these big guys, however domesticated, are serious predators without my fine-tuned and human-oriented sense of right and wrong. Leo would probably consider a dead big-game hunter a case of anything but murder.

“A human was killed and no one can tell who or what did it.”

Leo nods sagaciously. How could one not look sagacious with a head that big, wearing a wig reminiscent of an English judge with a blond dye job?

“You hunt the hunter,” he says.

We nod agreement for once.

“You are a little small for the job,” Leo notes.

I shrug. I refrain from pointing out that I am big enough to get by without needing an “Animal Oasis.”

Groucho is emboldened to squeak. “We are looking for a feline party, name of Osiris.”

“Oh, the little guy.” Leo nods again. With his head of flowing blond hair, he reminds me of a somber Fabio, the romance-novel cover dude. “I wondered why he was set apart. He does not look like a man-eater, but then it does not always show, does it?”

We nod. Truer words were never growled.

“I have never seen a man-eater,” Leo goes on, grooming a foreleg the size and shape of Florida. “I begin to think it is a mythical beast. I do not like stringy limbs and haunches myself, and I have not had to fend for myself, so cannot say much about this type.”

“Well,” I say, glancing at the pond, “thanks for the drink. We will mosey on down the line and have a chat with Osiris in person.”

“Be my guest.” Leo yawns and rolls over on his back, all four paws in the air.

The Yorkies have had to move briskly to avoid becoming mini-bath mats. Talk about a matting problem!

“That was a waste of time,” Groucho growls as we mush on through the sand like the Three Musketeers.

“Not at all,” I say. “We have checked in with the head honcho. That never hurts. That smell still doing it for you, Golda?”

“Oh, yes, mon Capitan! ” She responds to authority as well as any individual of this feisty breed can. “In fact, I see a leopard pattern dead ahead, and the scent trail leads directly to his compound.”

Osiris is lounging in the shade of some sort of imported plant, digging his claws into a huge felt toy of some kind.

We sneak around to the rear of his area, where more imported greenery shades us as well.

When he spots me, his long, lean, measle-spotted body leaps up and bounds to the fence.

We shrink back, but it seems that Osiris is as happy as a hound dog to see us. Or rather, me.

His huge pink tongue laves the airy fence wires, missing my puss by only about three inches as I jump back as fast as he leaped forward. Nobody washes Midnight Louie’s face since I left my mama’s supervision.

“Thank you!” Osiris purrs, rubbing his decorator-approved side back and forth on the wires separating me and the tiny duo from his hyperactive four hundred pounds.

“For what?” I naturally ask.

“Lunch!” He pauses to regard the Yorkshire constabulary.

They rush in where pit bulls would fear to tread, hurling themselves yapping against the fence and incidentally a good portion of the pacing Osiris.

“Idiot feline!” they screech. “We are highly trained tracking animals here to clear you of a murder one charge.” They bounce off the wires and lunge forward again, rather like attacking Ping-Pong balls with very long fungus.

Osiris backs off, blinking, and sits on his lean haunches. He still looks like he could use some lunch, but I see that his idea of edibles is not the Yorkies.

“I meant,” he says, lying down to wash his face and much resembling a faux leopardskin rug. “Thanks for lunch the other day, at the other place. The two-legs had given me nothing for several dark-times and I was almost ready to eat the mats between my toes, which you two in some ways resemble, no offense.”

He is eyeing the Yorkies askance, which is the only way to regard such an uppity breed of sand-hugging dog.

I realize with chagrin that the big rug has mistaken me for Midnight Louise.

Much as I like to take any undeserved credit I can, I cannot let this notion go unchallenged, so explain that his benefactor was a friend of mine, not me.

“Ah.” Osiris nods sagely while cleaning behind his cauliflower ear. (The big boys have these round, blunt ears that look as if they had been in the ring for years, not the svelte, pointed numbers we smaller cats do.) “I did detect a whiff of female that is distinctly lacking now.” He gazes benignly on the Yorkies. “And are these your and the lovely little black Miss’s cubs?”

I do not know whether I am more insulted to be taken for sharing the state of parenthood with Midnight Louise, or to be mistaken for contributing to the production of the Yorkie twins.

“No relation. Despite appearances, these are dogs.”

“I am not familiar with the breed,” Osiris admits.

Imagine that! What a sheltered upbringing. “Now that we know who’s who we need to find out what’s what,” I go on. “Meanwhile”—I turn to Golda and Groucho—“you two track down the human scent you have been following. I want to know who from here hiked all the way out there and back again.”

They scamper off, happy to be of use, I suppose (dogs are like that) and happier to be away from Osiris’s big white teeth.

I settle down, my mitts tucked under me for a long summer’s siesta.

In no time Osiris is pouring out his life story. Now it is my turn to yawn. Basically, he has had a pretty soft time of it until now. He was born into a performing family, but separated at an early age by an animal trainer. He did some commercial film work—we chat about the ups and downs of that profession—and caught the attention of his recent master thanks to an ad for spandex animal-print pants from something called “The Yap.”

“I would stretch like this”—Osiris curves himself into a long, lean arc—“and they would superimpose an image of Cindy Crawford stretching in her leopardskin-print capri pants. I got a lot of fan mail from that one, but not as much as Cindy Crawford.”