Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Leopard Spot

“That didn’t suit the purpose of the Synth.”

“No, and I suspect they had an agent here at the ranch to see to that, but Granger charged in and changed everything.”

“If the big-game people identify with their prey, why kill it?”

“Some people need to conquer any creatures big enough to kill them. I’ve always thought they’re out to find, track, and silence the fear inside themselves. Or maybe it’s the eternal independence of the Other they’re out to kill. They’re like the worm Ouroboros, swallowing their own mortality.”

“Whew. That’s way too philosophical for me. I’m just glad to get Osiris back.”

CC looked over his shoulder. “Those two are nosing each other through the bars like a couple of small-town gossips over a fence. They make a handsome pair. I wonder what they’re communicating.”

“At least they get along. I’m wondering something else: what the guard will make of his glimpse of my face wearing your mask.”

“Shoot! Do you think I’ll be fingered for this kidnapping?”

“I doubt he got a good enough look to be sure what he saw, but maybe we’ll start some leopardmen rumors. I’d like to shake up the Synth.”

“Fine. You do that. I’ll get back to business as usual. Osiris will be happy to get back to his usual digs. We’ll have to rig a separate setup for, for…what should I call the black one?”

Pulling off the mask, Max smiled and thought of Midnight Louie.

“Call him Lucky.”

Tailpiece Midnight Louie Enjoys Being a Pussycat

There was a time when I dreamed of being a Lord of the Jungle. Or the Plain. Or whatever.

I pictured myself away from the Big V, this urban Neon Jungle in the desert, and out where the Wildlife commences, where the lion and the wildebeest play. (In the lion’s case, it is probably playing with its food, which is a wildebeest.)

I contemplated lolling about the veldt under a spreading baobab tree while Midnight Louise prowled docilely off to round up some food on the hoof for my royal appetite.

My claws, the size of jumbo shrimp, would pulse in and out of their gigantic sheaths.

A few worshipful cubs would gambol about the edges of my magnificent eight-hundred-pound frame stretched out to its full twelve or thirteen feet. A flick of my powerful aft appendage would drive clouds of flies into retreat, too insignificant and frightened to come to rest upon my handsome hide.

Oops. My handsome hide.

Maybe a handsome hide is not a biological advantage in this modern world.

Now that I have seen the lives of Jungle Lords up close and personal, I understand why they are such an endangered species and why my subcompact version of lordliness is mostly endangered by overbreeding. From what I have seen, Beauty and the Beast are a combination that results in imprisonment and premature death.

Even those lordly ones with glamor jobs in the show ring or onstage are in danger of being downsized in their old age and thrown into the brutal arena for the amusement of a bunch of feeble humans whose IQ is about the caliber of the firearms they carry.

Although we pocket-size domestic varieties also suffer neglect and abuse, at least we are too small to make into rugs! And our mugs would look pretty ridiculous on some Great White Hunter’s wall.

Thank Bast for small favors, of which I guess I am one.

I will never wish to be King of the Beasts again.

I have just come to this momentous resolve when my Miss Temple wanders into our bedroom and finds me sprawled catty-corner across the comforter. (Little does she know that I have barely beaten her back to domicile, sweet domicile. Thanks to the hysterical Miss Leonora leaving the Storm door wide open for any footsore souls in need of a discreet ride, Louise and I slipped into the backseat and hid on the floor.)

I expect to be gently moved aside, but instead she sits on the end of the bed and regards me with what I can only describe as wistful fondness.

“Oh, Louie.” She sighs. (The dames are always sighing around me, and do not doubt that I take full credit for it.)

“Apparently,” she begins in a confessional tone—you would think that I was Matt Devine—“apparently I have not been a responsible pet owner.” (She has a pet? News to me. This I must look into. I do not like interlopers.)

“Apparently I am supposed to keep you safe at home. I should nail shut your bathroom window escape route, and see that you nevermore shall roam.” Here she frowns. “But you roamed all the way out to the Rancho Exotica. And you prevented a panther from being cruelly hunted down and shot. And your presence unmasked a murderer. So you ended up saving, in the long run, lions and tigers and bears. Oh, my. And you have in the short run, and on more than one occasion, saved me . What is a mother to do?”

(Here she fondly smooths the hair on my brow.)

“Obviously, Louie, you are not an ordinary cat.”

This she intones as if it were a revelation.

“Obviously, you are especially trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and irreverent. Well, maybe not ‘obedient,’ but I would not put that word into a wedding vow anyway. Obviously, dispensations have to be made in your case, and your case alone. Since you are now reproductively responsible, I suppose I will have to let you be about your business, no matter what the world at large will think.

“The others just do not understand. Rather than you having anything to fear from the world at large, the world at large has much to fear from you . You can take care of creatures great and small, including me. This is your mission, Louie, and I will not stand in your way, despite my puny fears.”

She bends down and kisses me tenderly on the right ear. Ummmm .

“Just promise me one thing, big boy. Take care of yourself too.”

Not to worry, Miss Temple. Is the Dalai Lama Tibetan?

Okay, she did not say it all exactly like that.

But it was close enough.

Carole Nelson Douglas Considers Louie’s Future

It’s hard to accept that Midnight Louie has actually learned a lesson from his latest case.

I thought he was far too feline to admit that he had anything left to learn.

Perhaps the lesson we could all learn is not to envy creatures apparently greater than we are. Often they face greater stresses as well. This goes for people as well cats.

I should mention that canned hunts are illegal in Nevada, although not in other states, so the Rancho Exotica is a totally fictional enterprise. But a state that boasts Area 51 and legalized prostitution ranches could very well spawn an illegal animal-hunting outfit aiming to satisfy monied clients. Those as appalled as Temple and I by the notion should look up “canned hunts” on the Web to find and support organizations that are working to ban the practice.

And real-life hunt breakers are more cautious about where, when, and how they disrupt a hunt, usually keeping a safe distance from their armed opponents, such as foiling mass bird shootings by scaring the prey into the air before the hunters are ready to shoot. I’ve researched nineteenth-century hunt parties in England and France for the Irene Adler historical series that I resume writing in September 2001, with Chapel Noir , about another infamous hunter, Jack the Ripper. These aristocratic country-house outings with their aura of upper-class civility destroyed an obscene number of animals: thousands upon thousands of birds and deer in a single day, often hundreds by a single shooter.

So given the assertion that many big cats who end up on canned-hunt ranches are less able to protect themselves than the average alley cat, it was only appropriate to let a decidedly “unaverage” alley cat take on the bully boys with the guns personally. Louie really dug into his assignment.