Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

''I doubt the Humane Society people would approve that expression in this instance, or any other, but it is apt. We not only publicize the parish fund drive, but find homes for the late Miss Tyler's excess of cats."

"We hope," Temple answered cautiously. "Finding homes for dozens of cats is no sure thing."

She panned the scene again, as critical as any old-time director. Leaping lizards! But bless you, she thought at second glance from a safe distance, approving the Technicolor-bright two-foot-long iguana perched on a pre-teen boy's shoulder. Her publicity-conscious eye also dwelled fondly on the picture-perfect, pig-tailed seven-year-old girl with a pet goat, and an ancient Hispanic woman carrying a truly magnificent rooster with splash of black-taffeta tail feathers worthy of a chorus girl at Bally's.

All creatures great and small, feathered and scaled, furred and coated--and their fond owners old and young--made first-class grist for the ever-grinding mill of the media cameras.

Who could resist animals and kids--at least from a distance?

And then the drama. . . . Temple studied Father Rafael Hernandez in his long black cassock with the shorter lacy white over thing. (Temple knew there was a name for this garment; she would have to ask Sister Seraphina what it was.)

Two adorable eleven-year-old altar boys, similarly smocked, clung to his side as he moved from group to group, a silver-haired shepherd blessing the helpless beasts to ward off illness and mischance.

''What a mob. I supposed you're responsible," a voice announced above Temple's right shoulder. ''You have a parade permit for this?"

Temple snapped her head around and found what she expected: Lieutenant C.R. Molina of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, loitering with intent.

"Are you serious?" Temple demanded.

Molina shrugged. "Unfortunately not. Can't you tell I'm off duty?"

Temple took in an oversized denim shirt studded with the occasional rhinestone, jeans and--my turquoise tootsies! -- beaded moccasins on Molina's size-nine feet. How lucky that Temple herself had paired her quiet khaki culottes with a red-and-white top and her Plexiglas-heeled, red grosgrain-ribbon-trimmed Stuart Weitzman heels. If Molina was putting on the dog, she didn't want to be caught looking like one.

"Supporting the parish fund drive?" Temple asked, knowing Lieutenant Molina lived in the neighborhood.

Molina nodded over her semi-sparkling shoulder at the long table without the lemonade.

"Supporting the Humane Society. I'm getting a couple of Miss Tyler's cats."

" You like cats?"

"I don't have much choice," Molina said wryly.

Temple couldn't imagine the towering homicide officer doing anything against her will, so she squinted toward the animal adoption table. A pair of half-grown tiger stripes meowed in a wire cage while an attendant filled out forms. She spotted a young girl in blue jeans and L.A.

Gear sneakers fidgeting before the cage just as Molina called, "Mariah! Got a minute?"

Mariah. Temple straightened as this genuine mythical beast--hard-nosed Lieutenant Molina's pre-teen daughter-- ambled over with a docility sure to vanish utterly in a couple of years when the hormones kicked in.

Meeting a mini-Molina did nothing to make Temple feel adult and superior. At ten or eleven, Mariah matched Temple's height (five-feet-flat) and outweighed her by a good twenty pounds.

Temple faced a chubby youngster with grave dark eyes nothing like Lieutenant Molina's spooky electric-blue ones. And braces were in the cards, Temple remembered. She winced for this awkward almost-adolescent whose mother was a local cop and who faced at least four years and a likely attack of ego-erasing acne before any signs of a silk purse would emerge from beneath the rough-cut, lumpy denim. Given the kid's plain-clothes mother's femininity quotient, Mariah didn't have much of a role model for turning from cabbage moth into Monarch.

But Mariah Molina wasn't Temple's problem, thank God.

''You're the cat-lover?" she asked the girl.

Mariah nodded shyly. No smile. Probably hiding the braces-doomed teeth.

"And a fan of gerbils and hamsters, which she already has too many of," Molina added with patience that was either maternal or paternal. With Molina, it was hard to tell when the authoritarian cop was speaking or when the woman was, if ever.

Father Hernandez and his entourage were edging toward the trio just in time to break an uneasy silence.

"I'd better get the cats ready for their official baptizing," Molina murmured, moving toward the completed paperwork and the cage.

"You can't baptize cats," Mariah remarked with a dubious giggle, her widening eyes half-tempted to take her mother literally even as she watched Temple for agreement.

Temple would have liked to have bent down to reassure the child, but there wasn't a height difference, dang it.

She did lower her voice, at least. ''Don't mention 'baptizing' the cats when Father Hernandez is within earshot. He got into quite a fight with their last, and late, owner over that very issue."

"Miss Tyler was crazy." Mariah dismissed her benefactress with pre-teen disdain for such as yet personally unexperienced states as insanity.

Wait'll she hits thirteen! Temple thought. "Miss Tyler was cat-crazy, that's all."

''And that's okay?"

"That's fine, as long as you don't have too many."

"Do you have any?"

"That's debatable." Temple glanced at a pair of cat carriers parked under the shade of a towering oleander bush pruned into a tree shape. "One cat seems to have me. His name is Midnight Louie."

"Did you bring him here to be blessed?"

"Yes." Temple sighed. "He's not too happy about it, to tell the truth."

"Isn't he a Catholic cat?"

"He isn't even a domesticated cat. But I figured since this was my idea, I should participate."

"Why are there two carriers if you only have one cat?" Mariah asked. All kids under twelve love to demonstrate that they can count.

"The other cat isn't mine. Say, are those the L.A. Gear sneakers with the red lights in the heels that blink every time you step? Let me see! Cool."

Mariah had turned to display her footwear, her midnight-brown eyes warming at Temple's interest. "How'd you know about that?"

Before Temple could answer that no pair of unusual shoes debuted without her knowledge and probable panting after them, Molina as well as Father Hernandez and his altar boys had converged on them for the ceremonials.

Father Hernandez's ascetic and slightly careworn face smoothed into a smile as warm as the day. "Carmen. Mariah. You've taken two of Miss Tyler's cats? What a fine act of charity. I must admit that cats are not my favorite beasts."

Temple tried to keep from sinking right through the play-ground asphalt. Lieutenant C.R.

Molina's first name was Carmen! As in Miranda? Or, in Molina's case, as in Miranda rights? Ay, yi yi yi. . . .

Molina, sensing the direction of Temple's thoughts, flashed her what could only be interpreted as a dirty look. ''You can call it an act of charity, Father," she told the priest, ''but I call it an act of self-defense."

She smiled as she gently yanked the long, black braid threading down Mariah's back. The girl smiled up at her mother, sudden sunshine, then bent to remove the first tiger-stripe kitten from the cage. It squirmed in her arms, rolling perfectly round yellow eyes.

While the solemn altar boys--Hispanic angels with honey-colored skin and India-ink eyes--

stood at attention. Father Hernandez intoned some soft Latin syllables. His upraised hand, oddly held in the edgewise position of a karate chop (Temple noticed now that she was acquainted with that art), pantomimed a sign of the cross on the hot, arid air.