Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

I am also watching dozens of carp school by the tourist walkway, making a solid gold, glittering carpet of scales punctuated by round, staring fish-eyes and round gaping mouths.

It is too easy to snag carp when they are begging, and they are shameless beggars. No finesse. Just gimme, gimme, all day long. I watch them wistfully, but dare not linger. These carp have waxed fat on tourist bounty; if I pause to ingest one, I risk seriously slowing myself down.

In the name of my rescue mission, I must travel on an empty stomach. (Although the summer sausage and rye are doing a rumba in my stomach, I only indulged in them to win Red's regard. Nothing gives a human such vicarious pleasure as overfeeding an animal.

The moment I separate from the tourists, I make good time sniffing the surrounding terrain.

The rocky shore of Lake Mead is seldom washed by rain, which means that scents ferment in the scalding heat for a good long time.

Away from the gadding crowd, the shoreline is mostly deserted in more ways than one. I bear south on the sandy rocks, the morning sun massaging my left shoulder with welcome heat.

I may need my muscles loose for the coming fray.

The dainty Caviar, a.k.a. Midnight Louise, may be a hard case to trail. Since she has had the dread surgery to prevent offspring, she will leave no rich, siren smell in her wake. As; for this Three O'clock Louie who is so bold as to make light with my name, I am not familiar with the dude and must separate the scents of my species from others, such as fox, skunk and the aforementioned coyotes.

But it appears that the skills of my merciless nose are not required. My ears perk to the sound of hissing and scraping.

Either a nest of rattlesnakes is holding a limbo contest over the next rise of rock, or I have come upon a contretemps between two of my own kind.

I bound atop the ridged red rock, lashing my tail to announce that someone to reckon with is on the scene.

I am not a split-second too early.

Were I not prepared for the event, I would think I was seeing double.

Two black cats circle on the barren soil below, backs humped, tails spiked like cactus, heads hunkered down beneath predatory shoulder blades.

Low moans and growls echo from the surrounding rocks. This is either an embarrassing private moment or a rumble, of the first order; with my kind such distinctions are sometimes hard to make. Each stalks slightly sideways, the better to keep an evil eye on the other. Neither gives ground, nor growl, nor glance to my arrival.

The piquant Caviar I have seen in full battle fluff before. She is petite by virtue of her gender and her tender age, but manages to swell to the impressive size of a sheared beaver muff.

The dude who has commandeered a portion of my name (and I really think there ought to be a law against such trespassing) is altogether a huskier sort, as one would expect of the male of the species. In full battle bristle, he is the size of a tumbleweed and has command of an impressive array of snarls, wails, belly-whines and cat curses.

I cannot help feeling a pang of anxiety for the well-being of my impudent offspring. She may have strange modern ideas; she may not respect her elders as she should, especially me; she may be in the mood to commit patricide, but she also may be my own flesh, fur and blood. I am proud of her for facing off this seasoned dude three times her size.

Everyone knows better than to interfere between two felines in a state of such savage fury, but Midnight Louie makes his own rules, and his path is clear. I must preserve from harm the innocent dude who is about to be turned into instant sushi merely for being mistaken for yours truly and the sire of the lion-hearted little minx below. I must also spare this idiotic offspring of mine the fruits of her misguided vengeance, which could be a fatal dose of the cactus known as

"catclaw."

I dart down the rocks, adding my own guttural wail to the proceedings.

I have forgotten the impact of sudden movement on an eclectic lunch, and pause. To burp.

Luckily, the contestants do not appear to hear this decidedly unwarlike sound.

With a bound, I flare my own magnificent coat into a state resembling Phyllis Diller's coiffure and land dead center of the quarreling cats.

Furious at having their unshakable glares so rudely disrupted, they snap their eyes to me, theirs hisses reaching an apex of hysteria.

I turn slowly, as a martial arts master surrounded by uppity students.

I speak even more slowly, selecting my syllables carefully, choosing a hypnotic lower register to disarm the combatants.

"You must. . . control yourselves," I suggest in my deepest baritone, a combination of a purr and a growl.

"Who do you think you are?" the purported daughter demands in a raspy voice. "Kitty Kong?"

I bow. I am not the figure purported to rule all cats, but I will masquerade as anyone to avoid a tragedy.

"Listen, layabout," she adds in the disdainful tone that is native to her. "Get out of the way.

This is a family matter, a blood feud. I do not need any overage hotel hang-around telling me what to do. This dude is my runaway father."

She scowls at the individual beyond me, whom I confront next.

Well. He is a large son of a bitch. (I am not using bad language here, as this is a breeding term among the canine species, and this dude is larger than your average lapdog!) His bile-green eyes spit figurative sparks at me while his mouth makes with the real spitballs.

"Listen, whippersnapper," he snarls. "Get out of the way. I was baldly attacked by this back-alley scrapper, and no one keeps Three O'clock Louie from administering a well-deserved licking."

I whirl to confront Caviar. "You see? His name is Three 0'Clock Louie, not Midnight Louie.

This is the wrong dude."

"He could have changed his name," she spits, not a single hair going limp. I would like to know the name of her grooming products. "He might have heard I was looking for him. One thing was sure, he wasn't hanging out around the Crystal Phoenix any more."

"Crystal Phoenix?" Three O'Clock sounds confused. "What is that, a glass bird?"

"Sure, play innocent," Caviar says. "No doubt that is how you ensnared my poor deluded mother not a year ago. She may not be here to call you what you are, but I spit upon your whiskers! You are a faithless, irresponsible, dog-livered layabout I would be so ashamed to call my father that it Is better to wipe you off the face of the planet."

"Mother? Father?" Three O'Clock lets one dog-eared ear lift a little. "Am I hearing this right, young lady? You think I am the poor bloke who fathered you?"

"I expected you to deny it," she growls.

Three O'Clock shakes his massive head. I notice a scar running down his cheekbone. His muzzle is grizzled with years of knocking around an arbitrary world.

"I am not the dude you wish to denude."

"Your name is Louie!"

"True, and it always has been."

"But not . . . Midnight?"

He shakes his head again. "Nope. Midnight has never been my best hour. Besides, Miss, I could not be your much-hated sire. A year ago I was not even in Nevada."

"Prove it."

He sits down on his haunches. "That would be difficult. I would have to extract testimony from Mr. Spuds Lonnigan, the owner of Three O'Clock Louie's, and humans are decidedly dense when it comes to answering feline-cross-examinations."

"Then you are history, mister."

"What made you think I am your father?" he asks.

"I was named Midnight Louise when I was born, and my mother said I was the spitting image of my father. I figure him to be Midnight Louie, and such a personage is notorious around Las Vegas for begging a free meal, chasing every fluffball that came along and consorting with humans."