Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

Two hammy hands clutch me in midair. I glimpse the stupefied faces of the drivers and smell their beery breaths.

Stopping at a low dive on the job, the cads! Somehow I manage to spring my icy claws from their stiff sheaths and give them both a parting pat on the cheek.

Now they are howling, but I have touched pad to ground. My stiff muscles and joints go through the motions I remember so well until they melt at the instant contact of warmth and sunshine.

I am halfway down an alley and I still hear the drivers arguing whether I am a skunk or a bear cub. Either guess stinks, but I am not about to linger and educate these clods to the scents of the animal kingdom, not when I smell like a loin of lamb ready for barbecuing.

Once I am moderately thawed, and my sprint for freedom has assured that, I take my bearings, then head toward the Crystal Phoenix. Even my chilled tail tingles at the prospect of once again saving my favorite hotel from the forces of evil--and all by myself, without that nosy Caviar on the scene.

Some ends are worth the means, even if it was my personal end at risk.

*************************

In a hop, skip and crouch, I am inside the hotel and following my instincts. These lead me directly to the basement.

Some people may think I have an unfortunate fondness for basements. True, I did end up bagged in the basement during my most recent adventure. Yet that was merely a minor basement in an old house, suitably creepy and damp but not worthy of Cecil B. DeMille.

It was also in a basement that I last rendezvoused with the Divine Yvette, that silver sweetheart of a Persian who guards my heart with her little lacquered toenails. In that same Goliath basement I pounced on the Stripper Killer, thus saving my other little doll. Miss Temple Barr, from a fate almost as bad as death. Miss Temple Barr's little lacquered toenails are not too tacky, either, and I speak from experience, or at least close observation.

At any rate, if some deviltry is afoot on cloven hooves tonight, I suspect it will stem from the below-stage area while the hundreds of innocent humans in the house above gaze rapt upon the refined onstage shenanigans. I have never seen a Gridiron show, but I am certain that any event in which Miss Temple Barr is involved must be the model of good taste and innocent fun.

Perhaps that is why I hear the faint roar of hearty laughter from above.

What I also hear from above is the stampede of elephant feet. I duck under a corridor costume rack just in time to avoid sixteen pairs of silver-dyed character shoes tippety-tapping down the stairs at a terrifying clip. Worse is the chorus of high-pitched squeals and laughter from the amateur chorines that accompany the shoes. One might almost wish for the banister to break again.

I slink farther down the hall, looking for the right scent and wrong sight. If something besides the Busby Berkeley Retirement Home Follies is afoot, I will know It when I see or smell it.

Indeed, I pick up the whiff of dirt, an interesting substance to find inside the sealed environs of the hotel, where dust is public enemy number one. This is fresh dirt I smell, not the usual sandy stuff up top I so often mistake for the miserable contents of Miss Temple's thankfully untouched bathroom litter box. This dirt is not decomposed of desiccated, stale, almost odorless grains. No, it is prime stuff, rich as Colombian coffee with earthy odors. In fact, it is giving me ideas I am in no position to act upon, and I realize that I have gone some time without. . . going.

Oh, well, the experience-hardened operative is not one to dawdle for sanitary reasons. I follow the sniff, bringing all my senses and my formidable experience to bear on the trail.

It leads me past dressing rooms humming with between-act panic attacks. I ignore clouds of talcum powder and the sickening reek of underarm deodorant, which seldom works. Will these humans never learn? Smell is good. Smell is free. Smell surrounds the ape family.

My nose is so close to the ground--concrete in this case-- that I walk forehead-first into an iron garment frame. I am knocked back on my tall. Perhaps I pass out for a moment, for when my senses focus again, I am seeing double.

Well, not exactly double. What I am seeing is what should not be there, and what should not be there is what I am seeing, capiche ? Perhaps not.

Let me put it this way. I am a large enough dude that my collision with the rack has jarred the unit and knocked some costumes askew. I can now see a portion of the wall behind it. Now the walls in the underbelly of a major entertainment facility are fairly predictable things: concrete blocks enameled an uninspiring shade of tan or pale green.

But this garment rack stands before a darkened door. Not only darkened, but smelling like Juan Valdez and all his bags of rich Colombian coffee and his donkey and its accumulated mementos of meals past are gathered there.

Naturally, I slink under the swinging skirts of the rack and into the fragrant dark. It will surprise no one with any nose at all that I am not in some accidentally concealed dressing-room, but an earthen cellar. Do I smell a rat? Oh, yes! Several.

My claws curl into raw dirt as I glide through the dark. My nose leads me deeper, until I know this is no secret chamber but a tunnel. All that is lacking is the drip of water on some stagnant rock trying to become a stalactite in a thousand years or so, and that is just as well.

Given the state of my bladder, the dripping of any liquid on rock would be Chinese water torture.

Drafts of clammy air riffle my fur. I find myself following them, and thus bearing right, then left, then right again. By now even my superb sense of special placement, otherwise known as direction, is confused. I know only that I traverse some vast, curving network of unsuspected subterranean channels. After the first flush of discovery, however, I find the dark and the damp somewhat boring. I fondly envision the amateur performers singing and dancing their heart- and ham-strings out under the dry, bright beam of the spotlights far above.

No doubt Miss Temple Barr is thoroughly enjoying herself as I belly-crawl through the bowels of the Crystal Phoenix, pushing my poor, quick-thawed body to its limits. . . .

I pause. Another entity shares my darkness.

How I can say this? I do not know what it is, only that every hair still left on my spine has stiffened.

Rats I can handle. A chorus line of rats ... would be more difficult.

I twitch my whiskers. I circle in the blackness, knowing my cover is perfect. I see nothing.

And then a light comes wobbling from the distance, a feeble, focused light, like the beam of a flashlight. That spells one thing: homo sapiens . I am not exactly afraid of a run-in with any sample of the species, even to the twelfth power, but I also wish to keep my anonymity.

I debate possible moves as the distant light bobbles closer. By its oncoming brightness I make out another hunched form on the Opposite side of the tunnel. Or call it a Chunnel. It Is big enough, and stinky enough.

Speaking of big and stinky, I cannot yet make out the species of my roommate, save that it is four-legged, smaller than myself and almost as dark.

The nearing light strikes a spark from its narrowed eyes: pure, venomous green.

For a-blinding instant we are both caught in the unwanted glare.

I stare into the gilded eyes of Caviar.

Then we rocket out of there, dodging the light like vampires avoiding a dagger of sunlight.

"Hey," grunts some yahoo down the tunnel. "I think there's rats down here. You never said nothing about rats."

****************

Caviar is boxing her ears with a damp paw as if she would like to be boxing my finer points, such as my face.