Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

"Are you in Las Vegas?"

"Don't sound so incredulous, Matth ias." A laugh in her voice modifi ed the arbitrary tone.

Sister Superfi ne, for all her popularity at St. S tanislaus Catholic grade school, had been a disciplinarian as unshakable as a drill sergeant. That's why the boys had all secretly loved her and the girls had feared her.

"Las Vegas," she was continuing in a schoolhouse voice, "has more churches per capita than gambling casinos. I've been transferred to a long established Hispanic church here, Our Lady of Guadalupe."

"That's a long way from a Chicago inner-city Polish neighborhood, Sister."

"WeIl--" Now she sounded pushed, cornered. "I ' m retired, Matthias." Forgive me, Father, for I have grown old . . . an unpardonable but inevitable sin, even in the church.

"Your kind never retires, Sister Seraphina," he said quickly. " That's why you called me. What's this private consultation?"

She laughed again, apologe tically. "We have a little problem at OLG. I was hoping you could come out to see us on your off--hours."

"Yeah, I could . . ."

"It wouldn't take much time, and I don't know where to turn."

Now, coming from super-competent Sister Seraphina, that was a startling confession.

"What about the pastor at our Lady of Guadalupe?"

A long pause, the kind Matt was used to getting on the ConTact phone. The closer the questions cut to the bone, the longer it took to get an answer.

"He's . . . part of the problem. Please, Matthias. I'll tell you when you come. I just thank God I thought of you, and found you."

He would go, of course. He would go even though the idea gave him the heebie-jeebies, and he didn't want to see this sad parish, Our Lady of Guadalupe, with its freight of eternally poor parishioners, with its idle, retired nuns put out to pastures not heavenly but all too human, with its mysterious pastor who was a problem. He had been there, and it wasn't his problem anymore. Or was it? But you don't say no to an old nun, to an old, favorite-teacher nun, to an old, never forgotten nun who knows how to track you down. Do you? Matthias didn't.

The ballpoint drew a series of thin red lines through the name so painfully yet carefully printed amid the much-inked squibbles.

"I'm not what I was," he said. Even he could hear the strangled tension in his voice.

"I know," she said, sudden, warm, sad compassion in hers. "I know," she repeated, without using the old name again. "None of us are.

Chapter 8

A Close Shave

Temple had never seen so many cats. Temple had never seen so many cats in cages. Temple had never seen so many different kinds of cats.

She stood north of downtown in the middle of one of the Cashman Convention and Sport Complex's loftiest, sparest exhibition halls, a vast concrete-floored vault echoing with excited human and feline voices in ear-splitting counterpoint.

Rows and rows of tables bore rows and rows of steel-mesh cathouses, so to speak. These were not the pastel canvas carriers allotted to the likes of Savannah Ashleigh's pampered Persian, Yvette. These were outright cages of metal mesh, but the proud owners and breeders had added homey touches.

Blue-gingham curtains swaged the first cage front that Temple paused before. Within, a matching gingham-covered pillow harmonized with a powder-blue plastic litter tray in the cage's opposite corner.

Amid this gingham glory reclined a huge, snub-nosed, vanilla-haired cat with chocolate-brown fur frosting the tips of its muzzle, legs and tail. The creature lay in slit-eyed feline repose on the bare space between the pillow and the litter box, its plumy tail lashing the water dish now and then like a languid, furbearing metronome.

Temple pulled her glasses from her ever present tote bag to read a card affixed atop the cage: LAZY H Farms, Home of Champion Himalayans. Stud Service Available.

The comatose cat opened eyes as breathtakingly azure as . . . oh, Lake Mead, or maybe even Paul Newman's electric baby-blues. Then it yawned hugely with slow and practiced expertise. Presumably this was a recumbent stud from the appropriately named Lazy H. It certainly resembled a sultan of the cat world. Even Midnight Louie had not mastered such studiedly sublime hauteur.

Temple cringed interiorly. One look at these purebred pussycats and Louie's mongrel origins were too obvious to overlook. These cats had class, had pedigrees, and had price tags high enough to require life insurance.

Temple left the unruffled tomcat and strolled down the aisle, peering into cages and studying cards. Some cages were shimmers of royal purple lame draperies; a few favored organza in the color orange. Pink tulle dusted the harsh grid of many a steel cage, while the pussums within displayed a blase feline resignation to captivity and competition that Temple couldn't imagine Louie adopting for one moment.

Cleo Kilpatrick, Electra's cat-breeding friend who had obtained Temple's visitor's pass, rushed over after attending to her row of cages. "What do you think?"

Temple gazed around and shrugged. "Impressive. But I haven't seen one . . . human-looking cat, if you'll pardon the expression, since that little black one in the cage at the entry."

Cleo, a fortyish woman smartly attired in a T-shirt with a spangled leopard rampant across her substantial chest, shook her carefully frosted head. "That's the Humane Society stand. They try to place their more attractive homeless cats at the shows. We give them free space."

"Terrific, Uh, What kind of . . . cat? . . . is this?"

Cleo leaned inward to study the animal in question. "Oh, that's a very rare cat, but it's not a recognized breed."

"It does look ready to be sauteed or something. I've never seen a cat look so much like a plucked chicken."

"It's supposed to. That's a Sphinx."

"It looks more like a naked lunch." Temple shivered in sympathy. "Isn't it cold without any fur?" she asked sensibly.

"No . . . a Sphinx's body temperature is four degrees higher than the ordinary cat's. Most owners keep them in sweaters when they're not on show."

Temple gingerly bent to study the creature's hanging creases of greige skin at flanks and chest. "That furrowed forehead is so sad. Seeing a naked cat is awfully shocking. And the ears are so big. I keep thinking of Dumbo."

"Have you ever seen your own cat wet? He might look as spindly as this one."

"Not Louie," Temple swore with conviction.

"Anyway, the Sphinxes are here just as a curiosity. They don't breed true."

"So they're a genetic freak?"

"An anomaly," Cleo said quickly. No negatives to anything feline were permitted anywhere near a Fancy Feline fancier. "That's how some of today's most prized breeds began, with one oddball kitten in a litter that was carefully bred and cultivated."

"I certainly can cultivate some print exposure for this poor, overexposed kitty," Temple said. "Where is the woman Electra told me about, the one who got the threatening phone calls before the show opened?"

"Threatening?"

"Hisses sound pretty sinister, absolutely viperish."

Cleo just laughed. "You haven't been around cats much, have you? Cats hiss plenty if provoked. I think Peggy is imagining things, or else someone she irritated recorded a cat fight and is playing it over her phone."

"This Peggy irritates a lot of people?" Temple asked, dutifully following Cleo as she wove between tows to the big central aisle.

Cleo stopped, allowing Temple to stare pupil to pupil with a huge, long-haired white cat that resembled a snowy owl with great gold eyes. She expected it to cry "Who?" at any moment.

"Everest Sweet Snowball Heavenly Hash," Cleo rattled off automatically as she gazed fondly on the gigantic feline.

"Champion Persian male. Two years old, great doming, they call him 'Hash' for short."