Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

"That, my dear, is not just any ordinary house cat. Don't you recognize him?"

Temple eyed the outsized tiger-striped animal. It was big enough, and blase enough, to be a male used to cat competitions, but why should she recognize some cat-show regular?

Cleo burst into sudden, and vapid, song. "'If it's whisker-lickin' yummy, it's Yummy Tum-tum-tummy.' "

Temple looked at her as if she had momentarily succumbed to cat-scratch fever.

"You know, the TV cat-food ads, For the Yummy tum-tum-tummy brand. Maurice is the spokescat. We're lucky to have him here in person."

"Right," Temple eyed the dignified animal again. The only thing she could picture him doing with a bowl of Yummy Tum-tum-tummy was burying it. She bent down, bringing her fuchsia framed glasses right up to the cage. "He looks almost as big as Louie," she observed.

Maurice blinked and twitched his large pink nose.

Temple had never cared for tiger-striped cats, but this one had a tiger-sized nose. Louie's nose, on the other hand--or head--vanished into the unremitting black of his expression, against which the tracery of his snow-white whiskers was as delicate as the strokes of Chinese lettering.

"Hey, my cat's cuter than this one," Temple concluded, unbending.

Cleo smiled with weary recognition. "That's why we have a household-pet category; everyone says that. This fellow was a stray under a death sentence at the animal pound when his trainer picked him up. Temperament's the thing when it comes to on-camera cats. Would your cat do well under lights?"

"I don't know. He's pretty laid-back when he wants to be, especially on my best silk dresses." Temple eyed the catatonic Maurice again. "Do they give them tranquilizers?"

"Strictly forbidden," Cleo said, shocked, "At least at cat shows, I don't know what they do on camera."

"Probably coax this fellow to perform for pellets of Free- to-be-Feline," Temple speculated glumly. "That's probably what Maurice, the Yummy Tum-tum-tummy cat, does cartwheels over. My cat won't touch the stuff."

"Free-to-be-Feline is a lot better for him," Cleo said sternly, moving on down the row.

A shriek of alarm halted both women in their tracks, Cats' ears flattened all around them. A second shriek--this one more a horrific wailing--echoed through the concrete vault.

Cleo was running toward it.

"What's happening?" Temple asked breathlessly, her tote bag banging against her ribs and hip and her high heels as brittle on the concrete as sleet.

Cleo turned as she ran, her half-glasses pummeling the glitzy leopard face on her chest. "l hope it's not-- Golly, that's the direction of Peggy Wilhelm's setup!"

Other people were rushing toward the screams. Cleo and Temple were at the head of a pack. Temple glimpsed cats milling in their ruffle-draped cages, cats crouched in cage corners, giving low, eerie growls. Cats . . . hissing.

It wasn't hard to tell who Peggy Wilhelm was. She was the buxom, brown-haired woman clutching a semi-naked cat, pacing like a tiger in front of her cages with a face frozen in shock and outrage.

"What happened?" Cleo demanded as soon as she and Temple made an abrupt halt.

The distraught woman thrust the animal toward her and Temple as mute evidence, then just shook her head.

"Oh, my . . ." Cleo's face wrinkled in consternation and denial.

"What's wrong with her Sphinx?" Temple asked in a low tone.

"That's the problem," Cleo said. "Her cat isn't--wasn't --a Sphinx, it's been--"

"Shaved!" Peggy Wilhelm wailed, pacing like a bereaved mother cradling her lost child.

Temple studied the strange form. Along the hairless backbone and midsection, the cat resembled the Sphinx she had seen earlier, but it also reminded her of a Siamese with blanched paws that had been given a one-two pass with a U.S. Army hair clipper.

"What . . . was it?" she asked Cleo discreetly.

Not discreetly enough to escape Peggy Wilhelm's outraged ears. "A Birman," she wailed. "She was perfect. She could have been a contender, Grand champion."

Crooning cat people gathered around, their faces studies in helpless sympathy.

"Has she been hurt otherwise?"

Peggy hadn't thought to look. She had only seized her violated car and clutched it as close as possible. She examined the narrow legs, the stomach, and the face. The shaving job was not impeccable, leaving ridges here and there reminiscent of what Temple had been told was a curly-coated Rex.

A two-inch-wide swath denuded the top of the head to the tail tip; another crude slash narrowed the cat's middle like a cinch belt.

"No cuts, thank God . . . but she's out of competition for at least a year."

"Sounds like spite." Cleo said reluctantly. "Or rivalry."

"When did it happen?" Temple asked.

Peggy slowly replaced the cat in its cage, latched the door, and then regarded the cluster of people. Temple's interrogation seemed to have a calming effect.

"I don't know," she answered. "I set up at seven this morning, then brought Minuet and the others in. After that, I had to leave to help my aunt with her morning feeding--"

"Your aunt has a baby?" Temple couldn't help interrupting. Peggy Wilhelm herself looked well past fifty.

"Feeding of the cats, of course," Peggy explained irritably.

"She's too old to handle it herself. Anyway, I just got back and . . . that's what l found."

"What are they supposed to look like?' Temple wondered.

Peggy stepped away from the cage behind her to reveal a blue-eyed beauty with long, cream-colored fur, pristine-white feet and the soft, lavender-gray markings of a lilac-point Siamese on muzzle, tail and legs.

"Oh." Temple was in love again. It was a good thing she was already committed to Midnight Louie, unpedigreed nobody that he was, or she'd go home with a cat breeder's ransom in exotic purebreds, at least the long-haired variety.

"Such a shame," she said with new understanding.

Peggy Wilhelm just shook her head. "I had that coat brushed and powdered to sheer magic."

"Then the . . . assault had to have happened after you left at--"

"Eight or so,"

"--and now." Temple consulted her wristwatch, then the onlookers. "How many people were here between eight and ten-twenty this morning?"

Scattered answers came.

"A couple dozen, but we were all involved at our cages."

"Most of us were coming and going."

"Who was closest to Peggy's cages?" Temple asked. An awkward silence held while folks figured this out, and also figured out if saying anything would incriminate themselves or a neighbor.

"I was grooming my Smoke Persians at the end of the row," a large woman in an orange-velour sweat suit volunteered.

The vast majority of breeders were women, but not all of them.

"Are the cats' cages arranged according to breed?" Temple wondered next.

"No," Cleo said. "It's more interesting for visitors if the cats are intermixed."

"And probably more diplomatic to keep direct competitors from seeing each other's animals," Temple added.

"Would anyone notice someone who shouldn't be here messing with the cats?"

Heads shook in concert. Cleo took it on herself to explain again. "Everybody's focused on their own cats, their own cages, on getting everything ready. An astronaut in full gear could walk in here and de-whisker every untended cat in sight. We'd never notice."

Temple sighed. "Wouldn't the cat cry if it was being suddenly shaved by a stranger?"

Peggy Wilhelm shook her grizzled, tight-curled head. "These animals are trained to be groomed and handled--both by owners and strange judges."

"What can we do?" a tall, thin young woman in a red knit sweater asked.

"Nothing," said Peggy. "Now, just watch each other's stands so it doesn't happen again."

"Great." A tall man in a plaid sports shirt grimaced. "We don't even open until five P.M. tonight. Maybe we should start a crime-watch patrol, any volunteers?"