Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

"No, I can't say that I have, but then, I don't frequent gun shows," Temple answered with great virtue.

Matt only shook his head. "Well, from you, a rock- bottom 'No!' sounds much more definite precisely because you are so petite. Surprise is your best weapon. Use it."

"The mouse that roared."

"Exactly."

"What else can you teach me?"

"Well, the human body has two vulnerable areas. Can you guess what they are?"

Temple was at a loss. She felt vulnerable everywhere, especially since the attack.

"What's covered and protected in professional sports?" he prompted her in the approved style.

"For women? Nothing, unless they play men's contact sports. For men . . . heads, I guess. Faces."

"Good."

Temple paused. What she had to say next would not be polite. Especially to a priest, Jesus. Should she be a good student or a sensitive friend?

"What else?" Matt prodded.

Temple sighed. "Groins," That was better than balls, at least.

"Right," he said, not the least nonplussed.

He was all instructor now, and Temple saw that naked wasn't the best disguise; distance was.

"The human body has its limitations, because it's erect," he went on. "We can either lunge forward or retreat backward."

Matt mimicked those motions, making a mock dive for Temple and then retreating. "What happens?"

"If you attack . . . you drive forward and your face is vulnerable."

"And if you attack my face?"

She pantomimed his suggestion, her fingernails going for his eyes, and watched his upper body flinch away.

"You can step in," he prompted, "and--"

She stepped in, lifted a knee, jabbed with it, and then froze the motion. He was right. An attacker exposed either his face or his groin; he could not protect both. All Temple had to master was the willingness to attack one or the other with all the skill and power at her command.

Self-defense, she realized, was a dirty business. Almost as dirty as having no defenses at all had been.

After learning another dozen ways of turning an attacker into creamed corn, Temple retreated to her apartment to take a shower. She wasn't accomplishing a lick of work, but she had never been so busy.

Matt had insisted on getting to work in his usual fashion, so Temple dashed out again in the Storm solo, this time to the vet's to pick up Midnight Louie.

Dr. Doolittle was gratifyingly positive about Peter's prognosis.

"He's such a mild little guy," she said by the front counter, where Louie, looking as unhappy as Nero Wolfe on a forced outing to a five-and-dime, lay in lackluster disarray after he had been retrieved from the place's mysterious private regions. "What a shame someone had to sneak up on such a good-natured cat and commit mayhem."

Louie yowled plaintively at that, no doubt identifying with the injured Peter now that he had been shanghaied into blood-donor duty.

"As for this big galoot, give him lots of meaty food, maybe kidney and liver," Dr. Doolittle advised. "He'll need to rest and recuperate for a while."

Louie's ears had perked up at the mention of food. Temple feared that her battle to convert him to Free-to-be-Feline pellets had encountered another setback, this time on doctor's orders.

She pushed her tote-bag straps as far up on her shoulder as possible and then lugged Louie out to the car. She had to put him down to open the door. He stood twitching his back on the asphalt, looking groggy. She was afraid that he might take off in sheer disgust, but when she opened the passenger door, he hopped up on the front seat in the disconcertingly doglike way he exhibited at times.

"Well, Louie," she told him as she put the Storm in gear and backed out of her parking spot, "you missed a lot of exciting developments yesterday while you were at home lounging and today while you were taking a rest cure at the Veterinarian's. Now you'll have to stay put for a while longer. I think I'll shut your escape hatch until you've had a chance to recover your strength."

Louie blinked and curled up on the seat in a big, black ball. He really was such an intelligent, docile cat, Temple thought as she patted his ears.

Chapter 20

Blood Brothers

Granted I am weak in the knees from my involuntary blood- Letting at the House of Dr. Death. This does not mean that I cannot lift my head a little and do some brain work. Contrary to Miss Temple Barr's notions, when I am laying about is when I do my most intense cogitating.

As for the charge of "lounging" about yesterday, she is, of course, utterly unaware of my unofficial outing to the cat show. In addition, the mysterious blue ribbon she puzzles over when she brings me home is no mystery. The perceptive Electra Lark brought both me and it home, and by then I was in a mood to be transported, although I usually prefer my transports to be made in the company of a female of my own species, if have any say in the matter.

Nonetheless, people will believe what they will of me and my kind, and it suits me to be underestimated. I get a lot more done that way.

While I am sequestered behind the innocent facade of the veterinarian clinic, in what I can only describe as a kennel, redolent as that word is of my least favorite species, the canine kind, I do a little mild sleuthing.

How, you may ask, can Midnight Louie, flat on his side--well, not exactly flat; I do have a generous amount of muscle around my midsection---accomplish what Mr. Matt Devine and Miss Temple Barr have not achieved in running from pillar to post in a car all day'?

For one thing, thing I have reached an age where I know how to produce the most results with the least effort. This is an art, like myself, that is much underestimated in these hectic modern times. For another, I speak the lingo of the chief witness to the mayhem.

Poor old Pete is a little jaundiced around the gills, and he was yellow to begin with. He lies on his side, looking quite flat and pathetic, a tastelessly cheery lime-green bandage on his foreleg holding a thin, transparent tube in place. Through this elongated straw can be seen the slow, rich trickle of a ruby-red substance: yours truly's life blood.

Despite public opinion, I abhor unnecessary roughness, especially when it is directed toward me. And although I have drawn my share of blood in my day, I do not resort to fancy technology to do it. Yet I cannot begrudge the poor schmuck in the adjoining cage 'a second chance at life, especially when he is the prime witness to the bizarre goings-on in the shadow of the convent. So I interrogate him gently.

"Say," begin I in a growling undertone that the attendants are likely to overlook, it am a past master at passing for an innocent bystander in stir.) "Who did your nails?"

My breezy relerence has all tour oi his limbs twitching, al- though only two were assaulted. Sometimes shock is the best incentive.

He spits weakly, and then asks, "Who wants to know?"

"Your blood brother in the cell next door; Midnight Louie is the name; crime is the game. What is the name of your attacker?"

"I am a pacifist," he says after a moment's silence.

"You are a pincushion," I point out brutally, "and unless you come clean and tell me the truth, who is to say that your pal Paul or some other neighborhood dudes might not get the same treatment or worse?"

"What can you do about it?" he demands in a thin, yet derisive voice.

"More than you can," I inform him. "Now talk."

So he does, oft and on, between visits from attendants. The story i squeeze out of him is not much help, it seems he was not accosted, but snatched. Only he says "abducted." These pacifist cats are somewhat unnatural. but everybody has a right to his political position.

This I find interesting. It betokens a crime of premeditation rather than of opportunity. Many a dude or doll of my type has been rudely run over--or more intentionally rubbed out--just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time: i.e., on the public street when a wacko of the human sort is feeling mean. Few have been the victims of premeditated mayhem. I will not speak of the unspeakable---of the attraction my species holds for the murderous actions of satanists and so-called scientists then and now. But there are less nefarious reasons that we might become victims of crime. The corporate cats, Baker and Taylor, were of the unspeakable---of the attraction my species holds for the murderous actions of satanists and so-called scientists then and now. But there are less nefarious reasons that we might become victims of crime. The corporate cats, Baker and Taylor, were kidnapped from a bookseller's convention to confuse a murderer's trail. I wonder if a scheme of the same sort is in play here and now.