Кэрол Дуглас: Cat In An Aqua Storm

“Is he purring or shaking?” this female Dr. Death inquires, laying a bony hand upon my shoulders. I do not think much of her diagnostic skills. Any fool could see that the frigid air-conditioning is giving me an ague. This doctor doll reminds me of every villainous or supposedly expert human female known to man or tomcat.

"I doubt he has seen a vet before," Miss Temple hazards, rightly. "He is a stray I found. He used to be unofficial house cat at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel on the Strip.”

“Hmm.”Dr. Cruella flicks back my eyelid so that all I see is her hairless hand before my eyes, then pulls my jaws open and leans forward to inspect my teeth. "This big guy is lucky that he was not picked up and sent for a three-day stay at the Hotel from Hell—the animal pound.”

My tail lashes while I weigh the benefits of sinking a fang into the vet’s disgusting, white nose so temptingly within reach. Miss Temple Bar would no doubt find such behavior, however much an act of self-defense, embarrassing, so I restrain myself. I permit myself a low, warning wail, however.

"Eight, maybe nine years old, I would say.” Dr. Imelda narrows her eyes. "Nice shoes," she adds approvingly, glancing at my erstwhile friend's feet. She presses my palm until my digits spread. “Nails could use clipping. You ever do that?"

"Only my own,” Miss Temple answers.

“Well." The vet sticks a cold hand under my nether parts and pulls me to a standing position. I have never been so humiliated in my life. “He will need all his shots, of course. He is a bit old for declawing, but we could neuter him at the same time. Do you let him outside?”

“Actually, Louie lets himself out."

“Oh?”

"I leave a small bathroom window open. If I do not, he has been known to unlatch the French door to the patio.”

“Quite a talented scamp,” Dr. Frankenstein’s smarter younger sister says with a feeble laugh that I do not like. “And he will have to go on the latest scientific formula diet, of course. The out-of-shape senior variety."

I twist angrily out of her grasp and berate her with a few choice words, which she ignores as if they were Urdu.

Miss Temple Barr forlornly strokes my head. “I do not want to overwhelm Louie,” she says with the wisdom and sensitivity I have come to expect from her superior sort of person. “Just the shots and the food today.”

“But if he wanders, you cannot want him impregnating all the female cats.”

"No, but maybe he has slowed down.”

Fat, excuse the expression, chance.

“I really advise you to at least fix him," Dr. Ruth suggests with a cheerful leer. “If he goes out, he might need his claws, but he certainly does not need his procreative powers with four out of five kittens born doomed to die within a year.”

"No...” Miss Temple is waffling.

I huddle, preparing to hurtle atop the cabinet. When the two shout for help in retrieving me, I will bound down atop the rescuer's head, and be out the door before you can say "sold downriver.”

“At his age he could get pretty badly beaten up in a fight with another tom,” Dr. Demento says.

Name one! Or even a Dick or Harry who could cream my corn!

Miss Temple regards me in sad perplexity, even her perky red curls drooping.

“I have never seen him injured,” she says. “Maybe he is too big to get hurt.”

“Now that you have brought him indoors, he could spray the furniture. Males are messy, you know.”

Here I cannot restrain a snarl. I do not deny that I am a gentleman of the road, but my indoor manners are impeccable. Even outdoors I am a model of civic responsibility, and go out of my way to make my deposits beside, rather than on top of, the flora.

“Spraying...? He has not done that yet,” Miss Temple murmurs in my defense, but her tone is troublingly indecisive.

Clearly, some unmistakable action is required, and I take it. I yowl plaintively and rake my front fingernails across the gray Formica.

This protest shakes my little doll out of her funk. “Just the shots, please,” she says. “I will see about getting some special food on the way out.”

My triumphal self-congratulations prove premature when this Dr. Doolittle doll instructs Miss Temple Barr to “hold him.”

While I squirm, a series of indignities are performed on my posterior with a hypodermic that, while I cannot see it, seems about the size of the previously mentioned knitting needle.

“Does he bite?” this latter-day Madame DeFarge inquires a trifle tardily, removing her needle to pick up another.

Not the hand that feeds him, I think as I restrain my fury. Although, if Miss Temple Barr is planning on switching her current brand to the aforementioned scientific sludge for seniors, I may reconsider that resolve.

1

Electraglide in Black

Temple pulledtheaqua Storm into the shade of a spreading oleander bush and paused, her hands clinging to the steering wheel. The Circle Ritz’s condominium and apartment building’s white marble facade looked cool and calm in the blazing July heat.

She eyed the flat Timex watch that almost covered her wrist. Punctuality was essential to Temple’s work. She had no time for fancy, deceiving little watch faces that she couldn’t read accurately at a glance. Good. Only twelve-twenty.

She got out, clicked around to the passenger’s side and finally wrestled Midnight Louie’s carrier through the gaping car door. Her credit card might be a hundred and forty dollars lighter, but she could swear the carrier was heavier than before. Perhaps this was the result of passive resistance. Louie had been silent and ominously still all the way home from the vet’s.

Tilting to balance the carrier’s weight, she struggled toward the condominium’s back gate. Three steps took her into silk-searing sunlight. Temple could feel her hot pink top bleaching and the crown of her red hair fading to pink.

She was a tiny woman who didn’t like to be reminded of it, not even by herself. So she gritted her teeth and took one laboring step after another, counting each one. The high heels didn’t encourage efficient locomotion while toting overweight cats, but elevation was enough of an issue with her that she didn’t mind. Three, four, five steps... uh. Maybe Matt Devine was by the pool working on his tan and his physique, both already perfect, but why stop now? He could help her with Louie. No, she could make it herself. Eight, nine, ten steps. The gate. Ah.

She eased the case to the hot concrete and sighed as her shoulder joint assumed its normal alignment. The vet was right. Louie desperately needed a diet.

A distant droning she took for bees in the honeysuckle vine draping the pierced concrete wall grew louder. Temple frowned and eyed the cat carrier. Was Louie growling again? He had not accepted his trip to the vet in the best of graces. The noise increased into a surflike roar.

Temple peered through her sunglasses toward the side street as the roar crested, then slowed into a chatter. Something large, silver and meaner-looking than a robotic junkyard dog, Terminator-style, turned into the driveway and rolled directly toward Temple.