Martin Greenberg - Catopolis

I wasn’t paying attention to the passing of time. My mind whirred with a mix of hopeful and horrid possibilities.

Maybe I could slip by the guards in the morning, when they opened the door to present me to the Humane Society. Maybe I could dart out between their legs and out the back and return to the safety of Little Italy.

Then I could hear the boss play

Tony’s Spring and Summer and Winter again, and promise to go after Tony’s Fall once more. Just a few less tortellini helpings, and I’d be able to fit through that duct.

The godawful crap-rap music started up again, Forty-Cent wailing about a woman who dumped him. I closed my eyes and shook my head and tried my best to imagine the boss’s talons and tail tip tickling the ivories.

The music came louder, and I paced, bumping into this and that. Suddenly the door opened, and one of the wainscot dusters flipped on the light switch and stared at me, the dim light of the hall haloing a head of bushy hair. I took only a heartbeat to register his kind face and thin lips, and then I was through his legs.

“I need to find some turpen… cat!” He said something else, but I couldn’t hear it over the cacophony of rap, which was loudest in the main hall, where the other three were now working.

The cleaning men didn’t notice me this time, so intent on bobbing their heads in time with the crap-rap and polishing the cases and the floor.

I shot up the stairs.

A great part of me thought I should instead look for an exit… right this very moment. Forget

Tony’s Fall, as I’d already taken a fall for trying to nab it. Get out and tell Luigi it couldn’t be had, not this time and not at this museum. There was too much security. I wouldn’t tell him about the too-narrow ducts, which were no doubt in violation of some building code. I should turn around and hover at the back door, wait for the cleaning men to finish and open it and head toward their van.

I’d pad back to Little Italy.

But I was, above all else, loyal to the boss. No one tells the Don they’ll do something and then doesn’t do it. And I’d told him I’d go after

Tony’s Fall.

And so that’s just what I was doing.

I don’t know where my energy came from, maybe birthed from mind-numbing panic. I didn’t want to be caught again; in my heart I knew a trip to the Humane Society wouldn’t be humane, not for an aging overweight cat like me. It’d be the needle.

Thoughts of the needle spurred my paws faster.

A moment more and I was at the top of the stairs and slipping to the side of the closest Red Priest display case. The security man who’d nabbed me earlier was there, along with another short fellow in a similar uniform. They were picking up the shards of glass. The short one stopped and talked into a little radio he pulled from his pocket. I didn’t pay attention to the conversation; my heart was hammering so loudly I could barely hear Forty-Cent shouting the lyrics from the boombox below.

The glass shards they collected glimmered in the pale lighting of the hall.

So much glass.

A pity I was responsible for the mess. I glanced around. Only the two guards; it wasn’t a terribly large museum, and so probably this pair constituted the entire night force. There would be many more people working here come morning. Through a trio of narrow windows on the east wall I saw that it was late, the sky black and moonless and filled with a scattering of stars.

I waited.

And after several minutes I slunk around behind the display case. The guards were moving; one of them picking up a bucket filled with the broken glass. They’d made no attempt to secure

Tony’s Fall, but I was certain that would be taken care of before the doors opened in the morning.

“Damn music.” This came from the one who’d caught me. “Wish they would play something else. Boz Scaggs, Elton John.”

“Country,” the short one said. “I like Gretchen Wilson, and that blond from Sugarland, and a little Faith Hill thrown in for good measure. Now that’s music.”

Did none of them have any taste? What the boss played was music. Real music. He produced notes so sweet and Italian that they didn’t need someone singing along to dilute them.

“Got someone from Consolidated Glass coming in a few hours.” Again, my once-captor spoke. “We’ve gotta get this case fixed and hooked to the alarm system before breakfast. Gotta get the cleaners up here one more time for another pass with the sweeper.”

“Martina McBride has got pipes, I tell you. Heard her once at the county fair grounds. Dolly, she’s okay, too.”

“Nah, Bruce Springsteen.”

The security guards continued their discussion of modern music as they finished their tidy of the room. Each took a different hall away from the gallery, and I took the shortest path back to the broken display case. With no alarm to worry about, I leaped onto the top counter, my leg muscles still fueled by fear of the Humane Society’s needle. I had to roll the sheet music up again, and this time I secured it with two ribbons. Then I was down the stairs again, and quick to hide behind a suit of plate mail.

I tried to catch my breath-a difficult thing to do considering my chest felt tight and on fire, my mind remembering the security’s guard hands squeezing my well-padded ribs. Someone was running a vacuum cleaner. I couldn’t see it, but I saw a long, red cord plugged into the wall that meandered like an old snake down a corridor. There was wainscoting along that hall, and a man was polishing it. That left two unaccounted for. But they had to be nearby, that jarring hip-hop refrain was echoing off a wall, a woman’s voice this time. Her rhythmic wail felt like pins against my sensitive ears.

Once more I thought of that lethal needle.

I flexed my claws nervously, unsure of what course I should take. Then indecision was ripped from me; the security guards were coming down the stairs.

I summoned all the strength remaining in my fatigued muscles and sprinted across the floor, slipping and sliding over the fresh wax and nearly caroming into a suit of samurai dragon armor. One of the guards must have spotted me, my original captor, I’ll wager. I barely heard his shout above the woman rapper.

“That cat!”

My chest and legs burned, my heart hammered even faster, and my paws somehow found just enough purchase so I could speed down the hall and past the hated janitor’s closet… and then through the back door that one of the cleaning men was opening. I thought he smiled at me as I galumphed past.

I didn’t wait to see if anyone else spotted me, though I knew I should have. I took a risk heading straight back to Little Italy with my hard-won prize. What if one of the security guards had followed me? What if I had led someone straight to the Italian restaurant and to the wooden stairs at the back that led up to Luigi’s spacious apartment? What if they’d discovered the rest of Tony’s Seasons hidden there and confiscated all of them?

But that didn’t happen. I was “free and clear,” as they say.

Sitting outside the door, I closed my eyes and thanked God and Bast that this fat cat burglar had escaped unscathed. I must have dozed or dropped off from sheer exhaustion, as when I opened my eyes the sky was lightening and full of birds. I heard a car horn, and then another.

I scratched at the door, still holding the ribbons in my teeth. After a moment, the boss let me in. I deposited the sheet music at his feet in much the same manner as one might drop a treasure at the toes of a human.

He grinned.

“Come, Vinnie,” he said. “Let me order you something fine to eat. I will play this for you while you decide what you want.”

He reverently carried the music to the piano and unrolled it, settled himself on the bench, and looked at me.