Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

I stare. I am being enjoined to silence, when I am the only silent one in this room.

Above me, the faithful humming continues unshushed. I stick my head out from under the table and eye my compatriots. All stare vacantly forward, some gazing directly at my night watchman. None see anything but their own faint reflections in the glass.

I look back to the panel the night watchman waits behind. His finger has left his lips. His hands are clasped before the darkness of his cape, clasped in supplication, in urgent supplication. Even as I stare, he suddenly sweeps open his cloak. I see a room lined with bookshelves. I see a lamp upon a table ... no, it is a bright spot upon a table, a pale, square bright spot, like an open luminous book, no, like the face of the machine Miss Temple uses to write upon and that I amuse myself with now and again by running over the keys. Without noise, books begin tumbling from shelves, and the old night watchman is laughing silently behind his beard and under the shadow of his broad-brimmed hat. Then the lighted screen dims, as it always does when it is turned off, but more slowly now, dimming like a day dims, when a whole sun must sink somewhere to make it happen ... and the night watchman is sad, downcast, so despondent that he dims with it. The cloak falls closed, the darkness outside is mere darkness, the lit screen is a memory as distant as the first fire.

And still the ninnies on the table hum their tuneless formula. Still they seek a phenomenon from Beyond.

I sit, pondering. Obviously, they did not see what I saw. Then again, I am beginning to think that I am as superior at seeing what is not there as I used to be at seeing what was there. In other words, I am better than they are, even at nothing.

Now the foolish felines begin to moan between their purrs. They sound like a 1973 Volkswagen starting, or thinking about it. Urrrr-rummmm. Urrrr-rummm. Uuuuur-eeee. Uuuur-eee.

Hurry?

Ouuuu-eeee. Ouuuu-eee.

Hurry Louie?

A spark snaps in the fireplace. I turn to look, not wanting my only escape hatch to go up in flames. But I spy only an old flame of mine, after all: Karma, the kibitzing ember. The spark dodges into the room and dances around yours truly, shedding no heat, but much static. My hair is soon whipped into enough peaks to pose as a Baked Alaska dessert, and I am forced to retreat to the high ground of the tabletop.

Once there, the demonic Karma buzzes me with shocks until I am herded back into place in the circle.

"Quick!" Ingram hisses at me through his fangs. "You are the focus of the invading spirit."

Oh, goody. First I am the "focus" of the electric eel of the Circle Ritz, that dominatrix of the light, Karma. Now I am soon to be zapped by some invading spirit. No, thanks.

Before I can shake my coat into shape again and make a break for the chimney, I am stopped cold by the clear sound of a spectral voice amidst the humming.

"Ooo-eee," it moans. Hollowly.

If you accept that "oooo-eee" is ghost talk for "Lou-ie," then I am one marked dude.

If, however, you are of my turn of mind that "ooooo-eeee" could mean absolutely nothing, then I have no reason to remain.

Before my paws can dig into the tabletop for a sudden dash, though, another light beams in the dark.

I wish that I could say that this was Karma's mean little spur of spark, or even my night watchman's spectral TV. But it is not. It is a huge green eye of the feline kind, slit up the middle, and it is looking right at me.

I am now paralyzed. Any cat big enough to own that eye must be the size of a leopard ...

no, of the Leo at the MGM Grand entrance, which is to say a couple of stories, give or take a few feet. It must be so big that, well, that a dude cannot see the other eye, because it is so far away!

While I stand there, frozen, my mind calculating mathematical possibilities, never the most efficient use of my brain cells, I hear the idiotic humming of the humbugs in the circle. If they are what is evoking this giant, staring feline eye, let them be quiet!

But then the eye blinks, and my breath bursts out at the same time, so I think I might have blown it out. No such luck. It is back, just as big again. Only the dark central strip, narrow as a wand, broadens and opens and through it walks--on all fours--a cat I swear I have not seen before, not until ittrods air all the way to the table, where it sits on its haunches about three inches above the actual surface.

What a pussycat! Nothing wrong about this dude, a marmalade torn who looks like a thousand others of the same stripe, including one of my acquaintance.

"Maurice?" I whisper.

"Right the first time," it notes with some satisfaction.

Then you are"--I cannot stop a small smirk of triumph from tweaking my whiskers--"dead."

"So they tell me."

I see that no mere Karma-spark has rubbed off on the dude, but that his orange fur is haloed by a corona of pure gold. This is an aura, and like the northern lights, it shifts. Could this dude make a mint on MTV!

"Sudden tragedy, huh?" I ask with all the sympathy I can muster, which is not much. This is the dude, after all, who had pretensions to the Divine Yvette.

"Tragedy, all right, and I want you to avenge me."

"Avenge. That implies something besides accident, veterinary error or ill luck did you in, buddy."

"Someone."

"Oho. Someone I know?" I mean only to be a little lippy, but I get a whole lot of lip back.

"Indeed. Some scum you know."

"I do not know much scum. Intentionally," I add.

"One ... Maurice."

"But... say, take a gander in some spirit mirror, buddy, if you have one where you are. You are Maurice."

"You sure got that right."

"So... since, from what you just told me, you are a suicide, there is not much I can do for you. You are a bit Beyond prosecution for your own death, if you get my meaning."

"My situation is not amusing." The spirit dude tongues his aura into place. "You are the only one who can avenge my restless spirit and allow me to enter Cat Heaven. Otherwise, I go to the Other Place."

'There is a Cat Heaven, really? What is it like?"

"I will tell you when I get there, which will be when you do as I say and avenge me."

"What about this Other Place I never heard of? What is it like?"

"Where dogs go. Need I say more?"

"No." I am aghast. Who runs this universe, anyway, that he/she/it would allow even a dead cat to go where dogs go? "Still, you pose something of a problem. If you are Maurice, and Maurice killed you, I guess you are one of those suicides that no one can help."

"No." The dude's aura snaps back to disorder. "I am Maurice One."

I blink.

"You must avenge yourself upon Maurice Two."

I blink again. But in the meantime, I manage to think.

"Then the current Maurice is Maurice Two, so if you are Maurice One and are dead--the lousy double-crosser killed you to get your job as Yummy Tum-tum-tummy spokescat!"

"He was my body double," Maurice One notes in a morose voice. "He was supposed to do the dangerous stunts and save my hide from unseemly wear and tear. Instead, he fixed it so one of those stunts killed me."

"Well, well, well. I have my own bone to pick with Maurice."

"I wish you would not put that in such personal terms."

"Sorry. You looked all there."

"We ... don an appearance that will not frighten those still among the living."

"Glad to hear it. I am frightened enough to think that I am about to displace Maurice Two as Yummy Tum-tum-tummy cat."

"I know that. Why do you think I am here? You are in a perfect position to avenge me."

"I am a private eye, Maurice, not an executioner."

"If you do not watch out for this killer, you will be his victim."

"On the other hand, a bit of prescient self-defense is always understandable, particularly when one has been tipped off by a reliable Underworld source. Perhaps I can make life so miserable for Maurice Two that he elects to get lost, permanently. By the way, did you mention where carp go? You know, after--?"