Douglas, Nelson - Midnight Louie 05-Cat in a Diamond Dazzle

"He's a landscaper. Really into xeroscape--native water-sparing plants. I worry about melanoma, out in this hot sun so much. I make him wear sunscreen, nag him about hats. He hates hats."

She nodded. She hated hats, too, almost as much as she loved shoes.

"And then I think--" Danny made a self-deprecating face. "Hey, at least what he does has a life beyond a few hours on stage. If he dies--when he dies--there won't only be a grave to visit. There'll be all those scrubby little, ecology-saving cactus corners to drive by every day. ..."

"I'm sorry," Temple said, voice breaking and eyes welling. She disguised her emotional downfall by hugging Danny.

His reciprocal hug nearly cracked her ribs. "You've got heart, girl." His voice was raw. "Don't you let anybody break it."

Easier said than done, Temple thought, especially when she herself seemed bent on imperiling it.

Chapter 23

Catfood vs. Dogmeat

I like to consider myself a pretty liberated guy, despite the usual hoots at that idea from the Midnight Louise corner. (And why, do you suppose, would such a liberated little doll keep a name that is a rip-off of her unesteemed pater familias felinus?)

Still, I must admit that some modern-day scenarios are enough to turn a few of my muzzle hairs gray, and I do not need any artificial assistance in that area nowadays.

Scenario is exactly the word to describe the situation that has made a successful takeover bid on my mind these days, to the exclusion of such usually distracting and juicy subjects as Chef Song's koi pond and Miss Temple Barr's latest murder victim. (Although she and I share living quarters, we also share a penchant for dead bodies; we differ only in how they arrive in that state and what we desire to do with them afterward. Miss Temple is consumed by the cause and effects of said dead condition; I cause the condition and consume the effects. Except for these wee differences, we have much in common.) In the case of human demise, I can confine myself to pure curiosity: death as an intellectual exercise. This is why I have been so useful to Miss Temple during her homicidal adventures.

But these days I have little appetite for the quick or the dead of any species, even the slow of paw and fin. I suffer from emotional indigestion, and the reason is simple: the ladylove of my life, the Divine Yvette, is pussyfooting up the stairway to stardom with some other dude.

That he is a well-known media figure is yet another claw in my coffin.

So while Miss Temple noses around below-stage, having put herself into the unenviable position of Incredible Hunk playmate, I play games of a different sort in a sequestered ballroom at the Crystal Phoenix. There the Divine Yvette is going for the animal acting Oscar by waxing enthusiastic over the latest Incredible Gunk designed to catch the feline fancy.

If the script calls for her to throw cat fits over co-star Maurice, she will be a natural for the Incredible Acting award.

I find my way onto the closed set by braving the kitchen during breakfast hour, under the cover of every stainless steel cart in sight. Should Chef Song spy me eeling beneath these low-lying islands of safety and concealment, I would lose more than a few loose hairs. His meat cleaver would give my coat a center-part so deep that I would develop a permanently split personality. And my nine lives would be down to four and a half and counting.

But in the kitchen at rush hour, omelets and pancakes are sizzling off the stovetops faster than hundred-dollar bills off the wad of a Texas poker player. All the white-coated figures are flying around looking up, not down.

"A hair!" Chef Song suddenly solos like a demented Barber of Seville, bending over the yellow fluff of an omelet. "Short and black. A moustache hair. Who has not shave?"

I has not shave ... and I has not stayed long enough for the lone hair to come home to me. I am through the swinging door into the back service halls that connect with every hotel ballroom and restaurant. Via the same hip variety of door, I am into the Lalique Ballroom and under a floor-length tablecloth before you can spell Esiuol Tghindim frontward.

Only my nose and eyes peek through a tea rose-pink linen tent. I view the expected horrors: the blackened spaghetti of thick electrical cables; the restless, high-heeled feet of Miss Savannah Ash-leigh; the pungent sneaker-clad tootsies of the camera crew; the Italian loafers of the director; the wingtips of the watching catfood muckety-mucks; and the pink canvas carrier of the Divine Yvette.

I see no sign of transport for the loathsome Maurice, but I know he is lurking somewhere.

Meanwhile, I shimmy from tablecloth tent to tablecloth tent until I am within whisker-distance of Miss Savannah Ashleigh's ankles. These are not the dainty appendages of my own little doll. Miss Savannah Ashleigh is no tenderfoot. Her ankles are tanned to within an inch of their epidermis, but the varicose tracks of blue veins deface the landscape nevertheless. I know Miss Temple would want a full description of Miss Savannah Ashleigh's footwear, were she here, so I overcome my distaste to examine the area further. There is no doubt that Miss Savannah Ashleigh has a taste for flashy shoes. The current pair are oil-slick patent leather that zip up the back of the heel and the so-called throat of the vamp.

Given that her spike heels tower at least an inch higher than Miss Temple's most elevated pair, the bony, blue-veined Ashleigh feet look forced into the shoes. Her insteps bulge like Cinderella's stepsisters' feet. All in all, a most unappetizing sight, normally unworthy of comment, did I not have a moral obligation to consider my roommate's interests before I focus on my own.

Speaking of which, Miss Savannah Ashleigh does. Speak, that is. Of the Divine Yvette.

"What are you doing with that stick?" she demands in a voice both low and breathy.

Mr. Italian Loafers spins on the soft carpeting. "It is a toy to encourage your cat to perform for the camera."

"Yvette does not play with such cheap diversions. They do not interest her."

I see a turquoise ostrich plume spin near the carpeting. I agree that the color is cheap and obnoxious, and that I would much prefer the natural feather, attached, in fact, to its natural ostrich. Size is not a factor for Midnight Louie. However, it is all I can do to restrain myself from dashing out of cover and clawing that feather flat.

Apparently I am not alone. A silver shape vaults out of nowhere to clutch for the feather. The Divine Yvette, despite pedigree and petite size, is quite a stalker. In fact, she is adorable when she is mad. I watch her fierce face bare tiny fangs as her dainty velvet mitts swat the feather-on-a-stick to smithereens. Well, perhaps feathers cannot smash into smithereens, but turquoise curls fly like emigrees from a Ginger Rogers ballgown.

It is all I can do not to sneeze, which would be disastrous.

"Tacky, tacky," frets Miss Savannah Ashleigh.

I am surprised that she is not looking at her feet instead of the Divine Yvette. She rises and moves nearer the camera.

"And what are those... grass clippings on the rug?" she wants to know next.

Mr. Italian Loafers shuffles. "Ah, something to make kitty happy. Catnip."

"Catnip? You are supplying my Yvette with a mind-altering substance? Get rid of it at once! She has never had anything herbal other than a bit of organically grown rye grass now and then, and my Boston ferns."

"It is just a little nip, Miss Ashleigh." The loafers do a soft shoe of irritation on Miss Van von Rhine's finest broadloom. "It relaxes them. I have done dozens of animal commercials--"

"That is obviously your problem," Miss Savannah Ashleigh interrupts. "Yvette is not an animal."

"Animal companion commercials," he revises through gritted teeth, trying for a more politically correct term.