Carole Douglas - Cat in an Alphabet Soup

The shadow stretched up, up, up, lengthened itself against the fragile, breakable glass. It reached the knob, a lever-type French latch. The latch vibrated to a blow. Temple lifted her plaster peacock.

The shadow yawned. Moonlight reflected from a diamond shape of tiny white shark’s teeth.

“Louie!”

Temple unlatched her patio door. The shadow fell lazily inward and commenced to scrub its furred sides on her calves.

10

A Little Night Music

Y ou hear it here first.

I am free to come and go. And if anything is free, I take full advantage of it. I am not born and bred in Las Vegas for nothing.

As fond as I am of Mr. Nicky Fontana and his lithesome wife, Miss Van von Rhine, they are prone to understatement under stress. I have been free to come and go since I was a pup, figuratively speaking, and my dear mama batted my face and nudged me in the direction of the refuse containers behind The Sands.

Lest you think my dear mama was lacking in maternal sentiment, you should know that I was one of seven and we all got the heave-ho early in life. That is because our dear mama was something of a femme fatale and had no access to population control devices in those days when I was born.

So I have been slipping in and out of where I should and should definitely not be since I was knee-high to a police dog—and the police dog none the wiser.

Miss Temple Barr's delicate French-style latch is kit’s play to me, especially with the door unlocked and a terracotta pot to stand on. Speaking of which—kids, that is, in the human form, not the goat edition—that is why I show up here again.

In the long, jostling ride back to the Crystal Phoenix in Mr. Nicky Fontana’s custom-painted Corvette convertible, I am held in close communion with my two friends. It dawns on me that despite the scent of desert rose upon the Las Vegas breeze, Miss Van von Rhine’s ever-present aura of Opium and Mr. Nicky Fontana’s devotion to Russian Leather, a distinct odor of Essence de Diaper Pail yet pervades this formerly loving (to me) couple.

Anyone who might think that some soft spot in my ticker has led me back to Miss Temple Barr in her hour of need should keep in mind that Midnight Louie is a fall guy for neither man nor woman, and nothing human. ¿ Comprende ?

I simply see that my previous carte blanche run at the Crystal Phoenix must yet be shared with that abominable yowling, crawling intruder, and this is not to be tolerated. I require persons about me with the same level of intelligence, not to mention manual dexterity.

There can be no attempt to dissuade me with any argument that the Abomination “will grow up.” It is well documented with such creatures that this "growing up” takes an insufferable amount of time—not to mention money. I may have nine lives, but I am advanced enough along my longevity graph to avoid wasting any of them in fruitless endeavors.

I must admit that my reception at the Circle Ritz is all that I hoped for.

“Ah, Louie,” Miss Temple Barr murmurs in dulcet, rapt tones, much as Leslie Caron must have chirped off camera to my (some say) handsome human soul mate, Louis (pronounced “Louie”) Jourdan, in the movie Gigi in their fifties heydays.

Miss Temple Barr clasps me to her bosom. She fondles my head and cradles my weary body—it is a long trot from the Crystal Phoenix to the Circle Ritz.

She wafts me to the kitchen and casts slightly stale refrigerated tuna before my nostrils. She reconsiders and opens a fresh can of room-temperature sockeye salmon. This chick has possibilities.

She strokes me from dome to Gehenna and back again. I am one purrin' kitten. Also, lately I have been pondering the advantages of acquiring a retirement condo far from the Strip’s hurly-burly (mostly burly, when one considers the local “muscle").

Anyone can see it is clearly to my advantage to take an interest in the doings of Miss Temple Barr. I do not wish to gain an undeserved reputation for becoming a sentimental slob in my old age, but I am, as the top dogs at the Crystal Phoenix say not eight hours earlier, free to come and go.

And I foresee that matters of a mysterious nature will come and go around Miss Temple Barr for some time. She is, if I may be allowed to say so, as curious as a cat, but shockingly näive and in desperate need of seasoned guidance. Like mine.

And she smells good.

11

Catastrophe . . .

T emple awoke tofind the black cat sleeping on her feet. This gesture of affection was wasted in the hot afterglow of a long, tossing Las Vegas summer night.

Midnight Louie, however welcome back, was hot, hairy and heavy, about eighteen pounds. Come to think of it, Temple had only to add a zero to Louie’s avoirdupois and she’d have a pretty good description of the nocturnal presence of the Mystifying Max.

“Bastard!” Temple growled at the morning and Louie, following this undeleted expletive with an unexplained shiver.

“Guess what I’m going to do at work today,” she told the cat, extracting her feet from its warm underbelly. “I’m going to find out more about Pennyroyal Press and the late Chester Royal—just for the heck of it.”

The cat apparently approved of her resolve. He ate his seven-ounce can of spring-water-packed albacore tuna, from a fishery that abided by the new Geneva conventions for the preservation of dolphins. Then he freshened his whiskers and was waiting, sleek and expectant, by the door when Temple charged out of her bedroom dressed and ready for battle.

“Why not?” she asked nobody rather pugnaciously. “The convention center has thousands more square feet than the Crystal Phoenix, even if none of it’s that upscale. You can rule the roost—and the rats to boot. Come on.”

She was not surprised when the cat trotted out after her like a dog. Midnight Louie was obviously a feline of great enterprise and intelligence. First she stopped at Electra’s penthouse apartment one floor up to collect the surprise package that had been a-borning all night.

Electra, an insomniac who welcomed nocturnal projects, was baggy-eyed but not too worn to fail to admire Midnight Louie rubbing demandingly at her ankles. Apparently she had no objections to his presence. Readily abandoning his new fan, the cat followed Temple to the car.

After Temple had stuffed Electra’s huge paper sack in the Geo’s rear area, Louie hopped into the front passenger seat and braced his huge front paws on the dashboard like a pro. The Storm whipped through Vegas’s sparse morning traffic. Folks who’d been up until two and three in the morning weren’t out puttering around at 7:30 a.m.

When Temple and Louie slipped into the nondescript rear employee entrance to the mammoth convention center, Lloyd pushed his cap back on his balding cranium and narrowed his eyes to miniblind slits.

“Look, Lloyd. Midnight Louie’s a VIP around here now. Famous detective cat. You read it in the paper. He can come and go as he likes.”