Carole Douglas - Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

“Why should I be nervous or driving? You know the terrain, and I don’t.”

“You’re just too logical for the average guy. I love it, but I warn you that logic won’t work with the Barr family Front Four.”

“Your…brothers,” Matt guessed. “I know they’re all older, but why do you call them the Front Four?”

“Football nuts.” Temple sighed. “Then they go to lakes and do horrible things to innocent fish. Even in the dead of winter. They’ve been teasing me since I was born and haven’t stopped yet.” Temple recalled the joke emails from her brothers popping up occasionally on her cell phone. She knew they missed her, but, being boys, didn’t dare admit it.

“So you escaped.”

Temple nodded, not taking her eyes off the road. “It was all ‘harmless’ stuff, but I was grown, moved out, and on my second great job before I left the Twin Cities, and I still never was able to shed their ‘Little Sister’ attitude. Their really little sister.” She made a face.

“So you’re more nervous than I am about what our reception will be?”

“You shouldn’t worry. Mom’s on our side. Or yours, rather. And Dad’s automatically for anyone who is not tall, dark, and Max.”

“Max isn’t so bad.”

“ You say that?”

Matt shrugged. “Your dad only met me once in passing. How do I get a free pass?”

“He knows Mom watches The Amanda Show , and will probably run off with you if I don’t.”

Matt laughed. “I had no idea of the kind of pressure I escaped by being a blissfully ignorant of family matters during my sixteen years as a seminarian and priest.”

“Or you escaped by not meeting my whole family until now.”

“That Vegas hit-and-run dinner did its job in making me a ‘better than’ instead of an ‘also-ran’. Apparently the great and powerful Max Kinsella didn’t score too high with your parents and brothers.”

“Putting it mildly.”

Matt turned his head to view the neighborhood and hide a grin. Temple knew Matt, her Current and Committed, would always want to one-up Max, her Ex and…Exiled.

It was surreal to wonder if Max was in Ireland dodging stalker Kathleen O’Connor while she and Matt made a Romcom movie-like journey to her parents’ home to pave the way for their wedding.

“Pleasant neighborhood,” Matt commented.

Surprised, Temple surveyed the long and low sixties split-level homes that had always seemed bland to her as they glided past. “Compared to the close-packed two-story, nineteen-twenties brick two-flats your Chicago relatives live in, this is Super Suburbia,” she agreed.

Seen with new eyes, the expansive lawns were gently rolling and as green as envy. In fact, Minnesota’s lush emerald lawns were a prize asset. What a pain to mow all summer long! Temple wondered if her brothers helped Dad out these days, even though they were all married with children and lawns of their own to mow.

Oh, God. Children. She hoped that topic would not come up when her many nephews showed up tomorrow for Sunday dinner. Too much too soon.

A familiar string of brass numbers on a wrought-iron lamppost by the curb had her turning into the driveway in front of a two-car garage. Concrete stairs flanked by yew trees were now hosting a stream of large, looming, descending adults.

“The big question is,” Temple said, popping the trunk lid, tightening the combs on her zebra-print pillbox hat, and leaning in to give Matt a last, private comment as five tall male shadows surrounded the car.

“What sleeping arrangements will they assign us?”

17

The Midnight Louie Boogie

Now that the lovebirds are hundreds of miles out of my way, I can thoroughly investigate the midnight incident of slot machine madness without fear of my Miss Temple showing up.

Luckily, as night falls and maybe even knocks itself out, I find Miss Midnight Louise at the nearby police substation where Ma Barker’s clowder is based.

“Why are you sticking so close?” I ask.

“I fear,” she says, “we need to investigate the underground gambling hell from which those antiquated slot machines were imported and exported in a matter of only hours last night.”

“Maybe you have hit on it, Louise. We witnessed some sort of traffic in antique gaming machines.”

“Whatever was going on is crazy,” she concludes.

I cannot disagree, so we trot the few blocks to the old building and slip through the broken slat in the padlocked rear basement doors that allowed the slot machines in and out hours ago. It is hard to imagine the stomp of work boots up from the dark regions below on these deteriorated stairs, but is maybe why they are in such bad shape. The slot-machine parties have been held here before.

The night is ours, in its customary still, dark condition. This is when we creatures of darkness—bats, cats, rats, owls and opossums—come forth to explore. Or hunt.

I must admit that my long domestic routine with Miss Temple Barr has made me a bit weary in the middle of the night. Since both of her suitors had night jobs, we all had to stay on the same page, as they say, and retire in the wee hours.

I let Miss Midnight Louise lead on our path down into the lower depths, now that the slot machines have been returned to the obscurity they had so long ago earned.

We slink down the shambling stairs at the building’s rear, step by step, stealthy pad by stealthy pad. We are a moving whisper in the night. Unseen and unthought of.

Such lesser lights as Punch and Katt and the moneyman Leon Nemo would never linger here, with dawn only an hour away.

Yet the very ebb of night is prime time for our kind. Louise pauses to let me lead now. Earlier, I explored the slot-machine-spewing basement briefly, and noted that many locked storage rooms line the space. I had assumed the most recent residents, antique mall purveyors, each had possessed a basement storage facility. I had not realized that vintage Las Vegas slot machines would be a major collectable.

Three steps down, Louise puts her chin on my shoulder and curls her shivs into my manly flank. Such an affectionate pose is highly unlikely from her. I detect a subtle shiver of anxiety. “Louie. I sense something is not right.”

She almost always calls me some scathing derivation of “Pop” or “Dad”.

“What?” I ask.

“I do not think we are alone down here.”

“Of course we are not alone. There are random rats and mice eating away at any of the storage room contents that are edible. Or not.”

“ Hmm ,” says Louise, “perhaps we could eat away at the rats and mice.”

She cannot fool me. She is totally addicted to the Asian sushi offerings of Chef Song at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel. I am the Great Black Hunter, who once subsisted and feasted on the chef’s prized koi pond residents. Now I am planet friendly. I dine on kibble and people food, which is getting more politically correct by the month. Soon I will be surviving on moth and marigold.

Still, my whiskers tremble to a waft of insubstantial air, the mere murmur of other times and other faces. Karma is not the only feline phenomenon who can channel past hauntings.