Unknown - 22_Cat_In_An_Ultramarine_Scheme

And, Temple mumbled to herself, since when had there been an annual festival on Lake Mead with her name on it?

For a PR person to miss her own publicity was really humiliating.

Media Draw

Welcome home to the conquering hero.

I guess not!

Here I have been through a fatiguing trek to Arizona, for Bast’s sake, not to mention my roommate’s namesake place and event on Lake Mead, and I am scolded and locked in like a juvenile delinquent.

It would not sting so much had I not gotten a similar dose of dissing and moaning at my last stop before this.

The locked window does not curl my whiskers.

My Miss Temple flatters herself that I need her arms and two opposable thumbs to fly this coop whenever I please. The living-room row of French doors has horizontal pulls and latches that a kitten could open with its milk teeth.

The lamented, but perhaps not late, Mr. Max Kinsella had often warned Miss Temple about the doors’ flimsy security, but she had relied too much on my crime-fighting presence to take him seriously.

So I can blow this joint anytime I wish. It simply suits me to make like a couch potato and rest my burning pads for a while. Also, to run the watershed events of the past several hours through my weary brain.

Of course it was up to me to mastermind and pull off the “cannibal cats” routine. Three O’Clock had neither the imagination nor inclination to bestir himself, once I’d gotten myself out to Lake Mead and eyeballed his “find,” his “case,” his dubious “murder victim.”

Say it turned out to be Jimmy Hoffa. Now that would make multimedia news.

I have no such expectations, but I know that if I can rouse human interest in this odd piece of found art I can get us air-conditioned transport back to civilization. Obviously, the old dude cannot hoof it, or even move fast enough to hitch it.

My plan is risky, but the best ones always are. I mentally replay my favorite moments.

First, I pick up my sandy toes and trot to the neighboring hash house that is still solvent. The closer I get, the more succulent is the sniff of rare hamburger and well-done anchovies on pizza. My kind of buffet table.

Right now, though, I am only pretending an interest in the quick-fried cuisine. I am trawling for a sucker, preferably a kid or a middle-aged lady. Dudes are useless for my purpose.

I glance back to mark the spot I want to aim at by the black lump of Three O’Clock’s form. The sun is getting hot, and I do not want him to cook more than the ground beef here.

My nimble mitts quickly spar with my cheeks, giving my snappy white whiskers a tangled and bedraggled look, then I roll over in the sand several times before hitting the asphalt surrounding the café. Yowsa! Hot on the bare tootsies.

I suppose I could say I then “hotfoot” into the restaurant “like a scalded cat.”

No. I am too cagey for that. I duck under the nearest vehicle, where the tarmac is shady and cool. By darting from shade to shade, I am able to approach the exterior tables that afford a nice view of the sandy lonesome that used to be lakefront.

Perfect.

I scoot under the first family-of-five table I can spot. Even more perfect! There I peruse four sets of legs and a child’s seat with kicking tiny tennies barely below chair-seat level.

The sweet sound of kiddie fussing whines above my head. Below I see two sets of large ugly tennies and two sets that barely reach the floor, one accessorized with Hello Kitty pink anklets.

I manage not to toss my cookies at the sight of this supercute kitty face swinging in duplicate so close to mine.

I brush my furry puss on the slender bare leg between anklet and shorts.

A small face ducks under the table level, as if searching for something dropped. The mouth makes a silent elongated O.

It disappears, and a French fry plops down beside me. The grease smell almost knocks me over, and the big dollop of attached tomato ketchup could make an Italian greyhound nauseous. I pull back my whiskers and harf and garf the fry down, even though it is death to my cholesterol count.

Another follows. This one I grab and retreat out of reach to eat in patented Hungry Stray Kitty behavior, which says: You feed and I will eat but Touch Not the Cat.

By then the smallest foot set is beating its heels on the chair legs and screaming up a storm. I must say not even a Siamese cat can compete with a human toddler for range and screech effect when howling.

I look up from burping after downing the second fry to see my Hello Kitty friend crouching on the wooden boards, a grease-stained napkin tucked like a hobo’s kerchief into her ketchup-stained little hand. I even sniff hamburger.

Good girl!

No one is watching as I lure her tidbit-by-tidbit down the few steps and onto the parking lot. Now I am simply picking up the latest offering, another fry, and moving away, hunching over it, watching her approach. Just as she gets within reach, I pick up my fry and retreat.

Nothing is as determined as a nine-year-old animal-loving kid attempting to feed a poor, starving stray kitty.

I have her out on the Lake Mead sandlot and halfway to Three O’Clock’s position before the howling heel-kicker can take a breath for another two-minute aria.

Of course every eye in the place has been surreptitiously glued to the screaming Mimi, and the mortified parents are totally concentrated on trying to stifle the sound without doing anything that would bring in the child-protection agencies.

Meanwhile, they fail to notice that Daughter Dearest is decamping on the trail of a no-doubt filthy, diseased, or even rabid stray cat.

I hate to play on my kind’s totally bad rap or the touching humanity of children, but private dicks are always being forced to cross moral lines, if you go by the books and movies.

By the time I hear the hue and cry raised back at the restaurant veranda, Hello Kitty has forgotten feeding me and is busy watching Three O’Clock wash his whiskers beside the bizarre leg-bone setup.

Shortly after a half dozen hysterical people have assembled, my friend Hello Kitty is snatched up, up, and away, and cell phones are put into instant service.

My major hope is that the angered villagers do not get lethal and decide against leaving stray cats and concrete-imbedded leg bones of unknown origin to the authorities.

Thanks to the urgent lobbying of our friend Hello Kitty Anklets, the hysterical adults are persuaded to withdraw and leave bad enough alone.

Luckily, what is left these days of the electronic media arrives first to get the money shot: Three O’Clock and I licking our outstanding whiskers over the macabre mortal remains.

(I had a devil of a time convincing Three O’Clock to smack his whiskers. He said that was rude and the act of a “whippersnapper.”

I said, “No, it was the act of a whiskersnapper.”)

My next challenge was arranging for us to snatch a ride with a TV-station van back to Vegas, undetected, and before the well-meaning animal-rescue folks took us for mere stray cats and tried to “save” us.

Sigh.

Now my Miss Temple has again tried to “save” me from myself by locking me in. She thinks.

I tell you, being a superhero of your species is very frustrating work. Pleased to have finally safely stowed away Three O’Clock—for his sake and that of Greater Las Vegas—I now have a chance to rest my weary feet and mind, eat something that is not greasy, but desert-dry, like Free-to-Be-Feline, and catch a few Zs. As in Zorro! En garde, world!

The Guggenheim of Gangsters

Las Vegas had its “whales”—big spenders who dropped millions on the gaming tables and were treated like sultans for it.

It also had its architectural “whales”—hotel-casinos lined up along the Strip, each one grander and more expensive than the next and inevitably sliding into “old-hat, second tier” as heaver behemoths sprang up along the eternally elastic Strip.