Unknown - Douglas_Carole_Nelson_Cat_in_a_Jeweled_Jumpsuit_Bo

“Great. I always thought this was a purely natural phenomenon. What would Elvis be doing down a dark hole, anyway? All we have to do is drag this suit down by the elevator, and even the dimmest bulb should be able to figure out what happened, just as we have.”

“We. Right. Start dragging, Dad, and save some strength for the upward climb. I did hear you refer to me as your ‘daughter,’ did I not? When you thought I was missing?”

“I was, ah, calling for wa-ter. Not daughter. I thought you might have fainted.”

“Yeah, sure. Well, at least your roommate will have seen the last of Elvis on all fronts. I would definitely say that Elvis has left the building.”

cannot disagree.

We set off down the long, dark tunnel to the elevator shaft. It reminds me of a birth canal, though I do not often think of things like that.

We are halfway there when my left ear flicks back to catch a distant murmur of “Thank you, thank you verra much.”

I glance at Louise, whose sour puss is pointed dead ahead, ears unperked.

Naw

Tailpiece

How a Cat May Look at the King

If you ask me, Elvis, the world’s most famous draftee, may have been A-1 to the army, but he was 4F in life: literally crushed to death by fame, fans, floozies, and flunkies.

I have detected several similarities between the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll and my kind of cat, least of all our propensities to hang out in a streetlight in front of all and sundry and cut loose with sound, motion, and our natural erotic appeal to females of all ages, stages, and wages of sin.

First, we share very humble origins, but extraordinary pizzazz at making ourselves beloved by others. Elvis was never a street person like myself, but we were always loners with a vision of how we could rise far above our kind to become an idol and inspiration to millions. Okay, -thousands and thousands in my case, but I am not done yet.

Natural talent can be such a curse, always in danger of exploitation by others. Like myself, Elvis had touching trust in those who purported to assist him in his meteoric rise to fame and fortune. (Okay, so my rise is more mediocre than meteoric; close enough.) Elvis had his mysterious Svengali, a self-created illegal immigrant who put on a pseudonym and airs, Colonel Tom Parker. The so-called Colonel commandeered the King’s career at an early stage and helped himself to a much bigger share of the take than a reputable manager would.

I have my so-called collaborator, Miss Carole Nelson Douglas, who signs our contracts and handles the purse strings and catnip dispersion. It is assumed I have no interest or aptitude for the distribution of my own wealth. In fact, I am treated something like an ignorant and minor child, who must be “managed” for my own good.

Although our associations with our respective “partners” have been necessary and good for us at the onset of our careers, as time goes by our Svengalis have exercised far too much artistic control of our high-energy brand of performing genius that requires constant challenge lest it become boring servitude. Elvis was indentured to films and concert tours. I have my books and book tours, although my front woman takes over even there.

And then there is our endless attraction to the ladies. We cannot help that. We were born with that, although Elvis helped it along by adopting my hair’s own natural ebony coloration. So there we are: bigger than life, black, and beautiful. Add in our natural athletic ability and urge to take the spotlight, and you have a potent variety of catnip for dolls of all persuasions.

Speaking of nip, we even share the same failing. I too am mighty fond of a legally prescribed medicinal substance, which, if taken too intensely, can change my kittenish, lovable side so appealing to my friends and fans into cruel, predatory moods during which I lash out and bounce off the wall. I cannot help it any more than Elvis; it is a genetic predisposition.

Elvis always wanted to be a helpful authority figure. Early in life, he wanted to be a policeman, which accounts for his later habit of hanging out with the police and collecting badges—even via President Nixon, during one famous Elvis incident when he was pretty well smoked—and major personal armaments such as guns. Despite his own medication dependence, Elvis hated kids using street drugs and wanted to serve as an example to them.

I, of course, help homeless members of my own species through my Adopt-a-Cat tours. And I too am drawn to police work, although I walk the PI side of the legal beat, not being much of a dude for regulations, just like Elvis. Just like Elvis, I am often loaded with concealed side arms, only mine are of the edged variety.

In karate, which he loved for both its defense and mystical side, his fighting name was Tiger, and for a while he carried a cane with a ruby-studded head of a Big Cat.

Then there’s our shared mystical side and penchant for Eastern religion. Elvis was interested in the Autobiography of a Yoga and Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet and such. I am a follower of Bastet, an ancient and powerful goddess of the Egypt of the pharaohs, where the hot text is The Book of the Dead. We both have been ridiculed for exploring fringe religion, but the impulse is sincere, and that is all that is called for in religion. Unlike Elvis, I do not see any necessity for standing up and preaching, but then I have never had access to the amount of catnip he did. Personally, I prefer to keep the mysteries of Bastet just among us nonhillbilly cats.

Alas, I do not share Elvis’s enthusiasm for motorized vehicles, although I will resort to them when I must.

Nor do I have a raft of former associates eager to leak every detail of my life and times. Miss CND is bad enough with the occasional personal eccentricity she will detail in

my fan publication, Midnight Louie’s Scratching Post-lntelligencer. Did the world really need to know that Midnight Louie Jr. was taken for a girl when he first came to the shelter? This is a sore point with Elvis and me: we are both such gorgeous dudes that some envious types would use it to impugn our virility. This is nonsense! We also have been dogged by paternity suits and death threats.

I, of course, am completely innocent and still kicking. As for Elvis, anything is possible.

Very best fishes,

Carole Nelson Douglas Takes the E Train

Midnight Louie, Esq.

Have an Elvis sighting to report, or merely wish information about Midnight Louie’s newsletter and/or T-shirt? Contact him at Midnight Louie’s Scratching Post-Intelligencer, PO Box 331555, Fort Worth, TX76163

, by e-mail at cdouglas@catwriter.com, or visit the web page . Thank you. Thank you very much.

L-or me, Elvis was always inevitable.

His past presence hangs over the Las Vegas landscape like a ghost moon, visible day and night, night and day. He first peeked from behind the curtain when Elvis impersonators contributed to the climax of Cat in a Crimson Haze, the fourth Midnight Louie novel.

I was never an Elvis fan. My grade-school best friend and I swore that we’d never join the screaming hordes of teenyboppers making him such a sensation. Our Midwestern upbringing ensured that we’d disdain dangerous icons of sexiness (or sexual excess, or sexual liberation, pick your point of view) such as Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley.

Later I realized that Elvis’s musical influence had been truly extraordinary, but I still didn’t care for or about Elvis, though I knew I needed to know more about him to fully portray Midnight Louie’s Las Vegas.

In 1996, while on a Midnight Louie Adopt-a-Cat book tour of the Southeast, I had just enough down time in Memphis to race to Graceland via Gray Line tours. I joined the milling throngs in the souvenir plaza and donned headphones for a self-guided tour, feeling like a fraud among the faithful. The fabled house and grounds surprised me; so ordinary, really. I most vividly remember a painfully thin horse in the pasture behind the grounds; very old or ill, for no tourist attraction would abuse an animal. Was this some frail survivor or descendent of Elvis’s horse-riding kick of ‘66? A last witness to his final spurt of happy (and expensive) enthusiasm before he turned totally inward into a paranoid kingdom of obsessive karate, mysticism, megalomania, prescription drugs, guns, and badges? At the Meditation Garden Elvis loved, filled with flowery floral and written tributes, I was impressed despite myself by the numbed silence of fans who filed past the engraved tombstones set into the ground. Here lay Elvis, his beloved mother, his ineffective father, and his ever-present paternal grandmother. He called her Dodger. As a kid he once threw something at her and she ducked so it missed. No doubt that Elvis inherited his mother, Gladys’s, notorious temper. Even there, though, I remained an unbeliever in the temple of another faith. Not even the sober contemplation of death could make me a pilgrim to Graceland.