Carole Douglas: Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

The King is dead. Long live the King. Live and in person! News flash: It lives! Even the word "lives" is just a mixed-up Elvis.

He laughed, and hummed a few bars of "It's Now or Never"while surfing the babbling channels over and over and over. The place was dark as a tomb, and freezing cold. He couldn't tell day from night.

He had always liked it that way.

Chapter 1

The King of Rock and Roll 'em!

I am taking my ease in the living room of Miss Temple Barr's flat at the Circle Ritz apartments and condominiums, a snazzy fifties joint built like a four-story black-marble hockey puck. In other words, it is round, and therefore definitely not square.

You could say the same about me.

Miss Temple has shut all the miniblinds to dim the chamber, and is now cursing the darkness because the VCR is not working and she cannot see to correct the problem.

I myself have never troubled to keep up with these new-(angled devices. Remote controls and answering machines are as much as I care to deal with. So although she is invoking my name—along with those of others often employed in such circumstances, such as "for Pete's sake, for the love of Mike" etc.—I know that she expectsno more help from my quarter than she does from the ever-absent Pete and Mike.

“Two stars in the building is one too many," she grumbles, punching buttons that punch right back by refusing to stay depressed. "The Mystifying Max's greatest sleight-of-hand trick on or off stage was making this zippety-doodah machine work! Where is the man of the house when you really need him?”

I am right here, where I always am—when I am not off on my investigations—ready to absorb all gripes. But operating VCRs is not in my contract, not even when I am the partial reason for the technological trials I see unfolding before me.

`There!" MissTemple sits back on the parquet floor with a satisfied sigh. "Better watch, Louie. You are up first!”

That is only the natural order of things, so I stretch, yawn, manicure my nails, and scratch behind my ears.

“Do not turn your head away," she beseeches. "Your segment is coming up.”

Yes, I see that my rear appendage is lofting to great advantage. . . .

“Louie! You are on!”

I am forced at last to play couch potato and turn to view the television screen. It is rerunning the ending of my least favorite show, Sabrina. I have nothing against teenage witches, although I have never consorted with them, but that black, mothball-mouthed feline supporting puppet is one bad actor. I could chew the scenery with far more effectiveness.

In fact, a demonstration of this is coming up, as I come on. Eat your heart out, Salem. And then lend it to me for a snack.

In a moment a perky voice-over chorus pipes into the room: Ooo-Ia-la. A la Cat! We see white-gloved hands removing a crystal dish from a cupboard. A silver spoon deposits some wet glop the color of Silly Putty into the dish's pristine center. The entire mess (I am speaking metaphorically here of a product I dearly love, of course) is gently laid on a high-gloss white floor.

“Dinner is served," announces Jeeves Black-sleeves the butler. A pale, patrician pussycat ankles over to inspect the offering and begin eating with dainty abandon. Mon amour, the Divine Yvette, draped in silver foxiness.

The camera pulls back to reveal a Big White Set from the Hollywood musical heyday of the thirties and a flight of stairs to cat heaven, lined by dancing dudes in jellybean-colored zoot suits. Down the center aisle, floating like a butterfly, windmilling his limbs like an aerialist, hustles yours truly in full black formal attire, crowned by a flamingo-pink fedora that perches precariously over one ear and eye.

I four-step from left to right in the wide center aisle, gaining momentum as the music swells into a full orchestration. Suddenly, I do a Fred Astaire drag to the left, ratchet up the mandarine-orange leg and torso of a chorus boy, and end up balanced on his shoulder like an epaulette with the black spot.

The guy's grinning face assumes an even more frozen expression as all sixteen of my extended shivs sink through fabric into flesh.

After flourishing my only unclawed member, I leap down to the white stairs again and continue my descent.

While watching my acrobatics, I squint at the small screen, hoping to see the noose of twine that a rival has slipped into my path to trip me up. Alas, apparently the evidence has ended up on the cutting room floor, just like my competition for the job of A La Cat spokesdude, the yellow-bellied Maurice.

“You certainly are quite the high-stepper," my MissTemple comments. "I wonder what made you improvise a straight-up two-yard dash? That poor dancer looks like he's been spindled, stapled, and mutilated. But he kept a game smile on his face. What a pro!”

Hey! I am the pro here. It is not every day one has tododge a bullet, so to speak, on camera without mussing a hair.

And I certainly am slick and sleek as I finish my descent by nosing up to the Divine Yvette and sharing her repast of A La Cat on Baccarat crystal.

“Ooo-la-la. A la Cat! Ooo-la-la. A la Cat!" the offscreen kitty chorus trills while I preen and lick my chops and the Divine Yvette lowers her smoky eyelashes to snick a crumb from my chin.

“What a natural," MissTemple declares, stealing the words from my mind. She ought to know, being an ace freelance public relations lady, and now manager of my sudden performing career. Considering my real profession is private dick, I am doing all right as a TV star.

She rewinds the bit, so we can play it again, Sam Spade.

We are no less impressed on second sight.

“Well," she says, "if they do not get a good response from that commercial, there is something very wrong with the American viewing public.”

This disturbs me. Of course there is something very wrong with the American viewing public! They are only human. I had no idea that my media fate would depend on them. I can only hope that cats everywhere know where the remote control is, and use it.

But MissTemple is never content to let me rest upon my laurels, as firm and fluffy as they may be.

She is fooling with the VCR again, her curly red head shaking in disgust as it snaps and whirls its defiance at her manipulations. I do think these particular devices have been planted among humans by subversive alien visitors. I have never known a household appliance more capable of driving people to extreme measures.

“I know I got it," MissTemple is muttering, whether to herself or to me it makes no difference. She is clearly out of control in either case. "I double-checked the time and channel ... do not tell me—! Ah.”

I watch some dopey introductory shots filled with noth- ing but close-ups of people's faces. They are all grinning like pumpkins, and it is not even Halloween, except for the faces that are grimacing as if they had just eaten fermented Free-to-Be-Feline, my least favorite health food.

Thinking of which, I burp.

Miss Temple is oblivious to my digestive distress, absorbed instead by the whirring sound the tape player makes as it reels and unreels until she has the exact place she wanted.

“Now." She rises, aims the remote at the machine, and zaps it into loud life.

I flatten my ears. These afternoon talk shows are filled with yowling, keening people lined up to engage in hissy fits and claws-out fist-fights, making a spectacle of themselves. If I had a shoe, I would heave it at them. in fact, I watch with interest as MissTemple comes to curl up beside me on the couch, kicking off her navy-andburgundy high heels with the leather rosettes on the toes so delectable for chewing.

She settles in, absently patting my head off-center. I hate that! I observe the scene on the screen: the usual lineup, the usual host pacing like a major cat behind bars, the usual zoo of exotic guests, the usual peanut gallery of a growling and spitting audience. Miss Temple leans forward when our upstairs neighbor, Mr. Matt Devine, walks on, and from then on I do not even get my head patted off-center. Not only is this show interminable—unlike my snappy sixty second commercial debut—but MissTemple keeps rewinding the tape to run Mr. Matt's segments over again. It is like watching an entire television program with a bad case of the stutters.