Unknown - Cat_In_A_Midnight_Choir-spaces_ru

Ole Tiger seems to be reading my mind, because his yellow teeth show a Cheshire cheese grin. “Guess you would not mind a ride in a cage, being the domestic sort to start with. You would come back minus your cojones, though.”

“You do not understand. I have already been rendered free of unpopular potential, such as progeny.”

Gimpy has been slinking around the side. “He has still got them, boss. He is lying. He is still armed and dangerous to dames.”

I sigh. “It is too difficult to explain to street types. I have had a fancy operation by a plastic surgeon called a vasectomy, and —”

“We are not interested in your medical history, you pampered sellout!” Tom spits. “Whatever you have had, what you will not have when you come back from the twenty-four-hour abduction is your hairballs.”

I gulp. This mission is more dangerous than I thought. If I happen to fall into the hands of these do-gooders, they will have me sliced and diced for real in no time, because a vasectomy is invisible. I will be summarily cut off from my former self just as if I were a homeless, irresponsible, kitty-littering street dude.

“So,” says Tom with an evil grin, digging his shivs into my shoulder like staples. “Why is a domestic dude like you risking life, limb, and liberty to come hassle us on our territory?”

“I am an investigator,” I begin.

“Narc!” screams Snow Off-white, arching her bony back. “We hardly ever get any nip, just that awful weed that people are always selling on corners around here. We better take care of the narc personally.”

They crowd closer, ugly mugs full of fangs and uglier expressions. I can handle myself in a brawl, but they have me pinned and my only escape is into the clutches of the North Las Vegas Neutering Society.

Shivs as edged as sharks’ teeth are pricking my undercoat in warning. With this crew, one puncture wound, one whiff of blood, and they will go into a fighting frenzy.

I let them push me closer to the open door to eunuchhood. I’d rather take my chances hornswaggling a bunch of humanitarians than beating off a gang of wildcats any day. Where is that twerp Midnight Louise when you need her?

“Wait a minute,” yowls a rough female voice.

A cat who is black like me shoulders through the mob to thrust her jaw in my face like a knuckle sandwich. Midnight Louise this is not.

This is a big-boned, rangy lady with a hacksaw voice. The white scar tracks crisscrossing her mug are not tokens of the plastic surgeon.

“I have been taken away by the aliens with the silver ships,” she says, “and it is not so bad. I was tired of trying to eat for five or six every few months anyway. So if I were you, dude, I’d take the escape hatch. This gang is out for blood. Just being brave enough, and stupid enough, to come here will not save you.”

I stare into her hard and weary green eyes. She stares into my hard and wary green eyes. Suddenly, I feel an embarrassing purr bubbling in my throat. I growl to conceal it, but it is too late.

She lunges at my throat, then twists her head and takes the nape of my neck in her teeth and shakes me until my fangs chatter. A big black mitt boxes my cheek.

“Is that you, Grasshopper?”

“Yeah,” I admit sheepishly. I cannot stand being publicly mauled by overenthusiastic females who are not babes. “Ma. But they call me Louie now. Midnight Louie.”

Well, there is only one thing that cuts it with a gang as down and out as this one: family. They are all so related to each other that if they were people they would be put in jail. In fact, I think a lot of them are a few whiskers shy of a full muzzle, but nobody cares about the family trees of our kind. Our mating tendencies go back to our godlike Egyptian origins. The Egyptians were not too nice to resort to marital alliances with brothers and sisters to keep the royal line going. I believe the term is inbred.

Anyway, by virtue of my long-lost mama being among them and being something of a top cat at that, my bacon is not chopped liver. In fact, they are all my kissing cousins now.

She has taken me aside for a family reunion.

“How did you remember me?” I ask as we settle down on a Naugahyde ottoman that has lost its stuffing until it is shaped like an inner tube. Actually, it is quite comfy. “It is not like you did not have dozens just like me.”

“Oh, Grasshopper, there were none just like you. Naughty from the moment you lost your milk teeth. You were after those poor grasshoppers before your eyes were open. So. You are in business. Did I hear you bragging about a co-op apartment? Not smart with this gang.” She boxes my ear again, as if dislodging mites.

“Actually, it is a ‘cooperative’ living arrangement I have with this babe who flacks for the Crystal Phoenix.”

“It is a mixed marriage?”

I blink.

“She is human?”

“Um, pretty much so, but she has long red nails. I really love the way they sink into my…ah, we are just roommates, Ma. Purely platonic. My real ladylove is this shaded silver Persian —”

“A foreigner? And what is this ‘shaded silver’ stuff? You mean the chit is gray.”

I roll my eyes. I am not about to explain the sublime and subtle mix of black, white, and gray hairs on the aristocratic form of the Divine Yvette.

“So tell me about your business.”

“It is a one-dude operation. Private-eye stuff. That is why I am here. I am looking into a case involving some Big Cats.”

“You know some Big Cats?” She actually sounds impressed. I am impressed.

“Some.”

“Then why did you not bring one along for backup?”

“These big guys do not just meander out on the streets. There are laws.”

“Well, boy, you are lucky I am part of this colony because your meatballs would have been chili powder in another couple of seconds, and I am getting too old to rumba without activating my rheumatism. So I suggest we go over and ask the boys what you want to know and then you skedaddle.”

“Yes, Ma.” There was never any point in arguing with her. She was the Sultana of Swat when it came to keeping her litters in line. “Uh,” I add as we amble over to the others. “What is your name besides Ma?”

“That is it. Ma. Ma Barker.”

“You are not a dog!”

“No, but I bite like one. Just remember that.”

In a moment I am huddling with the Wild Bunch.

“I am looking for a man,” I begin.

“Why come to us? We have nothing to do with that species if we can help it.”

“I cannot argue with your good taste, but this man has a place where he keeps Big Cats. It is a hideout, see. No human knows where it is. I figure you guys” — Snow Off-white bristles and hisses — “and dolls might have an idea where it is. I know you get around and I figure you have your ears to the ground better than anybody.”

“Hmm,” says Tom. “We do not roam as much as we used to now that our numbers are being whisked away and returned all meek and meatball-less. But I wonder if you could be talking about the Dead Place?” He glances at the others.

Oh, great. Like I need to visit another Dead Place. “What is this joint?” I ask.

“I have smelled Big Cat there,” Snow Off-white mews. She rolls her yellow eyes. “Very Big Cat.”

“But nobody human goes there much,” Tiger adds. “That is why we explore sometimes. It is not far from here and there are trees to climb.”

“It is like a park,” Ma puts in. A lot of these street types do not even know what a park is.

I nod. “It would be a rich man’s estate, but no one would know.”

Whiskers tremble sagely all around. “That is it, then. The Dead Place. People do not like Dead Places. They stay away and then we can come out and play. Not even the aliens with the silver ships who abduct us go there.”