Unknown - Cat_In_A_Midnight_Choir-spaces_ru

She would squeal protest, but I slap a spare mitt over her face. “Shhh! We are not alone.”

The kitchen is less dark than the cellar, but not by much.

It takes a few moments for our cellar-dampened senses to reassert themselves, but I can tell by the way Midnight Louise stiffens next to me that she too is taking the measure of the several unseen foes surrounding us.

Among the alien scents, I detect the ineffable perfume of the lady known as Hyacinth.

Midnight Louise turns her head to me, though her eyes remained focused on the smothering dark.

“If we close our eyes for an instant, and run, they will lose track of us,” she breathes into my ear.

It is a good stratagem. I nod so she can feel my vibrissae give assent, then shut my eyes and call the fury of Bastet down upon all our enemies.

Then I run.

I hear the soft pound of pads beside me…and behind me…and ahead of me on an angle.

The thump of meeting bodies erupts into an Etna of scalding hot fury and tufts of soft underfur floating like ash against my nose and pads.

Then I am galloping through the house, following a path of sheer memory and the glint of night lights on the suits of armor.

Something pounds along beside me up the hall stairs.

I head-butt the wall in the dark, eager to find the heat register exit.

Finally my muzzle pushes out and finds air instead of plaster and wallpaper.

I wiggle through, Louise on my tail.

Behind us the dislodged grating scrapes, and scrapes again and again, as a torrent of pursuers pours through the aperture.

I hear claws scrabbling on aluminum pipe.

Either Louise has surged ahead of me, or the rats are deserting the house to avoid the panting, slavering tide of unknown creatures that is on our trail.

It is too dark and confusing to worry about whether Louise is ahead or behind. I must boost myself into the confining vent pipe, then wriggle through it as if my life depended on it. Which it does.

Popping out into the night air gives me no rest. I hurtle down the thorny hedge to the grounds below, my own ingrown thorns out and snagging wherever they can to break what is more of a free-fall than a downward climb. Uh…never mind.

Something plunges earthward beside me. In the artificial night light of Las Vegas, I am happy to see that Miss Louise has managed to keep up with me. Or down, depending on how you look at it.

Once we hit terra firma, we leap up. A long sweep of lawn stretches between us and our hidden allies.

The whimpering and growling coming from the rock-park midway between the house and the gate tells me that the Rottweilers (whimpering) have been cowed by the Big Cats (growling).

However, even the best-laid plans of the trained operative can go awry, and my current awry comes plummeting down behind us: a ninja brigade of Havana browns as fresh from Cuba as a fine cigar.

Anyone who has not tangled with the breed known as Havana brown is unaware of the Bruce Lees of catdom. They are all muscle and silent, stalking pads. They wear their hair in a battle-ready buzz-cut and do not waste time on hollow boasts or warning howls.

So they are on us like tobacco-spit shadows, dark and almost liquid of motion.

I box one away, and then another. Beside me, Midnight Louise is similarly occupied.

We manage to work our way a few feet toward where our compadres await, but the Havana browns keep on coming, and those we knock down roll over and leap up again.

I do not know about Louise, but I am trying to head for a sheltered garden construction with vine-twined pillars and a latticed roof dripping hibiscus.

We will have more of an advantage against these numbers there than on open ground.

It is slow progress when you have to pause to repel another onrushing Havana brown every time you take one down for the count.

I am panting like a bellows as we near the edge of our island of safety.

“I have these three, Pop,” Louise hisses between pants. “You hide on the porch while you catch your breath.”

“It is not a porch! It is a pergola. And my breath has not run anywhere I cannot chase it down and get it back.”

After this speech, I do indeed seem to be out of steam.

Louise does some fancy footwork to come alongside of me. There are still about eight Havana browns circling tighter and tighter, their vibrissae lifted in mutual snarls, their canine fangs in doglike evidence.

I would say that it looks black for us, except that they are brown.

And before I could say that, we are suddenly attacked from above.

I see a huge tarantula spider — ten times the size of the big road-runners you glimpse in the desert — all fuzzy brown legs in a noxious cluster as it swings down from the roof above on an invisible rope of spider-silk.

Even Midnight Louise cannot keep a ladylike “Eeek!” from escaping her lips as the creature swings past us and to the ground.

I have been doing a rapid count and realize that I have only toted up five legs on the monster. It is handicapped! Spiders are supposed to sport eight legs.

Still, I shudder at its beady red eyes glimmering from the center of its bloated, pale body, at the dark furry legs churning as it rights itself and reveals….

“Why, Miss Hyacinth, I believe.” I am happy to see that while paralyzed with fright I managed to get my breath back.

Now I get it. When the evil Hyacinth leaped down her dark, dangling legs and tail looked like icky unshaven spider gams. Such is the coloring of the Siamese breed, dark at the extremities, light at the core. I wonder if there is any hope that this pattern might pertain to Hyacinth herself. I am immediately disabused of any such notion.

“Back off,” she hisses at the gathered Havana browns. “I will handle these intruders myself.”

She draws herself up until her back is an arch and prances at us sideways, her narrow face a mask of hatred and death.

Something slaps me in the solar plexus — Miss Midnight Louise’s right rear foot in a karate kick.

I rock over, gasping for my recovered breath, which is again AWOL.

“Outa my way, dude,” Miss Louise spits. “If this is the hussy that locked me up in the Marquis de Sade’s basement apartment, I need to have words with her.”

“Louise.” I can barely speak yet, and watch with horror as the two circle like prizefighters within an outer ring of Havana browns.

“Louise.”

Well, no one is listening but me, of course.

Hyacinth goes up on her toes, up on her razor-honed shivs that glint gangrene-green.

“Her nails,” I pant.

“I plan to nail her.”

“No. C-curare.”

It is too late, they abruptly stop circling and dash toward each other with earsplitting battle cries. Black and cream and lavender-brown are a blur in the moonlight. Fur floats like feathers to the ground.

Then they are separate again, heads lowered beneath their sharp shoulder blades, glaring, circling, stalking.

“Louise.” I do not expect her to take her gaze off her opponent to so much as glance over her shoulder. But she must listen. “Her nails are painted with curare. You cannot let one pierce you.”

“Now you tell me,” Louise snarls unjustly. I have been trying to tell her all along. “No problem. This chick will not have nails to paint when I am through with her.”

Brave words, but how can one engage in a duel to the death without suffering a single scratch?

Although my kind, and even humankind, have always recognized that the death duel of two individuals must be left up to them, for the first time in my life I consider interfering with this untouchable ritual.

Louise did not know her opponent had a secret weapon. Although no one would thank me for it, especially Midnight Louise, I could jump Hyacinth from behind and pin her down. Unfortunately, I doubt Louise would take advantage of my self-sacrifice and run. So I would end up paralyzed spider meat for nothing.