Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

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 ear-splitting 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.

While I am figuring out how to save Midnight Louise without her or me losing face, I notice, speaking of faces, that the Havana browns have turned a beiger shade of brown. Say…milk chocolate.

They are retreating, their ring growing wider and sparser.

I decide that my dilemma must have put a fearsome expression on my face, then decide to look over my shoulder.

It is a sight to uncurl the hair on a curly-coated Rex. Even I momentarily consider a craven retreat.

They come stalking up on us like Old West gunfighters: Osiris and Mr. Lucky and at their head Ma Barker.

The Big Cats place one deliberate foot in front of the other. Each pace covers two feet of ground.

“That is our cub,” Mr. Lucky growls with a sound like they use in movies to represent demons talking.

Even the evil Hyacinth pauses, her spiked hair wilting a bit.

Midnight Louise has not paid a moment’s heed to any of the action around her. The minute Hyacinth backs off, she is on her like a black tornado, feet whirring, fur flying from her shivs.

Hyacinth screams with fury and pain, twists like a pretzel, and rockets across the lawn to the house, driving the craven wave of Havana browns ahead of her.

Midnight Louise sits licking fiercely at her chest ruff, surrounded by tufts of cream fur.

I rush over. “Did she nick you? If we get you to a vet fast enough, and if I can figure out a way to tell Miss Temple you are a victim of curare poisoning — which I will, somehow — we can get you an antidote. If they have antidotes to curare in Las Vegas.”

“Relax,” says Miss Louise. “She did not lay a lavender-point glove on me. Besides, you are old enough to know that you cannot believe everything that a feline fatale says.”

She looks up from her grooming at the Big Cats. “Thanks, boys, but I had her on the run even before she saw you.”

Not one mention of my contemplated desperate dash to sacrifice myself! Talk about ingratitude.

Ma Barker stalks forward. “Very impressive, young lady, but you could interrupt your bath to give your elders a nod of thanks.”

“Are you claiming to be an elder?” she asks.

“Only if you are claiming to be a descendant of my son.”

Here they both glance at me.

“I do not know about that,” Miss Midnight Louise says with a hard look at me, “but I do have a partner who had the smarts to break me out of prison so I had a chance to whip the vibrissae off that witch, so I will say thank you very much to all concerned. Now I really must wash that purported curare out of my hair. Although, according to my connoisseur’s tongue from a life of attending Dumpster sales, it is no more toxic than Revlon’s Mean Green Glitter nail enamel that is available at Wal-Mart.”