Of course, I am lounging under the oleander bushes circling the parking lot when my Miss Temple and Mr. Danny Dove have their little tête-à-tête, as we Francophiles call it. (I had thought Francophiles had something to do with 1930s Spain, but apparently not. Those French do get around.)
I confess that I am deeply worried about my usually reliable roommate. It is those female hormones that produce that unreliable state called “heat.”
At least in my species it is a come-and-go sort of thing (much to my regret). However, human females have a 24/7 case of it, which is appropriate to Las Vegas. Perhaps it is only in Las Vegas that this condition occurs, as in other aberrations of the human species.
I can usually find some way to assist my Miss Temple in matters of crime and apprehension but now my apprehension is directed at the fact that I do not know how to handle this pesky situation.
It appears that I need female advice. The dedicated operative is never too proud to consult experts no matter how uppity they might be. I decide to make the rounds of my acquaintanceship. So, while Miss Temple is safely on the job at the New Millennium, I vow to scour the city for useful suggestions.
First, I go to the empty lot opposite Maylord’s Fine Furniture, which is looking a little seedy since the shocking events at its opening revealed a business plan that involved discrimination, harassment, felony, and murder.
The lot is empty of everything but trash, so I know Ma Barker and her clan have left and are working their way toward the Circle Ritz, as I had advised.
Now, I only have to find out how far they have gotten.
This is like tracking a tribe of Paiutes on the move on the wild Mojave Desert in the nineteenth century. It requires that I think like a scavenger rather than a sophisticated dude about town. So, I hopscotch northwest back toward the Circle Ritz, eyeing Dump-ster environs and the empty concrete corridors behind strip shopping centers. I am not talking about the big boys and girls—Strip Shopping Centers—here, just the small fringe one-story layouts that surround the flash, glitter, and cash of Las Vegas Boulevard, to use the Strip’s formal moniker.
If my Miss Temple knew how I was sanding my pads to the bone for her wayward heart . . . !
I catch up with the crew behind the Shanghai Noon all-you-can-eat buffet. They are dozing unseen, natch, in the noonday sun, but Ma Barker has posted two goons on guard in case any mad dogs or Englishmen show up.
“Hey, it is just me!” I say as Tiger and Tom jump out of nowhere, fangs bared and whiskers and nostrils flared. “I need to check with Ma Barker.”
“Ah, he needs his mommy,” Tiger snarls, his tone dripping mockery.
“Not to teach you manners,” I reply as I box the sneer off his mustachios. “C’mon, Tigue. I need a morning workout.”
The way I work it out is I duck as Tiger lunges, and Tom ends up giving Tiger another facial with his shivs. Heh-heh.
My mental comment is echoed by two short meows behind my back.
The lady in question has been roused by our set-to. In this case, this is no lady, it is my mother, my esteemed dam, my . . . ow!
She has boxed my ears. “That is for making jackasses of my guards.” She boxes the guards’ ears. “That is for being taken in by a smooth operator. Now.” She turns to me.
“What can I do for you besides rearrange your silly mug?”
No one can accuse Ma Barker of being anything but even pawed.
“This is private,” I tell her.
She jerks her head over her black-like-me shoulder and leads me to an overturned hounds-tooth-pattern loveseat that looks as if it last served as a rat condominium.
However, it is cool under there, and quiet.
“You are sure this Circle Ritz place we are headed for has lots of sheltering shrubbery?” she asks me for the fourth time.
“And even more soft-touch humans.”
“Hmph. I am not fond of a parking lot view.”
“Very low traffic, and the vehicles are mostly late models with few oil drips.”
“It is taking a lot of my street cred to herd this group uptown. It had better be worth it.”
“I will be able to keep an eye on you there.”
“Not a plus. On the other hand, I will be able to keep an eye on you.”
I give Ma a good onceover. She has recovered somewhat from her solo match with a marauding raccoon, but one eye is still swollen half shut and her black coat is full of claw tracks. She licks her ragged bib into shape and sinks back against the spewing stuffing, half sitting, half reclining like a sultan.
“So what advice do you need, grasshopper, other than to not make a fine point of it with my guards?”
I smooth my whiskers and satin lapels, both of which her boys had mussed. But not much. “It is about the human species.”
“You ask me? Who has had as little to do with them as possible?”
“It is about the female of the species.”
“Anyone I know?”
“My associate.”
“You mean your sugar mama.”
“Please! I give Miss Temple so much more than she gives me.”
“That is always the way with our kind, and what do we get for it?”
I am not about to go into a Us and Them riff with her. “They have strange mating habits.”
“You noticed?”
“Although the females are ever capable of being in heat, they attempt to ignore the fact.”
“Which the males do not.”
“No. This creates a certain tension.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Anyway, the humans aim at solo long-term mating.”
“Like some birds. Dodo birds.”
“And wolves.”
“Wild dogs! They are no role model for the superior species.”
“Right. Anyway, my roomie has found herself in a perplexing situation for the breed.”
“She is with litter?”
“No!”
“Then you have no rivals in the offing, at least.”
“This is not about me, Ma. It is about understanding her. Which seems to be the goal of the human males around her too. Mr. Max was her long-term squeeze, but now it looks like Mr. Matt is edging him out.”
“Sounds like a horse race rather than a romantic quandary. At least she gets to choose. I had to take all comers, which is why you had a calico sister and a gray brother.”
“Had?” I ask gingerly.
Normally, we street kits are cut out from the litter so fast by chance, death, and animal control that we would not recognize a sibling if it stood up and sang “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” right in front of us. I am one cat in a million for knowing who my ma and pa are, but I am one cat in a million anyway, just for being alive after a street birth. That is without mentioning my entrepreneurial success with an investigative operation.
“I do not know where they go,” she agrees, “or even when sometimes. Motherhood is way overrated. It was a boon when the Cage Ladies arranged for a tubal ligation.”
I do not ask what this “tubal ligation” is. It sounds like doctor or lawyer language, and one usually does not wish to decipher what they are talking about, which is why they end up with all the money and yachts on Lake Mead.
But I do wonder if a “tubal ligation” might be the answer for Miss Temple.
I ask Ma. Who laughs.
“She does not have my problem. Tomcats do not tiptoe around what they wish to be up to, like your roommate’s suitors. One would think that she could easily accommodate only two, but humans are a mystery.”
I cannot help sounding a bit whiny as I lay out my case to my esteemed dam, known as a “queen” in fancy cat breeding circles. Which are where they matchmake pedigrees and put dudes and dudettes into forced breeding arenas. Barbaric!
“I am afraid I am a wee bit selfish at this point,” I admit. “I favor Mr. Max because his various mysterious ways keep him from coming around too often, and I get full bed privileges in his absence. On the other hand, Mr. Matt offers Miss Temple more constant attention, but I fear he will boot me out of both bed and bedroom, and where will I find another roomie as attentive and even-tempered as my Miss Temple?”
Ma Barker shakes her venerable, raccoon-scabbed head. She is one tough cookie.
“You have become the fourth leg in a love triangle involving two alien species, Louie. Face it, you will never win. You have been trying to live in two worlds: wild and domestic. You will have to make a choice.”
“That is just it! I can tip the balance, if I feel like it. That is a lot of responsibility. I lean toward Mr. Max. He is wild and free and wily and noble. But Mr. Matt really needs a good home. Mr. Max and I know we are two of kind, and there is no love lost between us, but there is the kind of wary respect we both crave. Mr. Matt would not shove me aside on purpose, but he is a domestic born, loyal and true, and I share his quest to find a safe place in the world.”
“Louie, Louie, Louie.” Ma shakes her head. “I blame it on your coming from a broken home, but then most of us do. You have been a good boy. I realize that you want my gang moved uptown so we can live out our declining years under the watchful eyes of you and your humans. What you worry about is that your humans have feet of clay. They are not as stable as you had hoped. You will just have to see that they do the right thing, and then everybody will be happy.”
Argh! Seeing that everybody does the right thing so that everybody is happy is the one thing that does not make this world go round. In fact, reality is just the opposite.
I bid Ma Barker adieu and move on.
Miss Midnight Louise is sunning herself in front of the canna lilies that fringe the koi pond that used to be my office view and private fishing hole.
The koi are as fat and wet as ever, and come pucker-lipped up to the pond edge trolling for tourist bread crumbs, as if Midnight the Merciless had not suddenly cast his shadow in their sunshine once again.
I plough a paw through the water just to make my presence known.
“Be nice,” Miss Louise admonishes.
“Why?”
“This is my territory now, and I get plenty of legal fish and lobster from the house chef. You must learn the difference between game and decorative fish.”
“They are all game to me,” I announce, sitting on the water-dewed stones and curling my longest extremity around my toes.
“You are a girl,” I tell her.
“Obviously.”
“You have had the operation that makes this condition moot.”
“Obviously.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Miss what?”
“Being the object of male attention?”
“Not a bit,” she says. “That was always a nuisance. It is such a relief that a small surgical procedure can put an end to tomcats harassing one. A puss needs a tomcat like a fish needs a bicycle.”
I frown. “Fish have nothing to peddle with but fins.”
“Tomcats have nothing to peddle but fishy lines.”
“So, why does a modern woman need a man?”
“She does not.” Louise’s yellow eyes squint into gleaming slits. “Ah. You inquire about that human hussy you are shacked up with.”
“Miss Temple is not a hussy! That is the problem. She is only able to deal with one dude at a time. I do not understand.”
Miss Louise sits up and actually smoothes my agitated ears with her tongue. It is a daughterly gesture, which I know by the fact that she is fixed and has no reason at all to give me more than five in the face.
“Poor Louie. They are a strange breed. It is always a risk to try to depend upon such a fickle kind. I know you thought you had a permanent arrangement—”
“It still is!” But I am no longer so sure.
“Yet,” says Miss Louise, patting the tip of my tail in a most patronizing way, “they will go off and leave us without a thought. Move. Advertise for new homes because of . . . change of address. Change of circumstance. Babies. Is that it?”
“No! No babies. Yet. It is just that I sense she is having a change of heart. That is a very mysterious process and alien to our kind.”
“Yes. We do not give our hearts lightly, but when we do it is eternal. That is why I will never consent to being owned.’ ”
“I am not owned! I own. I am in a position to bestow favor on one or another of Miss Temple’s suitors. I lean to picking the one who suits my habits best, but realize that is perhaps not as noble as I could be.”
“The way to be noble, Louie, is to let others be as noble as they can be.”
I gaze into Louise’s gilt eyes. She is not quite my spitting image (except when she is mad, often at me) but she is a sassy little kit and I would not be loath to call her my daughter. If she was my daughter. Which is still up for grabs. Like my Miss Temple.
I move on.
I return to the Circle Ritz (because it is en route to the last way station) and I am loath to confront the most iffy female on my list.
Karma crowns the Circle Ritz like an invisible diadem of New Age mumbo jumbo. The penthouse is her territory, and the ambiguously phrased declaration is her bread and butter. But she is female and deserves consultation.
I claw my way up the old palm tree onto the high patio, and then through the French doors into the shrouded environment.
Miss Electra Lark is away, so I have full interrogation rights here.
First, I have to find Karma, who usually hides.
She is not under the couch. Or the chairs. Or the bed.
She is under the sink, in an area reeking of wet wood and lemon wax.
Her blue Birman eyes shine red in the dark. She was made for color-correcting cameras.
“Pssst!” her voice warns me.
“Chill,” I tell her. “I am conducting a survey.”
“You? A census taker?” The shock draws her out onto the kitchen parquet.
“A personal survey,” I say.
“And?”
“If you had your druthers, would you rather live with a human with a devoted roomie of the opposite sex, or a come-and-go boyfriend with interests abroad?”
“Are you working for Cosmo now, Louie?”
“Naw. This is a private poll.”
Karma slinks all the way out from under the pipes.
“An interesting question. Does it behoove us felines to have domestic stability or romantic uncertainty in our own love lives?”
“Uh, I am not talking about my love life. I am talking about my domestic situation, which is another kettle of fish entirely.”
“Your roomie is a mermaid?”
“No. She has two legs and no scales, except in her bathroom. I am just wondering which dude to encourage her to glom on to. In a way that would benefit her. And me.”
“Are you sure that your interests are matching?”
“No. That is why I am conducting this poll. Look. I know that a girl has gotta do what a girl has gotta do. I just wonder how I come out in all this. I have certain needs.”
“Like what?”
“Um, to come and go as I please.”
“Check.”
“To have a litter box on the premises, even if I do not deign to use it.”
“Check.”
“To be consulted as to my position on the bed.”
“Aha! That is where your territory overlaps with the men in question.”
“Right.”
“And you have been her main squeeze of late?”
“Pretty much.”
“Then you are obligated to claim lounging rights no matter who has been or is sleeping in her bed. Assert yourself!”
“I can handle keeping my claim in the current digs. But what if she moves in with the guy upstairs? Or they buy a house? Then it will be a free-for-all in claiming territory. And I may not want to move and leave the Circle Ritz. It is an ideal location and I am just now engineering moving my aged mother into an adjacent situation.”
“Louie! No wonder you are troubled. I was not aware that you actually knew your mother, and I am most impressed by your loyalty to her.”
Karma, being full of slightly schizty psychic cheer, cannot yet grasp what kind of cat dear old Ma Barker is.
“Do you see any glimmers of who my Miss Temple would be best off with?”
“And she is—?”
“Cute little redhead, now temporarily blond. Feisty. Her main job is public relations but she is a darn good gumshoe too.”
“Ah, she has visited my retreat on occasion. My companion person, Electra Lark, tries to keep intruders out so that my delicate sensory apparati are not clouded, but she is not always successful. I do pick up vibes from humans who haunt the Circle Ritz. But they seem vague, like spirits to me.”
Karma seems vague to me!
“Tell me of the rivals for her love.”
“One is long, dark, and sleek like me.”
“Him! I have sensed him before. He is a creature of air and high places, an overseer, a guardian, like myself. He is wise but troubled by a past he cannot elude. Your redheaded miss is a fire spirit, a spark of energy and ability. The air spirit will fan her flames, but will also exhaust her emotions.”
Okay. This does not sound too far out. For once, something Karma says makes sense.
“And the other man?”
“He lives here too. He’s got looks to rent out and still win a pageant. He has been stuck on meaning well for so long he can hardly move sometimes, but he is getting over it.”
“Ah, yellow haired?
“Right. Blond, the humans call it.”
Karma nods her head, which is also masked in darker fur like the Siamese sisters, only her dark hose end in white satin gloves and spats.
“I have seen him.”
“How?”
“Sometimes my mystical communion with the stars and moon require me to emerge onto the balcony. He is a water spirit, that one. I have seen him drawing himself powerfully through the deep blue pool below. His life has been struggle, but he has become good at it. I sense a new lightness in his dogged laps to and fro, as if he has sprouted wings that lift him above what that weighs him down in the water.”
“Water and fire, not a good match, right?”
“To the contrary, Louie. They balance each other’s destructiveness. Water needs fire to produce steam heat, you know.”
I gulp. I think I do know. And, worse, I think that Miss Temple and Mr. Matt know now too.
A lot of help Karma has been.
But I cannot help asking, “Which element am I?”
Her Lieutenant Molina blue eyes, which is to say a body-armorpiercing shade of electric blue, nail me to the wooden floor.
“Earth,” she says. “You are a creature of the streets who trusts your pad leather and your eyes and ears only. A born loner, you are, plodding and practical, and you always get your man. Or woman. You are not airy, or fiery, or even misty, but you are not one to leave any job undone. As for your own love life, I see many options, none of them very immediately rewarding. For now, you are better off meddling in human matters. You seem to have some minor gift for it.”
On that unhappy prediction, Karma makes the royal circling wave of dismissal with her foreleg.
I back out, careful not to salaam, and run my rear into the side of a mohair sofa in the main room. Dude, but those buzz-cut bristles sting like a radiator brush!
I cannot wait to escape onto the balcony and then piton my way down the rough trunk of my faithful palm-tree bridge to the Circle Ritz’s various floors.
My pads touch hot asphalt at last, and I reflect that solid ground is indeed my medium.
Unfortunately, my current case is an air-bred one, and I am off to the New Millennium to reconsider the sisters Siamese and just who and what is going on there to put my Miss Temple’s stilettos in a sling.
As for whom I wish to back in the Circle Ritz bedroom sweepstakes, my mind is torn between the elements of water and air. One a fellow can drown in, and the other can break a dude’s neck.
Looks to me like my little doll had better watch her backside.