Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

“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.