Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

He’d told her everything. How hooked he’d been on her way, way back when. When they’d first met. His hands and voice had trembled, but she had too, because it was too much, this Perfect Storm. It could eat her alive.

There was nothing blasé about him.

This was the central event of his life. His love. Because he did. Love her. Always. Only. Had burned for her from the first, not understanding why he could think of nothing, no one else. Trying to pull his outward personality together. Trying to respect her wishes, her past alliances. Refraining from undermining Max. Trying even to relate to other women. Recognizing his sexual drive and still coming back, always and only, to her.

She’d never been so touched, so shaken. So . . . okay, Max was a great lover, but this was beyond any experience or anticipation. This shook her to her soul, which she apparently still had. And a conscience too. This maybe was the thing she couldn’t live without. Except . . . was she worthy?

The responsibility was numbing. She knew what to do, how to do it, where to do it, but not where it would lead. And it had to lead to something significant, something . . . holy, or it was a lie and cheat and she would die before she would be part of it.

So. She’d chickened out. Matt thought he needed a license, or to offer her the option of one.

She didn’t. She needed to believe in what he did. Herself. She’d blown it. Stopped the music when it was the most sublime and irresistible. Still, there was something to be said for coitus interruptus. Like increased desire. The Scarlett in her smiled in hapless helpless kittenish anticipation. Temple tumbled into bed, reliving every instant and enjoying it more with every rerun, even as she shied away from the ultimate truth.

She was headed for the dreaded sixty: better enjoy thirty while she could. But glib answers weren’t for her. Or Matt. Or Max. That’s what made them all worth something to each other. My God, they were an awesome triangle! That tripod couldn’t keep its balance forever. Could it? At some point, it would be only two, and one would be so alone, and off-balance and hurt.

Temple fell asleep, next waking in the morning light sifting through her bedroom miniblinds. Midnight Louie was snuggled up to her hip, black hair shiny and soft, clawless feet pummeling her back, all dark embracing domestic pet.

She remembered Max and burrowed under the dark of the covers and wept for an hour. She remembered Matt and wept for another hour. She was an equal opportunity wuss.

Until she realized Kit was knocking tentatively on her door, promising coffee, and she knew she had a life-changing decision to make PDQ and a disintegrating status quo to deal with ASAP and a job to do at twelve o’clock high. STAT.

Cat in the Hat

Is my work cut out for me!

I have not been in such an early morning downpour since my mama done left me by a drainage ditch when she was swept away by one of Las Vegas’s tsunami rainstorms. She would not have left by her own druthers, of course. But these gully washers sweep druthers away like dreams.

So there I was, a kit with my ears still wet and getting wetter by the instant. My littermates were leaves in the watery wind. My sire at that time was just a whisper on the desert dust devil.

It was survival of the fittest and I was not very fit at that young age.

My Miss Temple reminds me of my abandoned younger self, and for a moment I could cry cat tears with her. Save that cat tears have never changed anything but the saline composition of my eye fluid.

So.

I could shake the sheets and some sense into my Miss Temple. Like tomorrow is another day and there is always another fine dude in the offing. But she would not listen in her present state, and I cannot blame her. We dudes are sometimes more than somewhat dense.

However, it is clear to me that what she most needs at the moment is not moonlight and roses and regret, but someone steady to untangle the many webs being woven at the New Millennium.

And I have the claws to do it!

I shimmy-shimmy off the zebra-print comforter. I have personally never taken much comfort in stripes of any sort, including tiger. We solid guys are the ones to rely on: solid black cats and . . . black panthers.

Faster than you can hitch a ride on a roller coaster, I am inside the New Millennium and rousting the resident Big Cats in their cages.

They blink and growl and hiss loud enough to fill the sails of a nice little ketch. Where, they ask, is Miss Louise?

While I am tongue-tied—for Louise is holding down the fort at the Crystal Phoenix—I feel an airy feminine presence brush by my side. Feline, of course.

The Big Boys growl in tandem, which—let me tell you—is ear inspiring. Also deafening.

“This is not the valiant daughter of Louie the First,” they thunder.

I see Squeaker’s narrow tall tremble slightly.

“You are that sssspolled houssssecat, Hyasssscinth,” they add hiss to growl.