Cat In A White Tie And Tails

Then I see what brings up the end of the Segway parade … a three-wheeled version for oldsters, wisely including a metal basket attached to the rear. With a leap and a bound I am in the last basket passing. I cannot claim this is a discreet or comfy mode of travel, but it is easy on the footpads.

My driver is a white-tufted snowbird in Bermuda shorts the better to showcase stilt-thin yet hairy legs. Ugh. Not an enticing sight, all that naked pink skin turning lobster red between the occasional whiskerette.

Speaking of whiskers, I cannot keep my long and delicate vibrissae from tickling the codger in the calves.

That sounds like a new nursery rhyme, “The codger in the calves.”

This sight must have struck the milling pedestrians as amusing as well. Perhaps my hitching a ride has entertained the masses too. They begin twittering and pointing. When I say “twittering,” I mean it in the old-fashioned sense, but the raised cell phone cameras mean they are also “tweeting” photos of my impressive forward motion, as they say in covering football games on TV.

I am thankful my old man uses antique investigation methods that will keep him from swiping, and then “swiping” Miss Temple’s cell phone. It is possible I may end up on YouTube, the first in the family to go viral.

That would really frost the old dude’s white whiskers. He is the sort who aims at being the only viral feline entity in Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, my Ride of Fame continues. My unintended chauffeur beams and doffs his plaid fishing cap with one hand, taking a bow. He simultaneously rubs his tickled calves on the basket grid while I offer pointed warnings by boxing his ankles with my famous Front Four defense, to continue the football analogy.

Whole lines of people on foot are stopping to stare and laugh. Dollar bills are showering over me and into my basket. I am about to turn to take a bow when my oblivious chauffeur, his head so turned by the attention, loses all concentration. His three-wheeled chariot runs straight into a palm tree trunk.

Whomp.

I had not anticipated such an abrupt stop and could clearly claim whiplash, but that would be fraud. In one fluid motion I do a triple back-twist out of the basket onto the sidewalk, landing on my tippy toes, to much applause and further media commemoration. This will outdo my unadmitted sire’s recent local TV news caper finding the bodiless, booted feet in the dried-up bed portion of Lake Mead.