Cat In A White Tie And Tails

She does take him past the main floor wedding chapel, silent and dim at the moment, yet eerie, because she has peopled the pews with soft sculpture figures. I leap up to drape the lap of Elvis Presley’s glitzy white pleather jumpsuit.

Umm, warm and highly worthy of paw-pummeling.

“Off of the King,” Miss Electra orders. “It is the queen cats may look at.”

I always appear to obey in public, so I trail my human escorts back to the charming circular entry hall with its single hanging chandelier.

In moments, Mr. Max and I are jerked from elegant interior to glaring sunlight on parking lot asphalt that duplicates what paves about half of American dirt.

Here I am at a crossroads. I can continue to shadow Mr. Max’s butter-soft black leather loafers or I can go about my own business, which is always, of course, since I am a sleuth, someone else’s.

So do I catch a lift in the silly clown car Mr. Max uses to keep a low profile now? That is a smart move undercover-wise but not what you would call a sweet ride. It does not soothe the savage soul when I know the old man has been hitching rides in limos lately. He is getting soft and could use a showing up, and I am the gal to do it.

Time to investigate on my own.

With that in mind I do a uey and head for the street, perking my ears for the unmistakable shake, rattle, and roar of a UPS truck. They are the unofficial public transportation for the more adventurous of my kind.

They make a lot of stops, their doors are always open, the drivers are always filling out papers and thus able to be slipped past, and they are loaded with nice bulky items to hide behind.

Of course, the drivers’ routes are limited and the savvy hitchhiker must know when to forsake one chauffeur for another working nearer her goal.

In less than three “transfers,” I am on the Las Vegas Strip, a mere mile or so from my destination. Yet one mile of hoofing it in the hot sun, to a four-footed individual with a three-inch stride like me, is like going for a six-mile hike were I a two-footed person with a fifteen-inch stride.

I am also not about to lose time zigzag-stitching my way through air-conditioned hotels. Taking a rest in the shade of a Stripside bush at the Paris Hotel, I plot the next leg of my journey. I rarely show myself on the Strip. It causes unwanted comment and I also am in danger of being captured and possibly killed for my “own good.” It is, as the cliché makes clear, a jungle out here.