Cat In An Alphabet Soup (Catnap)

My strongest hand is to keep my cards glued to the chest, sit tight and play dumb. This is where the indignity comes in: I must allow myself to be treated like a domestic pet.

So I submit to being dragged from my cell in the most interesting garden behind the intriguing Circle Ritz without making a run for it. This joint, however unusual, is not up to the standards of the Crystal Phoenix Hotel. Any fool who knows Midnight Louie would anticipate my normal game plan upon release from stir: up a palm tree, down to a rooftop and outa there.

However, I restrain myself and it is a good thing. I have always been a superb inside dude, if I say so myself, and it is when I am wafted by elevator to Miss Temple Barr's charming Pied-à-terre, otherwise known as a crash pad, that I get the skinny on her situation.

She is worried; this is obvious when she thinks herself alone and unobserved. (Some of my best pals have said that I ought to go into this psychoanalyzing game. I have a talent for listening to people’s troubles—and I even have the whiskers for the job.)

Anyway, this little doll chirrups to herself and me as she goes about her nightly domestic duties, which include an outing to the Quik Pik for a bag of concrete makings and an aluminum roaster pan.

The last occasion I see a bag of that size and likely contents, Guido Calzone is preparing a pair of permanent booties and a quick trip to the bottom of Lake Mead for “Noodles” Venucci. As for the roaster pan, certain large fowls of my acquaintance have not fared well in such a vicinity.

Even worse than my speculations is in store, as I discover late in the night, but first the most important revelation. I find it on the inside of Miss Temple Barr’s closet door, always a significant location. People tend to stash their dope, as well as outgrown clothes and dreams, in closets. I am partial to such areas myself, mainly because they are cozy, dark and quiet, qualities not often to be found in the same place at one time in a town like Las Vegas.

Anyway, there it is, a poster of this commanding dude resembling a cross between Count Dracula and Tom Cruise. I have not encountered such a piercing stare since I went eye to eye with an ailurophobic pit bull. This particular poster boy has black hair. I have always found the ladies to be especially partial to dudes having black hair, with which I am especially well equipped. It is obvious that my undeniable attractions have led Miss Temple Barr astray, and not for the first time.