Cat In An Alphabet Soup (Catnap)

I say I already know what these missing persons look like, I want to know where they might be at.

Ingram spreads his rear toes and examines one neatly clipped nail. Then he commences to tell me he has not heard a thing. If they are on the town they are keeping a low profile, says he. Nobody has reported a midnight serenade with a Highland skirl to it, and nobody's domestic life has been interrupted by the appearance of foreign suitors. So Ingram tells me.

I suggest that these out-of-town types might have been surgically prevented from that last sort of thing.

Ingram eyes me slyly through his amber peepers and begins one of his more boring lectures, to the effect that not all felines are rabble-rousing ladies’ fellows like myself. He remarks that, given my aggressive amatory proclivities, it is a miracle that my ears do not have a decidedly Scottish-fold look by now.

“Listen,” say I, "I know how to keep my ears pinned back and outa the way in a set-to. Now are you saying you do not have a clue to the absent Baker and Taylor?”

Ingram admits as how he sees one of my ex-lady-friends lately, purely on a platonic basis, he adds. This particular acquaintance is just out of the hoosegow, otherwise known as the Animal Pound, and mentioned that a couple of out-of-towners had gotten rounded up.

Scottish folds are out-of-towners, all right. I inform Ingram that this is not much of a lead and inquire as to the appearance of this so-called pal of mine.

Ingram is not flattering. Two-tone low-life with a grizzled mug and a tail kink, says he.

Sassafras, say I, that being the name of the cat in question, not an expression.

Ingram yawns again. He is openly dubious about Sassafras being a genuine nomenclature and implies that my friends trade names as often as they switch humans and in general are a promiscuous lot.

I am forced to growl my disagreement. Ingram can be a schnook with whom I find my temper growing short. I point out that “Ingram” is a somewhat less than riveting moniker also, and that his usual ready rumor-mongering has come up pretty thin soup. He gets on his hind horse and says that he is named for a major wholesaler in the book business and that Thrill ’n’ Quill owner Maeveleen Pearl has a computer that instantly connects her to Ingram Central and takes the name quite seriously, or she would not have conferred it upon him.