Cat In A Diamond Dazzle

Chapter 4

Yvette to Be Alone

Humans are a curious species. I mean that in both senses of the word: they are odd in their own practices, and nosy about the habits of others.

So they are always writing books about my kind purporting to explain our comings and goings and endearing little domestic quirks. They are especially obsessed by our bathroom routines for some reason, although we have bent over backwards to use their indoor facilities and I have not observed them making any reciprocal effort to adapt our outdoor etiquette in these matters.

When they are not speculating about our potty practices, they are puzzling over our enduring attraction to paper goods. Be it newsprint, tax forms or the pages of an open book, we can always be found on it (or, on occasion, under it). Why?

The answer is apparently too obvious to arrive at. Where do they suppose we get our legendary savoir faire, our wise demeanor and sage expressions? We are absorbing the contents of the printed matter in our own cryptic, inimitable way. I do not propose that we actually read line by line, but proximity is enough. Perhaps you have heard certain veterinarians seriously advising humans to shred newspapers as substitute litter box material for felines who have had that sometimes necessary procedure that I call a "claw draw."

How idiotic! What do they take us for? Such humans will tell you that their discriminating domestic partners usually refuse to use these substitute box fillers. And why? Not because of the caustic perfume of printer's ink, but because all of those tumbled and shredded bits of words and phrases confuse our sense of order. Although we often may be inclined to demonstrate our opinion of much of human literature with a well-deserved scratch and deposit, we do not wish to deface potential reading matter.

However, I am not here to discuss human behavior, however disgusting.

I merely cite these facts of feline behavior to explain how it is that when Miss Temple Barr returns from seeing Mr. Max Kinsella to the door, she finds me rising and stretching atop the brochures and flyers on the kitchen countertop.

"Oh, Louie, shoo!" she greets me in her usual melodious tones of affection. "Have you wrinkled all of Electra's information?"

Wrinkled it? I have conquered it. As I rise I know several key facts: one is the imminent arrival of hundreds of romance-lovers. This is no news. Las Vegas is full of romance-lovers, else it would not have so many wedding chapels.

What has set my synapses singing is the news that the female hostess of the main event at this amorous gathering is none other than Miss Savannah Ashleigh, the so-called film star. And where Miss Savannah Ashleigh goeth, her little lamb is sure to goeth also. I refer to none other than the Divine Yvette, mon amour of fur, the pinnacle of Persian pussy-hood, the shaded silver sultana of Rodeo Drive.

"Louie! Don't drool on the convention brochure." Miss Temple is now berating me. "Surely, you are not one of these cover model maniacs?"

Please. Naked muscle does not do a thing for me. The usually percipacious Miss Barr has evidently missed the key image: a small head shot of Miss Savannah Ashleigh, her waves of platinum hair bleached to match the natural silver of my beloved's soft locks.

"Ooooh," says Miss Temple, her piquant little features wrinkling. "Savannah Ashleigh is hosting the cover model pageant. That has-been could not get work as Heather Locklear's stand-in. Am I glad I am not handling PR for this do--temperamental cover hunks would be bad enough. Savannah Ashleigh would be too much. Louie--! Give that back!"

Even as my little doll battles me for possession of the convention brochure, I keep my claws in and my lip zipped. She suddenly freezes in mid-fight and opens those baby blue-grays as wide as all outdoors.

"Why, Louie, that Ashleigh woman has a cat you're sweet on ... what is its name? Iva ... Ivory ...

Minuet... Minaret?"

The Divine Yvette is not an "It," but I will not deign to tell Miss Temple so. I do not speak to humans, on principal, because some of them are so unspeakable to my kind.

Miss Temple does not expect an answer from me anyway. "Even cats get the long-gone, lonesome blues, I guess," she goes on. "I am sure that Savannah Ashleigh drags the poor thing everywhere she goes. So, feel free, Louie, to mosey on over to the Phoenix to visit Electra and me during the G.R.O.W.L.

convention. You can even say hello to your lost inamorata."

In amor what? Poor Miss Temple. Her mind is more than somewhat muddled from her recent encounter with the Mystifying Max. No doubt she has already forgotten that there is good reason I would not be eager to race over to the Crystal Phoenix to mix whiskers with the Divine Yvette.

I cannot touch tootsie to premises without risking an encounter with my own unwelcome offspring, the exceedingly un-divine Midnight Louise. No matter that the Divine Yvette waits and wonders in her lonely canvas carrier.

A romance conference may be convening at the Crystal Phoenix, but love is not in the cards for two lonely persons from the opposite side of the tracks. The Divine Yvette is forever Pretty Paws, and I am plain dirt.