Cat In A Flamingo Fedora

Chapter 8

Breaking the Carrier Barrier

"Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage," but a cat carrier makes a pretty good chastity belt. Like the Cavalier poet-dude, Richard Lovelace, I speak from painful experience.

And I am not feeling very cavalier right now. There we are, the Divine Yvette and me, together on a glamorous assignment; workmates, co-stars. There are our separate carriers, into which we are placed for hours on end without even an opportunity for a little sniff and whisker-tickle.

And there is Maurice, the Yummy Tum-tum-tummy spokescat who was originally supposed to have had my part (that of love struck swain) in the new A La Cat commercials. He should be back in some Sherman Oaks compound chatting it up with the other trained animals. But, no, he is along for the ride. On the scene of the crime, so to speak. In the wings. I wish those wings were the real thing and on his back.

For this is a very dangerous dude. I have it on good authority (albeit incorporeal) that Maurice Two is an imposter, like I told my old man. Poor Maurice One!

Imagine drowning in Yummy Tum-tum-tummy! What irony. All those dead fish doing you in.

Poetic justice, I suppose, but I have no intention of falling into a carp pond stocked with piranha.

And when Maurice Two is around, any set piece or prop is a potential murder weapon.

I am seeing potential for disaster everywhere I look.

Take the human chorus line that is supposed to back up Yvette and me when we finally get our few, brief moments on the stage. All those size nine and ten shoes (and I am talking just the girl hoofers here; the boys probably wear elevens and twe lves), all those tap shoes, armed with steel plates. Say I slipped (or was pushed) coming down the long flight of stairs on which I make my dramatic entrance.

I would make a dramatic exit under a hundred tapping feet. They could then market a new brand of cat food: Midnight Louie Pate. To think of it is to shudder, save there is no room in this cramped crate to so much as sneeze.

So, in one respect, my incarceration offers a certain protection.

But is life worth living under a constant threat? More than one human has pondered this question. I suppose I could seize the moment and endeavor to off the miserable Maurice Two before he offs me. This was the suggestion of Maurice One's pathetic shade. (Shade is a fancy word for ghost.) This dude came to me in a seance-dream. Although all the cats at the seance were actual felines, not another present was honored with a vision of Maurice One, so I know that our karma is irretrievably mixed. (And I am not speaking of the psycho cat named Karma who shares Miss Electra Lark's penthouse at the Circle Ritz. Okay, Karma is a psychic cat, but I prefer the other spelling.)

Anyway, what to do? Watch my back, obviously. Take out Maurice Two if given time and opportunity, well ... no. I have spent too much time of late on the right side of the law. I am not a vigilante, just an ordinary street dude who happens to have a nose for trouble. Still, it is hard to play a sitting duck when you would rather be eating one.

As for the Divine Yvette, she is happily ignorant of the dead-serious byplay. She gives me the baby blue-greens at every opportunity, although I detect a subtle change in her attitude. Her glances seem to be more of an appeal than a come-on. I think that she has sensed the tension and feels a corresponding distress.

All of this does not bode well for the A La Cat commercial. But then, can a television commercial that combines a purebred Persian with an alley cat and a human chorus line i n Easter egg-colored zoot suits possibly go right? Especially when said Persian is wearing a diamond collar and said alley cat is forced to have a flamingo-pink fedora affixed to his head in ways that are too embarrassing to mention. And must it tilt down over one eye, so I cannot see when I am pussyfooting down all those stairs in front of a tidal wave of tap dancers also wearing fedoras tilted over one eye so they cannot see when they run me down and pound me into chopped liver? And kidney and tongue and tail.

If you want a recipe for disaster and murder most musical, you could not find a better formula than at an A La Cat commercial filming in Las Vegas.

Color me History.